8. The computation of four Passovers, or three and a half years out of Daniel, is also gathered out of foreign histories.
That computation of four Passovers is also gathered by the learned out of Daniel 9:27, in which Messiah, whose passion, or the bringing in of eternal righteousness, after seventy hebdomads is there predicted, is said to confirm the covenant with many in one week, in the midst of which He is going to abolish sacrifice and offering (namely, by the sacrifice of His own body offered).Now, half a hebdomad makes three and a half years, in the midst of which four Passovers were celebrated.From this was taken the common and received opinion, which is also extant in Theophilus, that Christ went about in His ministry, teaching and doing, for three years and just so many months or days as fell between His Baptism and the first Passover.To which opinion external histories also lend their support, with Eusebius reciting out of the monuments of the Pagans, that the great eclipse that happened during Christ’s suffering happened in the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad:and that that time fell in the eighteenth year of Tiberius,[1] in whose fifteenth year Christ began to discharge His ministry.[2]