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CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE PRINCIPAL EVENTS CONNECTED WITH
THE LIFE OF THE APOSTLE PAUL.
by DAVID BROWN

      Certainty in these dates is not to be had, the notes of time in the Acts being few and vague. It is only by connecting those events of secular history which it records, and the dates of which are otherwise tolerably known to us--such as the famine under Claudius Cæsar (Ac 11:28), the expulsion of the Jews from Rome by the same emperor (Ac 18:2), and the entrance of Porcius Festus upon his procuratorship (Ac 24:27), with the intervals specified between some occurrences in the apostle's life and others (such as Ac 20:31; 24:27; 28:30; and Ga 1:1-2:21) --that we can thread our way through the difficulties that surround the chronology of the apostle's life, and approximate to certainty. Immense research has been brought to bear upon the subject, but, as might be expected, the learned are greatly divided. Every year has been fixed upon as the probable date of the apostle's conversion from A.D. 31 [BENGEL] to A.D. 42 [EUSEBIUS]. But the weight of authority is in favor of dates ranging between 35 and 40, a difference of not more than five years; and the largest number of authorities is in favor of the year 37 or 38. Taking the former of these, to which opinion largely inclines, the following Table will be useful to the student of apostolic history:

A.D. 37	PAUL'S CONVERSION	Ac 9:1.
A.D. 40	First Visit to Jerusalem	Ac 9:26; Ga 1:18.
A.D. 42-44	First Residence at Antioch	Ac 11:25-30.
A.D. 44	Second Visit to Jerusalem	Ac 11:30; 12:25.
A.D. 45-47	FIRST MISSIONARY JOURNEY	Ac 13:2; 14:26.
A.D. 47-51	Second Residence at Antioch	Ac 14:28.
	Third Visit to Jerusalem	Ac 15:2-30; Ga 2:1-10. (on which see Notes)
A.D. 51,53, or 54	SECOND MISSIONARY JOURNEY	Ac 15:36, 40; 18:22.
A.D. 53 or 54	Fourth Visit to Jerusalem	Ac 18:21, 22.
	Third Residence at Antioch	Ac 18:22, 23.
A.D. 54-58	THIRD MISSIONARY JOURNEY	Ac 18:23; 21:15.
A.D. 58	Fifth Visit to Jerusalem Arrest and Imprisonment at Cæsarea	Ac 21:15; 23:35.
A.D. 60 (Autumn)-- A.D. 61 (Spring)	Voyage to and Arrival in Rome	Ac 27:1; 28:16.
A.D. 63	Release from Imprisonment At Crete, Colosse, Macedonia, Corinth, Nicopolis, Dalmatia, Troas	Ac 28:30. 1 & 2 Tim. and Tit.
A.D. 63-65, or 66, or possibly as late as A.D. 66-68	Martyrdom at Rome

 

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