In regard to the duration of the public life of Jesus Christ, according to what the first three Evangelists say, there could be scarcely more than three months from the time of His baptism until His death, supposing He was thirty years old when He was baptized by John, according to Luke, and that He was born on the 25th of December. For, from this baptism, which was in the year 15 of Tiberius Caesar, and in the year when Anne and Caiaphas were high-priests, to the first Easter following, which was in the month of March, there was but about three months; according to what the first three Evangelists say, He was crucified on the eve of the first Easter following His baptism, and the first time He went to Jerusalem with His disciples; because all that they say of His baptism, of His travels, of His miracles, of His preaching, of His death and passion, must have taken place in the same year of His baptism, for the Evangelists speak of no other year following, and it appears even by the narration of His acts that He performed them consecutively immediately after His baptism, and in a very short time, during which we see but an interval of six days before his Transfiguration; during these six days we do not see that He did anything. We see by this that He lived but about three months after His baptism, from which, if we subtract the forty days and forty nights which He passed in the desert immediately after His baptism, it would follow that the length of His public life from His first preaching till His death, would have lasted but about six weeks; and according to what John says, it would have lasted at least three years and three months, because it appears by the Gospel of this apostle, that, during the course of His public life He might have been three or four times at Jerusalem at the Easter feast which happened but once a year. Now if it is true that He had been there three or four times after His baptism, as John testifies, it is false that He lived but three months after His baptism, and that He was crucified the first time He went to Jerusalem. If it is said that these first three Evangelists really mean but one year, but that they do not indicate distinctly the others which elapsed since His baptism; or that John understood that there was but one Easter, although he speaks of several, and that he only anticipated the time when he repeatedly tells us that the Easter feast of the Jews was near at hand, and that Jesus went to Jerusalem, and, consequently, that there is but an apparent contradiction upon this subject between the Evangelists, I am willing to accept this; but it is certain that this apparent contradiction springs from the fact, that they do not explain themselves in all the circumstances that are noted in the narration which they make. Be that as it may, there will always be this inference made, that they were not inspired by God when they wrote their biographies of Christ.