f the more comprehensive
idea it gives of the ministry depicted in the partial narratives of our
several gospels.

IV

The Chronology

45. The length of the public ministry of Jesus was one of the earliest
questions which arose in the study of the four gospels. In the second and
third centuries it was not uncommon to find the answer in the passage from
Isaiah (lxi. 1, 2), which Jesus declared was fulfilled in himself. "The
acceptable year of the Lord" was taken to indicate that the ministry
covered little more than a year. The fact that the first three gospels
mention but one Passover (that at the end), and but one journey to
Jerusalem, seems at first to be favorable to this conclusion, and to make
peculiarly significant the care taken by Luke to give the exact date for
the opening of Jesus' ministry (iii. 1, 2). In fact, the second century
Gnostics, relying apparently on Luke, assigned both the ministry and death
of Jesus to the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar,--an interpretation which
may have given rise to the widely spread, early tradition, found, for
example, in Tertullian (Ante-nicene Fathers, in. 160), which placed the
death of Jesus in A.D. 29, during the consulship of L. Rubellius Geminus
and C. Fufius Geminus.

46. The theory that the ministry of Jesus extended over but little more
than one year is beset, however, by difficulties that seem insuperable.
The first is presented by the three Passovers distinctly mentioned in the
Gospel of John (ii. 13; vi. 4; xii. 1). The last of these is plainly
identical with the one named in the other gospels. The second gives the
time of year for the feeding of the five thousand, and agrees with the
mention of "the green grass" in the account of Mark and Matthew (Mark vi.
39; Matt. xiv. 19). John's first Passover falls in a section which demands
a place before Mark i. 14 (compare John iii. 24). Hence it must be shown
that this first Passover is chronologically out of order in the Gospel of
John, or the one year ministry advocated by the second century Gnostics,
by Clement of Alexandria, by Origen, and of late years by Keim and others,
is seen to be impossible. The fact that at this Passover Jesus cleansed
the temple, and that the other gospels assign such a cleansing to the
close of the ministry, suggests the possibility that John has set it at
the opening of his narrative for reasons connected with his argument. This
interpretation falls, however, before the p