For centuries, scholars have studied the chronological order of events in Jesus’ earthly life. There is still significant uncertainty regarding the exact factual, historical events of Jesus’ life on earth given in the order of occurrence.
The chronological flow of events in the four Gospels of the Bible often explains why Jesus told certain parables or informed the way in which He reacted following certain events. Therefore the reader of the Bible will be more blessed to have more certainty about the order of events.
About the Researcher
Pieter Oberholzer was born on 24 March 1952 in the Thabazimbi District, in the Bushveld of the Limpopo Province of South-Africa, and grew up in a Christian family who attended a Pentecostal church. He is a member of the Cristian Association Church of South-Africa. He qualified as a Professional Civil Engineer in 1980 and was mostly involved in Water Supply Projects as an Engineer until he retired in 2013. Thereafter he performed missionary work in South Korea for 2 years.
By God’s grace, he has always been and still is very active in church activities.
He was also very much involved in a church building project in Pretoria where he did the design of the building and supervised the construction. He is still involved in the groundwater management of a 50-hectare church irrigation project.
He joined 7 study tours to Israel since 1987. These journeys into the historic locations of Jesus’ life on earth allowed him to learn, see, touch, and feel the Biblical-time locations of sites as mentioned in the Gospels. In all these tours, the emphasis was on sites where the four Gospels of the Bible reported events in Jesus’ life. This piqued Pieter’s interest and stirred him to develop an interest in the order of events in Jesus’ life.
This passion became so strong that he trusted the Holy Spirit and organised 3 additional study tours to the Holy Land, on which he was the tour leader himself. This enabled him to analyse events in Jesus’ life using first-hand experience and to put it all in chronological order.
The Holy Spirit inspired and guided him to write this study, “Jesus’ Chronicles”, wherein he organised all the events in Jesus’ life, reported by the 4 Gospels, in chronological order. He is very thankful to the three-fold God of heaven and earth who motivated him to complete this study.
The Objective of the Project
The main objective of this study is to develop an aid that can assist someone who is making a study of the “day-to-day” life of Jesus in chronological order. It should shed more light, truth, and revelation on each of the events recorded in the Gospels. By placing the events in chronological order, one can follow Jesus’ life chronologically as recorded by the four Gospels, and also physically by following Jesus’ travels on the attached detailed maps.
How To Use Jesus-Chronicles.com
There are two ways to use The Chronicles of Jesus’ life on Earth. Firstly, it can be read just like any other diary, providing a chronological, event-by-event account of Jesus’ actions here on earth. In this way, the reader can follow along in Jesus’ footsteps from event to event as recorded by the four Gospels and also view his travels with the help of the attached maps.
Secondly, it can be used as a guide when studying the Gospels. Commentary is also provided along with each incident which explains, amongst other things, why the specific incident follows the one before it.
How This Study Came About
Jesus’ life and actions are recorded in the four Gospels of the Bible – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and each one gives a slightly different description of the incidents or events. There are so many events that it is nearly impossible to arrange them all chronologically while at the same time ensuring that all verses from all four books are accounted for.
Through God’s grace and with the continuous, faithful support of the Holy Spirit, I did a complete study on this, in which I attempted to reason out the flow of events using mostly clues in the verses.
As a baseline to the study, I noted a statement in Luke about the chronological order of events, recorded in
I then took a systematic approach and looked simultaneously at all incidents in the four Gospels. In doing so, I soon concluded that the events in Mark and John were also mostly recorded chronologically. In contrast, Matthew grouped events by type and did not always record them chronologically. The challenge was then to synchronize the events of Mark, Luke, and John and to incorporate incidents from Matthew.
This approach allowed me to assign actual dates, up to the nearest month in most cases, to all events recorded in the 4 Gospels. I ended up with a complete list of every event where every verse in the four Gospels has been included.
I organized the four Gospels into 296 events along a chronological timeline. The timeline starts around 7 BC, about two years before Jesus Christ was born, and ends with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost on 28 May 30 AD.