Jesus, almost every year, went to Jerusalem for the feast of the passover. The details of these journeys are little known, for the synoptics do not speak of them,[1] and the notes of the fourth Gospel are very confused on this point.[2] It was, it appears, in the year 31, and certainly after the death of John, that the most important of the visits of Jesus to Jerusalem took place. Many of the disciples followed him. Although Jesus attached from that time little value to the pilgrimage, he conformed himself to it in order not to wound Jewish opinion, with which he had not yet broken. These journeys, moreover, were essential to his design; for he felt already that in order to play a leading part, he must go from Galilee, and attack Judaism in its stronghold, which was Jerusalem. [Footnote 1: They, however, imply them obscurely (Matt. xxiii. 37; Luke xiii. 34). They knew as well as John the relation of Jesus with Joseph of Arimathea. Luke even (x. 38-42) knew the family of Bethany. Luke (ix. 51-54) has a vague idea of the system of the fourth Gospel respecting the journeys of Jesus. Many discourses against the Pharisees and the Sadducees, said by the synoptics to have been delivered in Galilee, have scarcely any meaning, except as having been given at Jerusalem. And again, the lapse of eight days is much too short to explain all that happened between the arrival of Jesus in that city and his death.] [Footnote 2: Two pilgrimages are clearly indicated (John ii. 13, and v. 1), without speaking of his last journey (vii. 10), after which Jesus returned no more to Galilee. The first took place while John was still baptizing. It would belong consequently to the Easter of the year 29. But the circumstances given as belonging to this journey are of a more advanced period. (Comp. especially John ii. 14, and following, and Matt. xxi. 12, 13; Mark xi. 15-17; Luke xix. 45, 46.) There are evidently transpositions of dates in these chapters of John, or rather he has mixed the circumstances of different journeys.]