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: