After this, the author of the fourth gospel very inappropriately holds

up the solicitude which Jesus manifested that his disciples should not

be taken captive with him, as a fulfilment of the declaration of Jesus

(xvii. 12), that he had lost none of those intrusted to him by the

Father; a declaration which was previously more suitably referred to

the spiritual preservation of his disciples. As the next feature in the

scene, all the Evangelists agree, that when the soldiers began to lay

hands on Jesus, one of his disciples drew his sword, and cut off the

ear of the high priest’s servant, an act which met with a reproof from

Jesus. Still Luke and John have each a peculiar trait. Not to mention

that both particularize the ear as the right ear, while their two

predecessors had left this point undetermined; the latter not only

gives the name of the wounded servant, but states that the disciple who

wounded him was Peter. Why the synoptists do not name Peter, it has

been sought to explain in different ways. The supposition that they

wished to avoid compromising the apostle, who at the time of the

composition of their gospels was yet living, [1876] belongs to the

justly exploded fictions of an exegesis framed on the false principle

of supplying conjecturally all those links in the chain of natural

causation which are wanting in the gospels. That these Evangelists

elsewhere for the most part omit names, [1877] is too sweeping an

accusation as regards Matthew, though he does indeed leave unnamed

indifferent persons, such as Jairus, or Bartimæus; but that the real

Matthew, or even the common evangelical tradition, thus early and

generally should have lost the name from an anecdote of Peter, so

thoroughly accordant with the part played by this apostle, can scarcely

be considered very probable. To me, the reverse would be much more

conceivable, namely, that the anecdote was originally current without

the mention of any name (and why should not a less distinguished

adherent of Jesus—for from the synoptists it is not necessarily to be

inferred that it was one of the twelve—whose name was therefore the

more readily forgotten, have had courage and rashness enough to draw

his sword at that crisis?), but a later narrator thought such a mode of

conduct particularly suited to the impetuous character of Peter, and

hence ascribed it to him by a combination of his own. On this

supposition, we need not appeal, in support of the possibility that

John could know the servant’s name, to his acquaintance with the

household of the high priest, [1878] any more than to a peculiar

acquaintance of Mark with some inhabitants of Jericho, in explanation

of his obtaining the name of the blind man.

The distinctive trait in Luke’s account of this particular is, that

Jesus heals the servant’s ear, apparently by a miracle. Olshausen here

makes the complacent remark, that this circumstance best explains how

Peter could escape uninjured—astonishment at the cure absorbed the

general attention: while according to Paulus, Jesus by touching the

wounded ear (ἁψάμενος) only meant to examine it, and then told what

must be done for the purpose of healing (ἰάσατο αὐτόν); had he cured it

by a miracle there must have been some notice of the astonishment of

the spectators. Such pains-taking interpretations are here especially

needless, since the fact that Luke stands alone in giving the trait in

question, together with the whole tenor of the scene, tells us plainly

enough what opinion we are to form on the subject. Should Jesus, who

had removed by his miraculous power so much suffering of which he was

innocent, leave uncured suffering which one of his disciples out of

attachment to him, and thus indirectly he himself, had caused? This

must soon have been found inconceivable, and hence to the stroke of the

sword of Peter was united a miraculous cure on the part of Jesus—the

last in the evangelical history.

Here, immediately before he is led away, the synoptists place the

remonstrance which Jesus addressed to those who had come to take him

prisoner: that though, by his daily public appearance in the temple he

had given the best opportunity for them to lay hands upon him, yet—a

bad augury for the purity of their cause—they came to a distance to

seek him with as many preparations, as against a thief? In the fourth

gospel, he is made to say something similar to Annas, to whose

inquiries concerning his disciples and his doctrine, he replies by

referring him to the publicity of his entire agency, to his teaching in

the temple and synagogue (xviii. 20 f.). Luke, as if he had gathered

from both, that Jesus had said something of this kind to the high

priest, and also at the time of his arrest, represents the chief

priests and elders themselves as being present in the garden, and Jesus

as here speaking to them in the above manner, which is certainly a mere

blunder. [1879]

According to the two first Evangelists, all the disciples now fled.

Here Mark has the special particular, that a young man with a linen

cloth cast about his naked body, when he was in danger of being seized,

left the linen cloth and fled naked. Apart from the industrious

conjectures of ancient and even modern expositors, as to who this young

man was; this information of Mark’s has been regarded as a proof of the

very early origin of this gospel, on the ground that so unimportant an

anecdote, and one moreover to which no name is attached, could have no

interest except for those who stood in close proximity to the persons

and events. [1880] But this inference is erroneous; for the above trait

gives even to us, at this remote distance of time, a vivid idea of the

panic and rapid flight of the adherents of Jesus, and must therefore

have been welcome to Mark, from whatever source he may have received

it, or how late soever he may have written.

§ 128.

EXAMINATION OF JESUS BEFORE THE HIGH PRIEST.

From the place of arrest the synoptists state Jesus to have been led to

the high priest, whose name, Caiaphas, is, however, only mentioned by

Matthew; while John represents him as being led in the first instance

to Annas, the father-in-law of the existing high priest; and only

subsequently to Caiaphas (Matt. xxvi. 57 ff. parall.; John xviii. 12

ff.). The important rank of Annas renders this representation of John

as conceivable as the silence of the synoptists is explicable, on the

ground that the ex-high priest had no power of deciding in this cause.

But it is more surprising that, as must be believed from the first

glance, the fourth Evangelist merely gives some details of the

transaction with Annas, and appears entirely to pass by the decisive

trial before the actual high priest, except that he states Jesus to

have been led away to Caiaphas. There was no more ready expedient for

the harmonists than the supposition, which is found e.g. in Euthymius,

that John, in consistency with the supplementary character of his

gospel, preserved the examination before Annas as being omitted by the

synoptists, while he passed by that before Caiaphas, because it was

described with sufficient particularity by his predecessors. [1881]

This opinion, that John and the synoptists speak of two entirely

distinct trials, has a confirmation in the fact that the tenor of the

respective trials is totally different. In that which the synoptists

describe, according to Matthew and Mark, the false witnesses first

appear against Jesus; the high priest then asks him if he really

pretends to be the Messiah, and on receiving an affirmative answer,

declares him guilty of blasphemy, and worthy of death, whereupon

follows maltreatment of his person. In the trial depicted by John,

Jesus is merely questioned concerning his disciples and his doctrine,

he appeals to the publicity of his conduct, and after having been

maltreated for this reply by an attendant (ὑπηρέτης), is sent away

without the passing of any sentence. That the fourth Evangelist should

thus give no particulars concerning the trial before Caiaphas is the

more surprising, since in the one before Annas, if it be this which he

narrates, according to his own representation nothing was decided, and

consequently the grounds for the condemnation of Jesus by the Jewish

authorities, and the sentence itself, are altogether wanting in his

gospel. To explain this by the supplementary object of John is to

impute to him too irrational a mode of procedure; for if he omitted

facts because the other Evangelists had already given them, without

intimating that he did so purely for that reason, he could only reckon

on introducing confusion, and entailing on himself the suspicion of

having given a false narrative. He can hardly have had the opinion that

the trial before Annas was the principal one, and that therefore it was

allowable to omit the other, since he reports no judgment as having

been passed in the former; but if he knew the trial before Caiaphas to

have been the principal one, and yet gave no more particular

information concerning it, this also was a highly singular course for

him to take.

Thus the very simplest view of the case seems at once to point to the

attempt to discover in the account of the fourth gospel indications

that it also is to be understood of the trial before Caiaphas. What

affords the strongest presumption of the identity of the two trials is

the identity of an incident concomitant with both, John as well as the

synoptists making Peter deny Jesus during the trial detailed. It is

further remarkable that after Annas has been spoken of, at v. 13, as

the father-in-law of Caiaphas, there follows at v. 14, a more precise

designation of Caiaphas as the author of the fatal counsel, recorded in

John xi. 50, although apparently the Evangelist proceeds to narrate a

trial held, not before Caiaphas, but before Annas. Moreover in the

description of the trial itself, there is mention throughout of the

palace and of questions from the high priest, a title which John

nowhere else applies to Annas, but only to Caiaphas. But that in

accordance with the above supposition, the Evangelist from v. 15,

should be describing something which passed before Caiaphas, appears

impossible from v. 24, for it is there first said that Annas sent Jesus

to Caiaphas, so that he must until then have been before Annas. With

ready thought this difficulty was first met by removing the 24th verse

to the place where it was wanted, namely, after v. 13, and laying the

blame of its present too late position on the negligence of

transcribers. [1882] As, however, this transposition, being destitute

of any critical authority, must appear an arbitrary and violent

expedient for getting rid of the difficulty, it was next tried whether

the statement in v. 24, without being actually moved from its place,

might not receive such an interpretation as to come in point of sense

after v. 13; i.e., the word ἀπέστειλεν was taken as a pluperfect, and

it was supposed that John intended here to supply retrospectively what

he had forgotten to observe at v. 13, namely, that Annas immediately

sent Jesus to Caiaphas, so that the trial just described was conducted

by the latter. [1883] As the general possibility of such an enallage

temporum is admissible, the only question is whether it be accordant

with the style of the present writer, and whether it be intimated in

the context. In the latter respect it is certainly true that if nothing

important had occurred in the presence of Annas, the Evangelist, in

annexing to his notice of the relationship of Annas to Caiaphas the

more precise designation of the latter, might be drawn on to speak

without further preface of the trial before Caiaphas, and might

afterwards, by way of appendix, at some resting place, as here at the

close of the transactions of the high priest with Jesus, intimate the

transition which he had made. An accurate Greek writer certainly in

this case, if he did not use the pluperfect, would at least have made

evident the explanatory reference to what had preceded, by the addition

of a γὰρ to the aorist. Our Evangelist, however, in whom the

characteristic of the Hellenistic writers to connect their propositions

but loosely, in accordance with the genius of the Hebrew language, is

very strongly marked, might perhaps have introduced that supplementary

observation even without a particle, or, according to the ordinary

reading, by οὖν, which is not merely indicative that a subject is

continued, but also that it is resumed. [1884] If these considerations

be held to establish that he also intended to narrate the trial before

Caiaphas: it is clear from the aspect of his account taken by itself,

as well as from the previous comparison with the synoptical one, that

his narrative cannot be complete.

We turn, therefore, to the account of the synoptists, and among them

also, namely, between the two first and the third, we find numerous

divergencies. According to the former, when Jesus was brought into the

palace of the high priest, the scribes and elders were already

assembled, and while it was still night proceeded to hold a trial, in

which first witnesses appeared, and then the high priest addressed to

him the decisive question, on the answer to which the assembly declared

him worthy of death (in John also the trial goes forward in the night,

but there is no intimation of the presence of the great council).

According to the representation of the third gospel, on the other hand,

Jesus throughout the night is merely kept under guard in the high

priest’s palace, and maltreated by the underlings; and when at the

break of day the Sanhedrim assembles, no witnesses appear, but the high

priest precipitates the sentence by the decisive question. Now, that in

the depth of the night, while Judas was gone out with the guard, the

members of the council should have assembled themselves for the

reception of Jesus, might be regarded as improbable, and in so far, the

preference might be given to the representation of the third gospel,

which makes them assemble at daybreak only: [1885] were it not that

Luke himself neutralizes this advantage by making the high priests and

elders present at the arrest; a zeal which might well have driven them

straightway to assemble for the sake of accelerating the conclusion.

But in the account of Matthew and Mark also there is this singularity,

that after they have narrated to us the whole trial together with the

sentence, they yet (xxvii. 1 and xv. 1) say: when the morning was come,

they took counsel, πρωΐας δὲ γενομένης συμβούλιον ἔλαβον, thus making

it appear, if not that the members of the Sanhedrim reassembled in the

morning, which could hardly be, seeing that they had been together the

whole night; yet that they now first came to a definite resolution

against Jesus, though, according to these same Evangelists, this had

already been done in the nocturnal council. [1886] It may be said that

to the sentence of death already passed in the night, was added in the

morning the resolution to deliver Jesus to Pilate: but according to the

then existing state of the law, this followed as a matter of course,

and needed no special resolution. That Luke and John omit the

production of the false witnesses, is to be regarded as a deficiency in

their narrative. For from the coincidence of John ii. 19 and Acts vi.

14 with Matthew and Mark, it is highly probable that the declaration

about the destruction and rebuilding of the temple was really uttered

by Jesus; while that that declaration should be used as an article of

accusation against him on his trial was an almost necessary result. The

absence of this weighty point in Luke, Schleiermacher explains by the

circumstance, that the author of this passage in the third gospel had

indeed followed the escort which conducted Jesus from the garden, but

had with most others been excluded from the palace of the high priest,

and consequently narrated what occurred there merely from hearsay. But,

not to anticipate future points, the single trait of the cure of the

servant’s ear suffices to preclude our attributing to the author of

this portion of Luke’s gospel so close a proximity to the fact. It

rather appears that the above declaration came to the third Evangelist

under the form of an article of accusation against Stephen, instead of

Jesus; while the fourth has it only as a declaration from Jesus, and

not as an article of accusation against him. This subject having

however necessarily come under our observation at an earlier point of

our inquiry, it is needless to pursue it further here. [1887]

When Jesus made no answer to the allegations of the witnesses, he was

asked, according to the two first Evangelists, by the high priest,—in

the third gospel, without the above cause, by the Sanhedrim,—whether he

actually maintained that he was the Messiah (the Son of God)? To this

question, according to the two former, he at once replies in the

affirmative, in the words σύ εἶπας, thou hast said, and ἐγώ εἰμι, I am,

and adds that hereafter or immediately (ἀπ’ ἄρτι) they would see the

Son of man sitting on the right hand of the divine power, and coming in

the clouds of heaven; according to Luke, on the other hand, he first

declares that his answer will be of no avail, and then adds that

hereafter the Son of man shall sit on the right hand of the power of

God; whereupon all eagerly ask: Art thou then the Son of God? and he

replies in the affirmative. Thus Jesus here expresses the expectation

that by his death he will at once enter into the glory of sitting as

Messiah at the right hand of God, according to Ps. cx. i, which he had

already, Matt. xxii. 44, interpreted of the Messiah. For even if he at

first perhaps thought of attaining his messianic glorification without

the intervention of death, because this intervention was not presented

to him by the ideas of the age; if it was only at a later period, and

as a result of circumstances, that the foreboding of such a necessity

began to arise and gradually to acquire distinctness in his mind; now,

a prisoner, forsaken by his adherents, in the presence of the

rancorously hostile Sanhedrim, it must, if he would retain the

conviction of his messiahship, become a certainty to him, that he could

enter into his messianic glorification by death alone. When, according

to the two first Evangelists, Jesus adds to the sitting on the right

hand of power, the coming in the clouds of heaven, he predicts, as on

an earlier occasion, his speedy advent, and in this instance he

decidedly predicts it as a return. Olshausen maintains that the ἀπ’

ἄρτι of Matthew ought to be referred only to καθήμενον κ.τ.λ., because

it would not suit ἐρχόμενον κ.τ.λ., since it is not to be conceived

that Jesus could then have represented himself as about to come in the

clouds: a purely dogmatical difficulty, which does not exist in our

point of view, but which cannot in any point of view warrant such an

offence against grammatical interpretation as this of Olshausen. On the

above declaration of Jesus, according to Matthew and Mark the high

priest rends his clothes, declaring Jesus convicted of blasphemy, and

the council pronounces him guilty of death; and in Luke also, all those

assembled observe that now there is no need of any further witness,

since the criminal declaration has been uttered by Jesus in their own

hearing.

To the sentence is then added in the two first Evangelists the

maltreatment of Jesus, which John, who here mentions no sentence,

represents as following the appeal of Jesus to the publicity of his

work, while Luke places it before the trial; more probably because it

was not any longer precisely known when this maltreatment occurred,

than because it was repeated at various times and under various

circumstances. In John the maltreatment is said to proceed from an

attendant, ὑπηρέτης in Luke, from the men that held Jesus, ἄνδρες

συνέχοντες τὸν Ἰ.; in Mark, on the contrary, those who began to spit in

the face of Jesus (καὶ ἤρξαντό τινες ἐμπτύειν αὐτῷ) must have been some

of those (πάντες) who had just before condemned him, since he

distinguishes the ὑπηρέτας, servants, from them; and in Matthew also,

who, without introducing a new nominative proceeds merely with τότε

ἤρξαντο, then began they, it is plainly the members of the Sanhedrim

themselves who descend to such unworthy conduct: which Schleiermacher

justly considers improbable, and in so far prefers the representation

of Luke to that of Matthew. [1888] In John the maltreatment consists in

a blow on the cheek with the palm of the hand, ῥάπισμα, which an

attendant gives Jesus on account of a supposed insolent answer to the

high priest; in Matthew and Mark, in spitting on the face (ἐνέπτυσαν

εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ), and blows on the head and cheek, to which it is

added, in Luke also, that he was blindfolded, then struck on the face,

and scoffingly asked to attest his messianic second sight by telling

who was the giver of the blow. [1889] According to Olshausen, the

spirit of prophecy did not scorn to predict these rudenesses in detail,

and at the same time to describe the state of mind which the Holy One

of God opposed to the unholy multitude. He correctly adduces in

relation to this scene Isa. l. 6 f.; (LXX.): I gave my back to the

smiters, and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: I hid not my

face from shame and spitting, etc., τὸν νῶτόν μου δέδωκα εἰς μάστιγας,

τὰς δὲ σιαγόνας μου εἰς ῥαπίσματα, τὸ δὲ πρόσωπόν μου οὐκ ἀπέστρεψα ἀπὸ

αἰσχύνης ἐμπτυσμάτων κ.τ.λ. (comp. Mic. iv. 14); and for the manner in

which Jesus bore all this, the well-known passage Isa. liii. 7, where

the servant of God is represented as enduring maltreatment in silence.

But the interpretation of these passages in Isaiah as prophecies

concerning the Messiah is equally opposed to the context in both

instances: [1890] consequently the agreement of the result with these

passages must either have been the effect of human design, or purely

accidental. Now it is certain that the servants and soldiers in their

maltreatment had not the intention of causing prophecies to be

fulfilled in Jesus; and it will hardly be chosen to suppose that Jesus

affected silence with this view; while to deduce from mere chance a

coincidence which certainly, as Olshausen says, extends to minutiæ, is

always unsatisfactory. Probable as it is from the rude manners of that

age, that Jesus was maltreated when a prisoner, and moreover that

amongst other things he received just such insults as are described by

the Evangelists: it is yet scarcely to be denied, that their

descriptions are modelled on prophecies which, when once Jesus appeared

as a sufferer and maltreated person, were applied to him; and however

consistent it may be with the character of Jesus that he should have

borne this maltreatment patiently, and repelled improper questions by a

dignified silence: the Evangelists would scarcely have noticed this so

often and so solicitously, [1891] if it had not been their intention

thus to exhibit the fulfilment of Old Testament oracles.

§ 129.

THE DENIAL OF PETER.

The two first Evangelists state, that at the moment in which Jesus was

led away from the garden, all the disciples forsook him and fled; but

in their accounts, as well as in those of Luke and John, Peter is said

to have followed him at a distance, and to have obtained admission with

the escort into the court of the high priest’s palace: while, according

to the synoptists, it is Peter alone who gives this proof of courage

and attachment to Jesus, which however soon enough issues in the

deepest humiliation for him; the fourth Evangelist gives him John for a

companion, and moreover represents the latter as the one who, by means

of his acquaintance with the high priest, procures admittance for Peter

into his palace; a divergency which, with the whole peculiar relation

in which this gospel places Peter with respect to John, has been

already considered. [1892]

According to all the Evangelists, it was in this court, αὐλὴ, that

Peter, intimidated by the inauspicious turn in the fortunes of Jesus,

and the high priest’s domestics by whom he was surrounded, sought to

allay the repeatedly expressed suspicion that he was one of the

followers of the arrested Galilean, by reiterated asseverations that he

knew him not. But, as we have already intimated, in relation to the

owner of this habitation, there exists an apparent divergency between

the fourth gospel and the synoptists. In John, to judge from the first

glance at his narrative, the first denial (xviii. 17) happens during

the trial before Annas, since it stands after the statement that Jesus

was led to Annas (v. 13), and before the verse in which he is said to

have been sent to Caiaphas (v. 24), and only the two further acts of

denial (v. 25–27), in so far as they follow the last-named statement,

and as immediately after them the delivery to Pilate is narrated (v.

28), appear in John also to have occurred during the trial before

Caiaphas and in his palace. But to this supposition of a different

locality for the first denial and the two subsequent ones, there is a

hindrance in the account of the fourth gospel itself. After the mention

of the first denial, which happened at the door of the palace (of Annas

apparently), it is said that the night being cold the servants and

officers had made a fire of coals, and Peter stood with them and warmed

himself, ἦν δὲ καὶ μετ’ αὐτῶν ὁ Πέτρος ἑστὼς καὶ θερμαινόμενος (v. 18).

Now, when farther on, the narrative of the second and third denial is

opened with nearly the same words: And Simon Peter stood and warmed

himself, ἦν δὲ Σίμων Πέτρος ἑστὼς καὶ θερμαινόμενος (v. 25): this

cannot be understood otherwise than as an allusion to the previously

noticed circumstances of the fire of coals, and of Peter’s standing by

it to warm himself, and hence it must be inferred that the Evangelist

intended to represent the second and third denial as having occurred by

the same fire, consequently, on the above supposition, likewise in the

house of Annas. It is true that the synoptists speak of a fire in the

court of the palace of Caiaphas also (Mark v. 54; Luke v. 55), at which

Peter warmed himself (here, however, sitting, as in John standing): but

it does not thence follow that John also imagined a similar fire to

have been in the court of the actual high priest, and according to the

supposition on which we have hitherto proceeded, he only mentions such

a fire in the house of Annas. They who regard as too artificial an

expedient the conjecture of Euthymius, that the dwellings of Annas and

Caiaphas perhaps had a common court, and that consequently Peter could

remain standing by the same fire after Jesus had been led away from the

former to the latter, prefer the supposition that the second and third

denial occurred, according to John, not after, but during the leading

away of Jesus from Annas to Caiaphas. [1893] Thus on the presupposition

that John narrates a trial before Annas, the difference between the

gospels in relation to the locality of the denial remains a total one;

and in this irreconcilable divergency, some have decided in favour of

John, on the ground that the scattered disciples had only fragmentary

information concerning this scene,—that Peter himself being a stranger

in Jerusalem did not know in which palace he had, to his misfortune,

entered; but that he, and after him the first Evangelists, supposed the

denials to have taken place in the court of Caiaphas; whereas John,

from his more intimate acquaintance with the city and the high priest’s

palace, was able to rectify this mistake. [1894] But even admitting the

incredible supposition that Peter erroneously believed himself to have

denied Jesus in the palace of Caiaphas, still John, who in these days

was in the society of Peter, would certainly at once have corrected his

assertion, so that such an erroneous opinion could not have become

fixed in his mind. Hence it might be preferred to reverse the attempt,

and to vindicate the synoptists at the expense of John: were it not

that the observations contained in the foregoing section (according to

which John, after having merely mentioned that Jesus was led away to

Annas, may speak from v. 15 of what occurred in the palace of

Caiaphas), present a possible solution of this contradiction also.

In relation to the separate acts of denial, all the Evangelists agree

in stating that there were three of them, in accordance with the

prediction of Jesus; but in the description of the several instances

they are at variance. First, as it regards place and persons; according

to John the first denial is uttered on the very entrance of Peter, to a

damsel that kept the door, παιδίσκη θυρωρός (v. 17); in the synoptists,

in the inner court, where Peter sat at the fire, to a damsel, παιδίσκη

(Matt. v. 69 f. parall.). The second takes place, in John (v. 25), and

also in Luke, who at least notices no change of position (v. 58), at

the fire: in Matthew (v. 71) and Mark (v. 68 ff.), after Peter was gone

out into the porch. πυλὼν, προαύλιον; further, in John it is made to

several persons; in Luke, to one; in Matthew to another damsel than the

one to whom he made the first denial; in Mark, to the same. The third

denial happened, according to Matthew and Mark, who mention no change

of place after the second, likewise in the porch; according to Luke and

John, since they likewise mention no change of place, undoubtedly still

in the inner court, at the fire; further, according to Matthew and

Mark, to many bystanders, according to Luke to one: according to John,

to one who happens to be a relative of the servant who had been wounded

in the garden. As regards the conversation which passed on this

occasion, the suspicious queries are at one time addressed to Peter

himself, at another to the bystanders, in order to point him out to

their observation, and in the two first instances they are given by the

different Evangelists with tolerable agreement, as merely expressing

the opinion that he appeared to be one of the adherents of the man

recently taken prisoner. But in the third instance, where the parties

render a motive for their suspicion, they according to the synoptists

mention his Galilean dialect as a proof of its truth; while in John the

relative of Malchus appeals to his recollection of having seen Peter in

the garden. Now the former mode of accounting for the suspicion is as

natural as the second, together with the designation of the individual

who adduced it as a relative of Malchus, appears artificial, and

fabricated for the sake of firmly interweaving into the narrative the

connexion of the sword-stroke given in the garden with the name of

Peter. [1895] In the answers of Peter there is the divergency, that

according to Matthew he already the second time fortifies his denial by

an oath, while according to Mark this is not the case until the third

denial, and in the two other Evangelists this circumstance is not

mentioned at all; moreover, Matthew, to preserve a gradation, adds on

the third denial that Peter began to curse καταναθεματίζειν as well as

to swear ὀμνύειν, a representation which when compared with the other

gospels may appear exaggerated.

So to adjust these very differently narrated denials in such a manner

that no Evangelist may be taxed with having given an incorrect or even

a merely inexact account, was no light labour for the harmonists. Not

only did the older, supranaturalistic expositors, such as Bengel,

undertake this task, but even recently, Paulus has given himself much

trouble to bring the various acts of denial recounted by the

Evangelists into appropriate order, and thus to show that they have a

natural sequence. According to him, Peter denies the Lord,

1. Before the portress (1st denial in John);

2. Before several standing at the fire (2nd in John);

3. Before a damsel at the fire (1st in the synoptists);

4. Before one who has no particular designation (2nd in Luke);

5. On going out into the porch, before a damsel (2nd in Matthew and

Mark. Out of this denial Paulus should in consistency have made

two, since the damsel, who points out Peter to the bystanders,

is according to Mark the same as the one in No. 3, but according

to Matthew another);

6. Before the relative of Malchus (3rd in John);

7. Before one who professes to detect him by his Galilean dialect

(3rd in Luke), and who forthwith

8. is seconded by several others, to whom Peter yet more strongly

affirms that he knows not Jesus (3rd in Matthew and Mark).

Meanwhile by such a discrimination of the accounts out of respect to

the veracity of the Evangelists, there was incurred the danger of

impeaching the yet more important veracity of Jesus; for he had spoken

of a threefold denial: whereas, on the plan of discrimination,

according to the more or less consequent manner in which it is carried

out, Peter would have denied Jesus from 6 to 9 times. The old exegesis

found help in the canon: abnegatio ad plures plurium interrogationes

facta uno paroxysmo, pro unâ numeratur. [1896] But even granting such a

mode of reckoning admissible, still, as each of the four narrators for

the most part notices a greater or less interval between the separate

denials which he recounts; in each instance, denials related by

different Evangelists, e.g. one narrated by Matthew, one by Mark, and

so forth, must have occurred in immediate succession: a supposition

altogether arbitrary. Hence of late it has been a more favourite

expedient to urge that the thrice τρὶς in the mouth of Jesus was only a

round number intended to express a repeated denial, as also that Peter,

once entangled in the confusion to a supposed necessity for falsehood,

would be more likely to repeat his asseverations to 6 or 7 than merely

to three inquirers. [1897] But even if, according to Luke (v. 59 f.),

the interval from the first denial to the last be estimated as more

than an hour, still such a questioning from all kinds of people on all

sides, as well as the ultimate impunity of Peter amid so general a

suspicion, is extremely improbable; and when expositors describe the

state of mind of Peter during this scene as a complete stupefaction,

[1898] they rather present the condition which befals the reader who

has to arrange his ideas in such a crowd of continually repeated

questions and answers having an identical meaning—like the incessant

and lawless beating of a watch out of order. Olshausen has justly

discarded the attempt to remove such differences as a fruitless labour:

nevertheless he, on the one hand, immediately proceeds to a forced

reconciliation of the divergencies at some points of the narrative; and

on the other, he maintains that there were precisely three denials,

whereas Paulus again has evinced a more correct discernment in pointing

out the premeditated effort of the Evangelists to show that the denial

was threefold. What on that evening happened repeatedly (not, however,

eight or nine times), was represented as having happened precisely

three times, in order to furnish the closest fulfilment to the

prediction of Jesus, which was understood in its strictest literality.

The termination, and as it were the catastrophe, of the whole history

of the denial is, in all the narratives, according to the prediction of

Jesus, introduced by the crowing of the cock. In Mark, it crows after

the first denial (v. 68), and then a second time after the third; in

the other Evangelists only once, after the last act of denial. While

John concludes his account with this particular, Matthew and Mark

proceed to tell us that on hearing the cock crow, Peter remembered the

words of Jesus and wept; but Luke has an additional feature peculiar to

himself, namely, that on the crowing of the cock Jesus turned and

looked at Peter, whereupon the latter, remembering the prediction of

Jesus, broke out into bitter weeping. Now according to the two first

Evangelists, Peter was not in the same locality with Jesus: for he is

said to have been without ἔξω (Matt v. 69) or beneath κάτω (Mark v. 66)

in the court ἐν τῇ αὐλῂ, and it is thus implied that Jesus was in an

inner or upper apartment of the palace: it must be asked, therefore,

how could Jesus hear the denial of Peter, and thereupon turn to look at

him? In relation to the latter part of the difficulty, the usual answer

is that Jesus was at that moment being led from the palace of Annas to

that of Caiaphas, and looked significantly at the weak disciple in

passing. [1899] But of such a removal of Jesus Luke knows nothing; and

his expression, the Lord turned and looked on Peter, καὶ στραφεὶς ὁ

Κύριος ἐνέβλεψε τῷ Πέτρῳ, would not so well imply that Jesus looked at

Peter in passing, as that he turned round to do so when standing;

besides, the above supposition will not explain how Jesus became aware

that his disciple had denied him, since in the tumult of this evening

he could not well, as Paulus thinks, have heard when in a room of the

palace the loud tones of Peter in the court. It is true that the

express distinction of the places in which Jesus and Peter were is not

found in Luke, and according to him Jesus also might have had to remain

some time in the court: but first, the representation of the other

Evangelists is here more probable: secondly, Luke’s own narrative of

the denial does not previously create the impression that Jesus was in

the immediate vicinity. But hypotheses for the explanation of that look

of Jesus might have been spared, had a critical glance been directed to

the origin of the incident. The unaccountable manner in which Jesus,

who in the whole previous occurrence is kept behind the scene, here all

on a sudden casts a glance upon it, ought itself, together with the

silence of the other Evangelists, to have been taken as an indication

of the real character of this feature in Luke’s narrative. When also it

is added, that as Jesus looked on Peter the latter remembered the words

which Jesus had earlier spoken to him concerning his coming denial; it

might have been observed that the glance of Jesus is nothing else than

the sensible image of Peter’s remorseful recollection. The narrative of

John, which is in this case the simplest, exhibits the fulfilment of

the prediction of Jesus objectively, by the crowing of the cock; the

two first Evangelists add to this the subjective impression, which this

coincidence made on Peter; while Luke renders this again objective, and

makes sorrowful remembrance of the words of the master, with the force

of a penetrating glance, pierce the inmost soul of the disciple. [1900]

§ 130.

THE DEATH OF THE BETRAYER.

On hearing that Jesus was condemned to death, Judas, according to the

first gospel (xxvii. 3 ff.), was smitten with remorse, and hastened to

the chief priests and elders to return to them the thirty pieces of

silver, with the declaration that he had betrayed an innocent person.

When however the latter scornfully retorted that on him alone rested

all responsibility for that deed, Judas, after casting down the money

in the temple, impelled by despair, went away and hanged himself.

Hereupon the Sanhedrists, holding it unlawful to put the money returned

by Judas into the treasury, since it was the price of blood, bought

with it a potter’s field as a burying place for strangers. To this

particular the Evangelist appends two remarks: first, that from this

mode of purchase, the piece of ground was called the field of blood up

to his time: and secondly, that by this course of things an ancient

prophecy was fulfilled.—The rest of the Evangelists are silent

concerning the end of Judas; but on the other hand we find in the Acts

of the Apostles (i. 16 ff.) some information on this subject which in

several points diverges from that of Matthew. Peter, when about to

propose the completion of the apostolic number by the choice of a new

colleague, thinks proper, by way of preliminary to remind his hearers

of the manner in which the vacancy in the apostolic circle had arisen,

i.e. of the treachery and the end of Judas; and in relation to the

latter he says, that the betrayer purchased himself a field with the

reward of his crime, but fell headlong, and burst asunder in the midst,

so that all his bowels gushed out, which being known in all Jerusalem,

the piece of ground was called ἀκελδαμὰ, i.e. the field of blood. In

addition to this, the narrator makes Peter observe that these

occurrences were a fulfilment of two passages in the Psalms.

Between these two accounts there exists a double divergency: the one

pertaining to the manner of the death of Judas, the other to the

statement when and by whom the piece of ground was bought. As regards

the former, Matthew declares that Judas laid violent hands on himself

out of remorse and despair: whereas in the Acts nothing is said of

remorse on the part of the traitor, and his death has not the

appearance of suicide, but of an accident, or more accurately, of a

calamity decreed by heaven as a punishment; further, in Matthew he

inflicts death on himself by the cord: according to the representation

of Peter, it is a fall which puts an end to his life by causing a

horrible rupture of the body.

How active the harmonists of all times have been in reconciling these

divergencies, may be seen in Suïcer [1901] and Kuinöl: here we need

only briefly adduce the principal expedients for this purpose. As the

divergency lay chiefly in the words ἀπήνξατο, he hanged himself, in

Matthew, and πρηνὴς γενόμενος, falling headlong, in Luke, the most

obvious resource was to see whether one of these expressions could not

be drawn to the side of the other. This has been tried with ἀπήνξατο in

various ways; this word being interpreted at one time as signifying

only the torments of a guilty conscience, [1902] at another, a disease

consequent on these, [1903] at another, any death chosen out of

melancholy and despair; [1904] and to this it has been thought that the

statement πρηνὴς γενόμενος κ.τ.λ. in the Acts added the more precise

information, that the kind of death to which Judas was driven by an

evil conscience and despair was precipitation from a steep eminence.

Others on the contrary have sought to accommodate the meaning of πρηνὴς

γενόμενος to ἀπήνξατο, understanding it merely to express as a

circumstance what ἀπήνξατο expresses as an act: and accordingly

maintaining that if the latter should be rendered se suspendit, the

former should be translated by suspensus. [1905] From repugnance to the

obvious violence of this attempt, others, sparing the natural meaning

of the expressions on both sides, have reconciled the divergent

accounts by the supposition that Matthew narrates an earlier, the

author of the Acts a later, stage of the events which marked the end of

Judas. Some of the ancient commentators indeed separated these two

stages so widely as to see in Matthew’s statement (ἀπήνξατο) only an

unsuccessful attempt at self-destruction, which from the bough whereon

he suspended himself having broken, or from some other cause, Judas

outlived, until the judgment of heaven overtook him in the πρηνὴς

γενόμενος, falling headlong. [1906] But since Matthew evidently intends

in his expression ἀπήνξατο to narrate the last moments of the traitor:

the two epochs, the account of which is supposed to be respectively

given by Matthew and the Acts, have in later times been placed in

closer proximity, and it has been held that Judas attempted to hang

himself to a tree on an eminence, but as the rope gave way or the

branch broke, he was precipitated into the valley over steep cliffs and

sharp bushes, which lacerated his body. [1907] The author of a treatise

on the fate of Judas in Schmidt’s Bibliothek [1908] has already

remarked as a surprising circumstance, how faithfully according to this

opinion, the two narrators have shared the information between them:

for it is not the case that one gives the less precise statement, the

other the more precise; but that one of them narrates precisely the

first part of the incident without touching on the second, the other,

the second without intruding on the first; and Hase justly maintains

that each narrator knew only the state of the fact which he has

presented, since otherwise he could not have omitted the other half.

[1909]

After thus witnessing the total failure of the attempts at

reconciliation in relation to the first difference; we have now to

inquire whether the other, relative to the acquisition of the piece of

ground, can be more easily adjusted. It consists in this: according to

Matthew, it is the members of the Sanhedrim who, after the suicide of

Judas, purchase a field with the money which he had left behind (from a

potter moreover—a particular which is wanting in the Acts); whereas,

according to the Acts, Judas himself purchases the piece of ground, and

on this very spot is overtaken by sudden death; and from this

difference there results another, namely, that according to the latter

account, it was the blood of the betrayer shed on the piece of ground,

according to the former, the blood of Jesus cleaving to the purchase

money, which caused the ground to be named the field of blood, ἀγρὸς or

χωρίον αἳματος. Now here Matthew’s manner of expressing himself is so

precise, that it cannot well be twisted so as to favour the other

narrative; but the word ἐκτήσατο (he purchased or acquired) in the Acts

presents inviting facilities for its adaptation to Matthew. By the

reward of treachery, Judas acquired a field—such, it is said, is the

meaning in the Acts—not immediately, but mediately; since by returning

the money he gave occasion for the purchase of a piece of ground; not

for himself, but for the Sanhedrim or the public good. [1910] But

however numerous the passages adduced in which κτᾶσθαι has the

signification: to acquire for another, still in such instances it is

necessary that the other party for whom one acquires should be

specified or intimated, and when this is not the case, as in the

passage in the Acts, it retains the original meaning: to acquire for

one’s self. [1911] This Paulus felt, and hence gave the facts the

following turn: the terrible fall of Judas into a lime pit was the

cause of this piece of ground being purchased by the Sanhedrim, and

thus Peter might very well say of Judas ironically, that in death by

the fall of his corpse he had appropriated to himself a fine property.

[1912] But in the first place this interpretation is in itself

strained; and in the second, the passage cited by Peter from the

Psalms: let his habitation be desolate, γενηθήτω ἡ ἔπαυλις αὐτοῦ

ἔρημος, shows that he thought of the piece of ground as the real

property of Judas, and as being judicially doomed to desolation as the

scene of his death.

According to this, neither the one difference nor the other admits of a

favourable reconciliation; indeed the existence of a real divergency

was admitted even by Salmasius, and Hase thinks that he can explain

this discrepancy, without endangering the apostolic origin of the two

statements, from the violent excitement of those days, in consequence

of which only the general fact that Judas committed suicide was

positively known, and concerning the more particular circumstances of

the event, various reports were believed. But in the Acts nothing is

said of suicide, and that two apostles, Matthew and Peter (if the first

gospel be supposed to proceed from the former, the discourse in the

Acts from the latter), should have remained so entirely in the dark

concerning the death of their late colleague, a death which took place

in their immediate vicinity, that one of them represented him as dying

by accident, the other voluntarily, is difficult to believe. That

therefore only one of the two accounts can be maintained as apostolic,

has been correctly perceived by the author of the above-mentioned

treatise in Schmidt’s Bibliothek. And in choosing between the two he

has proceeded on the principle that the narrative the least tending to

glorification is the more authentic; whence he gives the preference to

the account in the Acts before that in the first gospel, because the

former has not the glorifying circumstances of the remorse of Judas,

and his confession of the innocence of Jesus. But, it is ever the case

with two contradictory narratives, not only that if one stands it

excludes the other, but also that if one falls it shakes the other:

hence, if the representation of the facts which is attested by the

authority of the Apostle Matthew be renounced, there is no longer any

warrant for the other, which professedly rests on the testimony of the

Apostle Peter.

If then we are to treat the two narratives on the same footing, namely

as legends, with respect to which it is first to be discovered how far

their historical nucleus extends, and how far they consist of

traditional deposits; we must, in order to be clear on the subject,

consider the data which form the roots of the two narratives. Here we

find one which is common to both, with two others of which each has one

peculiarly to itself. The datum common to both narratives is, that

there was in Jerusalem a piece of ground which was called the field of

blood, ἀγρὸς or χωρίον αἵματος, or in the original tongue, according to

the statement of the Acts, ἀκελδαμὰ. As this information is

concurrently given by two narratives in other respects totally

divergent, and as, besides, the author of the first gospel appeals to

the actual practice of his day in proof that the field was called by

this name: we cannot well doubt the existence of a piece of ground so

named. That it really had a relation to the betrayer of Jesus is less

certain, since our two narratives give different accounts of this

relation: the one stating that Judas himself bought the property, the

other that it was not purchased until after his death, with the thirty

pieces of silver. We can therefore draw no further conclusion than that

the primitive Christian legend must have early attributed to that field

of blood a relation to the betrayer. But the reason wherefore this

relation took various forms is to be sought in the other datum from

which our narratives proceed, namely, in the Old Testament passages,

which the authors cite (from different sources, however), as being

fulfilled by the fate of Judas.

In the passage of the Acts, Ps. lxix. 25, and Ps. cix. 8, are quoted in

this manner. The latter is a psalm which the first Christians from

among the Jews could not avoid referring to the relation of Judas to

Jesus. For not only does the author, alleged to be David, but doubtless

a much later individual, [1913] dilate from the opening of the psalm on

such as speak falsely and insidiously against him, and return him

hatred for his love, but from v. 6, where the curses commence, he

directs himself against a particular person, so that the Jewish

expositors thought of Doeg, David’s calumniator with Saul, and the

Christians just as naturally of Judas. From this psalm is gathered the

verse which, treating of the transfer of one office to another,

appeared perfectly to suit the case of Judas. The other psalm, it is

true, speaks more vaguely of such as hate and persecute the author

without cause, yet this also is ascribed to David, and is so similar to

the other in purport and style, that it might be regarded as its

parallel, and if curses might be applied to the betrayer out of the

former, they might be so out of the latter. [1914] Now if Judas had

actually bought with the wages of his treachery a piece of land, which

from being the scene of his horrible end, subsequently remained waste:

it was a matter of course to refer to him precisely those passages in

this psalm which denounce on the enemies the desolation of their

habitation ἔπαυλις. As, however, from the divergency of Matthew, the

fact that Judas himself bought that piece of ground and came to his end

upon it, is doubtful: while it can scarcely be supposed that the piece

of land on which the betrayer of Jesus met his end would be so

abhorrent to the Jews that they would let it lie waste as a land of

blood; it is more probable that this name had another origin no longer

to be discovered, and was interpreted by the Christians in accordance

with their own ideas; so that we must not derive the application of the

passage in the Psalms, and the naming of that waste piece of land, from

an actual possession of it by Judas, but on the contrary, we must refer

to those two causes the existence of the legend, which ascribes such a

possession to Judas. For if the two psalms in question were once

applied to the betrayer, and if in one of them the desolation of his

ἔπαυλις (LXX.) was denounced, he must have previously been in

possession of such an ἔπαυλις, and this it was thought, he would

probably have purchased with the reward of his treason. Or rather, that

out of the above psalms the desolation of the ἔπαυλις was a particular

specially chosen, appears to have been founded on the natural

presupposition, that the curse would be chiefly manifested in relation

to something which he had acquired by the wages of his iniquity; added

to the circumstance that among the objects anathematized in the psalm,

the one most capable of being bought was the ἔπαυλις. This conception

of the facts was met in the most felicitous manner by the ἀκελδαμὰ

lying near Jerusalem, which, the less was known of the origin of its

name and of the horror attached to it, might the more easily be applied

by the primitive Christian legend to its own purposes, and regarded as

the desolate habitation, ἔπαυλις ἠρημωμένη, of the betrayer.

Instead of these passages from the Psalms, the first gospel cites as

being fulfilled by the last acts of Judas, a passage which it

attributes to Jeremiah, but to which nothing corresponding is to be

found except in Zech. xi. 12 f., whence it is now pretty generally

admitted that the Evangelist substituted one name for the other by

mistake. [1915] How Matthew might be led by the fundamental idea of

this passage—an unreasonably small price for the speaker in the

prophecy—to an application of it to the treachery of Judas, who for a

paltry sum had as it were sold his master, has been already shown.

[1916] Now the prophetic passage contains a command from Jehovah to the

author of the prophecy, to cast the miserable sum with which he had

been paid, into the house of the Lord, and also ‏אֶל־הַיוֹצֵר‎, which, it

is added, was done. The person who casts down the money is in the

prophecy the same with the speaker, and consequently with him who is

rated at the low price, because the sum here is not purchase money but

hire, and hence is received by the person so meanly estimated, who

alone can cast it away again: in the application of the Evangelist, on

the contrary, the sum being considered as purchase money, another than

the one so meanly estimated was to be thought of as receiving and

casting away the sum. If the one sold for so paltry a price was Jesus:

he who received the money and finally rejected it could be no other

than his betrayer. Hence it is said of the latter, that he cast down

the pieces of silver in the temple ἐν τῷ ναῷ corresponding to the

phrase ‏וַאַשְׁלִיךְ אֹתוֹ בֵּית יְהוָֹה‎ in the prophetic passage, although these

very words happen to be absent from the extremely mutilated citation of

Matthew. But in apposition to the ‏בֵּית יְהוָֹה‎, wherein the money was

cast, there stood besides ‏אֶל־הַיוֹצֵר‎. The LXX. translates: εἰς τὸ

χωνευτήριον, into the melting furnace; now, it is with reason

conjectured that the pointing should be altered thus: ‏אֶל־הַיוֹצָר‎, and

the word rendered: into the treasury; [1917] the author of our gospel

adhered to the literal translation by κεραμεύς potter. But what the

potter had to do here,—why the money should be given to him, must at

first have been as incomprehensible to him as it is to us when we

adhere to the common reading. Here however there occurred to his

recollection the field of blood, to which, as we gather from the Acts,

the Christian legend gave a relation to Judas, and hence resulted the

welcome combination, that it was probably that field for which the

thirty pieces of silver were to be given to the potter. As, however, it

was impossible to conceive the potter as being in the temple when

receiving the money, and yet according to the prophetic passage the

pieces of silver were cast into the temple: a separation was made

between the casting into the temple and the payment to the potter. If

the former must be ascribed to Judas, if he had thus once cast away the

money, he himself could no longer purchase the piece of ground from the

potter, but this must be done by another party, with the money which

Judas had cast away. Who this party must be followed of course: if

Judas gave up the money, he would give it up to those from whom he had

received it; if he cast it into the temple, it would fall into the

hands of the rulers of the temple: thus in both ways it would revert to

the Sanhedrim. The object of the latter in purchasing the ground was

perhaps drawn from the use to which that waste place was actually

appropriated. Lastly, if Judas cast away again the reward of his

treachery, this, it must be inferred, could only be out of remorse. To

make Judas manifest remorse, and thus win from the traitor himself a

testimony to the innocence of Jesus, was as natural to the conception

of the primitive Christian community, as to convert Pilate, and to make

Tiberius himself propose in the Roman senate the deification of Christ.

[1918] But how would the remorse of Judas further manifest itself? A

return to the right on his part, was not only unattested by any facts,

but was besides far too good a lot for the traitor: hence repentance

must have become in him despair, and he must have chosen the end of the

well-known traitor in the history of David, Ahithophel, of whom it is

said, 2 Sam. xvii. 23: ἀνέστη καὶ ἀπῆλθεν—καὶ ἀπήνξατο, he arose, and

went—and hanged himself, as of Judas here: ἀνεχώρησε καὶ ἀπηλθὼν

ἀπήνξατο, he departed, and went and hanged himself.

A tradition referred to Papias appears to be allied to the narrative in

the Acts rather than to that of Matthew. Œcumenius, quoting the above

collector of traditions, says, that Judas, as an awful example of

impiety, had his body distended to such a degree, that a space where a

chariot could pass was no longer sufficiently wide for him, and that at

last being crushed by a chariot, he burst asunder and all his bowels

were pressed out. [1919] The latter statement doubtless arose from a

misconstruction of the ancient legend; for the chariot was not

originally brought into immediate contact with the body of Judas, but

was merely used as a measure of his size, and this was afterwards

erroneously understood as if a chariot in passing had crushed the

swollen body of Judas. Hence, not only in Theophylact and in an ancient

Scholium, [1920] without any distinct reference to Papias, but also in

a Catena with an express citation of his εξηγήσεις, we actually find

the fact narrated without that addition. [1921] The monstrous swelling

of Judas, spoken of in this passage, might, it is supposed, originally

be only an explanation of the displacing and protrusion of the viscera,

and in like manner the dropsy into which Theophylact represents him as

falling might be regarded as an explanation of this swelling: when,

however, in Ps. cix., applied in the Acts to Judas, amongst other

maledictions, we read: ‏וַתָּבֹא (קְלָלָה) כַּמַּיִם בְּקִרְבּוֹ‎ LXX: εἰσῆλθεν (ἡ

κατάρα) ὡσεὶ ὕδωρ εἰς τὰ ἔνκατα αὐτοῦ, so let it (cursing) come into

his bowels like water (v. 18): it appears possible that the dropsical

disease, νόσος ὑδερικὴ, may have been also taken from this passage; as

also one of the features in the monstrous description which Papias

gives of the condition of Judas, namely, that from the enormous

swelling of his eyelids he could no longer see the light of day, might

remind us of v. 23 in the other psalm applied to Judas, where, among

the curses this is enumerated: Let their eyes be darkened that they see

not, σκοτισθήτωσαν οἱ ὀφθαλμοὶ αὐτῶν τοῦ μὴ βλέπειν, a hindrance to

sight, which when once the swollen body of Judas was presupposed, must

necessarily assume the form of a swelling up of the eyelids. If then

the tradition which is allied to the account in Acts i. developed its

idea of the end of Judas chiefly in correspondence with the ideas

presented in these two psalms; and if in that passage of the Acts

itself the account of the connexion of Judas with the piece of ground

is derived from the same source: it is no farfetched conjecture that

what is said in the Acts concerning the end of the betrayer may have

had a similar origin. That he died an early death may be historical;

but even if not so, in Psalm cix. in the very same verse (v. 8), which

contains the transfer of the office, ἐπισκοπὴ, to another, an early

death is predicted for the betrayer in the words: Let his days be few,

γενηθήτωσαν αἱ ἡμέραι αὐτοῦ ὀλίγαι, and it might also be believed that

the death by falling headlong also was gathered from Ps. lxix. 22,

where it is said: Let their table become a snare before them, γενηθήτω

ἡ τράπεζα αὐτῶν—εἰς σκάνδαλον (‏לִמוֹקֵשׁ‎).

Thus we scarcely know with certainty concerning Judas even so much as

that he came to a violent and untimely death, for if, as was natural,

after his departure from the community of Jesus, he retired, so far as

the knowledge of its members was concerned, into an obscurity in which

all historical information as to his further fate was extinguished: the

primitive Christian legend might without hindrance represent as being

fulfilled in him all that the prophecies and types of the Old Testament

threatened to the false friend of the Son of David, and might even

associate the memory of his crime with a well-known desecrated place in

the vicinity of Jerusalem. [1922]

§ 131.

JESUS BEFORE PILATE AND HEROD.

According to all the Evangelists it was in the morning when the Jewish

magistrates, after having declared Jesus worthy of death, [1923] caused

him to be led away to the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate (Matt.

xxvii. 1 ff. parall.; John xviii. 28). According to Matthew and Mark,

Jesus was bound preparatory to his being conducted before Pilate,

according to John xviii. 12, immediately on his arrest in the garden;

Luke says nothing of his being bound. To this measure of sending him to

Pilate they were compelled, according to John xviii. 31, by the

circumstance that the Sanhedrim was deprived of the authority to

execute the punishment of death (without the concurrence of the Roman

government): [1924] but at all events the Jewish rulers must in this

instance have been anxious to call in the agency of the Romans, since

only their power could afford security against an uproar among the

people θόρυβος ἐν τῷ λαῷ, which the former feared as a result of the

execution of Jesus during the feast time (Matt. xxvi. 5 parall.).

Arrived at the Prætorium, the Jews, according to the representation of

the fourth gospel, remained without, from fear of Levitical defilement,

but Jesus was led into the interior of the building: so that Pilate

must alternately have come out when he would speak to the Jews, and

have gone in again when he proceeded to question Jesus (xviii. 28 ff.).

The synoptists in the sequel represent Jesus as in the same locality

with Pilate and the Jews, for in them Jesus immediately hears the

accusations of the Jews, and answers them in the presence of Pilate.

Since they, as well as John, make the condemnation take place in the

open air (after the condemnation they represent Jesus as being led into

the Prætorium, Matt. xxvii. 27, and Matthew, like John, xix. 13,

describes Pilate ascending the judgment seat βῆμα, which according to

Josephus [1925] stood in the open air), without mentioning any change

of place in connexion with the trial: they apparently conceived the

whole transaction to have passed on the outer place, and supposed, in

divergency from John, that Jesus himself was there.

The first question of Pilate to Jesus is according to all the gospels:

Art thou the king of the Jews? σὺ εἶ ὁ βασιλεύς τῶν Ἰουδαίων, i.e. the

Messiah? In the two first Evangelists this question is not introduced

by any accusation on the part of the Jews (Matt. v. 11; Mark v. 2); in

John, Pilate, stepping out of the Prætorium, asks the Jews what

accusation they have to bring against Jesus (xviii. 29), on which they

insolently reply: If he were not a malefactor, we would not have

delivered him up unto thee: an answer by which they could not expect to

facilitate their obtaining from the Roman a ratification of their

sentence, [1926] but only to embitter him. After Pilate, with

surprising mildness, has rejoined that they may take him and judge him

according to their law—apparently not supposing a crime involving

death—and the Jews have opposed to this permission their inability to

administer the punishment of death: the procurator re-enters and

addresses to Jesus the definite question: Art thou the king of the

Jews? which thus here likewise has no suitable introduction. This is

the case only in Luke, who first adduces the accusations of the

Sanhedrists against Jesus, that he stirred up the people and encouraged

them to refuse tribute to Cæsar, giving himself out to be Christ a

king, Χριστὸν βασιλέα (xxiii. 2).

If in this manner the narrative of Luke enables us to understand how

Pilate could at once put to Jesus the question whether he were the king

of the Jews; it leaves us in all the greater darkness as to how Pilate,

immediately on the affirmative answer of Jesus, could without any

further inquiries declare to the accusers that he found no fault in the

accused. He must first have ascertained the grounds or the want of

grounds for the charge of exciting the populace, and also have informed

himself as to the sense in which Jesus claimed the title of king of the

Jews, before he could pronounce the words: I find no fault in this man.

In Matthew and Mark, it is true, to the affirmation of Jesus that he is

the king of the Jews is added his silence, in opposition to the

manifold accusations of the Sanhedrists—a silence which surprises

Pilate: and this is not followed by a precise declaration that no fault

is to be found in Jesus, but merely by the procurator’s attempt to set

Jesus at liberty by coupling him with Barabbas; still what should move

him even to this attempt does not appear from the above gospels. On the

other hand, this point is sufficiently clear in the fourth gospel. It

is certainly surprising that when Pilate asks whether he be really the

King of the Jews, Jesus should reply by the counter-question, whether

he say this of himself or at the suggestion of another. In an accused

person, however conscious of innocence, such a question cannot be held

warrantable, and hence it has been sought in every possible way to give

the words of Jesus a sense more consonant with propriety: but the

question of Jesus is too definite to be a mere repulse of the

accusation as absurd, [1927] and too indefinite to be regarded as an

inquiry, whether the Procurator intended the title βασιλεὺς τῶν

Ἰουδαίων in the Roman sense (ἀφ’ ἑαυτοῦ) or in the Jewish (ἄλλοι σοι

εἶπον). [1928] And Pilate does not so understand it, but as an

unwarrantable question to which it is a mark of his indulgence that he

replies;—in the first instance, it is true, with some impatience, by

the second counter-question, whether he be a Jew, and thus able of

himself to have information concerning a crime so specifically Jewish;

but hereupon he good-naturedly adds that it is the Jews and their

rulers by whom Jesus has been delivered to him, and that he is

therefore at liberty to speak more particularly of the crime which

these lay to his charge. Now on this Jesus gives Pilate an answer

which, added to the impression of his whole appearance, might certainly

induce in the Procurator a conviction of his innocence. He replies,

namely, that his kingdom βασιλεία is not of this world ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου

τούτου, and adduces as a proof of this, the peaceful, passive conduct

of his adherents on his arrest (v. 36). On the further question of

Pilate, whether, since Jesus has thus ascribed to himself a kingdom,

although no earthly one, he then claims to be a king? he replies that

certainly he is so, but only in so far as he is born to be a witness to

the truth: whereupon follows the famous question of Pilate: What is

truth? τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια; Although in this latter reply of Jesus we

cannot but be struck by its presenting the peculiar hue of thought

which characterizes the author of the fourth gospel, in the use of the

idea of truth ἀλήθεια, as we were before surprised at the unwarrantable

nature of the counter-question of Jesus; still this account in John

renders it conceivable how Pilate could immediately step forth and

declare to the Jews that he found no fault in Jesus. But another point

might easily create suspicion against this narrative of John. According

to him the trial of Jesus went forward in the interior of the

Prætorium, which no Jew would venture to enter; who then are we to

suppose heard the conversation of the Procurator with Jesus, and was

the informant who communicated it to the author of the fourth gospel?

The opinion of the older commentators that Jesus himself narrated these

conversations to his disciples after the resurrection is renounced as

extravagant; the more modern idea that perhaps Pilate himself was the

source of the information concerning the trial, is scarcely less

improbable, and rather than take refuge, with Lücke, in the supposition

that Jesus remained at the entrance of the Prætorium, so that those

standing immediately without might with some attention and stillness

(?) have heard the conversation, I should prefer appealing to the

attendants of the Procurator, who would scarcely be alone with Jesus.

Meanwhile it is easily conceivable that we have here a conversation,

which owes its origin solely to the Evangelist’s own combination, and

in this case we need not bestow so much labour in ascertaining the

precise sense of Pilate’s question: what is truth? since this would

only be an example of the fourth Evangelist’s favourite form of

dialogue, the contrast of profound communications on the part of Jesus,

with questions either of misapprehension or of total unintelligence on

the part of the hearers, as xii. 34, the Jews ask who is this Son of

man? τίς ἐστιν οὗτος ὁ υἱὸς τ. α.? so here Pilate: what is truth? τί

ἐστιν ἀλήθεια? [1929]

Before the introduction of Barabbas, which in all the other Evangelists

comes next in order, Luke has an episode peculiar to himself. On the

declaration of Pilate that he finds no guilt in the accused, the chief

priests and their adherents among the multitude persist in asserting

that Jesus stirred up the people by his agency as a teacher from

Galilee to Jerusalem: Pilate notices the word Galilee, asks whether the

accused be a Galilean, and when this is confirmed, he seizes it as a

welcome pretext for ridding himself of the ungrateful business, and

sends Jesus to the Tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, at that time in

Jerusalem in observance of the feast; perhaps also designing as a

secondary object, what at least was the result, to conciliate the petty

prince by this show of respect for his jurisdiction. This measure, it

is said, gave great satisfaction to Herod, because having heard much of

Jesus, he had long been desirous to see him, in the hope that he would

perhaps perform a miracle. The Tetrarch addressed various questions to

him, the Sanhedrists urged vehement accusations against him, but Jesus

gave no answer; whereupon Herod with his soldiers betook themselves to

mockery, and at length, after arraying him in a gorgeous robe, sent him

back to Pilate (xxiii. 4 ff.). This narrative of Luke’s, whether we

consider it in itself or in its relation to the other gospels, has much

to astonish us. If Jesus as a Galilean really belonged to the

jurisdiction of Herod, as Pilate, by delivering the accused to him,

appears to acknowledge: how came Jesus (and the question is equally

difficult whether we regard him as the sinless Jesus of the orthodox

system, or as the one who in the history of the tribute-penny

manifested his subjection to the existing authorities) to withhold from

him the answer which was his due? and how was it that Herod, without

any further procedures, sent him away again from his tribunal? To say,

with Olshausen, that the interrogation before Herod had elicited the

fact that Jesus was not born in Nazareth and Galilee, but in Bethlehem,

and consequently in Judæa, is on the one hand an inadmissible appeal to

the history of the birth of Jesus, of the statements in which there is

no further trace in the whole subsequent course of Luke’s gospel; and

on the other hand, a totally accidental birth in Judæa, such as that

represented by Luke, the parents of Jesus, and even Jesus himself,

being both before and after resident in Galilee, would not have

constituted Jesus a Judæan; but above all we must ask, through whom was

the Judæan origin of Jesus brought to light, since it is said of Jesus

that he gave no answer, while according to all the information we

possess, that origin was totally unknown to the Jews? It would be

preferable to explain the silence of Jesus by the unbecoming manner of

Herod’s interrogation, which manifested, not the seriousness of the

judge, but mere curiosity; and to account for his being sent back to

Pilate by the fact, that not only the arrest, but also a part of the

ministry of Jesus had occurred within the jurisdiction of Pilate. But

why do the rest of the Evangelists say nothing of the entire episode?

Especially when the author of the fourth gospel is regarded as the

Apostle John, it is not easy to see how this omission can be explained.

The common plea, that he supposed the fact sufficiently known from the

synoptists, will not serve here, since Luke is the sole Evangelist who

narrates the incident, and thus it does not appear to have been very

widely spread; the conjecture, that it may probably have appeared to

him too unimportant, [1930] loses all foundation when it is considered

that John does not scorn to mention the leading away to Annas, which

nevertheless was equally indecisive; and in general, the narrative of

these events in John is, as Schleiermacher himself confesses, so

consecutive that it nowhere presents a break in which such an episode

could be inserted. Hence even Schleiermacher at last takes refuge in

the conjecture that possibly the sending to Herod may have escaped the

notice of John, because it happened on an opposite side to that on

which the disciple stood, through a back door; and that it came to the

knowledge of Luke because his informant had an acquaintance in the

household of Herod, as John had in that of Annas: the former

conjecture, however, is figuratively as well as literally nothing more

than a back door; the latter, a fiction which is but the effort of

despair. Certainly if we renounce the presupposition that the author of

the fourth gospel was an apostle, we lose the ground of attack against

the narrative of Luke, which in any case, since Justin knows of the

consignment to Herod, [1931] is of very early origin. Nevertheless,

first, the silence of the other Evangelists in a portion of their

common history, in which, with this exception, there prevails an

agreement as to the principal stages in the development of the fate of

Jesus; and secondly, the internal difficulties of the narrative, remain

so suspicious, that it must still be open to us to conjecture, that the

anecdote arose out of the effort to place Jesus before all the

tribunals that could possibly be gathered together in Jerusalem; to

make every authority not hierarchical, though treating him with

ignominy, still either explicitly or tacitly acknowledge his innocence;

and to represent him as maintaining his equable demeanour and dignity

before all. If this be probable with respect to the present narrative,

in which the third Evangelist stands alone, a similar conjecture

concerning the leading away to Annas, in which we have seen that the

fourth Evangelist stands alone, would only be warded off by the

circumstance that this scene is not described in detail, and hence

presents no internal difficulties.

After Jesus, being sent back by Herod, was returned upon his hands,

Pilate, according to Luke, once more called together the Sanhedrists

and the people, and declared, alleging in his support the judgment of

Herod as accordant with his own, his wish to dismiss Jesus with

chastisement; for which purpose he might avail himself of the custom of

releasing a prisoner at the feast of the passover. [1932] This

circumstance, which is somewhat abridged in Luke, is more fully

exhibited in the other Evangelists, especially in Matthew. As the

privilege to entreat the release of a prisoner belonged to the people,

Pilate, well knowing that Jesus was persecuted by the rulers out of

jealousy, sought to turn to his advantage the better disposition of the

people towards him; and in order virtually to oblige them to free

Jesus, whom, partly out of mockery of the Jews, partly to deter them

from his execution as degrading to themselves, he named the Messiah or

King of the Jews, he reminded them that their choice lay between him

and a notable prisoner, δέσμιος ἐπίσημος, Barabbas, [1933] whom John

designates as a robber, λῃστής, but Mark and Luke as one who was

imprisoned for insurrection and murder. This plan however failed, for

the people, suborned, as the two first Evangelists observe, by their

rulers, with one voice desired the release of Barabbas and the

crucifixion of Jesus.

As a circumstance which had especial weight with Pilate in favour of

Jesus, and moved him to make the proposal relative to Barabbas as

urgently as possible, it is stated by Matthew that while the procurator

sat on his tribunal, his wife, [1934] in consequence of a disturbing

dream, sent to him a warning to incur no responsibility in relation to

that just man (xxvii. 19). Not only Paulus, but even Olshausen,

explains this dream as a natural result of what Pilate’s wife might

have heard of Jesus and of his capture on the preceding evening; to

which may be added as an explanatory conjecture, the notice of the

Evangelium Nicodemi, that she was pious, θεοσεβὴς, and judaizing,

ἰουδαΐζουσα. [1935] Nevertheless, as constantly in the New Testament,

and particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, dreams are regarded as a

special dispensation from heaven, so this assuredly in the opinion of

the narrator happened non sine numine; and hence it should be possible

to conceive a motive and an object for the dispensation. If the dream

were really intended to prevent the death of Jesus, taking the orthodox

point of view, in which this death was necessary for the salvation of

man, we must be led to the opinion of some of the ancients, that it may

have been the devil who suggested that dream to the wife of the

procurator, in order to hinder the propitiatory death; [1936] if on the

contrary, the dream were not intended to prevent the death of Jesus,

its object must have been limited to Pilate or his wife. But as far as

Pilate was concerned, so late a warning could only aggravate his guilt,

without sufficing to deter him from the step already half taken; while

that his wife was converted by means of this dream, as many have

supposed, [1937] is totally unattested by history or tradition, and

such an object is not intimated in the narrative. But, as the part

which Pilate himself plays in the evangelical narrative is such as to

exhibit the blind hatred of the fellow-countrymen of Jesus in contrast

with the impartial judgment of a Gentile; so his wife is made to render

a testimony to Jesus, in order that, not only out of the mouth of babes

and sucklings (Matt. xxi. 16), but also out of the mouth of a weak

woman, praise might be prepared for him; and to increase its importance

it is traced to a significant dream. To give this an appearance of

probability, similar instances are adduced from profane history of

dreams which have acted as presentiments and warnings before a

sanguinary catastrophe: [1938] but the more numerous are these

analogous cases, the more is the suspicion excited that as the majority

of these, so also the dream in our evangelical passage, may have been

fabricated after the event, for the sake of heightening its tragical

effect.

When the Jews, in reply to the repeated questions of Pilate, vehemently

and obstinately demand the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of

Jesus, the two intermediate Evangelists represent him as at once

yielding to their desire; but Matthew first interposes a ceremony and a

colloquy (xxvii. 24 ff.). According to him Pilate calls for water,

washes his hands before the people, and declares himself innocent of

the blood of this just man. The washing of the hands, as a protestation

of purity from the guilt of shedding blood, was a custom specifically

Jewish, according to Deut. xxi. 6 f. [1939] It has been thought

improbable that the Roman should have here intentionally imitated this

Jewish custom, and hence it has been contended, that to any one who

wished so solemnly to declare his innocence nothing would more readily

suggest itself than the act of washing the hands. [1940] But that an

individual, apart from any allusion to a known usage, should invent

extemporaneously a symbolical act, or even that he should merely fall

in with the custom of a foreign nation, would require him to be deeply

interested in the fact which he intends to symbolize. That Pilate,

however, should be deeply interested in attesting his innocence of the

execution of Jesus, is not so probable as that the Christians should

have been deeply interested in thus gaining a testimony to the

innocence of their Messiah: whence there arises a suspicion that

perhaps Pilate’s act of washing his hands owes its origin to them

alone. This conjecture is confirmed, when we consider the declaration

with which Pilate accompanies his symbolical act: I am innocent of the

blood of this just man, ἀθῶός εἰμι ἀπὸ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ δικαίου τούτου.

For that the judge should publicly and emphatically designate as a just

man, δίκαιος, one whom he was nevertheless delivering over to the

severest infliction of the law,—this even Paulus finds so contradictory

that he here, contrary to his usual mode of exposition, supposes that

the narrator himself expresses in these words his own interpretation of

Pilate’s symbolical act. It is surprising that he is not also struck by

the equal improbability of the answer which is attributed to the Jews

on this occasion. After Pilate has declared himself guiltless of the

blood of Jesus, and by the addition: see ye to it, has laid the

responsibility on the Jews, it is said in Matthew that all the people

πᾶς ὁ λαὸς, cried: His blood be on us and on our children, τὸ αἷμα

αὐτοῦ ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς καὶ τὰ τέκνα ἡμῶν. But this is obviously spoken from the

point of view of the Christians, who in the miseries which shortly

after the death of Jesus fell with continually increasing weight on the

Jewish nation, saw nothing else than the payment of the debt of blood

which they had incurred by the crucifixion of Jesus: so that this whole

episode, which is peculiar to the first gospel, is in the highest

degree suspicious.

According to Matthew and Mark, Pilate now caused Jesus to be scourged,

preparatory to his being led away to crucifixion. Here the scourging

appears to correspond to the virgis cædere, which according to Roman

usage preceded the securi percutere, and to the scourging of slaves

prior to crucifixion. [1941] In Luke it has a totally different

character. While in the two former Evangelists it is said: When he had

scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified, τὸν δὲ Ἰ. φραγελλώσας

παρέδωκεν ἵνα σταυρωθῇ: in Luke, Pilate repeatedly (v. 16 and 22) makes

the proposal: having chastised him I will let him go, παιδεύσας αὐτὸν

ἀπολύσω: i.e. while there the scourging has the appearance of a mere

accessory of the crucifixion, here it appears to be intended as a

substitute for the crucifixion: Pilate wishes by this chastisement to

appease the hatred of the enemies of Jesus, and induce them to desist

from demanding his execution. Again, while in Luke the scourging does

not actually take place,—because the Jews will in nowise accede to the

repeated proposal of Pilate: in John the latter causes Jesus to be

scourged, exhibits him to the people with the purple robe and the crown

of thorns and tries whether his pitiable aspect, together with the

repeated declaration of his innocence, will not mollify their

embittered minds: this, however, proving also in vain (xix. 1 ff.).

Thus there exists a contradiction between the Evangelists in relation

to the scourging of Jesus, which is not to be conciliated after the

method of Paulus, namely by paraphrasing the words τὸν Ἰ. φραγελλώσας

παρέδοκεν ἵνα σταυρωθῇ in Matthew and Mark thus: Jesus, whom he had

already before scourged in order to save him, suffered this in vain,

since he was still delivered over to crucifixion. But, acknowledging

the difference in the accounts, we must only ask, which of the two has

the advantage as regards historical probability? Although it is

certainly not to be proved that scourging before crucifixion was a

Roman custom admitting no exception: still, on the other hand, it is a

purely harmonistic effort to allege, that scourging was only made to

precede crucifixion in cases where the punishment was intended to be

particularly severe, [1942] and that consequently Pilate, who had no

wish to be cruel to Jesus, can only have caused him to be scourged with

the special design which Luke and John mention, and which is also to be

understood in the narratives of their predecessors. It is far more

probable that in reality the scourging only took place as it is

described by the two first Evangelists, namely, as an introduction to

the crucifixion, and that the Christian legend (to which that side of

Pilate’s character, in virtue of which he endeavoured in various ways

to save Jesus, was particularly welcome as a testimony against the

Jews) gave such a turn even to the fact of the scourging as to obtain

from it a new attempt at release on the part of Pilate. This use of the

fact is only incipient in the third gospel, for here the scourging is a

mere proposal of Pilate: whereas in the fourth, the scourging actually

takes place, and becomes an additional act in the drama.

With the scourging is connected in the two first gospels and the

fourth, the maltreatment and mockery of Jesus by the soldiers, who

attired him in a purple robe, placed a crown of thorns on his head,

[1943] put, according to Matthew, a reed in his hand, and in this

disguise first greeted him as King of the Jews, and then smote and

maltreated him. [1944] Luke does not mention any derision on the part

of the soldiers here, but he has something similar in his narrative of

the interrogation of Jesus before Herod, for he represents this prince

with his men of war, σύν τοῖς στρατεύμασιν αὐτοῦ, as mocking Jesus, and

sending him back to Pilate in a gorgeous robe, ἐσθὴς λαμπρά. Many

suppose that this was the same purple robe which was afterwards put on

Jesus by the soldiers of Pilate; but it must rather have been thrice

that Jesus had to wear this disguise, if we take the narrative of John

into the account and at the same time refuse to attribute error to any

of the synoptists: first in the presence of Herod (Luke); secondly,

before Pilate brought Jesus forth to the Jews, that he might excite

their compassion with the words: Behold the man, ἴδε ὁ ἄνθρωπος (John);

thirdly, after he was delivered to the soldiers for crucifixion

(Matthew and Mark). This repetition is as improbable as it is probable

that the one disguising of Jesus, which had come to the knowledge of

the Evangelists, was assigned by them to different places and times,

and ascribed to different persons.

While in the two first gospels the process of trial is already

concluded before the scourging, and in the third, on the rejection of

his proposal to scourge and release Jesus by the Jews, Pilate forthwith

delivers him to be crucified: in the fourth Evangelist the scene of the

trial is further developed in the following manner. When even the

exhibition of Jesus scourged and disguised avails nothing, but his

crucifixion is obstinately demanded, the procurator is incensed, and

cries to the Jews, that they may take him and crucify him themselves,

for he finds no fault in him. The Jews reply that according to their

law he must die, since he had made himself the Son of God υἱὸς θεοῦ; a

remark which affects Pilate with a superstitious fear, whence he once

more leads Jesus into the Prætorium, and inquires concerning his origin

(whether it be really heavenly), on which Jesus gives him no answer,

and when the procurator seeks to alarm him by reminding him of the

power which he possesses over his life, refers to the higher source

from whence he had this power. Pilate, after this reply, seeks (yet

more earnestly than before) to release Jesus; but at last the Jews hit

upon the right means of making him accede to their will, by throwing

out the intimation that, if he release Jesus who has opposed himself to

Cæsar as an usurper, he cannot be Cæsar’s friend. Thus, intimidated by

the possibility of his being calumniated to Tiberius, he mounts the

tribunal, and, since he cannot prosecute his will, betakes himself to

derision of the Jews in the question, whether they then wish that he

should crucify their king? Whereupon they, keeping to the position

which they had last taken with such evident effect, protest that they

will have no king but Cæsar. The procurator now consents to deliver

Jesus to be crucified, for which purpose, as the two first Evangelists

remark, the purple mantle was removed, and he was again attired in his

own clothes.

§ 132.

THE CRUCIFIXION.

Even concerning the progress of Jesus to the place of crucifixion there

is a divergency between the synoptists and John, for according to the

latter Jesus himself carried his cross thither (xix. 17), while the

former state that one Simon a Cyrenian bore it in his stead (Matt.

xxvii. 32 parall.). The commentators indeed, as if a real agreement

were assumed as a matter of course, reconcile these statements thus: at

first Jesus himself endeavoured to bear the cross, but as the attempt

made it obvious that he was too much exhausted, it was laid on Simon.

[1945] But when John says: And he bearing his cross went forth

into—Golgotha, where they crucified him, καὶ βαστάζων τὸν σταυρὸν αὑτοῦ

ἐξῆλθεν εἰς—Γολγοθᾶ· ὅπου αὐτὸν ἐσταύρωσαν: he plainly presupposes that

the cross was borne by Jesus on the way thither. [1946] But the

statement so unanimously given by the synoptists respecting the

substitution of Simon appears the less capable of being rejected, the

more difficult it is to discover a motive which might lead to its

fabrication. On the contrary, this individual trait might very probably

have remained unknown in the circle in which the fourth gospel had its

origin, and the author might have thought that, according to the

general custom, Jesus must have carried his cross. All the synoptists

designate this Simon as a Cyrenian, i.e. probably one who had come to

Jerusalem to the feast, from the Libyan city of Cyrene, where many Jews

resided. [1947] According to all, the carrying of the cross was forced

upon him, a circumstance which can as little be urged for as against

the opinion that he was favourable to Jesus. [1948] According to Luke

and Mark, the man came directly out of the country, ἀπ’ ἀγροῦ, and as

he attempted to pass by the crowd advancing to the place of

crucifixion, he was made use of to relieve Jesus. Mark designates him

yet more particularly as the father of Alexander and Rufus, who appear

to have been noted persons in the primitive church (comp. Rom. xvi. 13;

Acts xix. 33 (?); 1 Tim. i. 20 (?); 2 Tim. iv. 14 (?)). [1949]

On the way to the place of execution, according to Luke, there followed

Jesus, lamenting him, a great company, consisting especially of women,

whom he however admonished to weep rather for themselves and their

children, in prospect of the terrible time, which would soon come upon

them (xxiii. 27 ff.). The details are taken partly from the discourse

on the second advent, Luke xxi. 23; for as there it is said, Οὐαὶ δὲ

ταῖς ἐν γαστρὶ ἐχούσαις, καὶ ταῖς θηλαζούσαις, ἐν ἐκείναις ταῖς

ἡμέραις, so here Jesus says, that the days are coming in which αἱ

στεῖραι, καὶ κοιλίαι αἳ οὐκ ἐγέννησαν, καὶ μαστοὶ οἳ οὐκ ἐθήλασαν, will

be pronounced blessed; partly from Hosea x. 8, for the words τότε

ἄρξονται λέγειν τοῖς ὄρεσι κ.τ.λ. (then shall they begin to say to the

mountains, etc.) are almost exactly the Alexandrian translation of that

passage.

The place of execution is named by all the Evangelists Golgotha, the

Chaldaic ‏גֻּלְגָּלְתָּא‎, and they all interpret this designation by κρανίου

τόπος the place of a skull, or κρανίον a skull (Matt. v. 33 parall.).

From the latter name it might appear that the place was so called

because it resembled a skull in form; whereas the former

interpretation, and indeed the nature of the case, renders it probable

that it owed its name to its destination as a place of execution, and

to the bones and skulls of the executed which were heaped up there.

Where this place was situated is not known, but doubtless it was out of

the city; even that it was a hill, is a mere conjecture. [1950]

The course of events after the arrival at the place of execution is

narrated by Matthew (v. 34 ff.) in a somewhat singular order. First, he

mentions the beverage offered to Jesus; next, he says that after they

had nailed him to the cross, the soldiers shared his clothes among

them; then, that they sat down and watched him; after this he notices

the superscription on the cross, and at length, and not as if supplying

a previous omission, but with a particle expressive of succession in

time (τότε), the fact that two thieves were crucified with him. Mark

follows Matthew, except that instead of the statement about the

watching of the cross, he has a determination of the time at which

Jesus was crucified: while Luke more correctly relates first the

crucifixion of the two malefactors with Jesus, and then the casting of

lots for the clothes; and the same order is observed by John. But it is

inadmissible on this account to transpose the verses in Matthew (34,

37, 38, 35, 36), as has been proposed; [1951] and we must rather

abandon the author of the first gospel to the charge, that in his

anxiety not to omit any of the chief events at the crucifixion of

Jesus, he has neglected the natural order of time. [1952]

As regards the mode of the crucifixion there is now scarcely any

debated point, if we except the question, whether the feet as well as

the hands were nailed to the cross. As it lay in the interest of the

orthodox view to prove the affirmative: so it was equally important to

the rationalistic system to maintain the negative. From Justin Martyr

[1953] down to Hengstenberg [1954] and Olshausen, the orthodox find in

the nailing of the feet of Jesus to the cross a fulfilment of the

prophecy Ps. xxii. 17, which the LXX. translates: ὤρυξαν χεῖράς μου καὶ

πόδας, but it is doubtful whether the original text really speaks of

piercing, and in no case does it allude to crucifixion: moreover the

passage is nowhere applied to Christ in the New Testament. To the

rationalists, on the contrary, it is at once more easy to explain the

death of Jesus as a merely apparent death, and only possible to

conceive how he could walk immediately after the resurrection, when it

is supposed that his feet were left unwounded; but the case should

rather be stated thus: if the historical evidence go to prove that the

feet also of Jesus were nailed, it must be concluded that the

resuscitation and the power of walking shortly after, either happened

supernaturally or not at all. Of late there have stood opposed to each

other two learned and profound investigations of this point, the one by

Paulus against, the other by Bähr, in favour of—the nailing of the

feet. [1955] From the evangelical narrative, the former opinion can

principally allege in its support, that neither is the above passage in

the Psalms anywhere used by the Evangelists, though on the

presupposition of a nailing of the feet it was so entirely suited to

their mode of accounting for facts, nor in the history of the

resurrection is there any mention of wounds in the feet, together with

the wounds in the hands and side (John xx. 20, 25, 27). The other

opinion appeals not without reason to Luke xxiv. 39, where Jesus

invites the disciples to behold his hands and his feet (ἴδετε τὰς

χεῖράς μου καὶ τοὺς πόδας μου): it is certainly not here said that the

feet were pierced, but it is difficult to understand how Jesus should

have pointed out his feet merely to produce a conviction of the reality

of his body. The fact that among the fathers of the church, those who,

living before Constantine, might be acquainted with the mode of

crucifixion from personal observation, as Justin and Tertullian,

suppose the feet of Jesus to have been nailed, is of weight. It might

indeed be concluded from the remark of the latter: Qui (Christus) solus

a populo tam insigniter crucifixus est, [1956] that for the sake of the

passage in the Psalms these fathers supposed that in the crucifixion of

Christ his feet also were pierced by way of exception; but, as

Tertullian had before called the piercing of the hands and feet the

propria atrocia crucis, it is plain that the above words imply, not a

special manner of crucifixion, but the special manner of death by

crucifixion, which does not occur in the Old Testament, and by which

therefore Jesus was distinguished from all the characters therein

celebrated. Among the passages in profane writers, the most important

is that of Plautus, in which, to mark a crucifixion as extraordinarily

severe, it is said: offigantur bis pedes, bis brachia. [1957] Here the

question is: does the extraordinary feature lie in the bis, so that the

nailing of the feet as well as of the hands only once is presupposed as

the ordinary usage; or was the bis offigere of the hands, i.e. the

nailing of both the hands, the usual practice, and the nailing of the

feet an extraordinary aggravation of the punishment? Every one will

pronounce the former alternative to be the most accordant with the

words. Hence it appears to me at present, that the balance of

historical evidence is on the side of those who maintain that the feet

as well as the hands of Jesus were nailed to the cross.

It was before the crucifixion, according to the two first Evangelists,

that there was offered to Jesus a beverage, which Matthew (v. 34)

describes as vinegar mingled with gall, ὄξος μετὰ χολης μεμιγμένον,

Mark (v. 23) as wine mingled with myrrh, ἐσμυρνισμένον οἶνον, but

which, according to both, Jesus (Matthew says, after having tasted it)

refused to accept. As it is not understood with what object gall could

be mixed with the vinegar, the χολη of Matthew is usually explained, by

the aid of the ἐσμυρνισμένον of Mark, as implying bitter vegetable

ingredients, especially myrrh; and then either οἰνον wine is actually

substituted for ὄχος vinegar, or the latter is understood as sour wine;

[1958] in order that the beverage offered to Jesus may thus appear to

have been the stupefying draught consisting of wine and strong spices,

which, according to Jewish usage, was presented to those about to be

executed, for the purpose of blunting their susceptibility to pain.

[1959] But even if the text admitted of this reading, and the words of

this interpretation, Matthew would assuredly protest strongly against

the real gall and the vinegar being thus explained away from his

narrative, because by this means he would lose the fulfilment of the

passage in the psalm of lamentation elsewhere used messianically:

(LXX.) καὶ ἔδωκαν εἰς τὸ βρῶμά μου χολην, καὶ εἰς τὴν δίψαν μου

ἐπότισάν με ὄχος, they gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst

they gave me vinegar to drink (Ps. lxix. 21). Matthew incontestably

means, in accordance with this prophecy, real gall with vinegar, and

the comparison with Mark is only calculated to suggest the question,

whether it be more probable that Mark presents the incident in its

original form, which Matthew has remodelled into a closer accordance

with the prophecy; or that Matthew originally drew the particular from

the passage in the Psalm, and that Mark so modified it as to give it an

appearance of greater historical probability?

In order to come to a decision on this question we must take the two

other Evangelists into consideration. The presentation to Jesus of a

drink mingled with vinegar is mentioned by all four, and even the two

who have the vinegar mingled with gall, or the myrrhed wine, as the

first drink offered to Jesus, mention afterwards the offering of simple

vinegar. According to Luke, this offering of vinegar ὄξος προσφέρειν,

was an act of derision committed by the soldiers not very long after

the crucifixion, and before the commencement of the darkness (v. 36

f.); according to Mark, shortly before the end, three hours after the

darkness came on, one of the bystanders, on hearing the cry of Jesus:

my God, my God, etc., presented vinegar to him, likewise in derision,

by means of a sponge fixed on a reed (v. 36); according to Matthew, one

of the bystanders, on the same cry, and in the same manner, presented

vinegar to him, but with a benevolent intention, as we gather from the

circumstance that the scoffers wished to deter him from the act (v. 48

f.); [1960] whereas in John it is on the exclamation: I thirst, that

some fill a sponge with vinegar from a vessel standing near, and raise

it on a stem of hyssop to the mouth of Jesus (v. 29). Hence it has been

supposed that there were three separate attempts to give a beverage to

Jesus: the first before the crucifixion, with the stupefying drink

(Matthew and Mark); the second after the crucifixion, when the soldiers

in mockery offered him some of their ordinary beverage, a mixture of

vinegar and water called posca [1961] (Luke); and the third, on the

complaining cry of Jesus (Matt., Mark and John). [1962] But if the

principle of considering every divergent narrative as a separate event

be once admitted, it must be consistently carried out: if the beverage

mentioned by Luke must be distinguished from that of Matthew and Mark

on account of a difference in the time, then must that of Matthew be

distinguished from that of Mark on account of the difference in the

design; and, again, the beverage mentioned by John must not be regarded

as the same with that of the two first synoptists, since it follows a

totally different exclamation. Thus we should obtain in all five

instances in which a drink was offered to Jesus, and we should at least

be at a loss to understand why Jesus after vinegar had already been

thrice presented to his lips, should yet a fourth time have desired to

drink. If then we must resort to simplification, it is by no means only

the beverage in the two first gospels, and that in the fourth, which,

on account of the agreement in the time and manner of presentation, are

to be understood as one; but also that of Mark (and through this the

others) must be pronounced identical with that of Luke, on account of

their being alike offered in derision. Thus there remain two instances

of a drink being offered to Jesus, the one before the crucifixion, the

other after; and both have a presumptive support from history, the

former in the Jewish custom of giving a stupefying draught to persons

about to be executed, the other in the Roman custom, according to which

the soldiers on their expeditions,—and the completing an execution was

considered as such,—were in the habit of taking with them their posca.

But together with this possible historical root, there is a possible

prophetic one in Ps. lxix., and the two have an opposite influence: the

latter excites a suspicion that the narrative may not have anything

historical at its foundation; the former throws doubt on the

explanation that the whole story has been spun out of the prophecies.

On once more glancing over the various narratives, we shall at least

find that their divergencies are precisely of a nature to have arisen

from a various application of the passage in the Psalms. The eating of

gall and the drinking of vinegar being there spoken of, it appears as

if in the first instance the former particular had been set aside as

inconceivable, and the fulfilment of the prophecy found in the

circumstance (very possibly historical, since it is mentioned by all

the four Evangelists), that Jesus had vinegar presented to him when on

the cross. This might either be regarded as an act of compassion, as by

Matthew and John, or of mockery, with Mark and Luke. In this manner the

words: they gave me vinegar to drink, ἐπότισάν με ὄξος, were indeed

literally fulfilled, but not the preceding phrase: in my thirst, εἰς

τὴν δίψαν μου; hence the author of the fourth gospel might think it

probable that Jesus actually complained of thirst, i.e. cried, I

thirst, διψῶ, an exclamation, which he expressly designates as a

fulfilment of the scripture, γραφὴ, by which we are doubtless to

understand the above passage in the Psalms (comp. Ps. xxii. 16); nay,

since he introduces the ἵνα τελειωθῇ ἡ γραφὴ, that the scripture might

be fulfilled, by εἰδὼς ὁ Ἰησοῦς, ὅτι πάντα ἤδη τετέλεσται, Jesus,

knowing that all things were now accomplished, he almost appears to

mean that the fulfilment of the prophecy was the sole object of Jesus

in uttering that exclamation: but a man suspended on the cross in the

agonies of death is not the one to occupy himself with such typological

trifling—this is only the part of his biographer who finds himself in

perfect ease. Even this addition, however, only showed the fulfilment

of one half of the messianic verse, that relating to the vinegar: there

still remained what was said of the gall, which, as the concentration

of all bitterness, was peculiarly adapted to be placed in relation to

the suffering Messiah. It is true that the presentation of the gall,

χολὴ, as meat, βρῶμα, which the prophecy strictly taken required, was

still suppressed as inconceivable: but it appeared to the first

Evangelist, or to the authority which he here follows, quite

practicable to introduce the gall as an ingredient in the vinegar, a

mixture which Jesus might certainly be unable to drink, from its

unpalatableness. More concerned about historical probability than

prophetic connexion, the second Evangelist, with reference to a Jewish

custom, and perhaps in accordance with historical fact, converted the

vinegar mingled with gall, into wine mingled with myrrh, and made Jesus

reject this, doubtless from a wish to avoid stupefaction. As however

the narrative of the vinegar mingled with gall reached these two

Evangelists in company with the original one of the presentation of

simple vinegar to Jesus; they were unwilling that this should be

excluded by the former, and hence placed the two side by side. But in

making these observations, as has been before remarked, it is not

intended to deny that such a beverage may have been offered to Jesus

before the crucifixion, and afterwards vinegar also, since the former

was apparently customary, and the latter, from the thirst which

tormented the crucified, natural: it is merely intended to show, that

the Evangelists do not narrate this circumstance, and under such

various forms, because they knew historically that it occurred in this

or that manner, but because they were convinced dogmatically that it

must have occurred according to the above prophecy, which however they

applied in different ways. [1963]

During or immediately after the crucifixion Luke represents Jesus as

saying: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (v. 34);

an intercession which is by some limited to the soldiers who crucified

him, [1964] by others, extended to the real authors of his death, the

Sanhedrists and Pilate. [1965] However accordant such a prayer may be

with the principles concerning love to enemies elsewhere inculcated by

Jesus (Matt. v. 44), and however great the internal probability of

Luke’s statement viewed in this light: still it is to be observed,

especially as he stands alone in giving this particular, that it may

possibly have been taken from the reputed messianic chapter, Isa.

liii., where in the last verse, the same from which the words: he was

numbered with the transgressors, μετὰ ἀνόμων ἐλογίσθη are borrowed, it

is said: ‏וְלַפּשְׁעִים יַפְנִּיעַ‎ (he made intercession for the transgressors),

which the LXX. erroneously translate διὰ τὰς ἀνομίας αὐτῶν παρεδόθη, he

was delivered for their transgressions, but which already the Targum

Jonathan renders by pro peccatis (it should be peccatoribus) deprecatus

est.

All the Evangelists agree in stating that two malefactors δύο κακοῦργοι

(Matthew and Mark call them λῃστὰς thieves) were crucified, one on each

side of Jesus; and Mark, if his 28th verse be genuine, sees in this a

literal fulfilment of the words: he was numbered with the

transgressors, which, according to Luke xxii. 37, Jesus had the evening

before quoted as a prophecy about to be accomplished in him. Of the

further demeanour of these fellow-sufferers, John says nothing; the two

first Evangelists represent them as reviling Jesus (Matt. xxvii. 44;

Mark xv. 32): whereas Luke narrates that only one of them was guilty of

this offence, and that he was rebuked by the other (xxiii. 39 ff.). In

order to reconcile this difference, commentators have advanced the

supposition, that at first both criminals reviled Jesus, but that

subsequently one of them was converted by the marvellous darkness;

[1966] more modern ones have resorted to the supposition of an enallage

numeri: [1967] but without doubt those only are right who admit a real

difference between Luke and his predecessors. [1968] It is plain that

the two first Evangelists knew nothing of the more precise details

which Luke presents concerning the relation of the two malefactors to

Jesus. He narrates, namely, that when one of them derided Jesus by

calling upon him, if he were the Messiah, to deliver himself and them,

the other earnestly rebuked such mockery of one with whom he was

sharing a like fate, and moreover as a guilty one with the guiltless,

entreating for his own part that Jesus would remember him when he

should come into his kingdom βασιλεία: whereupon Jesus gave him the

promise that he should that very day be with him in Paradise ἐν τῷ

παραδείσῳ. In this scene there is nothing to create difficulty, until

we come to the words which the second malefactor addresses to Jesus.

For to expect from one suspended on the cross a future coming to

establish the messianic kingdom, would presuppose the conception of the

whole system of a dying Messiah, which before the resurrection the

apostles themselves could not comprehend, and which therefore,

according to the above representation of Luke, a thief must have been

beforehand with them in embracing. This is so improbable, that it

cannot excite surprise to find many regarding the conversion of the

thief on the cross as a miracle, [1969] and the supposition which

commentators call in to their aid, namely, that the man was no common

criminal, but a political one, perhaps concerned in the insurrection of

Barabbas, [1970] only serves to render the incident still more

inconceivable. For if he was an Israelite inclined to rebellion, and

bent on liberating his nation from the Roman yoke, his idea of the

Messiah was assuredly the most incompatible with the acknowledgment as

such, of one so completely annihilated in a political view, as Jesus

then was. Hence we are led to the question, whether we have here a real

history and not rather a creation of the legend? Two malefactors were

crucified with Jesus: thus much was indubitably presented by history

(or did even this owe its origin to the prophecy, Isa. liii. 12?). At

first they were suspended by the side of Jesus as mute figures, and

thus we find them in the narrative of the fourth Evangelist, into whose

region of tradition only the simple statement, that they were crucified

with Jesus, had penetrated. But it was not possible for the legend long

to rest contented with so slight a use of them: it opened their mouths,

and as only insults were reported to have proceeded from the

bystanders, the two malefactors were at first made to join in the

general derision of Jesus, without any more particular account being

given of their words (Matt. and Mark). But the malefactors admitted of

a still better use. If Pilate had borne witness in favour of Jesus; if

shortly after, a Roman centurion—nay, all nature by its miraculous

convulsions—had attested his exalted character: so his two

fellow-sufferers, although criminals, could not remain entirely

impervious to the impression of his greatness, but, though one of them

did indeed revile Jesus agreeably to the original form of the legend,

the other must have expressed an opposite state of feeling, and have

shown faith in Jesus as the Messiah (Luke). The address of the latter

to Jesus and his answer are besides conceived entirely in the spirit of

Jewish thought and expression; for according to the idea then

prevalent, paradise was that part of the nether world which was to

harbour the souls of the pious in the interval between their death and

the resurrection: a place in paradise and a favourable remembrance in

the future age were the object of the Israelite’s petition, to God, as

here to the Messiah; [1971] and it was believed concerning a man

distinguished for piety that he could conduct those who were present at

the hour of his death into paradise. [1972]

To the cross of Jesus was affixed, according to the Roman custom,

[1973] a superscription ἐπιγραφὴ (Mark and Luke), or a title τίτλος

(John) which contained his accusation τὴν αἰτίαν αὐτοῦ (Matthew and

Mark), consisting according to all the Evangelists in the words: ὁ

βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων, the King of the Jews. Luke and John state that

this superscription was couched in three different tongues, and the

latter informs us that the Jewish rulers were fully alive to the

derision which this form of superscription reflected on their nation,

and on this account entreated Pilate, but in vain, for an alteration of

the terms (v. 21 f.).

Of the soldiers, according to John four in number, who crucified Jesus,

the Evangelists unanimously relate that they parted the clothes of

Jesus among themselves by lot. According to the Roman law de bonis

damnatorum [1974] the vestments of the executed fell as spolia to the

executioners, and in so far that statement of the Evangelists has a

point of contact with history. But, like most of the features in this

last scene of the life of Jesus, it has also a point of contact with

prophecy. It is true that in Matthew the quotation of the passage Ps.

xxii. 18 is doubtless an interpolation; but on the other hand the same

quotation is undoubtedly genuine in John (xix. 24): ἵνα ἡ γραφὴ πληρωθῇ

ἡ λέγουσα· (verbally after the LXX.) διεμερίσαντο τὰ ἱμάτιά μου

ἐαυτοῖς, καὶ ἐπὶ τὸν ἱματισμόν μου ἔβαλον κλῆρον, that the scripture

might be fulfilled which saith, They parted my raiment among them, and

for my vesture they did cast lots. Here also, according to the

assertion of orthodox expositors, David the author of the psalm, under

divine guidance, in the moments of inspiration chose such figurative

expressions as had a literal fulfilment in Christ. [1975] Rather we

must say, David, or whoever else may have been the author of the psalm,

as a man of poetical imagination used those expressions as mere

metaphors to denote a total defeat; but the petty, prosaic spirit of

Jewish interpretation, which the Evangelists shared without any fault

of theirs, and from which orthodox theologians, by their own fault

however, have not perfectly liberated themselves after the lapse of

eighteen centuries, led to the belief that those words must be

understood literally, and in this sense must be shown to be fulfilled

in the Messiah. Whether the Evangelists drew the circumstance of the

casting of lots for the clothes more from historical information which

stood at their command, or from the prophetic passage which they

variously interpreted, must be decided by a comparison of their

narratives. These present the divergency, that while according to the

synoptists all the clothes were parted by lot, as is evident from the

words: διεμερίσαντο τὰ ἱμάτια αὐτοῦ, βάλλοντες κλῆρον, they parted his

garments, casting lots, in Matthew (v. 35), and the similar turn of

expression in Luke (v. 34), but still more decidedly from the addition

of Mark: τίς τί ἄρη, what every man should take (v. 24): in John it is

the coat or tunic, χιτὼν, alone for which lots are cast, the other

garments being parted equally (v. 23 f.). This divergency is commonly

thought of much too lightly, and is tacitly treated as if the

synoptical representation were related to that of John as the

indefinite to the definite. Kuinöl in consideration of John translates

the words διεμερίζαντο βάλλοντες of Matthew thus: partim dividebant,

partim in sortem conjiciebant: but the meaning is not to be thus

distributed, for the διεμερίζαντο, they parted, states what they did,

the βάλλοντες κλῆρον, casting lots, how they did it: besides Kuinöl

passes in total silence over the words τίς τί ἄρη, because they

undeniably imply that lots were cast for several articles: while

according to John the lots had reference only to one garment. If it be

now asked, which of the two contradictory narratives is the correct

one, the answer given from the point of view to which the comparative

criticism of the gospels has at present attained is, that the

eye-witness John gives the correct particulars, but the synoptists had

merely received the indefinite information, that in parting the clothes

of Jesus the soldiers made use of the lot, and this, from

unacquaintance with the more minute particulars, they understood as if

lots had been cast for all the garments of Jesus. [1976] But not only

does the circumstance that it is John alone who expressly cites the

passage in the Psalms prove that he had an especial view to that

passage: but, in general, this divergency of the Evangelists is

precisely what might be expected from a difference in the

interpretation of that supposed prophecy. When the psalm speaks of the

parting of the garments and a casting of lots for the vesture: the

second particular is, according to the genius of the Hebrew language

which abounds in parallelism, only a more precise definition of the

first, and the synoptists, correctly understanding this, make one of

the two verbs a participle. One however who did not bear in mind this

peculiarity of the Hebrew style, or had an interest in exhibiting the

second feature of the prophecy as specially fulfilled, might understand

the and, which in reality was indicative only of more precise

definition, as denoting addition, and thus regard the casting of lots

and the distribution as separate acts. Then the ἱματισμὸς (‏לְבוּשׁ‎)

which was originally a synonyme of ἱμάτια (‏בְּגָדִים‎) must become a

distinct garment, the closer particularization of which, since it was

not in any way conveyed in the word itself, was left to choice. The

fourth Evangelist determined it to be the χιτὼν, tunic, and because he

believed it due to his readers to show some cause for a mode of

procedure with respect to this garment, so different from the equal

distribution of the others, he intimated that the reason why it was

chosen to cast lots for the tunic rather than to divide it, probably

was that it had no seam (ἄῤῥαφος) which might render separation easy,

but was woven in one piece (ὑφαντὸς δι’ ὅλου). [1977] Thus we should

have in the fourth Evangelist exactly the same procedure as we have

found on the side of the first, in the history of the entrance into

Jerusalem: in both cases the doubling of a trait originally single,

owing to a false interpretation of the ‏ו‎ in the Hebrew parallelism;

the only difference being that the first Evangelist in the passage

referred to is less arbitrary than the fourth is here, for he at least

spares us the tracing out of the reason why two asses must then have

been required for one rider. The more evident it thus becomes that the

representation of the point in question in the different Evangelists is

dependent on the manner in which each interpreted that supposed

prophecy in the Psalms: the less does a sure historical knowledge

appear to have had any share in their representation, and hence we

remain ignorant whether lots were cast on the distribution of the

clothes of Jesus, nay whether in general a distribution of clothes took

place under the cross of Jesus; confidently as Justin appeals in

support of this very particular to the Acts of Pilate, which he had

never seen. [1978]

Of the conduct of the Jews who were present at the crucifixion of

Jesus, John tells us nothing; Luke represents the people as standing to

look on, and only the rulers ἄρχοντες and the soldiers as deriding

Jesus by the summons to save himself if he were the Messiah, to which

the latter adds the offer of the vinegar (v. 35 ff.); Matthew and Mark

have nothing here of mockery on the part of the soldiers, but in

compensation they make not only the chief priests, scribes, and elders,

but also the passers by, παραπορευόμενοι, vent insults against Jesus

(v. 39 ff., 29 ff.). The expressions of these people partly refer to

former discourses and actions of Jesus; thus, the sarcasm: Thou that

destroyest the temple and buildest it again in three days, save thyself

(Matt. and Mark), is an allusion to the words of that tenor ascribed to

Jesus; while the reproach: he saved others, himself he cannot save, or

save thyself (in all three), refers to his cures. Partly however the

conduct of the Jews towards Jesus on the cross, is depicted after the

same psalm of which Tertullian justly says that it contains totam

Christi passionem. [1979] When it is said in Matthew and Mark: And they

that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads and saying: οἱ δὲ

παραπορευόμενοι ἐβλασφήμουν αὐτὸν, κινοῦντες τὰς κεφαλὰς αὑτῶν καὶ

λέγοντες· (Luke says of the rulers ἄρχοντες they derided him

ἐξεμυκτήριζον), this is certainly nothing else than a mere reproduction

of what stands in Ps. xxii. 8 (LXX.): All they that see me laugh me to

scorn, they shoot out the lip and shake the head: πάντες οἱ θεωροῦντές

με ἐξεμυκτήρισάν με, ἐλάλησαν ἐν χείλεσιν, ἐκίνησαν κεφαλὴν; and the

words which are hereupon lent to the Sanhedrists in Matthew: He trusted

in God; let him deliver him now if he will have him, πέποιθεν ἐπὶ τὸν

θεὸν, ῥυσάσθω νῦν αὐτὸν, εἰ θέλει αὐτὸν, are the same with those of the

following verse in that Psalm: He trusted in the Lord that he would

deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him, ἤλπισεν

ἐπὶ Κύριον, ῥυσάσθω αὐτόν· σωσάτω αὐτὸν, ὅτι θέλει αὐτόν. Now though

the taunts and shaking of the head on the part of the enemies of Jesus

may, notwithstanding that the description of them is drawn according to

the above Old Testament passage, still very probably have really

happened: it is quite otherwise with the words which are attributed to

these mockers. Words which, like those above quoted, are in the Old

Testament put into the mouth of the enemies of the godly, could not be

adopted by the Sanhedrists without their voluntarily assuming the

character of the ungodly: which they would surely have taken care to

avoid. Only the Christian legend, if it once applied the Psalm to the

sufferings of Jesus, and especially to his last hours, could attribute

these words to the Jewish rulers, and find therein the fulfilment of a

prophecy.

The two first Evangelists do not tell us that any one of the twelve was

present at the crucifixion of Jesus: they mention merely several

Galilean women, three of whom they particularize: namely, Mary

Magdalene; Mary the mother of James the Less and of Joses; and, as the

third, according to Matthew, the mother of the sons of Zebedee,

according to Mark, Salome, both which designations are commonly

understood to relate to the same person (Matt. v. 55 f.; Mark v. 40

f.): according to these Evangelists the twelve appear not yet to have

reassembled after their flight on the arrest of Jesus. [1980] In Luke,

on the contrary, among all his acquaintance, πάντες οἱ γνωστοὶ αὐτοῦ,

whom he represents as beholding the crucifixion (v. 49) the twelve

would seem to be included: but the fourth gospel expressly singles out

from among the disciples the one whom Jesus loved, i.e. John, as

present, and among the women, together with Mary Magdalene and the wife

of Cleopas, names instead of the mother of James and John, the mother

of Jesus himself. Moreover, while according to all the other accounts

the acquaintances of Jesus stood afar off, μακρόθεν, according to the

fourth gospel John and the mother of Jesus must have been in the

closest proximity to the cross, since it represents Jesus as addressing

them from the cross, and appointing John to be his substitute in the

filial relation to his mother (v. 25 ff.). Olshausen believes that he

can remove the contradiction which exists between the synoptical

statement and the presupposition of the fourth gospel as to the

position of the friends of Jesus, by the conjecture that at first they

did indeed stand at a distance, but that subsequently some approached

near to the cross: it is to be observed, however, in opposition to

this, that the synoptists mention that position of the adherents of

Jesus just at the close of the scene of crucifixion and death,

immediately before the taking down from the cross, and thus presuppose

that they had retained this position until the end of the scene; a

state of the case which cannot but be held entirely consistent with the

alarm which filled the minds of the disciples during those days, and

still more with feminine timidity. If the heroism of a nearer approach

might perhaps be expected from maternal tenderness: still, the total

silence of the synoptists, as the interpreters of the common

evangelical tradition, renders the historical reality of that

particular doubtful. The synoptists cannot have known anything of the

presence of the mother of Jesus at the cross, otherwise they would have

mentioned her as the chief person, before all the other women; nor does

anything appear to have been known of a more intimate relation between

her and John: at least in the Acts (i. 12 f.) the mother of Jesus is

supposed to be with the twelve in general, his brothers, and the women

of the society. It is at least not so easy to understand how the memory

of that affecting presence and remarkable relation could be lost, as to

conceive how the idea of them might originate in the circle from which

the fourth gospel proceeded. If this circle be imagined as one in which

the Apostle John enjoyed peculiar veneration, on which account our

gospel drew him out of the trio of the more confidential associates of

Jesus, and isolated him as the beloved disciple: it will appear that

nothing could be more strikingly adapted to confirm this relation than

the statement that Jesus bequeathed, as it were, the dearest legacy,

his mother (in reference to whom, as well as to the alleged beloved

disciple, it must have been a natural question, whether she had left

the side of Jesus in this last trial), to John, and thus placed this

disciple in his stead,—made him vicarius Christi.

As the address of Jesus to his mother and the favourite disciple is

peculiar to the fourth gospel: so, on the other hand, the exclamation,

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? ἠλὶ, ἠλὶ, λαμὰ σαβαχθανί; is

only found in the two first gospels (Matt. v. 46; Mark v. 34). This

exclamation, with the mental state from which it proceeded, like the

agony in Gethsemane, constitutes in the opinion of the church a part of

the vicarious suffering of Christ. As however in this instance also it

was impossible to be blind to the difficulties of the supposition, that

the mere corporeal suffering, united with the external depression of

his cause, overwhelmed Jesus to such a degree that he felt himself

forsaken by God, while there have been both before and after him

persons who, under sufferings equally severe, have yet preserved

composure and fortitude: the opinion of the church has here also, in

addition to the natural corporeal and spiritual affliction, supposed as

the true cause of that state of mind in Jesus, a withdrawal of God from

his soul, a consciousness of the divine wrath, which it was decreed

that he should bear in the stead of mankind, by whom it was deserved as

a punishment. [1981] How, presupposing the dogma of the church

concerning the person of Christ, a withdrawal of God from his soul is

conceivable, it is the part of the defenders of this opinion

themselves, to decide. Was it the human nature in him which felt so

forsaken? Then would its unity with the divine have been interrupted,

and thus the very basis of the personality of Christ, according to the

above system, removed. Or the divine? In that case the second person in

the Godhead would have been separated from the first. As little can it

have been the God-man, consisting of both natures, that felt forsaken

by God, since the very essence of this is the unity and inseparableness

of the divine and the human. Thus urged by the self-contradiction of

this supranaturalistic explanation, to fall back on the natural mode of

accounting for the above exclamation by the sense of external

suffering, and yet repelled from the idea that Jesus should have been

so completely subdued by this, commentators have attempted to mollify

the sense of the exclamation. It consists of the opening words of Ps.

xxii., a passage which is classical for this last scene in the life of

Jesus. Now this psalm begins with a complaining description of the

deepest suffering, but in the course of its progress soars into joyful

hope of deliverance; hence it has been supposed that the words which

Jesus immediately utters do not give his entire experience, and that in

thus reciting the first verse he at the same time quotes the whole

psalm and especially its exulting close, just as if he meant to say: It

is true that I, like the author of this psalm, appear now forsaken of

God, but in me, as in him, the divine succour will only be so much the

more glorified. [1982] But if Jesus uttered this exclamation with a

view to the bystanders, and in order to assure them that his affliction

would soon be merged in triumph, he would have chosen the means the

least adapted to his purpose, if he had uttered precisely those words

of the Psalm which express the deepest misery; and instead of the first

verse he would rather have chosen one from the 10th to the 12th, or

from the 20th to the end. If however in that exclamation he meant

merely to give vent to his own feeling, he would not have chosen this

verse if his actual experience in these moments had been, not what is

there expressed, but what is described in the succeeding verses. Now if

this experience was his own, and if, all supernatural grounds of

explanation being dismissed, it proceeded from his external calamities;

we must observe that one who, as the gospels narrate of Jesus, had long

included suffering and death in his idea of the Messiah, and hence had

regarded them as a part of the divine arrangements, could scarcely

complain of them when they actually arrived as an abandonment by God;

rather, on the above supposition, we should be led to think that Jesus

had found himself deceived in the expectations which he had previously

cherished, and thus believed himself forsaken by God in the prosecution

of his plan. [1983] But we could only resort to such conjectures if the

above exclamation of Jesus were shown to have an historical foundation.

In this respect the silence of Luke and John would not, it is true, be

so serious a difficulty in our eyes, that we should take refuge in

explanations like the following: John suppressed the exclamation, lest

it should serve to countenance the Gnostic opinion, by admitting the

inference that the Æon which was insusceptible of suffering, departed

from Jesus in that moment. [1984] But the relation of the words of

Jesus to the 22nd Psalm does certainly render this particular

suspicious. If the Messiah was once conceived of as suffering, and if

that psalm was used as a sort of programme of his suffering—for which

it was by no means necessary as an inducement that Jesus should have

really quoted one of its verses on the cross:—the opening words of the

psalm which are expressive of the deepest suffering must appear

singularly adapted to be put into the mouth of the crucified Messiah.

In this case the derisive speech [1985] of the bystanders, he calleth

for Elias, etc., can have had no other origin than this—that the wish

for a variety of taunts to complete this scene after the model of the

psalm, was met by the similarity of sound between the ἠλὶ in the

exclamation lent to Jesus, and the name of Elias which was associated

with the Messiah.

Concerning the last words which the expiring Jesus was heard to utter,

the Evangelists differ. According to Matthew and Mark, it was merely a

loud voice, φωνὴ μεγάλη, with which he departed (v. 50, 37); according

to Luke it was the petition: Father, into thy hands I commend my

spirit, πάτερ, εἰς χεῖράς σου παραθήσομαι τὸ πνεῦμᾴ μου (v. 46); while

according to John it was on the brief expression: it is finished,

τετέλεσται, that he bowed his head and expired (v. 30). Here it is

possible to reconcile the two first Evangelists with one or other of

the succeeding ones by the supposition, that what the former describe

indefinitely as a loud cry, and what according to their representation

might be taken for an inarticulate expression of anguish, the others,

with more particularity, give in its precise verbal form. It is more

difficult to reconcile the two last gospels. For whether we suppose

that Jesus first commended his soul to God, and hereupon cried: it is

finished; or vice versâ; both collocations are alike opposed to the

intention of the Evangelists, for the expression of Luke καὶ ταῦτα

εἰπὼν ἐξέπνευσεν cannot be rendered, as Paulus would have it, by: soon

after he had said this, he expired; and the very words of the

exclamation in John define it as the last utterance of Jesus; the two

writers forming different conceptions of the closing words. In the

account of Luke, the common form of expression for the death of Jesus:

παρέδωκε τὸ πνεῦμα (he delivered up his spirit) appears to have been

interpreted as an actual commending of his soul to God on the part of

Jesus, and to have been further developed with reference to the passage

Ps. xxxi. 5: (Lord) into thy hands I commend my spirit, (κύριε) εἰς

χεῖράς σου παραθήσομαι τὸ πνεῦμά μου (LXX.),—a passage which from the

strong resemblance of this Psalm to the 22nd would be apt to suggest

itself. [1986] Whereas the author of the fourth gospel appears to have

lent to Jesus an expression more immediately proceeding from his

position in relation to his messianic office, making him express in the

word τετέλεσται it is finished the completion of his work, or the

fulfilment of all the prophecies (with the exception, of course, of

what could only be completed and fulfilled in the resurrection).

Not only these last words, however, but also the earlier expressions of

Jesus on the cross, will not admit of being ranged in the succession in

which they are generally supposed. The speeches of Jesus on the cross

are commonly reckoned to be seven; but so many are not mentioned by any

single Evangelist, for the two first have only one: the exclamation my

God, my God, etc. ἠλὶ, ἠλὶ, κ.τ.λ. Luke has three; the prayer of Jesus

for his enemies, the promise to the thief, and the commending of his

spirit into the hands of the Father; John has likewise three, but all

different: the address to his mother and the disciple, with the

exclamations, I thirst διψῶ and It is finished τετέλεσται. Now the

intercessory prayer, the promise and the recommendation of Mary to the

care of the disciple, might certainly be conceived as following each

other: but the διψῶ and the ἠλὶ come into collision, since both

exclamations are followed by the same incident, the offering of vinegar

by means of a sponge on a reed. When to this we add the entanglement of

the τετέλεσται with the πάτερ κ.τ.λ., it should surely be seen and

admitted, that no one of the Evangelists, in attributing words to Jesus

when on the cross, knew or took into consideration those lent to him by

the others; that on the contrary each depicted this scene in his own

manner, according as he, or the legend which stood at his command, had

developed the conception of it to suit this or that prophecy or design.