=14. One incident only= is recorded of Jesus from this time until he arrived at manhood. This incident was his visit to the Temple at Jerusalem, when only twelve years of age. His parents, with their friends, had visited the city to attend the great feast of the Passover. The celebration of that feast being over, they had started upon their return in company with crowds of those who were passing along the only highway leading northward from the city. Jesus had stopped at the Temple and was conversing with the learned doctors, or teachers, of the Law. =15. The peculiar significancy of this visit= at this time is stated in Mal. 3:1, and it was the first time that he had ever referred to the great object of his divine mission. This divine mission he announced to his mother when she, having sought for and found him in the Temple, gently reproved him for remaining behind. From this time to that when he entered upon his public ministry our Saviour remained at Nazareth, and as the Scriptural record informs us, he was subject to his parents and “increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man,” Luke 2:51, 52. THE INTERIM. =16. Events now transpired= in the history of the Jews which are important to a full understanding of the future ministry of our Saviour. It is evident, in accordance with the ancient prophecy by Jacob in his dying hour,[159] that the “sceptre had departed from Judah,” for “Shiloh” had come. This Shiloh had been interpreted in all their chief commentaries to mean the Messiah.[160] These commentaries were the Targums of which we have written, page 189, note. The expression in Mal. 3:1, that “he shall suddenly come to his temple,” appears to have been fulfilled when Jesus visited the Temple as spoken of already, that is, when at the age of twelve he suddenly appeared asking and answering questions of the astonished doctors of the Law in whose midst he sat, Luke 2:47. THE CHRISTIAN ERA. =17. Before we proceed= it is necessary that we should know that not even at the present time are we fully assured as to the exact date of the birth of Christ. It is generally supposed that Dionysius Exiguus, the monk who introduced in A. D. 527 the custom of dating events from the birth of Christ, mistook the time of that event by exactly four years. That is, the birth took place four years before the time asserted in that chronology known as Anno Domini. But recent discoveries seem to prove that the true statement is that the error is one of five years, as Prof. Sattler of Munich asserts in an essay published by him in 1883. This statement he bases upon the discovery of four copper coins which were struck under Herod Antipas, seeming to prove that Christ was born 749 years after the foundation of Rome, and not, as usually accepted, 754.