Baptism a.u. 780 (Jan.?) a.d. 27.
Length of Public Ministry
(three years and three or
four months) a.u. 780–783 a.d. 27–30.
Crucifixion a.u. 783 (15th of Nisan) a.d. 30 (April 7)§ 17. The Land and the People.
Literature.
I. The geographical and descriptive works on the Holy Land by Reland (1714), Robinson (1838
and 1856), Ritter (1850–1855), Raumer (4th ed. 1860), Tobler (several monographs from 1849
to 1869), W. M. Thomson (revised ed. 1880), Stanley (1853, 6th ed. 1866), Tristram (1864),
Schaff (1878; enlarged ed. 1889), Guérin (1869, 1875, 1880).
See Tobler’s Bibliographia geographica Palaestinae (Leipz. 1867) and the supplementary lists of
more recent works by Ph. Wolff in the "Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie, " 1868 and 1872,
and by Socin in the "Zeitschrift des deutschen Palaestina-Vereins," 1878, p. 40, etc.
II. The "Histories of New Testament Times" (Neutestamentliche Zeitgeschichte, a special department
of historical theology recently introduced), by Schneckburger (1862), Hausrath (1868 sqq.),
and Schürer (1874).
See Lit. in § 8, p. 56.
There is a wonderful harmony between the life of our Lord as described by the Evangelists,
and his geographical and historical environment as known to us from contemporary writers, and
illustrated and confirmed by modern discovery and research. This harmony contributes not a little
to the credibility of the gospel history. The more we come to understand the age and country in
which Jesus lived, the more we feel, in reading the Gospels, that we are treading on the solid ground
of real history illuminated by the highest revelation from heaven. The poetry of the canonical
Gospels, if we may so call their prose, which in spiritual beauty excels all poetry, is not (like that
of the Apocryphal Gospels) the poetry of human fiction—"no fable old, no mythic lore, nor dream
of bards and seers;" it is the poetry of revealed truth, the poetry of the sublimest facts the poetry of
the infinite wisdom and love of God which, ever before had entered the imagination of man, but
which assumed human flesh and blood in Jesus of Nazareth and solved through his life and work
the deepest problem of our existence.
The stationary character of Oriental countries and peoples enables us to infer from their
present aspect and condition what they were two thousand years ago. And in this we are aided by
the multiplying discoveries which make even stones and mummies eloquent witnesses of the past.
Monumental evidence appeals to the senses and overrules the critical conjectures and combinations
of unbelieving skepticism, however ingenious and acute they may be. Who will doubt the history
of the Pharaohs when it can be read in the pyramids and sphinxes, in the ruins of temples and
rock-tombs, in hieroglyphic inscriptions and papyrus rolls which antedate the founding of Rome
and the exodus of Moses and the Israelites? Who will deny the biblical records of Babylon and
Nineveh after these cities have risen from the grave of centuries to tell their own story through
cuneiform inscriptions, eagle-winged lions and human-headed bulls, ruins of temples and palaces
disentombed from beneath the earth? We might as well erase Palestine from the map and removeA.D. 1-100.