Gemini were consuls.* It is a curious fact, that some of the early Christian writers speak of the death of Christ as occurring in that year; and though it shews how little we can rely on their chronology, it also proves that they could not have entertained the opinion now prevalent as to the interval between our Lord's baptism and his death.†

In St. John's Gospel we find mentioned a Passover, ch. ii. 13; a festival which may have been the succeeding Pentecost, ch. v. 1; a Passover approaching, ch. vi. 4; a Feast of Tabernacles, ch. vii. 2; a Feast of Dedication, ch. x. 22; and the last Passover, ch. xì. 55. If this were the exact chronological order, then the Passover spoken of in John vi. 4, as approaching, could not have been the last Passover and several able writers have been led, by this consideration, to extend the duration of our Lord's ministry to two years and some months, so as to include three Passovers. Supposing this correct, we have still three national festivals, during which we have no proof that our Lord was at Jerusalem. This fact presents some difficulty; but the chief objection to the hypothesis arises from the situation, in Matthew's Gospel, of the miracle recorded in John vi.: and this objection presses against every hypothesis except that which supposes the Passover, near which the miracle occurred, to have been the last in our Lord's ministry.

The portion of St. Matthew's Gospel which begins at ch. xiv. 13, and ends with ch. xx. 34, contains a regular, uninterrupted narrative of our Lord's transactions, apparently a short time before his sufferings at Jerusalem. This portion begins with the miracle of the Five Thousand; and, from Matthew alone, we might reasonably infer, that the miracle was performed a short time before the Passover at which our Lord suffered. A month is sufficient for all the events which are recorded by him between that miracle and the crucifixion.-Now St. John says (ch. vi. 4), that the Passover was nigh at the period of this miracle; and this agrees precisely with the narrative of St. Matthew.

The succession of events as recorded by Mark, agrees, in this portion of the history, with that of Matthew; and as their order materially differs in the preceding periods, their agreement in this is the more important. § The period shortly preceding our Lord's crucifixion is that in which, à priori, we might expect the greatest agreement in the order of events. Every thing must then have had a constantly increasing and intense interest, and the records would naturally be most in the order of occurrence.

The corresponding part of Luke's Gospel begins with ch. ix. 10, and extends to ch. xix. 29; but this includes a remarkable portion which will hereafter be analyzed, consisting of a collection of precepts, parables, and

Augustus died Aug. 19, A. D. 14. The 15th year of Tiberius, therefore, began Aug. 19, A. D. 29. In the year 29, the two Gemini were Consuls; and though they were succeeded, on the 1st of July, by Pomponius Secundus and Sauguinius Maximus, yet the Julian year in which the 15th of Tiberius began, received its desiguation, of course, from the Gemini. The 15th of Tiberius is the only Roman date that appears in the gospels.

How far the hypothesis entertained by various eminent men, that the commencement of Tiberius's reign is to be reckoned from his proconsular government, is in itself well-founded, and agreeable to the chronology of the early fathers, will be considered in a subsequent article.

Dr. Lardner, Dr. Benson, Mr. Cappe, and Mr. Benson, advance this opinion. $ The portion of Christ's ministry beginning with the miracle of the Five Thousand, and ending with his last visit to Jerusalem, includes from ch. vi. 30, to the end of the xth chapter of Mark's Gospel.

discourses, with such facts only as gave rise to them. Leaving this out of the question, the order of St. Luke, in the period referred to, is the same with that of St. Matthew and St. Mark.

If the order of St. John be regarded as strictly chronological, our Lord must have been present at two festivals (besides a Passover and a Pentecost of which we have no account) between the miracle of the Five Thousand and the last Passover, viz. the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Feast of Dedication. Now, the former of these, all the apostles must have attended; and yet there is no intimation of this in the Gospel of Matthew; nor can we find any interval, after the 14th chapter, in which the transactions of above a year could have occurred.

If the order of St. John be not regarded as strictly chronological, no essential difficulty occurs from the position in his Gospel of the miraculous feeding of the Five Thousand. Now, his Gospel consists of several independent portions, (principally supplementary to the other gospels,) each complete and regular in itself, and each containing some intimation of the period to which it belongs. We have no evidence, or internal reason to believe, that he intended to arrange those separate portions in a chronological order: and to suppose this, reduces us to the necessity of admitting that he has passed by at least one Passover, as well as several other national festivals, without any notice whatever of the transactions which occurred at them.

It is attended with much less difficulty to admit, that the separate portions of St. John's Gospel are not exactly in chronological order, than that the

See Marsh's Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of our three first Canonical Gospels, p. 202. Without adopting all Bishop Marsh's views in that acute investigation, or even maintaining that a separate collection of this nature existed before the time of Luke, we have no hesitation in the belief that the middle portion of the Gospel (ch. x. 51 to xviii. 14, as Marsh thinks) consists of such Memorabilia; and that St. Luke placed it in the interval between our Lord's leaving Galilee and his entering Judea, (after passing through the Peræa,) as being the most convenient situation for a miscellaneous collection, the exact date of which he might be unable to ascertain. It is further probable, that he was led to this position by many of the discourses having been delivered in the Peræa-some of them on the last journey; and it is not improbable that he collected them there while engaged in preparing materials for his invaluable narrative.

This subject will be considered more fully hereafter; but it is proper to state here, that the Gospel of St. John consists of the following distinct parts; and these may, not improbably, have first existed as separate supplementary narratives.

i. Transactions succeeding our Lord's return from the Desert, till soon after the first Passover; which (including the Introduction) occupy the first four chapters. ii. Transactions at another festival of the Jews, probably the Pentecost; recorded in the vth chapter.

iii. The miracle of the Five Thousand, and Christ's subsequent discourse at Capernaum, not long before a Passover, (which, following the evidence of the other gospels, we say was the last Passover,) both recorded in the vith chapter, with which we unite the 1st verse of the viith.

iv. Transactious at, and immediately succeeding, the Feast of Tabernacles; occupying from ch. vii. 2, to ch. x. 21, with which, undoubtedly, the xth chapter should have closed.

v. Transactions at, and soon after, the Feast of Dedication; from ch. x. 22, to ch. xi. 54, with which the xith chapter should have closed.

vi. Transactions during our Lord's last visit to Jerusalem, at the Passover; recorded in ch. xi. 55, to the end of ch. xx.

vii. A supplementary record, in ch. xxi., closed by the declaration of the personsay one of the Ephesian Elders-who edited the Gospel, and possibly arranged the separate documents.

regular connected narrative in the xivth and six following chapters of Matthew had such interruptions, and such long intervals in it, as there must have been if the miracle of the Five Thousand occurred above a year before the crucifixion, and also that the Gospel of St. John is so defective as it must then have been, in the account of what took place at the Jewish Festivals.

To reconcile the Gospel of St. John with the ancient opinion respecting the duration of our Lord's ministry, Dr. Priestley and others have supposed, that the word Passover, in John vi. 4, was not in the earliest copies. But this supposition is not authorized by any external evidence whatever; and it is not necessary for the object in view.*

If the opinion of the early fathers respecting the duration of our Lord's ministry, had been, decidedly, that it included three, or four, Passovers, and if, further, they had rested it on the tradition supposed to have begun with those who were personally acquainted with the period recorded by the evangelists, then it ought to have been allowed great weight, and could have been overbalanced only by clear internal evidence to the contrary: indeed, if, on such grounds, they had extended the ministry of Christ to include three Passovers, and supposed the festival mentioned in the fifth chapter of John to have been one of them, there is no internal evidence which would have weighed so powerfully against their opinion as to produce any great hesitation in admitting it. In the actual circumstances of the case, though their opinion (taken generally) accords with our own, we cannot lay any great stress upon it but were it as consistent and clear, and its foundation as complete, as Mr. Mann and Dr. Priestley regard it, in favour of two Passovers only, yet sound principles of criticism as to the text of Scripture would make me hesitate in giving up the word narxa, or the whole verse, in opposition to the evidence of every known manuscript and version. Bishop Pearce rested on internal evidence in proposing to relinquish the whole verse; and his note deserves the reader's attention. It is a specimen of the latitude with which critical emendation was, at that period, pursued, even by learned divines of the Church of England; and it ought to rescue Dr. Priestley from the imputations so often cast on his mode of criticism. Bishop Pearce's reasoning proceeds upon the supposition, that the separate portions of St. John's Gospel are arranged in the exact order of time; and if this were true, his argument would have great weight. On Dr. Priestley's opinion as to the duration of Christ's ministry, the alteration of the text required, for its availableness, a transposition of one of the portions of John's Gospel; and one similar transposition is all that is needed to bring the order to that of the preceding gospels, without any change in the text.

Against every supposition some objection rests; but the reference of the miracle of the Five Thousand to a time shortly preceding the last Passover, is so perfectly accordant with the narratives of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that the difficulty arising from the position of it in St. John's Gospel is entirely outweighed. The difficulty, too, is itself greatly lessened by the characteristics of that Gospel. We know of no other. In every other respect it obviously accords with the circumstances of the period. Our Lord's discourse after the miracle, as recorded by St. John, (see vers. 51-56,) has

Independently of this objection, (which we deem an insuperable one,) Dr. Priestley's arrangement of the events in our Lord's ministry is attended, as we shall hereafter shew, with other great difficulties; and, in particular, it leaves the last five months with few records.

that species of reference to his death, which implies its near approach. The Evangelist himself says, (ver. 64,) that he knew from the beginning who was going to betray him; o napadowy auToy: and at the close of the chapter he says of Judas Iscariot," for he was about to betray him," oros you ημελλεν αυτον παραδιδοναι. Then again, it is obvious from each of the prior gospels, that this miracle occurred not long before the Transfiguration; and during this, as St. Luke records (ch. ix. 31), the two heaven-sent messengers spake to Christ of his departure, which he was about to fulfil, ɛɛλλe Angour, at Jerusalem. It seems impossible, indeed, from ch. ix. 7-56, that Luke could have had any other idea of the period of the miracle of the Five Thousand, than that it occurred shortly before our Lord's final visit to Jerusalem at the last Passover.

We know of no writer that has come to our conclusion as to the period of this miracle, except G. J. Vossius, in his work De Annis Christi; and he is commonly, through some oversight, adduced to support the emendation of the text in John vi. 4. Perceiving from a note in Newcome's first Letter to Priestley, (pp. 117-119,) that he entertained the simple and obvious, but neglected, opinion which we advocate, we requested a friend on whose accuracy and acquaintance with the subject we could rely, to examine Gehrard Vossius's work, and ascertain the grounds on which he rested his opinion. The views of this eminent critic are so exactly accordant with our own, that we have great satisfaction in laying before the reader the information with which we have been furnished.

Vossius gives his opinion, in p. 49, that Christ was crucified a year and a few months after his baptism; but adds, that the words of John (in ch. vi. 4) appear decidedly to oppose it. This objection he obviates by observing (1) that if the Evangelist had referred to an intervening Passover, he would not have merely spoken of such a Passover as approaching, but would have given some account of the transactions during it: (2,) that instances of departure from the order of time, frequently occur in the gospels: and, (3,) that Luke obviously considered the miracle in question as occurring shortly before the time when Christ was to be crucified. He maintains, therefore, that we have no need to resort to the omission of the word wax.

We have now considered the first of the points we had in view; and as the internal evidence is most decidedly in favour of the opinion that the ministry of Christ included only two Passovers, and this is accordant with the prevalent opinion of the Christian fathers during the two centuries succeeding that period, we entertain it, as we have long done, without hesitation, and make it the foundation of our arrangement of the gospel narratives. The other subjects we have to consider, are,

(1.) The peculiar texture of each Gospel, so far as respects the succession of events; in order to determine which we should make our guide in the chronological arrangement of the evangelical records. And

(2.) The date of our Lord's baptism, and that of his death; in considering which we shall have to shew what Luke probably intended by the 15th year of Tiberius. In this we shall have again to advert to the opinion of the early fathers on the duration of Christ's ministry, and may be able to give some particulars respecting their statements on the subject.

(To be continued.)

LETTERS FROM GERMANY.

(No. VIII.)

SIR,

Heidelberg. FEW names are better known in the Gymnasia of Germany than Dinter's. His School-Bible soon came into general use, and it has maintained its ground, not indeed without opposition, but till lately without a rival. It was prepared by Dinter with a view to the use of schoolmasters in particular. He has distinguished, with certain marks, those parts of the Bible which should, and those which should not be read, in schools, according to his judgment; and has illustrated all with a special regard to what will be useful to teachers, and salutary and instructive to children. If, however, he thought himself sufficiently fortified against the attacks of church orthodoxy, by drawing his illustrations from history and criticism, and invoking the authority and example of Ernesti and his followers in defence of his manner of exposition, he was soon undeceived; the charge of Rationalism was presently reiterated against him in periodicals and pamphlets, accompanied with deep lamentations, that an instrument was now placed in the hands of teachers, through which a deadly poison could not fail to be infused into young minds. On the other side, the book was approved and defended with great resolution in the more popular reviews and journals; and its sale soon reached to several thousand copies. At the opening of the campaign, Dinter had proposed to his opponents to produce another School-Bible, and leave it to the teachers to choose between them. This has been done at length in the Evangelical School-Bible; but it has not been judged necessary to prepare it solely or particularly for the use of teachers. It is also remarked in Kohr's Preacher's Journal, that there is a mistake, or a misnomer, in the title-page of the Evangelical Bible. The authors have stated in the preface, that their illustrations are in agreement with the creeds which have been already established in their church-evangelical confessions of faith. The Reviewer says that the title should, therefore, be, not the Evangelical, but the Symbolical Bible, which imports neither more nor less than that the exposition is in conformity to a pre-established sense and rule, namely, to the particular views of the authors of the symbolical books.

In a country like Protestant Germany, where, both in and out of the schools and pulpits, inquiry refuses to be fettered by authority, and every man, who thinks at all on religious questions, exercises his own power of thought, holding himself accountable only to the judgment of God, it was to be expected that many opinions, and shades of opinion, would arise on the subject of divine revelations and inspirations. Lessing's free speculations opened the door to the public discussion of these important questions. He began by suggesting, that Christianity would exist even if the Scriptures were not extant. Walch entered into the discussion in his " Inquiry respecting the Use of the Holy Scriptures in the First Four Centuries." Lessing, in his "Education of the Human Race," and Krug, in "Letters on the Perfectibility of Revealed Religion," proposed their opinion, that a more perfect religion will exist upon earth, to which Christianity will give place, or rather, in which it will merge. This will be the religion of pure reason. On the other side appeared Meyer's Prize Essay on the question, How far have the doctrines and precepts of the New Testament a local and temporary ordination, and how far are they of universal and perpetual validity? Fichte, in 1793, published "An Attempt to establish a Critical Test of all