p. 12 | The Chronology from the Birth of Christ to the End of the Seventy Weeks

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Dec 19, 1907

The Chronology from the Birth of Christ to the End of the Seventy Weeks

(Concluded)

AFTER the Saviour commenced his miracles, in Cana of Galilee, he went down to Capernaum; “and they continued there not many days. And the Jews’ passover was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” John 2:12, 13. On this occasion he drove out those who defiled the temple with merchandise. And when asked a sign, he said to them: “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body.” John 2:18-21. Herod the Great began his preparations for the rebuilding of the temple, by gathering materials, two years previous to the commencement of the work on the temple, B. C. 19. Reckoning from this, forty-six years extend to, and bring his first passover in, A. D. 28.

“After this there was a feast of the Jews; and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.” John 5:1. Dr. Hales says, “The correcter reading appears to be the feast, by way of eminence, as the passover was styled (Luke 2:42; John 4:45; 11:56; 12:12),” which reading is sustained “by twenty-five MSS., including the three oldest.” This, then, was the second passover during Christ’s ministry. A. D. 29.

Again we read, “And the passover, a feast of the Jews, was nigh.” John 6:4. The Saviour did not go up openly to this feast, because his time was not then full come, and the Jews were seeking to kill him. After this, the Jews required of him a sign, and he told them that no sign should be given them, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. Matt. 16:4. A. D. 30.

Again: the Saviour said to his disciples, “Ye know that after two days is the feast of the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified.” Matt. 26:2. This was the fourth and last passover during his ministry, and, reckoning from the commencement of his ministry, in the autumn of A. D. 27, reaches to the midst of the week, when he should “cause the sacrifice and the oblation to cease.” Dan. 9:27. A. D. 31.

The Saviour “sent Peter and John, saying, Go and prepare us the passover, that we may eat.” Luke 22:8. And “they made ready the passover. And when the hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him.” Verses 13, 14. On this occasion he instituted the Lord’s supper, as a memorial of his death, till he should again come. After this, the Jews seized on him, gave him a mock trial, and crucified him. “And it was about the sixth hour, and there was a darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. And the sun was darkened.” Luke 23:44, 45.

“This obscuration of the sun must have been preternatural, in its extent, duration, and opposition of the moon at full to the sun. It was observed at Heliopolis, in Egypt, by Dionysius, the Areopagite, afterward the illustrious convert of Paul at Athens (Acts 17:33, 34), who, in a letter to the martyr Polycarp, describes his own and his companion’s—the sophist Apollophanes—astonishment at the phenomenon, when they saw the darkness commence at the eastern brink of the sun, and proceed to the western, till the whole was eclipsed; and then retrograde, from the western to the eastern, till his light was fully restored; which they attributed to the miraculous passage of the moon across the sun’s disk. Apollophanes exclaimed, as if divining the cause, ‘These, O good Dionysius, are the vicissitudes of divine events!’ Dionysius answered, ‘Either the Deity suffers, or he sympathizes with the sufferer.’ And that sufferer, according to tradition recorded by Michael Syncellus, of Jerusalem, he declared to be ‘The Unknowable God,’ for whose sufferings all nature was darkened and convulsed.”—Hales, Vol. II, page 897.

“A total eclipse of the moon may occasion a privation of her light for an hour and a half, during her total immersion in the shadow; whereas, a total eclipse of the sun can never last in any particular place above four minutes, when the moon is nearest to the earth, and her shadow thickest.

“Hence it appears that the darkness which ‘overspread the whole land of Judea’ at the time of our Lord’s crucifixion, was preternatural, or miraculous in its extent; and ‘from the sixth until the ninth hour,’ or from noon until three in the afternoon, in its duration, and also in its time, about full moon, when the moon could not possibly eclipse the sun.

The time it happened, and the fact itself, are recorded in a curious and valuable passage of a respectable Roman consul, Aurelius Cassiodorus, senator, about A. D. 514:—

“In the consulate of Tiberius Cæsar Augustus V and Aelius Sejanus (U. C. 784, A. D. 31), our Lord Jesus Christ suffered on the eighth of the Calends of April (twenty-fifth of March), when there happened such an eclipse of the sun as was never before nor since. ”

“In this year, and in this day, agree also the Council of Cæsarea, A. D. 196 or 198; the Alexandrian Chronicle, Maximus Monachus, Nicephorus Constantinus, Cedrenus; and in this year, but on different days, concur Eusebius, and Epiphanius, followed by Kepler, Bucher, Patinus, and Petavius, some reckoning it the tenth of the Calends of April, others the thirteenth. Amidst this variety of days, we may look on the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh of March as the most probable.

“And, indeed, that the passover of the crucifixion was an early one, may be collected from the circumstance of ‘the servants and officers’ having made a fire of coals in the hall of the high priest’s house, ‘for it was cold,’ at which they and Peter warmed themselves.” John 18:18; Luke 22:55; Mark 14:54. Whereas, the passovers of the two ensuing years, A. D. 32, April 14, and A. D. 33, were later in the season, and probably milder.

“The preternatural darkness at the crucifixion was accompanied by an earthquake, which altogether struck the spectators, and among them the centurion and Roman guard, with great fear, and a conviction that Jesus was the Son of God. Matt. 27:51-54.

“Ignatius and Eusebius both assign three years for the duration of our Lord’s public ministry.”

“Eusebius dates the first half of the passion week of years as beginning with our Lord’s baptism, and ending with his crucifixion. The same period, precisely, is recorded by Peter, as including our Lord’s personal ministry: ‘All the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of [or by] John, unto that same day that he was taken up from us,’ at his ascension, which was only forty-two days after the crucifixion. Acts 1:21, 22. And the remaining half of the passion week ended with the martyrdom of Stephen, in the seventh or last year of the week. For it is remarkable that the year after, A. D. 35, began a new era in the church; namely, the conversion of Saul, or Paul the apostle, by the personal appearance of Christ to him on the road to Damascus, when he received his mission to the Gentiles, after the Jewish Sanhedrin had formally rejected Christ by persecuting his disciples. Acts 9:1-18.”—Hales, Vol. II, pages 176, 177, 199, 200, 205, 206.

In the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon found, by computation, that the pascal full moon, A. D. 33, fell on Friday; and this circumstance led him, and several others, Scaliger, Usher, Pearson, etc., to conclude that this was the year of the crucifixion. The accuracy of the astronomical calculation has been repeatedly verified; and “this circumstance,” says Dr. Hales, “proves that it was not the year of the crucifixion; for the true paschal moon was the day before, Thursday, when Christ celebrated the passover with his disciples.”—Vol. II, page 205.

The Saviour ate the passover the night previous to his crucifixion, which took place on Friday, for “that day was the preparation, and the Sabbath drew on.” Luke 23:54. On the third day following—on the first day of the week—he rose triumphant from the tomb, the pledge of the resurrection of all the dead.

Dr. Hales, Usher, and Pearson place the martyrdom of Stephen, and the commencement of the first persecution, in A. D. 34.

With this act Dr. Hales closes the “one week” of Dan. 9:27, during which Christ should “confirm the covenant with many.”—“Analysis of Sacred Chronology,” by S. Bliss, pages 181-186.