Various attempts to harmonize this discrepancy have been attempted: Move the gospel Jesus crucifixion to 36 c.e. Move the Josephan John the baptizer figure to somewhere within the consensus gospel dating - 29 – 33 c.e. This move having to deal with Aretas waiting some 7 years before taking revenge on Herod (Antipas) for the divorce of his daughter. Josephus was having a ‘flashback’ moment….The TF is a forgery but in the wrong time context....
A new approach has now been suggested by Tamás Visi:
Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth: A New Approach
Tamás Visi
The consensus of most of the present-day historians is that Jesus was
crucified around the year 30 CE, perhaps a year earlier or a few years later, but
in any case not after 33 CE. A minority of scholars have challenged the
consensus. They argue that the execution of John the Baptist could not take
place earlier than 35 CE, and for that reason Jesus must have been crucified at
the Passover of 36 CE; the last Passover which Pontius Pilate could spend in
Jerusalem as Roman governor. The present paper will argue that both parties
have strong and convincing arguments: it is indeed not very likely that Jesus
was crucified later than 33 CE, and it is nearly certain that John the Baptist
was not executed earlier than 35 CE. So how to solve this chronological
conundrum?
The plain solution is accepting both dates and abandoning the idea that
John the Baptist was executed earlier than Jesus. The rules of logic dictate
that at least one of the following three propositions must be false: (1) Jesus
was crucified in ca. 29–33 CE. (2) John was decapitated in ca. 35–36 CE. (3)
John died earlier than Jesus. This paper will argue that the last statement is
the weakest of the three, because it is much less supported by primary
historical evidence than the first two, and for that reason it should be
considered false. In other words, we must conclude that John was probably
executed after Jesus’ death.
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Conclusion
As has been stated at the beginning of this paper, at least one of the following
three propositions must be false:
1. Jesus died ca. 29–33 CE.
2. John the Baptist died ca. 35–36 CE.
3. John the Baptist died earlier than Jesus.
This paper has argued that while (1) and (2) are both supported by strong
historical evidence (see sections 1 and 2 above), the evidence for (3) is weak.
In particular, the Gospel of John does not state that the Baptist died earlier
than Jesus, and there are further reasons to believe that this idea is a specific
theological construction of the synoptic gospels (see 3.4. and 3.6 above).
Moreover, since first-century Jewish society at large had difficulties in
remembering dates of historical events (see 3.2), it is possible that neither the
exact date nor the chronological sequence of the two executions had been
remembered by the time the first extant gospels were written (see 3.3).
Therefore, the synoptic gospels’ claim that John the Baptist died earlier than
Jesus should be considered weak evidence (cf. 3.5).
Seeing that (1) and (2) are supported by strong evidence, whereas (3) is
supported by weak evidence, the idea that (1) and (2) should be considered
true, whereas (3) is false, recommends itself. For these reasons a secular
historian cannot but conclude that John the Baptist was executed after Jesus
was crucified.
https://www.academia.edu/40137424/_Revi ... Approach
Did the gospel writers, writing after Antiquities, knowingly reverse the Josephan Antiquities order i.e. first Jesus then John, to first John then Jesus, for theological reasons. Did the Antiquities writer, writing after the gospel story, knowingly put aside the gospel’s theological story and simply reference a historical event. Whether one is on the historical or the ahistorists side of the Jesus and John the Baptist argument the ‘who done it’ is an intriguing question.