This authority states that his ministry lasted two or three years. It was necessary to do this or reject John. By taking a year or more from John's ministry of Jesus and adding it to the one year ministry of the Synoptics--by assuming that the Synoptics omit to mention one or more Passovers, and that one of the Passovers mentioned by John was some other feast--it pretends to have reconciled the discrepancy regarding the length of Christ's ministry. But if his ministry lasted two or three years, as affirmed, he could not have been crucified in 29 A. D. With orthodox commentators, a favorite method of reconciling Old Testament dates, as I have noted in a previous work, is to assume that a king, concerning the date of whose accession, or length of reign, a discrepancy appears, reigned in consort with his predecessor for a number of years sufficient to cover the discrepancy. This dishonest method of explanation--for it is a dishonest trick, intended to deceive the reader and hide from him an error--has been employed to reconcile Luke and John. By assuming that Tiberius divided the government with Augustus for two years preceding his accession to the throne, an assumption for which there is no credible authority, and that Luke accordingly reckons the fifteenth year from 12 A. D., instead of 14 A. D., when he really became emperor, it is possible to give Jesus a ministry of two or three years and still have him crucified in 29 A. D. But another irreconcilable difficulty remains. The Synoptics state that he was crucified on the Passover and on the day preceding the Sabbath, that is, on Friday. If so, he could not have been crucified in 29 A. D., for the Passover did not fall on Friday that year. Dr. Farrar says it is "highly probable that the crucifixion took place at the passover of March, 30 A. D." Justice Bradley of the United States Supreme Court, who made an exhaustive examination of all the evidence and arguments bearing on the question, decided in favor of 30 A. D. He says: "There were only three years from A. D. 27 to A. D. 36, inclusive, in which the 1st of Nisan, and consequently the 15th of Nisan, happened on Friday, and these were A. D. 27, 30 and 33, the last of which is very doubtful. But the crucifixion could not have happened before A. D. 28, and probably not later than A. D. 31. Therefore the year 30 is the only one which satisfies all the conditions of the problem.... Now, since in A. D. 30, the 1st of Nisan fell on Friday, the 24th of March, the 15th fell on Friday, the 7th of April, which was the day of the crucifixion." Dr. Farrar and Justice Bradley are agreed in regard to the year of the crucifixion, but they are not agreed in regard to the calendar month in which it occurred. Dr. Farrar says it occurred in March; Justice Bradley says it occurred in April.