Important Dates in the Lives of Jesus and Mary 

of time consulting various physicians and trying various treatments before he resigned himself to his own 

death. Herod must have spent many weeks trying to save his own life before he gave up hope. 

    Only after he realized his death was imminent did Herod devise his plan to have all of the Jewish leaders 

from the entire nation brought to the hippodrome. Knowing that Herod had recently burned a number of Jews 

to death, would they have come quickly at the call of king Herod? A man does not usually go in haste to his 

own death. In any case, it must have taken a week or more for word of Herod's order to travel across the 

nation, and at least another couple of weeks for all of the Jewish leaders to comply with his order, and to travel 

to the hippodrome. 

    Then there were five days that passed between the execution of Herod's son and Herod's own death, plus 

another day or two for the Jews to be released from the hippodrome and travel towards their homes. Then 

Herod's funeral was held, a very elaborate funeral for which it may have taken a few days to prepare.

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 Then 

Herod's other son, Archelaus, mourned until the seventh day and then held a feast for him and his friends (cf. 

Sirach 22:12). Clearly, even these few events from Antipater's death to the end of Archelaus' mourning took 

over two weeks. 

    And there are any number of days that may have passed in between the events which Josephus describes, 

such as, between the eclipse and Herod traveling beyond the Jordan for treatments, between Herod returning 

from those treatments and his decision to gather the Jewish leaders, between the confining of the Jewish 

leaders to the hippodrome and the execution of Herod's son, and between Archelaus assuming the throne and 

the Passover. Just because the amount of time between two events is not specified, does not mean it is zero. 

    Therefore, the time frame required for the events occurring between the lunar eclipse and the Passover feast 

must be at least 3, and perhaps as many as 5 or 6, lunar months. But it is unlikely that these events took longer 

than 6 lunar months. The reason is as follows. 

    Immediately before describing the burning of the Jewish martyrs and the lunar eclipse, Josephus describes 

events occurring on Tishri 10 (Yom Kippur). Yet the lunar eclipse could not have occurred that same month. 

Lunar eclipses occur about the middle of the Jewish month, which would be Tishri 14 or 15. But Tishri 15 

marks the beginning of the Feast of Tabernacles (also called the Feast of Booths). Jewish religious law required 

all Jewish adult males to come to the Temple of Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles.   `Three times a year 

all your males shall appear before the L

ORD

 your God at the place which he will choose: at the feast of 

unleavened bread, at the feast of weeks, and at the feast of booths.'   (Deut 16:16). Huge crowds of adult male 

Jews gathered in Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, which begins on Tishri 15 (cf. Lev 23:34). 

    At one point in his account of Jewish Roman history, Josephus estimates the number of Jews who came to 

Jerusalem for the Passover at  not fewer in number than three millions. 

767

 At such times, there was not nearly 

enough housing for so many persons, so the Jews pitched their tents around the city. Imagine Jerusalem 

surrounded by millions of people and their tents, like a great army encamped around the city. Of course, Israel 

had no standing army. In times of war, every able bodied man took up arms. Thus, this crowd included nearly 

every adult Jewish man who would become a soldier if the Jews ever rebelled against the Romans in war (as 

they did a couple of generations later). 

    For these reasons, the huge crowds that assembled in Jerusalem for Jewish feasts had power to influence the 

Roman rulers as both the crowds and the rulers knew well. For example, Pontius Pilate wanted to release 

Jesus (cf. Mt 27:17 19; Lk 23:13 16; Jn 19:6 12), but the crowds demanded His Crucifixion. Pilate feared a 

riot; this is part of the reason that he released Jesus to be crucified (Mt 27:24 26; Mk 15:11 15; Lk 23:23 25). 

    Another such example of this influence occurred at the time of the Passover following the death of Herod, 

when  an innumerable multitude came thither out of the country, nay, from beyond its limits also, in order to 

worship God . 

768

 It was then that the Jews, feeling the power of their numbers, demanded that those who 

had carried out Herod's order to burn alive the Jewish martyrs be punished. Some of the Jews even under took 

violence against Herod's soldiers.

769

    Therefore, on the earlier occasion of the Feast of Tabernacle prior to Herod's death, Herod would not have 

dared to anger such huge crowds by deposing the Jewish high priest, by burning alive two of the teachers of 

the Temple and 40 of their students, and by doing all of this at the very beginning of a sacred Jewish feast. 

There would have been riots or an armed rebellion. Herod had thousands of soldiers, but there were millions 

of Jews in and around Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. Therefore, the burning of the Jewish martyrs 

could not have occurred at the time of the Feast of Tabernacles, and the lunar eclipse, which accompanied the 

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