According to popular conception, Jesus was crucified during the thirty-third year of His life and in the third year of His ministry following His baptism. About A.D. 180, St. Irenæus, Bishop of Lyons, one of the most eminent of the ante-Nicene theologians, wrote Against Heresies, an attack on the doctrines of the Gnostics. In this work Irenæus declared upon the authority of the Apostles themselves that Jesus lived to old age. To quote: "They, however, that they may establish their false opinion regarding that which is written, 'to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord,' maintain that He preached for one year only, and then suffered in the twelfth month. [In speaking thus], they are forgetful of their own disadvantage, destroying His whole work, and robbing Him of that age which is both more necessary and more honourable than any other; that more advanced age, I mean, during which also as a teacher He excelled all others. For how could He have had His disciples, if He did not teach? And how could He have taught, unless He had reached the age of a Master? For when He came to be baptised, He had not yet completed His thirtieth year, but was beginning to be about thirty years of age (for thus Luke, who has mentioned His years, has expressed it: 'Now Jesus was, as it were, beginning to be thirty years old,' when He came to receive baptism); and, (according to these men,) He preached only one year reckoning from His baptism. On completing His thirtieth year He suffered, being in fact still a young man, and who had by no means attained to advanced age. Now, that the first stage of early life embraces thirty years, and that this extends onward to the fortieth year, every one will admit; but from the fortieth and fiftieth year a man begins to decline towards old age, which Our Lord possessed while He still fulfilled the office of a Teacher, even as the Gospel and all the elders testify; those who were conversant in Asia with John, the disciple of the Lord, (affirming) that John conveyed to them that information. And he remained among them up to the time of Trajan. Some of them, moreover, saw not only John, but the other apostles also, and heard the very same account from them, and bear testimony as to the'(validity of) the statement. Whom then should we rather believe? Whether such men as these, or Ptolemæus, who never saw the apostles, and who never even in his dreams attained to the slightest trace of an apostle?"

From Julius Caesar, therefore, to the death of Commodus, are two hundred and thirty-six years, six months. And the whole from Romulus, who founded...

And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age.

Accordingly, in fifteen years of Tiberius and fifteen years of Augustus; so were completed the thirty years till the time He suffered. And from the...

A certain man was there, which had an infirmity thirty and eight years. When Jesus saw him lie, and knew that he had been now a long time in that...

And he lacked seventy years of one thousand years; for one thousand years are as one day in the testimony of the heavens and therefore was it written ...

Further, others say that He was born on the twenty-fourth or twenty-fifth of Pharmuthi.

The seventh and eighth septenniads see him now In mind and speech mature, till fifty years; And in the ninth he still has vigour left, But strength...

Augustus, forty-three years; Tiberius, twenty-two years; Caius, four years; Claudius, fourteen years; Nero, fourteen years; Galba, one year; Vespasian...

¶From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he, the Son of man, must go unto Jerusalem, and be killed, saying,

Jesus said: "If the time of such an one is completed through the sphere, the receivers of Yaldabaōth come after him and bind him by his tongue to a...

If I would now amend it, thou wottest well, by very reason of thy words written before, it may not be after the course of nature, nor of common grace,...

The decreasing Years and increasing Corrup- tion of Mankind (xxiii. -).

Flavius Josephus the Jew, who composed the history of the Jews, computing the periods, says that from Moses to David were five hundred and...

IT came to pass, when Jesus had risen from the dead, that he passed eleven years discoursing with his disciples, and instructing them only up to the...

Of others, counting from Inachus and Moses to the death of Commodus, some say there were three thousand one hundred and forty-two years; and others,...

Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? Jesus answered,

Then from that day forth they took counsel together for to put Jesus to death.

Critias: and by recounting the number of years occupied by the events mentioned he tried to calculate the periods of time. Whereupon one of the...

What were his Apostles? Poor, despised, illiterate fishermen. And what were they that believed their preaching? The poorer and meaner sort of the...

And the whole council held a consultation, to put Jesus to death.