Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadJohn Bengel Commentary - Luke 3:1 - 3:1
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Luk 3:1. Ἐν ἔτει, in the year) The most important of all epochs of the Church: Mar 1:1 (Comp. 1Ki 6:1 as to the epoch of the temple); with which also the thirtieth year of Christ is associated, Luk 3:23. Here as it were the whole scene of the New Testament is thrown open. [The year 27 of the common era, verging towards autumn, was then in course of progress. Three years before the beginning of that era, Christ was born, and Herod died.-V. g.] Not even the nativity of Christ, or His death, resurrection, and ascension, have their dates so precisely and definitively marked as this: ch. Luk 2:1. Moreover the mode of marking the date is not taken from the Roman consuls, but from the emperors. Scripture is wont accurately to define the epochs of great events: this, in the case of the New Testament, is done in the present passage alone; and even for this reason alone, this book of Luke is a necessary part of the Scriptures of the New Testament. See Ord. Temp., p. 219, etc. [Ed. ii. p. 191, etc.]-Καίσαρος, Cæsar) The Church has its existence [manifests itself externally] in the state [the commonwealth]: on this account, the epoch receives its denomination from the empire. [The first year of Tiberius, as Luke counts it, begins with the month Tisri of that Jewish year, in which Augustus died. It was in the same year as John that Jesus BEGAN, i.e. made a beginning of His public proceedings.-Not. Crit.]-καὶ, and) Ituræa and the region of Trachonitis, beyond Jordan, form two tetrarchies.-Αβιληνῆς, Abilene) beyond the region of Trachonitis towards the north.