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was baptized on the sixth of the ides (that is, the eighth) of November, in the fifteenth of Tiberius, reckoning from the death of Augustus; making it to correspond to A. D. 28, and that he died A. D. 30, when Venutius and Cassius Longinus were consuls, having preached through the whole year 29, in which the Gemini were consuls. *

Placing the baptism of Jesus a little after the feast of tabernacles, he supposes him to have preached from that time, without any opposition, a whole year, which he weakly enough calls "the acceptable year;" and then from the feast of tabernacles following, through the whole of the ensuing year, to have been violently opposed; and that in the passover after that complete year of opposition he suffered.

But I shall give our readers a better idea of this harmonizer, if I partly translate and partly abridge a few passages from him. He says, "after the expiration of his thirtieth year, Christ came to be baptized, and after the same thirtieth year he preached the whole acceptable year of the Lord, without any opposition. He afterwards went through a year of opposition from the Jews, in which he suffered much from their vexation and envy, and moreover entered upon a third year; so that in all he lived 32 years and 74 days."+ In this we see how little regard was paid to the fancies of Irenæus, by a writer who lived about two centuries after him, and indeed to the opinion of Eusebius, who flourished about half a century before Epiphanius. But to proceed with my

extracts.

"At his baptism," he says, "Christ was 29 years and 10 months old. After this followed the forty days' temptation, then a stay of about two weeks at Nazareth, then a day or two with John. When he had left John, we reckon two days more for the call first of Andrew and then of Peter. In another day, Philip and Nathanael were called. The third day after these two last was the marriage feast at Cana, where he performed his first miracle, being then exactly thirty years old.

"The disciples above-mentioned having then left him, he was joined by others, with whom he went to Capernaum, afterwards to Nazareth, and then again to Capernaum, where he performed some miracles, as the cure of the withered hand, and of Peter's wife's mother. Then returning again to Nazareth, he read in the prophecy of Isaiah, and was rejected. From thence he fled for fear of Herod, and after his flight remained

* Opera, VI. p. 446. (P.) VOL. XX.

↑ Opera, I. p. 449. (P.)

at Nazareth. He then retired to the desert, and returning from thence, began to preach.

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Afterwards, he says, "It is plain that Christ preached the acceptable year in which no person opposed him. For the first year after the thirtieth of his incarnation he preached with universal approbation, so that neither Jews, Heathens, nor Samaritans opposed him, but all heard him gladly. In this year he went up to Jerusalem, after he had been baptized, and passed through the forty days' temptation, and chose his disciples. Having returned from the temptation, to Jordan, and travelled to the sea of Tiberias, and to Nazareth, he went up to Jerusalem, and in the midst of the feast cried, saying, 'If any one thirst, let him come unto me and drink,' (John vii. 37,) and then he returned to Nazareth, and Judea, and Samaria, and the country about Tyre.

"The first year being accomplished, he again went up to Jerusalem, and then they sought to apprehend him in the feast, but were afraid. At this feast he said, I do not yet go up to the feast. And they said, (John vii. 25, &c.) Is not this he whom they sought to apprehend, and behold he speaketh boldly?'

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"After these things, two years and some months" (which he particularly specifies) being elapsed, he suffered in the month of March, in the year after the consulship of the Gemini." +

What little countenance these notions, and this arrangement, have from the Scriptures, I need not tell your Lordship. We find no hint there of any period in our Saviour's ministry in which he was not opposed. The jealousy of the highpriests was excited at the very first passover, before any mention is made of his preaching. It was on their hearing of his making "more disciples than John" that he thought of retiring from Judea into Galilee. In the feast mentioned John v. 1, we read, ver. 16, that the Jews persecuted him, and sought to slay him. And this feast, whatever it was, must have been a considerable time before the feast mentioned in the viith chapter, at which he dates the opposition to Christ's ministry. Nay the passover in John vi. 4, as your Lordship supposes, must have intervened between it and that in the viith chapter, which is expressly said to be the feast of tabernacles.

I therefore think that, since all the ancients were agreed that the active part of our Lord's ministry, all that part in * Opera, I. p. 439. (P.)

+ Ibid. I. p. 447. (P.

which they say he met with any opposition, and all that is related by the three first evangelists, was confined to one year, we are sufficiently authorized by this tradition, and the plainest sense of scripture together, to reject all that supposed part of our Lord's ministry which passed without opposition, and to limit the whole to one year.

So little attention, we see, had Epiphanius given, even to John's Gospel, where only this pretended "acceptable year" is to be found; that, if I understand him at all, he makes two feasts of what John makes but one, and a long journey to come between them. And what is still more extraordinary, the incident mentioned as belonging to the first feast is subsequent to those which he mentions as belonging to the latter, as will appear by comparing the quotations in the passage recited above. His account of our Lord's visits to Nazareth, and his journeys from that place to Capernaum and back again, is exceedingly confused.

I much suspect the account he gives of the objections that the Alogi made to John's Gospel. "They found fault," he says, "with the Gospel of John, because he relates the attendance of Christ at two passovers; whereas the other evangelists only mention his attendance at one, viz. the last; though," he adds, "they might have observed a third passover mentioned in John's Gospel, viz. that at which he suffered."* But how does Christ's attendance at two passovers affect their hypothesis, when they supposed that his ministry lasted at least a whole year; and consequently there must have been two passovers, at which he might have attended?

I cannot help expressing my surprise that Dr. Lardner should incline to the opinion of Epiphanius, and others of that age, of Christ's preaching a year without opposition." He says, "In St. John's Gospel are three passovers, and our Saviour's ministry has two years and a part; but the former part of his ministry there related was not so public as that after John's imprisonment. In the other three evangelists, who relate chiefly our Lord's most public preaching, after John the Baptist's imprisonment, is the history of only somewhat more than the space of one year. How much more is not very easy to say."†

Dr. Lardner, however, says of the Harmony ascribed to Tatian, that the author "does not suppose the feast of the Jews' mentioned John v. i, to have been passover, but pentecost," and he says, "this is a mark of antiquity," he himOpera, I. p. 444, (P.) + Credibility, Pt. ii. (P.) Works, II. pp. 423, 424. 1 Ibid. p. 423.

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self finding no intimation of any passover between the first mentioned by John and the last at which our Lord suffered, but that in John vi. 4. * It is plain, however, that Irenæus considered the feast mentioned John v. 1, as a passover, and so I think must Epiphanius and Eusebius have done.

Of all the modern professed harmonizers, Lami† is the only one that I know who has followed the plan of those of the fathers who distributed the business of our Lord's ministry into two years; but his arrangement of the events is such as I imagine will not give much satisfaction, since the lights that have been thrown upon the Gospel history, of late years, and especially in this country.

Before the passover in which our Lord had the interview with Nicodemus, he places a great part of Christ's preaching in Galilee, and even the mission of the twelve, and the upbraiding of the cities in which the chief of his mighty works were done. He also places the scene of Jesus's preaching in Enon, while John was baptizing there, in the August after this passover. Then comes the journey through Samaria, the conversation with the woman of Sychar, and the rejection at Nazareth. In the January following he places the imprisonment of John, ‡ in the month following his death; and in March after this, Herod hears of Jesus, and supposes him to have been "John risen from the dead."

SECTION XV.

MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS.

I. Of the first Excursion from Capernaum.

YOUR Lordship contends, that our Lord's first excursion from Capernaum must have required more than a week. § But, except the general expression of going "about all Galilee," &c., on which certainly no great stress can be laid, your Lordship cannot find any particulars of that excursion that can be supposed to have required a week. All that I find are, his visiting some unnamed towns, with which * Works, II. p. 425.

+ Bernard Lami, Priest of the Oratory, who died at Rouen in 1715, aged 70. Besides several other works in science and theology, he published in 2 vols. 4to. Harmonia sive Concordia Evangelica.

According to one of his French biographers, Lami supposed two imprisonments of John: "La première fois par l'ordre des Prêtres et des Pharisiens; la seconde par celui d' Herode." Nouv. Dict. Hist. IV. p. 31.

§ Reply, p. 77. (P.) "I allow three weeks for Jesus's residence in Capernaum, Matt. iv. 13 and transactions follow for which, in my opinion, less than a month cannot be allowed, but which you include within a week." Ibid.

Galilee was very thick sown, the Sermon on the Mount, and the cure of a leper. And I must again insist upon it, that unless, in any case, so much business be distinctly specified, as would necessarily require more time than my hypothesis. admits, supported as it is by various external and independent evidence, I cannot relinquish it. On a variety of occasions, your Lordship may think that more time than my hypothesis admits would have been better. But it is enough for me if it always allows sufficient time, though it may now and then be thought scanty. In general, it gives more time than is wanted.

II. Of the Time of the Journey to Nam.

To lengthen out the time of our Lord's journeying, your Lordship appears to me to put a harsh and improbable construction on the words of Luke, in describing the journey to Nain. After mentioning the cure of the centurion's servant in Capernaum, he says, (vii. 11,) "And it came to pass, the day after, that he went into a city called Nain." With respect to which your Lordship says, "It is by no means necessary to suppose-that he performed this journey in one day, accompanied as he was by many of his disciples, and much people: the evangelist may mean that he undertook the journey on the next day, not that he finished it."*

Now admitting that the words of the evangelist may bear this construction, (though I do not think that they will,) I should not have recourse to it without some more urgent occasion than merely to gain a single day, and a day that I can very well spare your Lordship. On a former occasion your Lordship said, that "because Luke asserted a thing, you believed it." I should think, therefore, that in this case, rather than depart from the obvious meaning of his words, you might suppose with me, that, on this and some other occasions, our Lord might not travel on foot. Not that a walk of twenty miles appears so formidable a thing to all persons as it may to your Lordship. And persons used to walking, as our Saviour and his apostles probably were, do not find it very fatiguing, unless unfavourable circumstances relating to the weather or the roads, &c. contribute to make

it so.

III. Of the Second Sabbath after the First.

As to the difficult phrase of deυTEGOTOWTOоs, Luke vi. 1,

* Reply, pp. 89, 90. (P.)

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