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Untitled Article
( Capernaum , our Lord ' s usual residence , was about seventy miles distant ;) but no one could be said , with any appearance of plausibility , to do things in secret , who ( as St . Matthew states , ch . iv . 23—25 ) went about all Galilee , teaching in their synagogues , and healing all manner of diseases ; whose fame went » throughout all Syria ; and whom great multitudes followed , not only from Galilee , but from Jerusalem , and from Judaea , and from beyond the Jordan . Indeed , it appears that wherever our Lord went , the Pharisees ( i . e . the leading men of the sect , some of whom were members of the Sanhedrim ) , were always closely watching him , and doing whatever they could to interfere with the execution of his work , and to find some pretext for legal measures against him , or some means of destroying his influence with the people : and , on one occasion , ( as St . Luke informs us , ch . v . 17 , ) there were Pharisees and Doctors of the Law sitting by , who were come out
of every town of Galilee and Judaea , and from Jerusalem . From the commencement of our Lord ' s public preaching in Galilee , to the last Passover , there is no indication in any one of the first three Gospels , of any Festivals occurring ; nor , indeed , any interval in which a national festival can suitably be placed . In examining this point , it should also be borne in mind that , both from a principle of duty ( MatU iii . 14 , and ch . v . 19 ) and from a desire to give no needless offence to the Jews ( ch . xvii . 27 ) , our Lord , if he had been obliged to absent himself from a national festival , would not have
kept his Apostles away ; and surely some intimation even of his absence would have been given . But we do ourselves see abundant reason for the conviction , that no national festival intervened between the commencement of our Lord's Public Preaching after the imprisonment of John , and the Last Passover . If those who have as yet adopted no hypothesis respecting the duration of
our Lord ' s Ministry and the arrangement of its records , attentively examine the portion of Matthew ' s Gospel beginning with ch . iv . 12 , and ending with ch . xiv 14 , which must necessarily precede the sixth chapter of John , they will not , we believe , deem us unreasonable in maintaining , that nothing short of positive , unambiguous evidence should lead the Harmonist to arrange the sixth chapter of St . John before the seventh . There is no such
evidence ; and the very nature of a supplementary narrative renders it probable that the Apostle would place the portions of his Gospel v if he arranged them himself ) in the order he found most convenient . From ch . vii . to the period of the Resurrection is-a series of narratives , all closely connected with Jerusalem , and with the purposes of the Jewish Sanhedrim ; and all having so intimate a connexion with each other , that if we had ourselves to arrange the portions of the Gospel so as to form one book , we should not willingly interrupt that connexion , in order to insert the detached document of the sixth
chapter , respecting a miracle in Galilee . * Besides , that detached document has its specific date ; and this would obviate all objection arising from a regard to chronological accuracy , and from the desire to shew the true force of several expressions in our Lord ' s discourse at Capernaum , and in the Evangelist ' s own narration , which accord only with a near approach , of the period when he was to give himself " for the life of the world . " That date is the near approach of the Passover . Now as the Gospel of John gives an
* How close the connexion ib , from ch . vii . to ch . xii ., may be inferred from the way in which the transactions at the Tabernacles , and the visit at the Feast of Dedication , are united , in the Public Version , in ch . x ., and the raising of Lazarus with the Last Passover , in ch . xi .
Untitled Article
306 On the Chronology and Arrangement of the Gospel Narratives *
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), May 2, 1831, page 306, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2597/page/18/
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