ii. The Duration of the Ministry.
The question as to the length of our Lord’s ministry is allied to that as to its place. As to this, however, I should not be prepared to speak with quite so much confidence. Antecedently we have no sufficient means of saying whether a period of a little over one year or a little over two years would be more probable. Over such work a year is soon gone; and the relation of the different Synoptic documents to each other seems to show that all are but fragmentary and give an imperfect account of the events. The plucking of the ears of corn (or ‘grain,’ Amer. R. V.) has been taken to point to the occurrence of a Passover in the course of the Galilean ministry, because it would be at Passover time that the grain was beginning to ripen. We cannot press this very far; the incident may have occurred (if we have not to work in the Johannean narrative as well) near the beginning of the ministry.
On the other hand it is just possible that St. John’s story may be compressed within the shorter limits. All turns on the reading of John vi. 4, where it is well known that there is strong patristic evidence for omitting ‘the Passover,’ so that this feast, like that in ver. 1, would be unnamed. At the same time readings that rest entirely on patristic quotations are notoriously precarious; and I should hesitate as much to lay stress on this point as on the other. If I myself give the preference to the Johannean reckoning, it would be not because I thought that a clear case could be made out for it in itself, but only on the ground of the general superiority of the Fourth Gospel in chronological precision.