John 2:20

Prepared by Patrick Narkinsky <patrick@extremehope.org> - May 24, 2001.
Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?" Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days." The Jews replied, "It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?" But the temple he had spoken of was his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples recalled what he had said. Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken. (John 2:18-22)
On the surface, this seems to be a fairly routine story of Jesus engaging the Pharisees in dialogue. Jesus had just whipped the money changers and kicked them out of the temple. The Jews challenged him, and he responded in his typical gnomic fashion, making a clouded prediction of his execution.
However, this episode has a uniqure feature which is all too rare in the gospels. It can be precisely dated. Josephus tells us that Herod reigned for 34 years after his capture of Jerusalem1. Josephus also makes mention of a lunar eclipse immediately before the death of Herod2. There are several lunar eclipses which might fit the bill, however the best fit is the one which occured in 4BC3. These facts together lead us to claim that Herod's rule of Jerusalem began in 37BC. And, also through Josephus, we know that the reconstruction of the temple was begun in the 18th year of Herod's reign4. This would have been 19BC. If you add the forty-six years mentioned above (don't forget there was no year zero) you arrive at 28AD, which is exactly what we would expect based on the gospel claim that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, who reigned from 26-36AD. 1 Antiquities 17.190, War 1.665
2 Antiquities 17.167
3 Solar and Lunar Eclipses of the Ancient Near East, by M. Kudlek and E. Mickler, 1971 referenced in Link
4 Antiquities 15.380
Obviously, if this is true then the "Christ-Myth" theory is invalidated, because this demonstrates a statement attributed to the historical Jesus that can be positively dated to around 28AD. But is it true? Some New Testament scholars will tell you that the gospel according to John was not written until the 90's. Is it likely that the author of John simply inserted the "forty-six" years thing as an incidental detail?
There are strong circumstantial reasons to doubt that this reference was fabricated. First, it would have been prohibitively difficult to research in the first century. Second, John does not emphasize the fact that it was forty-six years from the construction of the temple. Finally, there is no good reason, even by the standards of liberal Bible scholarship, to assume that all Johannine material is late in origin.
In the paragraph above, I was able to date, from first-century sources, the episode described above. I had several advantages. First, I had the best research tool ever invented (the Internet.) Second, I knew what I was looking for, and that it was attainable with the resources I had5. Better yet, I was able, using the Internet, to find a document that led me through the difficult tast of determining the end of Herod's reign6. I walked in the footsteps of better scholars than myself, and with all this information it only took me one hour and forty-seven minutes (yes I timed it) to resarch that paragraph. 5 Lightfoot, John. 1893. "Internal Evidence for the authenticity and genuineness of Saint John's Gospel." Link. 21 Nov. 2000.
6 "Birth of Christ Recalculated.". Link. May 24, 2001.
"John", on the other hand, didn't even have books.
He had scrolls. Josephus' Antiquities, which I had to consult three times, occupies 20 scrolls. His Jewish War, which I consulted once, occupied seven. John would also have had to get a hold of an astrologer to find out when the lunar eclipse was. Also, John did not have our modern AD/BC (or CE/BCE) system. He would have had to add up the reigns of various kings. And, to add insult to injury, he was working in Roman numerals! I doubt anyone could reconstruct this research in under a day using the resources our author would have had. And, even if the author of John had easier methods, it is difficult to imagine any first-century methods that would be easier than the tedious and difficult method I followed. A considerable investment would have been required to fabricate this reference.
Therefore, we must ask ourselves: why would John have even spent ten minutes reconstructing this date, much less the days or weeks actually required? This statement ("It has taken forty-six years to build the temple!" - 2:20) is just an aside that he puts in the mouth of a minor character who doesn't even merit a name. For John's purposes the date could have been ten years, thirty years or three-hundred and thirty. It didn't matter. Nor is forty-six a conventional number in Jewish numerology like forty or seven. Why forty-six? I submit that the most natural explanation would be that this statement is an accurate quote of something that the Jews in the temple actually said to Jesus. It is much more probable that a Jew in the temple in 28AD would have known how long the temple had been under construction than that a Christian would have put so much effort into such a trivial point.
Finally, why should we even be suspicious of this statement? While liberal scholarship has generally held that John was not written by an eye-witness, it has also generally held that the author had access to multiple sources when he composed this gospel. Is it absurd or improbable to suppose that one of these sources might have been an eye-witness? It is certainly much less absurd than the picture of a elderly Jew turned Christian, hunched over twenty-seven scrolls trying to find the eclipse reference that he vaguely remembers being sometime before the death of Herod in the hopes of convincing everyone that this statement is a quotation.
As I like to point out, for the Christ-Myth theory to be falsified, there need only be one reference to the traditional Jesus of early origin. I leave the conclusion to you.
Last updated: May 25, 2001.