Dating the Baptism of Christ

In Luke, it is said that John the Baptist began to preach and baptize “in the fifteenth year of Tiberius” (Luke 3:1), and Jesus “was about thirty years of age” (Luke 3:23) when He was baptized by John and began His ministry. If the 15th year of Tiberius is dated by his association with Augustus as colleague in the government in 12 AD (Tacitus, Annals i. 3; Suetonius on Augustus, 97), and it is assumed that Jesus was baptized around six months after John began his work, these data combine to bring us to the year 27 AD, as the year for Jesus’ baptism. It should be noted this agrees with the former conclusion that the date of His birth was 5 BC.  (see: Dating the Birth of Christ) To place the birth earlier is to make Jesus 32 or 33 years of age at His baptism – an unwarrantable extension of the “about.” In agreement with this is the statement in John 2:20 that the temple had been under construction for 46 years (beginning in 20-19 BC) at the time of Christ’s first Passover in 27-AD (compare Schurer, op. cit., Div. I, Vol. I, 410).