The two preceding arguments are independent of the par- ticular number of passovers recorded in St. John's Gospel ; the two which follow derive their force from tlie result above established, that three passovers, or a minimum of two years, are there assigned to the Slinistr}-.
y. An early tradition, dating back certainl.v to the Gnostics of the 2nd cent., and perhaps to St. Luke himself, limited the Ministry to a single yeir ; every year, therefore, added to the minimum of two years required by St. John makes it more difficult to understand how tifie error can have bad so ancient an origin or so wide a diffusion.
i. It the ap])arGnt narrowness of tbe framework in which the Synoptic narrative is set paved the way in part for the theory of the single year, an almost equally rapid succession of events is implied b}' two indications in the Fourth Gospel— indications which, but for the actual enumeration of the feasts, might well have seemed to bmit the Ministry to an even shorter duration than two years. Ch i*^ 'the Galileans received him, having seen all things that be did at Jerus. at tbe feast,* refers to 'Z'^ * when he was in Jems, at the passover at the feast, many behcvcd on his name, beholding the signs which he was doing ' ; and ch. 721 23 * One work I did, and ye are all marvelling. . . . I made a man sound every whit on the sabbath day,' reaches back to 51-9. Not only can there have been no visit to Galilee between 2*1 and 4*^, no visit to Jerus. between 6* and 7^1, but the intervals themselves must have been relatively small : eigiit or nine months is the outside limit for the former ; and since many signs were perfonned at the first recorded visit to Jems., the impression of the one miracle which marked the Becon(i visit v^'ould scarcely stand out with unique distinctness for much more than a similar period. As 7*-' was spoken at Tabernacles, and a Passover intervenes at 6*, this is 90 far an argument lor not putting back tbe visit of 6^ beyond the previous Purim (February).
The cumulative effect of these considerations warrants the conclusion that while two years 7nust, not more than two years can, bo allowed for the interval from Jn 2''' "* to Jn 11"; and it now remains only to ask how far the results establisheil from St. John's Gospel agree with the more tentative results deduced from .St. Mark's.
a coiiiparca with c. St. Mark's Gospel was shown (p. 400), if its order of events can be taken as chronological, to imply, exactly like St. John's, a
410 CHRONOLOGY OF NEW TEST.
CHRONOLOGY OF NEW TEST.
two-year Ministry. Its second note of time, the springof the miracle of the 5000, corresponds exactly to the Passover mentioned as ' nigh ' on the same occasion in St. John (Mk 6''=Jn 6*). Its first note, the harvest of the ears of com (Mk 2"), must; if recorded in its proper place, belong to the months immediately succeeding the passover of .In 2. It would follow at once that the visit welcomed by the Galileans (Jn 4''''), being the first visit to Galilee after Jn 2, must precede Mk 2^ ; and St. John's note of time in Samaria (Jn 4"') must be placed between the passover and the episode of the ears of com, i.e. at the actual harvest season. Very soon after the passover — room has only to be found for the visit of Nicodemus — per- haps about April 20, since passover in A.D. 27 fell on April 11 or 12, Christ leaves Jems, with his disciples and makes a stay in the ' land of Jud,'ea ' while John was still preaching ; but the Baptist's arrest probably followed shortly, and may actu- ally have been the cause of our Lord's removal through Samaria to Galilee, at a time when at least the barley was ripe, say about the middle of May (Jn S^ »* 4', and Westcott, ad loc). 'After the arrest of John, Jesus came into Galilee ' is St. Mark's description of the same moment, 1". So far the chronology is smooth enough ; the difficulty is to know wnether the six weeks, which is the utmost that can be allowed between the middle of May and the end of wheat harvest, are enough to cover the opening stages of the Galilean Ministry down to the episode of the ears of corn. It haw been shown above (p. 406"") that within his first section St. Mark certainly groups events by subject- matter rather than by time, so that there is no d priori reason against placing the episode of the com during, or even before, the circuit of the village- towns (xoi^oirAXetj, i. 38), which is almost the only distinctively marked occurrence in these chapters. No doubt, however, such a scheme as this would crush the early GalUean Ministry into an tm- comfortably narrow space ; the double call of the apostles, for instance, is more appropriate if a sub- stantial interval, during which they had returned to their ordinary avocations, elapsed between the return to Galilee in May and the second and final call. But if the harmonization is thought im- possible, it is the chronological order of the events m St. Mark, and not the limitation of the Ministry to two years, which must be given up. The corn episode must be transferred to the second year of the Ministry, and placed after the miracle of the Five Thousand.