Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871)
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: