pressed it: "Now Jesus was, as it were, beginning to be thirty years old,"[1] when He came to receive baptism); and, [according to these men,] He preached only one year reckoning from His baptism. On completing His thirtieth year He suffered, being in fact still a young man, and who had by no means attained to advanced age. Now, that the first stage of early life embraces thirty years,[2] and that this extends onwards to the fortieth year, every one will admit; but from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man begins to decline towards old age, which our Lord possessed while He still fulfilled the office of a Teacher, even as the gospel and all the elders testify; those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [affirming] that John conveyed to them that information.[3] And he remained among them up to the times of Trajan.[4] Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles also, and heard the very same account from them, and bear testimony as to the [validity of] the statement. Whom then should we rather believe? Whether such men as these, or Ptolemæus, who
- ↑ Luke iii. 23.
- ↑ The Latin text of this clause is, "Quia autem triginta annorum ætas prima indolis est juvenis"—words which it seems almost impossible to translate. Grabe regarded "indolis" as being in the nominative, while Massuet contends it is in the genitive case; and so regarding it, wc might translate, "Now that the age of thirty is the first age of the mind of youth," etc. But Harvey re-translates the clause into Greek as follows: Ὅτι δὲ ἡ τῶν τριάκοντα ἐτῶν ἡλικία ἡ τρώτη τῆς διαθέσεώς ἐστι νέας—words which we have endeavoured to render as above. The meaning clearly is, that the age of thirty marked the transition pomt from youth to maturity.
- ↑ With respect to this extraordinary assertion of Irenæus, Harvey remarks: "The reader may here perceive the unsatisfactory character of tradition, where a mere fact is concerned. From reasonings founded upon the evangelical history, as well as from a preponderance of external testimony, it is most certain that our Lord's ministry extended but little over three years; yet here Irenæus states that it included more than ten years, and appeals to a tradition derived, as he says, from those who had conversed with an apostle."
- ↑ Trajan's reign commenced a.d. 98, and St. John is said to have lived to the age of a hundred years.
