ch they returned to Galilee, into their town of Nazareth,
where their child Jesus grew every day in grace and in wisdom. Luke goes
on to say that His father and His mother went every year to Jerusalem on
the solemn days of their Easter feast, but makes no mention of their
flight into Egypt, nor of the cruelty of Herod toward the children of
the province of Bethlehem. In regard to the cruelty of Herod, as neither
the historians of that time speak of it, nor Josephus, the historian who
wrote the life of this Herod, and as the other Evangelists do not
mention it, it is evident that the journey of those wise men, guided by
a star, this massacre of little children, and this flight to Egypt, were
but absurd falsehoods. For it is not credible that Josephus, who blamed
the vices of this king, could have been silent on such a dark and
detestable action, if what the Evangelist said had been true.

In regard to the duration of the public life of Jesus Christ, according
to what the first three Evangelists say, there could be scarcely more
than three months from the time of His baptism until His death,
supposing He was thirty years old when He was baptized by John,
according to Luke, and that He was born on the 25th of December. For,
from this baptism, which was in the year 15 of Tiberius Caesar, and in
the year when Anne and Caiaphas were high-priests, to the first Easter
following, which was in the month of March, there was but about three
months; according to what the first three Evangelists say, He was
crucified on the eve of the first Easter following His baptism, and the
first time He went to Jerusalem with His disciples; because all that
they say of His baptism, of His travels, of His miracles, of His
preaching, of His death and passion, must have taken place in the same
year of His baptism, for the Evangelists speak of no other year
following, and it appears even by the narration of His acts that He
performed them consecutively immediately after His baptism, and in a
very short time, during which we see but an interval of six days before
his Transfiguration; during these six days we do not see that He did
anything. We see by this that He lived but about three months after His
baptism, from which, if we subtract the forty days and forty nights
which He passed in the desert immediately after His baptism, it would
follow that the length of His public life from His first preaching till
His death, would have lasted but about six w