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When, and at what age, did Jesus begin his ministry?
Luke: “In the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar” ([iii, 1]). “Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age” ([23]).
In the fifteenth year of Tiberius, who began his reign in August, 14 A. D., Jesus, according to Matthew, was at least thirty-three years of age; according to Luke, about twenty-two.
Regarding this subject, Dr. Geikie writes as follows: “The age of Jesus at his entrance on his public work has been variously estimated. Ewald supposes that he was about thirty-four, fixing his birth three years before the death of Herod. Wieseler, on the contrary, believes him to have been in his thirty-first year, setting his birth a few months before Herod’s death. Bunsen, Anger, Winer, Schurer, and Renan agree with this. Lichtenstein makes him thirty-two. Hausrath and Keim, on the other hand, think that he began his ministry in the year A. D. 34, but they do not give any supposed date for his birth, though if that of Ewald be taken as a medium he must have been forty years old, while, if Wieseler’s date be preferred, he would only have been thirty-seven.... Amidst such difference, exactness is impossible” (Life of Christ, vol. i, pp. 455, 456).