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How old was Jesus at the time of his death?
Luke: He was but little more than thirty years old.
John: He was nearly fifty. In a controversy with the Jews, during his ministry, he said: “Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day: and he saw, and was glad. Then said the Jews unto him, Thou art not yet fifty years old, and hast thou seen Abraham?” ([viii, 56, 57].) This implies that he was nearly fifty at this time.
Discussing the question of Jesus’ age, St. Irenaeus, the most renowned of the early Christian Fathers, and the founder of the New Testament canon, who lived in the century immediately following Jesus, says:
“He [Christ] came to save all through means of himself—all I say, who through him are born again to God—infants and children, and boys, and youths, and old men. He therefore passed through every age; becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child for children, thus sanctifying those who are of this age, being at the same time made to them an example of piety, righteousness and submission; a youth for youths, becoming an example to youths, and thus sanctifying them for the Lord. So likewise, he was an old man for old men, that he might be a perfect master for all; not merely as respects the setting forth of the truth, but also as regards age; sanctifying at the same time, the aged also, and becoming an example to them likewise. Then, at last, he came on to death itself, that he might be the first born from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence; the Prince of Life, existing before all, and going before all” (Against Heresies, Book iv, ch. xxii, sec. 4).
Commenting on the passage quoted from John, Irenaeus says: “But besides this, those very Jews who thus disputed with the Lord Jesus Christ, have most closely indicated the same thing. For when the Lord said to them, ‘Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it, and was glad;’ they answered him, ‘Thou art not yet fifty years old; and hast thou seen Abraham?’ Now, such language is fittingly applied to one who has already passed the age of forty, without having yet reached his fiftieth year, yet is not far from this latter period. But to one who is only thirty years old, it would unquestionably be said, ‘Thou art not yet forty years old.’ For those who wished to convict him of falsehood, would certainly not extend the number of his years far beyond the age which they saw he had attained.... It is altogether unreasonable to suppose that they were mistaken by twenty years, when they wished to prove him younger than the times of Abraham.... He did not then want much of being fifty years old” (Ibid. sec. 6).
Nor did Irenaeus depend upon the Fourth Gospel alone for his authority. He was the companion of the aged Polycarp, whom Christians claim to have been the companion of the Apostle John. Concerning the testimony of Polycarp and others, he writes: “Those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, [testify] that John conveyed to them that information. And he (John) remained among them up to the times of Tragan. Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles also, and heard the same account from them, and bear testimony to the statement” (Ib., sec. 5).
In regard to this testimony of the “divine Irenaeus,” as he is called, Godfrey Higgins says: “The church has been guilty of the oversight of letting this passage from Irenaeus escape. One of the earliest, most respected, and most quoted of its ancient bishops, saints and martyrs, tells us in distinct words that Jesus was not crucified under Herod and Pontius Pilate, but that he lived to be turned fifty years of age. This he tells us on the authority of his master, St. Polycarp, also a martyr, who had it from St. John himself, and from all the old people of Asia” (Anacalypsis).
Of this testimony and its consequences, Judge Waite, in his “History of Christianity” (pp. 329, 330) says: “It must be remembered that Irenaeus had been a companion of Polycarp and others who had seen John, and that he was speaking of what had come to his personal knowledge from the elders in Asia. If, then, Irenaeus tells the truth, the evidence in favor of the fact is almost overwhelming. If, on the other hand, he would deliberately falsify in a matter of this importance, what is his testimony worth as to the origin of the four gospels? Against this evidence, we have only the silence of the gospels. But if the silence of the Synoptics is consistent with a ministry of three or four years, why is not the further silence of all the gospels consistent with a ministry of twenty years?
“How would such a theory affect the received chronology concerning Christ? The date of the crucifixion at not later than A. D. 36, or when Christ was, by the received chronology, forty years old, is settled by the fact, that in that year, Pontius Pilate was removed from his government.... If, then, it be accepted as a historical fact that Christ was about fifty years old at this crucifixion, the date of his birth would have to be set back at least ten years.”
Every line of these accounts of the trial and crucifixion of Christ bears the ineffaceable stamp of fiction. There was no Christ to crucify, and Jesus of Nazareth, if he existed, was not crucified as claimed.
For more than fifteen centuries an inoffensive, industrious and moral people have been persecuted, robbed and butchered by Christians, because their forefathers are said to have slain a mythical God.
Supposing that from the myth of Prometheus had sprung a popular religion, which, in its day, had, like the religions of Osiris, Bacchus, Krishna and Christ, overspread the earth. Then think of the devotees of this religion massacring the Hellenists because Zeus had crucified Prometheus! How long must our mythology, with all its attendant evils, rule and curse the world? How long must an innocent people suffer for an alleged crime that was never committed?