p. 12 | Aids for Bible Readers

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D.C. · Dec 5, 1907

Aids for Bible Readers

Historical quotations and extracts from various writers which may assist the thoughtful student of the Scriptures.

Duration of Our Lord's Ministry

On the phrase feast of the Jews (heorte ton loudion) (John 5:1) turns mainly the question as to the duration of our Lord's public ministry. John notes distinctly three passovers. John 2:13; 6:4; 12:1. If now this feast be another passover, then our Lord's public labors continued during three and a half years; if not, then the time of his ministry must in all probability be reckoned one year less.

The only reasonable ground of doubt in this case, is the absence of the definite article before feast. But even as the text now stands, it may assuredly in itself just as well denote the great Jewish festival as any other. The following considerations seem to show that it does most probably thus stand for a passover; viz., the second in our Lord's public ministry.

1. The word feast (heorte) without the article, is put definitely for the passover, in the phrase kata heortan. Matt. 27:15; Mark 15:6; Luke 23:17. Comp. John 18:39.

2. In Hebrew a noun before a genitive is made definite by prefixing the article, not to the noun itself, but to the genitive; see Davies's translation of Gesenius's Heb. Gr., par. 109; I Nordheim Heb. Gr. ii., p. 14, g. This idiom is transferred by the LXX. into Greek: e. g., Deut. 16:13, heortan ton skanon poieseis seauto, i. e., the festival of tabernacles. So too in the New Testament: Matt. 12:24, en to Beelzeboul archonti ton daimonion, i. e., the prince of demons. Hence, in the passage before us, according to the analogous English idiom, we may render the phrase by the Jews' festival; which marks it definitely as the passover.

3. It is not probable that John means here to imply that the festival was indefinite or uncertain. Such is not his usual manner. The Jewish festivals were to him the measures of time; and in every other instance they are definitely specified. So the passover (John 2:23; 12:1), even when Jesus does not visit it (chap. 6:4); and also when it is expressed only by the feast. Chap. 4:45; 11:56; 12:12, 20, al. So, too, the festival of tabernacles (chap. 7:2); and of the dedication. Chap. 10:22. This is all natural in him; for an indefinite festival could afford no note of time.

4. The plucking of the ears of grain by the disciples shows that a passover had just been kept; which tallies accurately with this visit of our Lord to Jerusalem.

5. This feast could not have been the festival either of Pentecost or of tabernacles next following our Lord's first passover. He returned from Judea to Galilee not until eight months after that passover, when both these festivals were already past. That it might by possibility have been the Pentecost after a second passover not mentioned, and before that in John 6:4, can not perhaps be fully disproved; but such a view has in itself no probability, and is apparently entertained by no one. At any rate, it would also give the same duration of three and a half years to our Lord's ministry.

6. Nor can we well understand here the festival of Purim, which occurred on the fourteenth and fifteenth of the month Adar, or March, one month before the passover. See Esther 9:21, 22, 26-28. Against this the following considerations present themselves: (a) The Jews did not go up to Jerusalem to celebrate the festival of Purim. The observance of it among that people throughout the world consisted solely in reading the book of Esther in their synagogues on those days, and making them “days of feasting and joy and of sending portions [dishes] one to another and gifts to the poor.” Esther 9:22; Jos. Ant. xi. 6, 13, Reland, Antiq.; Heb. 4:9. But the “multitude” (John 5:13) seems to imply a concourse of strangers at one of the great festivals. (b) It is very improbable that Jesus would have gone up to Jerusalem at the Purim, to which the Jews did not go up, rather than at the passover which occurred only a month later. His being once present at the festival of dedication (John 10:22) is not a parallel case; since he appears not to have gone up for that purpose, but this festival occurred while he remained in or near Jerusalem after the festival of tabernacles. John 7:2, sq. (c) The infirm man was healed on the Sabbath (John 5:9); which Sabbath belonged to the festival as the whole context shows. John 5:1, 2, 10-13. But the Purim was never celebrated on a Sabbath; and, when it happened to fall on that day, was regularly deferred. See Reland l. c.

7. The main objection urged against taking this feast as a passover, is the circumstance that in such case, as our Lord did not go up to the passover spoken of in John 6:4, but only at the subsequent festival of tabernacles in John 7:2, sq., he would thus have absented himself from Jerusalem for a year and six months; a neglect, it is alleged, inconsistent with his character and with a due observance of the Jewish law. But a sufficient reason is assigned for this omission; namely, “because the Jews sought to kill him.” John 7:1; comp. 5:18. It obviously had been our Lord's custom to visit the holy city every year at the passover; and because, for the reason assigned, he once let this occasion pass by, he therefore went up six months afterward, at the feast of tabernacles. All this presents a view perfectly natural, and covers the whole ground. Nor have we any right to assume, as many do, that our Lord regularly went up to Jerusalem on other occasions besides those specified in the New Testament.

In this instance, the most ancient view is that which takes feast for a passover. So Irenæus in the third century: “Et posthac iterum secunda vice adscendit [Jesus] in diem paschæ in Hierusalem, quando paralyticum, qui juxta natatoriam jacebat xxxviii annos curavit.”—Adv. Hær. ii. 39. The same view was adopted by Eusebius, Theodoret, and others; and in later times has been followed by Luther, Scaliger, Grotius, Lightfoot, Le Clerc, Lampe, Hengstenberg, Greswell, etc. Cyril and Chrysostom held to a Pentecost, as also the Harmony ascribed to Tatian; and so, in modern times, Erasmus, Calvin, Beza, Bengel, etc. The festival of Purim was first suggested by Kepler (“Eclogæ Chronicæ,” pp. 72, 129, sq. Francof. 1615); and at the present day this is the only view, aside from the passover, that finds advocates. Those who hold it, as Hug, Neander, Olshausen, Tholuck, Meyer, Wieseler (Lücke and De Wette leave the question undecided), regard John 6:4 as having reference to the second passover during our Lord's ministry; which thus becomes limited to two and one-half years. See generally, Greswell's Dissert. viii. vol. ii., Neander's Leben Jesu, 3te Ausg. p. 434. Wieseler's Chronol. Synopse der Vier Evangelien, pp. 211-222.

From “Harmony of the Gospels,” following that in Greek, by Ed. Robinson, D. D., LL. D., published by the Religious Tract Society (pages 199-200).

“That this feast was a passover, was certainly the most ancient opinion, and it is the opinion of the great majority of critics, being that of Irenæus, as early as the second century, Eusebius and Theodoret among the fathers; and of Luther, Beza, Maldonat, Grotius, Lightfoot, Le Clerc, Lampe, Hengstenberg, Greswell, Robinson, Tholuck in his 6th edition, and apparently in his 7th and last, Middleton, Trench, Webster, and Wilkinson,” etc. Commentary on New Testament, Rev. D. Brown, on John 5:1.—Foot-note in “The Approaching End of the Age,” by H. Grattan Guinness, Fourth Edition, pages 451-453.