33

M33 - The 33rd fuzzy object that annoyed Messier

Turning 33 is hardly a momentous occasion. And yet by doing so I will have outlived Alexander the Great who died at the age of 32. In his time Alexander managed to conquer the Persian Empire, Egypt, Phoenicia, Mesopotamia, Bactria, Anatolia and reach as far as India. His legacy, other than many cities named Alexandria, was to bring Greek culture and values to a broad swathe of the ancient world and to make Greek the language of culture and diplomacy. Hellenic culture was the new game in town and even the Romans centuries later looked to the greeks for wisdom, literature, theatre and myth. Not bad going to set all that up by the time you’re 32. So I haven’t managed quite that yet, but on the other hand I live in a time where I can afford luxuries no ancient despot could dream of. Not for me the worry of where my next meal will come from, or how to keep warm in the winter. Advances in medicine over the last hundred years have been amazing, and it is thanks to them that I am even alive. Like the decadent Persians (but so much wealthier!) it’s nice to live in the Western world these days.

Another figure who lived until he was 33 was Jesus. This is a commonly known ‘fact’, but where does this information come from? The most basic idea for this length of time is by merging two of the gospels. In Luke Chapter 3, mention is made that Jesus was ‘about 30′ when he was baptised in the river Jordan. There isn’t much else to go by in terms of how long his ministry is in Luke, so a jump to John is needed, whereby it can be worked out that he spends three (or four) years before being crucified. Of course John is a bit of a muddle, it’s the one gospel that is know to have been rearranged quite a bit – there is evidence that it was pieced together in the wrong order, a rather large scribal error as if several scrolls had been mixed up. Nonetheless, by adding ‘about 30′ and a few years of ministry we get to an age of 33.

Isaac Newton, a man who spent more time on Alchemy and the Book of Daniel than he did on physics, dismissed the above reasoning and used other measures to work out the date of the crucifixion, and hence the age of Jesus. He used a number of ingenious methods to match up the odd phrase in the gospels with astronomical data and declared that Jesus died in 34 CE. Having been born anywhere between 6 BCE and 4 CE this meant Jesus could have been as old as 40 when he died. Others think he was older still. The church father Irenaeus declared that Jesus was nearly 50 years old when he died. Certainly many arguments can be dragged up from the small amount of writings about his age, so perhaps it’s best for all to be rather agnostic about this issue.

So I may not have outlived Jesus (if there even was such a person) at all. I suppose I shall just have to live till I’m over 50, just to be on the safe side.