The Beginning of the Messiah's Ministry

The Gospel of John records some prime chronological references for reckoning the years of the Messiah's ministry which the other three Gospels do not report. For example, John mentions three Passovers which occurred during the ministry of the Messiah (2:13; 6:4; 13:1). Other Jewish festivals were acknowledged as well. There was the "unknown feast" between the first two Passovers (5:1), and after the second Passover he mentions the feasts of Tabernacles (7:1) and Dedication (10:22). These feasts provide some chronological benchmarks for establishing the proper sequence of years associated with Yeshua's ministry.

The new evidence which is presented in this research centers on a statement given by the Messiah which John positions between his first two Passovers (2:13 and 6:4) and before his "unknown" feast (5:1). This reference is an important piece of historical information which, up to now, has been completely overlooked and misunderstood by most scholars. But when the new research is recognized, we will have one of the most significant chronological keys for ironing out the historical difficulties associated with the Messiah's ministry.

It is essential to understand the historical environment in which the new evidence occurs. At the end of John's third chapter we are told that the Messiah left Jerusalem after John's first Passover and started on his journey toward Galilee (John 4:3). His route necessitated traveling through Samaria. Upon his arrival at Jacob's Well, being weary of his journey, he talked to a Samaritan woman while his disciples went into the village to fetch food. No other people were around when his discussion with the woman took place (John 4:6-26). However, upon the conclusion of the dialogue, the disciples returned with food, whereupon the Messiah gave them some spiritual teaching about what true food actually represented. It is this particular teaching (when the woman had left and no other Samaritans were around) that solves a major chronological problem in the Messiah's ministry. Yeshua said:

The real meaning of the Messiah's words has not been understood, yet his intention is so easy to comprehend if the legal requirements governing Palestinian agriculture in the first century are taken into account. In a moment we will show what the Messiah had in mind when he made his statement, but let us first review the normal interpretations given by scholars to explain what Yeshua meant.

1). Since the Messiah was speaking within a context of sowing and reaping, it is recognized (correctly) that the Messiah was calling attention to the barley and wheat harvest which farmers reaped between Passover and Pentecost from late March to early June. Scholars have seen significance in the phrase "four months unto the harvest." If the Messiah meant that there were yet four months until the time of the Palestinian grain harvest, then it is supposed he must have uttered his statement about late December or early January. This would allow the phrase "four months to harvest" to make reasonable sense. If this is the case, scholars have surmised, it would mean that the Messiah gave this illustration to the disciples some 8 or 9 months after John's first Passover, and about 4 months before the beginning of the regular grain harvest which started about late March. So, most conservative theologians have felt that this is a chronological statement which can be placed within the months of December or January. We will see the utter absurdity of this belief.

2). The other theory, however, suggests that the Messiah was simply stating a well-known proverb about some four month interval of time from the period of sowing to the harvest, and that no chronological significance is to be interpreted from his reference.

The trouble is, there are flaws in both suppositions. For one, the Messiah's statement could hardly have been made some 8 or 9 months after John's first Passover because in verse 45, given shortly after he had returned to Galilee, his Galilean acquaintances recalled the signs he had recently accomplished at John's first Passover. These were Galileans who had gone to "the FEAST: for they also went unto the FEAST." Anyone can easily recognize that this refers to the first Passover mentioned by John which had happened about six or seven weeks before. If this is not the case, then the words of John's Gospel are incomprehensible. To say that the Galileans were referring to an unmentioned feast of Pentecost, or an unnamed feast of Tabernacles or even the feasts of Dedication or Purim is stretching the matter beyond reasonable belief. Truly, the Galileans must have been talking about the recent feast of Passover during which they had seen the Messiah perform certain miracles and that Passover was no more than 40 or 50 days before. This means that the Messiah's statement (made at Jacob's Well, about a week before he met the Galileans) was not made in the months of December or January, and not 8 or 9 months after John's first Passover. It is clear that the statement was made by the Messiah in late May or early June. The reason he did so at that time will be shown shortly.

The second explanation offered by many scholars is also suspect because no proverb has been found in Jewish literature which refers to a four month season from sowing to harvest -- indeed, the period for wheat was more like six months according to the Jewish Mishnah (Ta’anith. i.7).

The Messiah said that his disciples should reckon four more months to the harvest, yet his statement was proclaimed in late May or early June -- right in the midst of the wheat harvest. There is really no doubt that this is correct. Origen who lived in Palestine in the third century recognized that the Messiah's teachings in John 4:35 were stated in the middle of the actual harvest season (in Joan, Tom. xiii. 39,41). Even the Messiah himself acknowledged that this time was during the regular grain harvest.

This reference by the Messiah shows that the grain was already available for harvest (after all, it was late May or early June), but for some reason he put it in the mouths of the disciples that they would not expect anyone to harvest for another four months. Why on earth did the Messiah say there were yet four more months before harvest, when the harvest season was already at its height?

The answer is simple if one remembers the agricultural legislation that Moses imposed on Jews and Samaritans living in the Holy Land -- rules that both groups observed in the first century. The truth is, the Messiah made his statement in the midst of a Sabbatical Year. Such a year was one in which no sowing or reaping were permitted, from the New Year of one Autumn to the New Year of the next autumn. When this is realized and understood, all chronological difficulties associated with John 4:35 (though they appear to be contradictions on the surface) thoroughly disappear.

Notice how plain the whole matter can become. The Messiah gave his teaching near the end of the second Hebrew month or the start of the third (late May or early June). When a person counts forward four more months, the Hebrew month of Tishri is reached. This is the month in which all Sabbatical Years ended and people could legally begin to harvest once again (Leviticus 25). Yeshua was saying what the apostles and the general population were aware of. Since that year was a Sabbatical Year, no one could commence any harvesting (even though one were in the midst of the harvest season for grain) until the Sabbatical Year was over. This is the reason the Messiah said it was still "four months" to the period of harvest.

There is more evidence to support this interpretation. The Messiah elaborated in his teaching about the harvest by saying:

Even the Messiah adopted the theme of a Sabbatical Year by telling his disciples that the harvest he asked them to engage in was one in which they HAD DONE NO LABOR. How true this illustration would have been even for the physical harvest of a Sabbatical Year. During Sabbatical Years no Judahite people in Palestine could labor on the land; no sowing, plowing, pruning, or harvesting were permitted. So even the Messiah's statement that the disciples had bestowed no labor on the harvest that he referred to, is indicative of the fact that that year was Sabbatical.

Another point needs to be made. Since the Messiah gave his illustrations in John 4:35-38 at the time the fields were already white for harvest, he strongly implies that no one was in the fields doing any reaping. If all the fields (and that is what Yeshua said) were then ripe for harvest, this is a powerful suggestion that none of the fields (no matter how many there were) was then being harvested by the people. And, of course, this would have been the case in a Sabbatical Year.

And in case some might doubt that fields in Sabbatical Years would produce much grain, since they had not been sowed in the previous Autumn and Winter, all one has to do is to recall that Leviticus 25:5 indicates there would always be a crop during the fallow Sabbatical Year from the grains that fell on the ground in the sixth year of harvest.

There is yet another probable proof that the event which occurred at Jacob's Well happened in a Sabbatical Year. This is Luke's parallel account of what occurred in Galilee soon after the Messiah had returned to his hometown of Nazareth from the Passover at Jerusalem. Luke tells us, in an unusual Greek expression, that on "The Day of the Sabbaths" (or, The Day of the Weeks -- another way of saying Pentecost to agree with the terminology of Exodus 34:22; Deuteronomy 16:10,16; II Chronicles 8:13), the Messiah was handed the scroll of Isaiah and he read chapter 61, verses 1 and 2. Luke recorded the occasion:

It should be noted that the synagogue attendant handed Yeshua the scroll of Isaiah. This shows that the synagogue liturgy required Isaiah to be read that day. If so, this indicates that the Messiah read the regular triennial cycle selection from the prophets that accompanied the sequential readings from the five books of Moses. It is interesting that the section that the Messiah quoted was that which paralleled the readings from the Law of Moses for Pentecost on the second year of the triennial cycle. See the chart accompanying the article on the "Triennial Cycle in the Jewish Encyclopedia," Funk and Wagnalls, 1906. This may well be another indication that this event in the synagogue in Nazareth occurred on Pentecost.

Though I am in no way insisting that the phrase "The Day of the Weeks" on which the Messiah read Isaiah 61:1,2 was Pentecost (yet it seem to have been), it is still clear that the event happened in the late Springtime just after the Messiah had returned from Jerusalem from John's first Passover. It was certainly the same year that the Messiah said his John 4:35 Sabbatical Year teaching. With this in mind, we may have a further reference that that year was Sabbatical. Note that Yeshua called that year "the acceptable year of the Lord" -- the time of release.

These are terms associated with Sabbatical Years (and with the Jubilee which was a type of Sabbatical Year). [Jubilee Years were not being celebrated by the Judahites in the first century, yet the ordinary seven year sabbatical cycle was very much in evidence among the Judahites and Samaritans.]

Look at the factors within the Messiah's quote from Isaiah which suggest this. He said that he was anointed (1) to preach good tidings to the poor. This is a reflection on the sabbatical regulations that the poor and the stranger could eat from the fields without hinder. (2) He was to proclaim a release and to free the bruised. This recalls the Sabbatical release regulations and being free of debt as mentioned in Deuteronomy 15:1-6. And (3), the Messiah was ordained to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. This is a reference to a Sabbatical period (which years commenced on the Day of Atonement -- Leviticus 25:9 and Isaiah 58:1-14). Such years are always associated with

This is the type of "acceptable year" that the Messiah was proclaiming at the synagogue in Nazareth, and the theme smacks of a Sabbatical Year.

If it can thus be shown that the beginning of John the Baptist's ministry and that of the Messiah's started in a Sabbatical Year, then it makes excellent sense why so many people were able to follow both of them during the times of their preaching -- many of the people would have been off from their farm labor and able to travel at leisure over the land of Palestine.

Though over the past few centuries historians studying the records about Sabbatical Years have been able to arrive at their sequence within a year or two, only within the last 50 years (and especially the last 20), has it become possible, through archaeological discoveries, etc., to determine with an almost certainty what the exact Sabbatical Years' sequence is. This can be known from 163 B.C. to the present. Two brilliant historical studies by Prof. Wacholder of Hebrew Union College, Cincinnati, have solved the riddle of when the Sabbatical Years occurred in ancient times, and when they ought to be observed today. His first study is in the Hebrew Union College Annual, 1973, titled "The Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles During the Second Temple and the Early Rabbinic Period" (pp. 153-196), and the same Annual for 1975 has his "The Timing of Messianic Movements and the Calendar of Sabbatical Cycles" (pp. 201-218). In this article we will summarize the results of Prof. Wacholder's excellent studies. It will demonstrate the number of precise years over the centuries as Sabbaticals, and how we can know the exact sequence of the seventh years for the period we are discussing.

1). We are told by I Maccabees 6:49 that Judas Maccabee's defeat at Beth-Zur was in a Sabbatical Year. And this can be dated to the Sabbatical Year from the Autumn of 163 to Autumn 162 B.C.

2). Josephus, the Jewish historian, shows the murder of Simon the Hasmonean as happening in the Sabbatical Year of Autumn 135 to Autumn 134 B.C.

3). Josephus shows Herod's conquest of Jerusalem as occurring in the Sabbatical Year of 37 to 36 B.C.

4). King Agrippa the First recited the section of Deuteronomy which a king was required to do as associated with the Sabbatical Year (Deut. 31:10-13). He performed it at a time which historically shows that Agrippa's Sabbatical Year was A.D. 41 to 42.

5). A papyrus document written in Aramaic has recently been found in Palestine which is dated to the second year of Nero, and it says that that year was a Sabbatical Year. Thus, A.D. 55 to 56 was Sabbatical.

6). A reference in the second century Jewish work called the Seder Olam can be interpreted as showing the Temple at Jerusalem being destroyed in a Sabbatical Year. That would have been A.D. 69 to 70.

7). Dated documents have been found concerning the Bar Kochba revolt of the Judeans against the Romans which show that the year A.D. 132 to 133 was also a Sabbatical Year.

8). The ruins of an ancient synagogue have recently been uncovered which have a date, in a mosaic, for the Jewish year 4000, and that it was the second year of a Sabbatical cycle. This answers to A.D. 237 to 238.

9). There is a reference in the Jewish Talmud (Sanh. 97b) that the Messiah will release the world from its bondage of corruption in the year after 4291 of the Jewish calendar. Since it was believed this would occur in a Sabbatical Year, this reference becomes important (though the prophecy did not occur) because the year after 4291 was A.D. 531 to 532 and it was Sabbatical.

The interesting thing about these Sabbatical Years is the fact that they are all in proper sequence This gives the historian a great deal of confidence that they are correct. Now, all the Sabbatical Years in between can be known (Schurer, following Zuckermann, felt that the Sabbatical Years' cycle was a year earlier than the one presented here, but Wacholder has shown this to be untenable. For example, in Schurer's sequence, the year A.D. 40 to 41 was Sabbatical, but Josephus says that crops were able to be harvested that year -- War II. 200; Antiq. XVIII. 271-284 -- and even Schurer admits to the difficulty (JPJC I, I. pp. 42,43)). Prof. Wacholder, however, reveals the answer to the sequence of Sabbatical Years. See also The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, Suppl. Vol., pp. 762, 763. Other historical incidences mentioned in Josephus also support Wacholder's proofs.

Once the proper annual occurrences of Sabbaticals are understood, all other intervening years in sequence can be tallied. We then discover how important events occurred on them. Those years were times when the majority of the population, being mostly in agriculture, were off from their ordinary jobs and something had to be done in order to keep them busy at earning a proper living. There was a simple answer to this that many people have not thought of. During the six years of farm labor the government took some grain and foodstuffs like Joseph did in Egypt and when the Sabbatical Year came around, they paid the people this produce to work at construction or other types of work. Since there was a vast reservoir of workers then available, new buildings, cities, walls, roads, irrigation projects were undertaken. And for the most part the people did the work willingly because they believed YEHOVAH God to be behind their efforts of keeping the Sabbatical Years. Note examples of this.

Herod commenced his work on the outer parts of the great Temple of YEHOVAH God on the Sabbatical Year of 23/22 B.C. (cf. War. I.101 and Loeb, vol. VIII, p.184 note c). This was also the exact year he commenced work on building the new city of Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast (cf. Antiq. XV. 341 and Loeb note d). And later, Herod's son Philip started to build Caesarea Philippi (cf. Schurer, rev II. 169-171) in the Sabbatical Year 2/1 B.C. The city of Tiberias probably had its founding in A.D. 20 the beginning of a Sabbatical Year (cf. Schurer, ibid. p.179).

Also the expansive third wall around the northern parts of Jerusalem which, if finished, Josephus said would have made Jerusalem impregnable was no doubt started by King Agrippa the First in the Sabbatical Year of A.D. 41/42 (cf. War II. 218). And his son Agrippa II also began huge construction projects in similar circumstances. In the Sabbatical Year of A.D. 62/63 Josephus said that "King Agrippa enlarged Caesarea Philippi and renamed it in honor of Nero. He furthermore built, at great expense, a theater for the people of Beirut and presented them with animal spectacles, spending many tens of thousands of drachmas upon this project" (Antiq. XX. 211).

It is because so many Jews had to take different types of jobs in Sabbatical Years that it was common for most of them in the first century to have two trades. Recall that the apostle Paul was a trained tentmaker (Acts 18:3). Most learned these secondary trades during the Sabbatical Years when so many new construction projects were then underway. This is one of the main reasons that the Judean people put up with many of the building endeavors of Herod during the Sabbatical Years.

The sequence of Sabbatical Years is now established with almost certainty by Professor Wacholder and other historical data which I can provide. This information, with the new interpretation of John 4:35 that I am giving in this article, provide a logical chronology for the years of the Messiah's ministry. We can now know that the Messiah gave his information about the "four months to harvest" in a Sabbatical Year -- and that year has to be the one from the Autumn of A.D. 27 to the Autumn of A.D. 28.

There is another chronological indication in Luke's Gospel that helps substantiate this. Luke said that John the Baptist began his ministry in the fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar (Luke 3:1). Scholars have recognized several ways of reckoning this fifteenth year, but with our new information identifying Yeshua's first year of teaching as the Sabbatical Year of A.D. 27 to A.D. 28, we are now helped in understanding the regnal years of Tiberius as reckoned by Luke. For a full discussion on the various ways that Tiberius' fifteenth year have been reckoned, see the excellent works of Prof. Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, pp. 259-273, and Prof. Harold W. Hoehner, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ, pp. 29-37.

We can now consider two of the explanations which blend in perfectly well with our new chronological information. If one acknowledges the fifteenth year of Tiberius as being in conformity with the non-accession method based on the official Roman Year (called the Julian), that fifteenth year would be from January 1, A.D. 28 to December 31, A.D. 28. This would dovetail nicely with our new proposal, yet it would mean that John the Baptist began baptizing in January A.D. 28 in the Jordan Valley. This would be acceptable since it was not excessively cold in the Jordan depression even during mid-winter. However, it does press events between January and the next Passover which occurred in late March or early April into a "hurry up" situation. Recall that the Messiah spent 40 days in the wilderness after his baptism. Though this reckoning for the fifteenth year is not improbable, it is not to be preferred over the following determination which fits in much better with all factors. Let's notice it.

Since Luke was a Gentile and writing to a nobleman named Theophilus (traditionally both were from Antioch, Syria), it is possible that Luke was using the non-accession method of reckoning regnal years in Syria from the time of Augustus to Nerva. The fifteenth year of Tiberius was then from Tishri 1, A.D. 27 to Tishri 1, A.D. 28. This would mean that Luke was calculating the beginning of John the Baptist's ministry and consequently that of the Messiah's according to the calendar with which he and Theophilus would have been familiar (Hoehner, pp. 34,35). It also has the advantage of paralleling the Jewish Year which also commenced with Tishri 1. And more than that, this reckoning would also correspond precisely with the Sabbatical Year of A.D. 27 to A.D. 28.

And what a significant symbolic time for John and the Messiah to start their ministries. The Jewish people were keenly aware of the prophetic significance of Sabbatical Years as they related to prominent people of the Old Testament periods, and also to the advent of the Messiah into the world. In literature written not long before Yeshua began to preach, we have these symbolic features emphasized. The Book of Enoch presents an apocalyptic account based on the seven Sabbatical ages, and in 91:12-17 it adds three more -- a total of ten Sabbatical periods. The Book of Jubilees records that at the creation YEHOVAH God partitioned off time periods into Sabbatical and Jubilee cycles (Jub. 1:27-29). The births of significant people such as Adam, Noah, Abraham, and other patriarchs were timed to dovetail precisely with Sabbatical eras (4Q181, fragments 1-2). The Dead Sea sectarians recognized future reigns of the Kings of Wickedness and Righteousness relative to a Sabbatical calendar, and believing that the last year of the cycle would be the start of the Messianic age (1QMelch. 3:2).

These early opinions on the symbolic teaching concerning Sabbatical Years were no doubt prompted by the sabbatical periods recorded by the Prophet Daniel. His Seventy Weeks' prophecy was an extension of a Sabbatical Years' theme, and this prophecy was the prime reference point for the advent of the Messianic age that the Judeans were expecting in the first century. "Passover of the Sabbatical Year became the period when the redeemer's coming was expected most" (Wacholder, "Int. Dict. One Vol." supplement, p. 763).

It is thus no surprise that vast crowds of people came out in the Sabbatical Year of A.D. 27 to A.D. 28 to be baptized of John the Baptist and the Messiah. This was not only a time when a great percentage of the people would have been free of agricultural duties and able to travel at leisure following the great teachers around Palestine, but it was also the Sabbatical Year when many of them were expecting many Messianic signs to occur.

It makes perfectly good sense that John the Baptist would have started his ministry in the Autumn, at the beginning of the Sabbatical Year, and that the Messiah would have commenced his own teaching a little later. The Judean people would have seen significance in that year.

This would indicate that John the Baptist inaugurated his teaching ministry at the start of a Sabbatical Year. For what it's worth, Epiphanius said that the Messiah was baptized a little later on November 8. Soon after that Yeshua went into the wilderness for 40 days and then returned to Galilee. The preaching of the Messiah was relatively restricted until the wedding feast in Cana, which took place not long before John's first Passover. Though the Messiah performed a great miracle at the behest of his mother, he still informed her that "mine hour is not yet come" (John 2:4). It appears that he was waiting for the time of Pentecost A.D. 28 to begin officially his ministry. And why not? As is well known among students of the Bible, the Day of Pentecost was reckoned as a day of "beginnings." Not only did the New Testament church in Jerusalem commence on Pentecost (Acts 2), but the Jews have long believed that the Law was given to Moses on Mount Sinai also on Pentecost. Interestingly, the apostle Paul even began his official teaching in Europe on "the Day of Weeks" at Philippi (Acts 16:13, see original Greek rendering, not the King James), and Paul at a later time acknowledged that this was "a beginning of the Gospel" in Europe (Phil. 4:15). The Messiah also began his official teaching on Pentecost and this is what we find him doing as recorded in Luke 4:16. This matter is explained in the second portion of this article.

Since it looks evident that John the Baptist and Yeshua the Messiah began to teach in the Sabbatical Year from Tishri 1, A.D. 27 to Tishri 1, A.D. 28, it is a simple procedure to follow the apostle John through his other chronological references to the year of the Messiah's crucifixion. Indeed, it is the establishing of the "first year" for the Messiah's ministry that can make the time of his crucifixion understandable.

The first Passover mentioned by John can now be reckoned to A.D. 28. At the following Pentecost season he was in Galilee -- probably at Nazareth. The next festival of John was his "unknown" feast (5:1). This "unknown" festival occurred some time before John's next Passover mentioned in 6:4.

What was this "unknown feast? Many scholars have tackled the problem of identifying it. It is almost certain that it was not Pentecost because it can be reasonably shown that the Messiah was in Galilee for the Pentecost after John's first Passover. It is also not likely to be the other two national feasts since they are mentioned by name in other sections of John. Westcott makes an excellent case for the Day of Trumpets -- which was the beginning of the Jewish New Year (The Gospel According to John, pp. 92-94). This suggestion is an attractive one. The theme of the Messiah's teaching at that feast was on the judgment and the resurrection (John 5:25-31) -- the exact symbolic teaching associated with the Day of Trumpets. This evidence is shown in my book The Star That Astonished The World. This theme is central to Trumpets.

Both Professors Finegan and Hoehner accept the "unknown" feast as Tabernacles. This may be true, but for our present chronological purposes, Trumpets and Tabernacles are only separated from one another by 15 days, and this short interval presents no difficulty. It is only fair, however, to mention that both Finegan and Hoehner place this "unknown" feast not in the first year of the Messiah's ministry, as we do in this article, but in the second. To do this, an "unknown" and unmentioned Passover is usually inserted between the Passovers of John 2:13 and 6:4. My new proposal, however, shows no need to create another unmentioned Passover.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A.D. 28 IN THE MESSIAH'S MINISTRY

When I wrote my book The Birth of Christ Recalculated in 1980 I had not yet noticed the chronological importance of John 4:35-38. Had I realized that this was an indication of a Sabbatical Year (which indeed it is), then it would have been simple to show that the Messiah began his ministry during the Sabbatical Year from Tishri One in A.D. 27 to Tishri One in A.D. 28. New research since that time (to accord with Second Peter 3:18) has now established that John 4:35-38 is indeed describing events appropriate to that Sabbatical Year, and I have this information in my book The Star That Astonished the World. While this is true, this still does not tell us the exact time during that unique year when the Messiah officially commenced his ministry. But this is not difficult to determine if one will pay attention to other chronological data which are mentioned in the Holy Scriptures.

First of all, we are told that Yeshua "began [his ministry] about thirty years of age" (Luke 3:23). To be "about" thirty means that he was approaching his birthday. As explained in my book The Birth of Christ Recalculated (and in my new book The Star That Astonished the World, he was born on the Day of Trumpets (Tishri One). In the Bible we find that everyone was advanced one year of age on the same day (again, this was the Day of Trumpets). The late Spring of A.D. 28 would fit Luke's description ideally because he would become exactly 30 years of age on the Day of Trumpets which began the Hebrew Autumn.

Since it appears that the Messiah was approaching 30 years of age when he began his ministry, where and when did that official beginning take place? One thing for certain, Peter, who was an eyewitness to all such affairs, said his ministry began "in Galilee" (Acts 10:37). The first miracle the Messiah performed was turning the water into wine which was in Cana of Galilee, but this was not the time for the official commencement of his ministry because he told his mother that "mine hour is not yet come" (John 2:4). Soon after that event the Messiah went to Jerusalem for the Passover and performed some miracles to the astonishment of the people (John 2:23), but the apostle John specifically states that "he did not commit himself unto them" (John 2:24). After that first Passover, he returned through Samaria where he told the apostles that the Sabbatical Year they were then experiencing would end in four months time (John 4:35-38). He then went north to Galilee where he was reared. And in the synagogue at Nazareth, on the Day of the Weeks (Pentecost in A.D. 28), he committed himself officially to the people as the Messiah (Luke 4:16-21). This is what Peter meant when he said the Gospel began in Galilee (Acts 10:37). This proclamation by Yeshua the Messiah occurred a little over three months before the Messiah became 30 on the following Day of Trumpets in A.D. 28.

When the complete ramifications of this subject are recognized, it will be seen how important the proper interpretation of John 4:35-38 really is. It represents a powerful chronological benchmark which can help us identify the years when the various festivals took place that John mentioned in his Gospel. And more importantly, it gives us, with an almost certainty, the true year of the crucifixion. When it is realized that the Sabbatical Year of A.D. 27 to A.D. 28 is the first year of the Messiah's ministry, most of the other chronological indications in the Gospels and epistles can make much better sense.

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