The gospel authors never specifically announce the length of Jesus Christ’s ministry. However, the three Passovers mentioned in the Gospel of John (2:13; 6:4; 11:55) indicate that his ministry spanned at least two years in addition to the time between his baptism and the first Passover of his ministry in 30 CE.
An additional year of ministry between the Passovers of John 2:13 and 6:4 may be posited. The Passover of John 6:4 occurred about the time he fed the 5,000. Before this event, the synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke refer to Jesus’ disciples picking grain in Galilee (Mark 2:23; Matt 12:1; Luke 6:1), which would point to the harvest season a year earlier. Yet, the Passover of John 2:13 is too early for this incident to have occurred because the Passover of John 2:13 occurred shortly after Jesus had been baptized and had started his ministry. Also, after the Passover of John 2:13, his ministry was in Judea, whereas the plucking of grain occurred after he arrived in Galilee.
Two additional time clues suggest an additional year between these two Passovers. First, after the first Passover of John 2:13, Jesus ministered in Judea and then went into Samaria, during which time he noted that there were four months until harvest (4:35), pointing to the following January or February. Second, there is another feast mentioned in John 5:1. Although it is not specified and some think it refers to another Passover, it more likely refers to the Feast of Tabernacles.
These two time notes substantiate the need for another Passover between the Passovers of John 2:13 and 6:4. This, therefore, suggests that there were four Passovers during Jesus’ public ministry, which would make possible a span of three and a half or three and three-quarter years.
References
Hoehner, Harold. W. “Chronology.” In The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus, edited by Craig A. Evans, 421–437 (Apple Books). Routledge.
Could you respond to this I know you responded to Jesus mystic in the past and I saw something that bothered me it’s curious weak response to my nail could you respond to this
Seeds of David
O’Neill and gang like to make fun of the idea that the earliest Christians may have thought Jesus’s mortal body was literally manufactured directly from David’s sperm (as prophecy had to be taken to say to evade being falsified by history) simply because they think it’s weird. But in so doing they only illustrate how out of touch they are with what was considered weird in antiquity. The cosmic sperm hypothesis is actually ordinary in the context of the kinds of beliefs people then held. They also thus demonstrate their lazy incompetence in reading even the scholarship they intend to critique by never noticing what I’ve repeatedly said on the point: that mythicism does not require the cosmic sperm hypothesis. So they don’t listen to why it’s plausible; and they don’t listen to why it’s not even a necessary hypothesis. (See The Cosmic Seed of David and, for related treatment, Yes, Galatians 4 Is Allegory.)
As I note in OHJ, Irenaeus documented many far weirder beliefs about Jesus’s cosmic birth, and Jewish lore already had precedents for it. But I should have also mentioned as precedent the Babylonian Talmud, Niddah folio 16, where we are told an angel takes up every “drop” of semen to heaven “and places it in the presence of the Holy One” and asks, “Sovereign of the universe, what shall be the fate of this drop? Shall it produce a strong man or a weak man, a wise man or a fool, a rich man or a poor man?”
If Jews could so readily come up with this bizarre idea, then the idea that God could store one of those drops from David that the angel would thus have delivered for inspection—all to effect His secret plan to defeat Satan and fulfill an otherwise failed prophecy—cannot even be called strange. It’s no weirder than the “fact” that Paul relates without blush that God “stores” our future resurrection bodies for us up in heaven (in 2 Corinthians 5) or that God manufactured Eve’s body from Adam’s rib. Likewise, Zoroastrianism, which originated the entire idea of an eschatological messiah subsequently taken up by Judaism, embraced essentially the very same belief: that the messiah would be born from the sperm of the ancient Zoroaster stored for thousands of years in a sacred lake.
But Paul could just as easily have meant Jesus came from the seed of David in whatever nonliteral, allegorical way he believed Gentiles came from the seed of Abraham. And either way, even the Gospels make clear that Jesus did not come from the “Seed of David” the usual way—they explicitly make clear Joseph never imparts that seed to Mary, yet both Matthew and Luke make explicitly clear their genealogy through David is only of Joseph (not Mary, contrary to Christian apologists who hope you don’t know how to read). They thus both depict God manufacturing Jesus’s body in Mary’s womb. What seed then did he use? And how did it derive from the belly of David? Whatever answer you give for them, would then apply to Paul. Either way, you don’t get “Jesus was a descendant of David.” And thus you can’t get to historicity this way.
You can’t legitimately mock an idea if you ignore every fact that renders it plausible. And yet this is how they operate throughout the video: leaving out everyhing that makes an argument plausible or sound, and then make fun of it for lacking anything making it plausible or sound. You just aren’t going to learn the truth through this method. You’re better off ignoring their ignorant pronouncements and just reading OHJ or whatever is my most recent article on the point. Judge for yourself—with all the facts