30 (number) - History and Literature

History and Literature

• At age 30 (according to most biblical scholars) Jesus of Nazareth was baptized by John the Baptist, at the beginning of his public ministry of teaching and healing.
• One of the rallying-cries of the 1960s student/youth protest movement was the slogan, 'Don't trust anyone over thirty'.
• In 'The Myth of Sisyphus' the French existentialist Albert Camus comments that the age of thirty is a crucial period in the life of a man, for at that age he gains a new awareness of the meaning of time.
• In Franz Kafka's novel 'The Trial' Joseph wakes up on the morning of his thirtieth birthday to find himself under arrest for an unspecified crime. After making many futile attempts to find the nature of the crime or the name of his accuser, Joseph dies on the eve of his thirty-first birthday.
• The number of uprights that formed the Sarsen Circle at Stonehenge, also the supposed number of holes forming the arrays of Y and Z Holes at Stonehenge.
• Western Christianity's most prolific 20th century essayist, F. W. Boreham in 'Life at Thirty' ('Cliffs of Opal') mentions that in addition to Jesus commencing ministry at 30 (Luke 3:23), Joseph was 30 when he stood before Pharaoh, King of Egypt (Genesis 41:46), King David was 30 when he began to reign (2 Samuel 5:4), and the Levites were numbered from the age of 30 and upward (1 Chronicles 23:3). Also in that essay Boreham writes 'It was said of Keats, that "he ensphered himself in thirty perfect years and died, not young".'