NOTE B.*

(See pp. 55, 101, 119, 250, 262, 354, 356, 364.)

ON THE CHRONOLOGICAL ARRANGEMENT OF THE EVENTS RECORDED BY THE EVANGELISTS.

In the first place, I suppose that Mark and Luke were not well acquainted with the chronological order of events, and are in error, generally or always, when they differ in their arrangement from Matthew. See Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, Vol. I. p. cxvi, seqq.; p. clxxx, seqq.; and compare p. cxciii, seqq.

I believe, on the other hand, a chronological order to be the basis of Matthew's arrangement. In John's Gospel such an order, I think, is evidently followed.

The question then is, How are the events recorded by these two Evangelists to be adjusted together? We will begin with. the first Passover in our Lord's ministry, mentioned by John in his second chapter.

After this Passover, as John relates (ch. iii. 22), our Lord remained in Judæa, I suppose for two or three weeks. He then left Judæa and went to Galilee. (John iv. 3, 43, seqq.) Here Matthew's narrative, ch. iv. 12, commences.

To this it may be objected, that John, speaking of a time. after the Passover, says (ch. iii. 24), "John was not yet put in

* [The following note is taken from a manuscript letter, written in answer to an inquiry respecting the subject to which it relates. This will explain the character of the style, and the brevity with which some points are treated.]

prison"; and that Matthew says (ch. iv. 12) that Jesus, “hearing that John was apprehended, removed to Galilee."

The answer is, that, though John the Baptist had not been put in prison at the commencement of the interval of two or three weeks which I have supposed, there is no reason for believing that he may not have been so before its close. John says nothing irreconcilable with what is said by Matthew. On the contrary, the only way in which we can account for his parenthetical remark, that "John was not yet put in prison," is by supposing that John was put in prison very soon after the Passover, and that the Evangelist, being aware of this fact, and supposing his readers might be aware of it, meant to say in effect, that, though such was the case, there was still a short period after the Passover, a few days, or a week or two, or even more time, during which he continued to baptize.

The limits within which I must confine myself do not allow me to enlarge on any one topic. From John iv. 1-3 it appears that our Lord considered himself to be in danger because he was becoming more conspicuous than the Baptist. One of two things follows: the Baptist either was in danger, or had already incurred the penalty of his boldness as a reformer. The latter inference, which there is nothing to render improbable, coincides with the statement of Matthew.

The words in John iv. 35, which some have considered as a note of the period of the year, I regard as a mere proverbial expression.

Returning, then, to Matthew, and proceeding with his narrative, we do come to a clear, though somewhat indeterminate, note of time, in the account of the disciples' plucking ears of grain to eat, ch. xii. 1, seqq.

This probably occurred about the time of the Pentecost, the

first Pentecost in our Lord's ministry, — perhaps on the Sabbath following that day. About this time the wheat harvest was for the most part ended. Some wheat, however, might still be left standing. But I suppose it to have been gathered from the field in question, and that the disciples took only from that portion which, according to the Jewish Law (Leviticus xix. 9, xxiii. 22), was to be left for gleaners.

Supposing our Lord, then, to have left Judæa two or three weeks after the Passover, a month or more remains for all the transactions recorded by Matthew between the twelfth verse of the fourth chapter and the end of the eleventh chapter.

Here it is worth while to observe how little time was actually occupied by much that Matthew relates. From the beginning of the fifth chapter to the thirty-fourth verse of the ninth chapter, we have the transactions of only three days. All that is related in the tenth chapter could have occupied but a part of one day; and so all that is related in the eleventh, from the second verse to the end.

Going on with Matthew's Gospel, we find no coincidence between him and John in the narrative of the same events, till we come to the feeding of the five thousand. (Matthew xiv. 13, seqq.) This, as we learn from John (vi. 4), was near a Passover, the second Passover, as I suppose, in our Lord's ministry.

From this point, therefore, we must turn back to find, if we can, somewhere in Matthew's narrative, a place for our Lord's visit to Jerusalem at the time of one of the Jewish festivals, as related in the fifth chapter of John. This festival, I suppose, was the Feast of Tabernacles.

In Matthew's Gospel there is evidently a break between the end of the thirteenth and the beginning of the fourteenth

chapter; and here, I conceive, the visit of our Lord to Jerusalem is to be inserted. Perhaps on his journey to Jerusalem he took Nazareth in his way. (Matthew xiii. 53-58; Mark vi. 1-6.)

After his visit to Nazareth, he, according to Mark vi. 7, seqq., sent away his disciples to preach by themselves. The same sending away of his disciples is mentioned by Luke in a similar connection, Luke ix. 1, seqq.; compare verse 7, seqq. with Mark vi. 14. This, it seems to me probable, was the first time that he had sent his Apostles to preach apart from himself.

At first view it may seem from Matthew (ch. x.) that he had done so at an earlier period in his ministry. But I conceive that Matthew's account refers to the time when he first solemnly announced to his twelve disciples their office as future ministers of his religion, and enforced upon them some of the duties connected with the character which they were about to sustain. Matthew, according to his usual manner, has, I think, brought together directions given by our Lord to his disciples at different times.

That the Apostles were not simultaneously appointed to their office, as mentioned by Matthew, and sent away by our Lord on a mission to preach by themselves, appears from various considerations. In the eleventh chapter of Matthew, following that which contains the discourse addressed to them, we have another long discourse of our Lord, which we cannot reasonably suppose to have been preserved except in the memory and by the report of Apostles; and in the next chapter (xii. 1, seqq.) we find clear evidence that his Apostles were with him.

After our Lord's visit to Nazareth, therefore, I suppose he dismissed the greater part, nearly all, of "his disciples" or

Apostles, giving them a commission to preach in his name. It might be neither convenient for him nor for them that they should in a body accompany him at this time to Jerusalem. John, however, went with him, as we may conclude from the account which he has given of the events which there took place, and of the discourses there delivered by our Lord. The Apostles, it would appear from Mark vi. 30 and Luke ix. 10, did not generally rejoin him till a little before the Passover. His ministry and theirs were naturally suspended by the cold and rainy season which soon followed the Feast of Tabernacles; and from this circumstance, and from the fact that they were not generally with him, we have no further account of our Lord's ministry through the winter.

After the second Passover in his ministry, he remained in Galilee till the succeeding Feast of Tabernacles mentioned by John (ch. vii. 1, seqq.). He then, as I conceive, left it for the last time, when, as John relates (ch. vii. 10), he went up to the festival. This final departure of our Lord from Galilee is, I suppose, the same with that mentioned by Matthew (ch. xix. 1) and Mark (ch. x. 1), and what Luke had in mind when he wrote the fifty-first verse of the ninth chapter of his Gospel.

According to Matthew and Mark (as cited above), he passed from Galilee into Peræa. This I think Matthew indicates as the country where he principally remained during the latter part of his ministry; and the supposition is confirmed by what is said by John (ch. x. 40).

The only account given by Matthew of what our Lord did and said between his final departure from Galilee and his last visit to Jerusalem, is contained in the nineteenth and twentieth chapters of his Gospel. To this nothing is added by Mark. Some of the relations peculiar to Luke may belong