When Was Jesus Born? Part 11
When Jesus Was "About" 30 Years Old
(avg. read time: 2–3 mins.)
Jesus is about 30 at the start of his ministry when he meets John the Baptist (Luke 3:23)
The last relevant piece of information for our analysis appears in Luke’s introduction to his genealogy of Jesus. Other figures about whom the text notes their age of 30 include Joseph when he entered Pharaoh’s service (Gen 41:46), David when he began his reign as king (2 Sam 5:4), and Ezekiel when he began his prophetic ministry (Ezek 1:1). It was also the age of enrollment for the Levites connected to tabernacle and temple service (Num 4:3, 23). By contrast, Luke says here that Jesus was “about” (ὡσεί) 30 years old when he began [his ministry]. The question is: what does ὡσεί 30 mean?
Hoehner represents a typical view of the meaning of this term when he says, “In this context, Luke’s ‘about thirty’ could well serve for any actual age ranging from 26 to 34, before and after which (presumably) the middle 5 might intrude before attraction to the next adjacent round number, 20 or 40 in this case. If Jesus was born in late 5 B.C., his age in A.D. 28–29 would have been 32.”1 The term ὡσεί certainly does function to create an approximation, but I cannot help but wonder if scholars would allow such a wide variance of approximation for time if we were not here dealing with a round number. In other cases where Luke uses the term in a temporal phrase, he does not imply this level of variability: “about/some 8 days” (Luke 9:28), “about an hour” (22:59), “about the 6th hour” (23:44), “about the 9th hour” (Acts 10:3; cf. uses in other numerical statements in Luke 9:14; Acts 1:15; 2:41; 19:7). Although the vocabulary is slightly different, the most similar reference to 3:23 is in Luke 8:42, where the text says that Jairus’s daughter was ὡς 12 years old.2 The same holds true for other uses of ὡσεί: “about 10 days” (Gen 24:55 [LXX]; 1 Sam 25:38 [LXX]); “about 1 hour” (Daniel 4:19 [Theodotion]); “[I was young,] about twenty years old” (T.Levi 1:5); “about the 6th hour” (T.Jos. 8:1); “about 3 or 4 days” (Galen, Cur. rat. 11.13); “about 50 days” (Hippocrates/Hippocratic Corpus, Epid. 5.18); “about 30 years [or slightly less]” (Hippocrates/Hippocratic Corpus, Epid. 5.22); “about 2 weeks and 3 days” (Epiphanius, Pan. 31.30.4); “[a lad] about 10 years old” (Palladius, Hist. Laus. 16.4).3 When the word is used in the context of a time reference, it appears to have a narrower rounding function than when it refers to large quantities (particularly of people).
Luke, like these other authors, thus likely means “about 30” in the sense of “closer to 30 than 29 or 31,” just as the similar “about 12” in 8:42 would mean “closer to 12 than 11 or 13,” rather than “between 8 and 16.”4 Furthermore, the prima facie implication of the phrasing is that Jesus is not quite 30 yet. Otherwise, one would think that Luke would simply say “he was 30 years old.” Of course, some patristic authors, such as Irenaeus (Haer. 2.10.2; 2.12.1, 8; 2.22.4–5), did take this phrase as simply meaning “30.” As such, we need to account for a secondary possibility: Jesus was a few months past his 30th birthday and was on his way to the second half of his 30th year. But because this seems to be a rather specific meaning for an approximate phrase, it is inherently less probable without further indications that this should be so. However, without a larger chronological picture of Jesus’s ministry, which is beyond my scope, it is not necessarily possible to adjudicate between these two options here. But in any case, Jesus is either soon to be 30 or just past 30 when he comes to John the Baptist in 28 or 29 CE.
Next time, I will lay out my conclusions.
Hoehner, “Date,” 122.
He also used ὡς in a similarly approximating fashion in Luke 1:56 (a variant reading uses ὡσεί); Acts 4:4; 5:7, 36; 13:18–19; 19:34. Compare John 1:39; 4:6; 19:14; Rev 8:1.
Michael Glykas, the Byzantine historian, sometimes used the term in chronological markers in his Annals (“about 14 years,” “about 150 years,” “about 5 months,” “about 4 months”).
Cf. Steinmann, “Reign,” 19.