Timeline of the Bible · The Captivity & the Return
Herod Begins to Rebuild the Temple
Event · About 19 BC
The Years
- The Year 19 BC
- Forty and six years before the first Passover, AD 28 (John 2:20). Ussher: 17 BC
- “46 years before the first Passeover of the Ministery of Christ”
Dated by the Jews’ words at the first Passover of the Lord’s ministry, AD 28: “Forty and six years was this temple in building” (John 2:20), so it was begun in 19 BC. Josephus puts it in Herod’s eighteenth year, which, counted from his taking of Jerusalem, is the same year. Ussher, whose first Passover is AD 30, puts it in 17 BC.
Where the year isn’t Ussher’s, the text sets it, and the note says how. Ussher’s years and sentences are from his Annals of the World (1658), quoted as printed.
