SECT. 5. The First Messianic Attendance of Jesus on the Passover, and the Purification of the Temple, PART III. THE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CHARACTER OF CHRIST'S PUBLIC MINISTRY, SECTION I. A DETERMINATION OF THE DATES. CCORDING to the statements of the Evangelist Luke, which appear to us well accredited, John was about half a year older than Jesus. To this difference in their ages, the difference in the time of their first public appearance most exactly corresponds. John had only for a short period entered on the exercise of his vocation, when Jesus arrived at the Jordan to prepare Himself by baptism for assuming His official functions. It was not to be expected that these two champions of Heaven (Gotteshelden) would begin their ministry before the completion of their thirtieth year. Reverence for their national institutions would deter them from committing such a violation of law and custom, which required that mature age for entering on any public office. But as little could it be supposed that 1 See Num. iv. 3, 37, viii. 24; 1 Chron. xxiii. 24; 2 Chron. xxxi. 17. In these passages a scale is noticeable from 20 years old to 25, and again to 30. It has been questioned, whether from the legal standard fixed for the Levites in reference to the commencement and term of their service, any conclusion can be drawn relative to the more irregular ministry of the prophets. Here a distinction must be made between prophetical acts and prophetical authority. Prophetical declarations could emanate in Israel from any individual, even from children and women; but prophetical authority would hardly be granted to one who was levitically a minor, VOL. 11. A they would delay beyond this highest point of their manly development, past the limits assigned by the law, to enter upon their divine mission. As, on the one hand, they were kept back by the law up to a certain age, and on the other, impelled by the power of the Spirit to lose no time when they had reached that limit, we may believe that they would carefully observe the exact time of entering on their office; just as the racer starts for the goal at the given signal, or a volley is fired at the exact moment. John might perhaps, during the winter season, delay the administration of baptism, but not the commencement of his ministry.1 Matthew does not state the exact time of John's first public appearance. In those days,' he says, 'came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness of Judea' (iii. 1). He does not mean those days in which Jesus first took up His abode at Nazareth, but that later period in which, by having resided there, He was regarded as belonging to that city (ii. 23). Thus much we gather from this statement, that when the Baptist made his first appearance, Jesus was still residing at Nazareth. Luke informs us still more precisely that 'in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Cæsar, Pontius Pilate being governor of Judea, and Herod being tetrarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip tetrarch of Ituræa and of the region of Trachonitis, and Lysanias the tetrarch of Abilene, Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests, the word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness; and he came into all the country round about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins' (iii. 1-3). especially if he was commissioned to rebuke the priests. Besides, John the Baptist was in this respect, as a Levite, subject to the Levitical arrangements. But Christ was not only the supreme Prophet, but also the real High Priest, and would avoid most scrupulously every ground of offence which would make His office of questionable validity to the Israelites. But this legal point was in His case connected with the inner motive, namely, to await the completion of His consciousness. 1 Though we might give the Theocrat credit that for himself he would not hesitate to bathe in the Jordan when swelled by the wintry snow-water of Hermon, since as a Nazarite he had grown up in the desert in the full heroic energy of a life of nature, yet the multitude would hardly be induced to submit to baptism at that time of the year, the rainy season. Wieseler, Chronol. Synops. p. 148. See |