Thus have we in the Gospels of Matthew and John all things told in due order, from the beginning of John's preaching to the death of Christ, and the years distinguished from one another by such essential characters that they cannot be mistaken. The second Passover is distinguished from the first, by the interposition of John's imprisonment. The third is distinguished from the second, by a double character: first, by the interposition of the feast to which Christ went up, Mat. viii. 19. Luke ix. 57. and secondly, by the distance of time from the beginning of Christ's preaching: for the second was in the beginning of his preaching, and the third so long after, that before it came Christ said, from the days of John the Baptist until now, &c. and upbraided the cities of Galilee for their not repenting at his preaching, and mighty works done in all that time. The fourth is distinguished from the third, by the mission of the twelve from Christ to preach in the cities of Judea in all the interval. The fifth is distinguished from all the former by the twelve's being returned from preaching, and continuing with Christ during all the interval, between the fourth and fifth, and by the passion and other infallible characters.
Now since the first summer of John's baptizing fell in the fifteenth year of the Emperor Tiberius, and by consequence the first of these five Passovers in his sixteenth year; the last of them, in which Jesus suffered, will fall on the twentieth year of the same Emperor; and by consequence in the Consulship of Fabius and Vitellius, in the 79th Julian year, and year of Christ 34, which was the sabbatical year of the Jews. And that it did so, I further confirm by these arguments.
I take it for granted that the passion was on friday the 14th day of the month Nisan, the great feast of the Passover on saturday the 15th day of Nisan, and the resurrection on the day following. Now the 14th day of Nisan always fell on the full moon next after the vernal Equinox; and the month began at the new moon before, not at the true conjunction, but at the first appearance of the new moon: for the Jews referred all the time of the silent moon, as they phrased it, that is, of the moon's disappearing, to the old moon; and because the first appearance might usually be about 18 hours after the true conjunction, they therefore began their month from the sixth hour at evening, that is, at sun set, next after the eighteenth hour from the conjunction. And this rule they called
יה
Jah, designing by the letters
י
and
ה
the number 18.
I know that Epiphanius tells us, if some interpret his words rightly, that the Jews used a vicious cycle, and thereby anticipated the legal new moons by two days. But this surely he spake not as a witness, for he neither understood Astronomy nor Rabbinical learning, but as arguing from his erroneous hypothesis about the time of the passion. For the Jews did not anticipate, but postpone their months: they thought it lawful to begin their months a day later than the first appearance of the new moon, because the new moon continued for more days than one; but not a day sooner, lest they should celebrate the new moon before there was any. And the Jews still keep a tradition in their books, that the Sanhedrim used diligently to define the new moons by sight: sending witnesses into mountainous places, and examining them about the moon's appearing, and translating the new moon from the day they had agreed on to the day before, as often as witnesses came from distant regions, who had seen it a day sooner than it was seen at Jerusalem. Accordingly Josephus, one of the Jewish Priests who ministred in the temple, tells us [[2]] that the Passover was kept on the 14th day of Nisan, κατα σεληνην according to the moon, when the sun was in Aries. This is confirmed also by two instances, recorded by him, which totally overthrow the hypothesis of the Jews using a vicious cycle. For that year in which Jerusalem was taken and destroyed, he saith, the Passover was on the 14th day of the month Xanticus, which according to Josephus is our April; and that five years before, it fell on the 8th day of the same month. Which two instances agree with the course of the moon.