Chapter III (1)

RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

§ 125.

AGONY OF JESUS IN THE GARDEN.

According to the synoptical narratives, Jesus, immediately after the conclusion of the meal and the singing of the Hallel, it being his habit during this feast time to spend the night out of Jerusalem (Matt. xxi. 17; Luke xxii. 39), went to the Mount of Olives, into a garden χωρίον (in John, κῆπος) called Gethsemane (Matt. xxvi. 30, 36 parall.). John, who gives the additional particular that the garden lay over the brook Kedron, does not represent him as departing thither until after a long series of valedictory discourses (xiv.–xvii.), of which we shall hereafter have to speak again. While John makes the arrest of Jesus follow immediately on the arrival of Jesus in the garden, the synoptists insert between the two that scene which is usually designated the agony of Jesus.

Their accounts of this scene are not in unison. According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus takes with him his three most confidential disciples, Peter and the sons of Zebedee, leaving the rest behind, is seized with tearfulness and trembling, tells the three disciples that he is sorrowful even unto death, and admonishing them to remain wakeful in the mean time, removes to a distance from them also, that he may offer a prayer for himself, in which, with his face bent to the earth, he entreats that the cup of suffering may pass from him, but still resigns all to the will of his Father. When he returns to the disciples, he finds them sleeping, again admonishes them to watchfulness, then removes from them a second time, and repeats the former prayer, after which he once more finds his disciples asleep. For the third time he retires to repeat the prayer, and returning, for the third time finds the disciples sleeping, but now awakes them, in order to meet the coming betrayer. Of the number three, which thus doubly figures in the narrative of the two first Evangelists, Luke says nothing; according to him, Jesus retires from all the disciples, after admonishing them to watch, for the distance of about a stone’s cast, and prays kneeling, once only, but nearly in the same words as in the other gospels, then returns to the disciples and awakes them, because Judas is approaching with the multitude. But, on the other hand, Luke in his single scene of prayer, has two circumstances which are foreign to the other narrators, namely, that while Jesus was yet praying, and immediately before the most violent mental struggle, an angel appeared to strengthen him, and that during the agony ἀγωνία which ensued, the sweat of Jesus was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.

From the earliest times this scene in Gethsemane has been a stumbling-block, because Jesus therein appears to betray a weakness and fear of death which might be considered unworthy of him. Celsus and Julian, doubtless having in their minds the great examples of a dying Socrates and other heathen sages, expressed contempt for the fear of death exhibited by Jesus; [1823] Vanini boldly extolled his own demeanour in the face of execution as superior to that of Jesus; [1824] and in the Evangelium Nicodemi, Satan concludes from this scene that Christ is a mere man. [1825] The supposition resorted to in this apocryphal book, that the trouble of Jesus was only assumed in order to encourage the devil to enter into a contest with him, [1826] is but a confession of inability to reconcile a real truth of that kind with the ideal of Jesus. Hence appeal has been made to the distinction between the two natures in Christ; the sorrowfulness and the prayer for the removal of the cup having been ascribed to the human nature, the resignation to the will of the Father, to the divine. [1827] As however, in the first place, this appeared to introduce an inadmissible division in the nature of Jesus; and in the second place, even a fear experienced by his human nature in the prospect of approaching bodily sufferings appeared unworthy of him: his consternation was represented as being of a spiritual and sympathetic character—as arising from the wickedness of Judas, the danger which threatened his disciples, and the fate which was impending over his nation. [1828] The effort to free the sorrow of Jesus from all reference to physical suffering, or to his own person, attained its highest pitch in the ecclesiastical tenet, that Jesus by substitution was burthened with the guilt of all mankind, and vicariously endured the wrath of God against that guilt. [1829] Some have even supposed that the devil himself wrestled with Jesus. [1830]

But such a cause for the trouble of Jesus is not found in the text; on the contrary, here as elsewhere (Matt. xx. 22 f. parall.), the cup ποτήριον for the removal of which Jesus prays, must be understood of his own bodily sufferings and death. Moreover, the above ecclesiastical opinion is founded on an unscriptural conception of the vicarious office of Jesus. It is true that even in the conception of the synoptists, the suffering of Jesus is a vicarious one for the sins of many; but the substitution consists, according to them, not in Jesus having immediately borne these sins and the punishment due to mankind on account of them, but in a personal suffering being laid upon him on account of those sins, and in order to remove their punishment. Thus, as on the cross, it was not directly the sins of the world, and the anger of God in relation to them, which afflicted him, but the wounds which he received, and his whole lamentable situation, wherein he was indeed placed for the sins of mankind: so, according to the idea of the Evangelists, in Gethsemane also, it was not immediately the feeling of the misery of humanity which occasioned his dismay, but the presentiment of his own suffering, which, however, was encountered in the stead of mankind.

From the untenable ecclesiastical view of the agony of Jesus, a descent has in more modern times been made to coarse materialism, by reducing what it was thought hopeless to justify ethically, as a mental condition, to a purely physical one, and supposing that Jesus was attacked by some malady in Gethsemane; [1831] an opinion which Paulus, with a severity which he should only have more industriously applied to his own explanations, pronounces to be altogether unseemly and opposed to the text, though he does not regard as improbable Heumann’s hypothesis, that in addition to his inward sorrow, Jesus had contracted a cold in the clayey ground traversed by the Kedron. [1832] On the other hand, the scene has been depicted in the colours of modern sentimentalism, and the feelings of friendship, the pain of separation, the thoughts of parting, have been assigned as the causes which so lacerated the mind of Jesus: [1833] or a confused blending of all the different kinds of sorrow, selfish and sympathetic, sensual and spiritual, has been presupposed. [1834] Paulus explains εἰ δυνατόν ἐστι, παρελθέτω τὸ ποτήριον (if it be possible, let this cup pass from me) as the expression of a purely moral anxiety on the part of Jesus, as to whether it were the will of God that he should give himself up to the attack immediately at hand, or whether it were not more accordant with the Divine pleasure, that he should yet escape from this danger: thus converting into a mere inquiry of God, what is obviously the most urgent prayer.

While Olshausen falls back on the ecclesiastical theory, and authoritatively declares that the supposition of external corporeal suffering having called forth the anguish of Jesus, ought to be banished as one which would annihilate the essential characteristics of his mission; others have more correctly acknowledged that in that anguish the passionate wish to be delivered from the terrible sufferings in prospect, the horror of sensitive nature in the face of annihilation, are certainly apparent. [1835] With justice also it is remarked, in opposition to the reproach which has been cast on Jesus, that the speedy conquest over rebellious nature removes every appearance of sinfulness; [1836] that, moreover, the shrinking of physical nature at the prospect of annihilation belongs to the essential conditions of life; [1837] nay, that the purer the human nature in an individual, the more susceptible is it in relation to suffering and annihilation; [1838] that the conquest over suffering intensely appreciated is greater than a stoical or even a Socratic insensibility. [1839]

With more reason, criticism has attacked the peculiar representation of the third gospel. The strengthening angel has created no little difficulty to the ancient church on dogmatical grounds,—to modern exposition on critical grounds. An ancient scholium on the consideration, that he who was adored and glorified with fear and trembling by all the celestial powers, did not need the strengthening of the angel, ὅτι τῆς ἰσχύος τοῦ ἀγγέλου οὐκ ἐπεδέετο ὁ ὑπὸ πάσης ἐπουρανίου δυνάμεως φόβω καὶ τρόμῳ προσκυνούμενος καὶ δοξαζόμενος, interprets the ἐνισχύειν ascribed to the angel as a declaring strong, i.e. as the offering of a doxology; [1840] while others, rather than admit that Jesus could need to be strengthened by an angel, transform the ἄγγελος ἐνισχύων into an evil angel, who attempted to use force against Jesus. [1841] The orthodox also, by founding a distinction between the state of humiliation and privation in Christ and that of his glorification, or in some similar way, have long blunted the edge of the dogmatical difficulty: but in place of this a critical objection has been only so much the more decidedly developed. In consideration of the suspicion which, according to our earlier observations, attaches to every alleged angelic appearance, it has been sought to reduce the angel in this narrative first into a man, [1842] and then into an image of the composure which Jesus regained. [1843] But the right point in the angelic appearance for criticism to grapple with, is indicated by the circumstance that Luke is the only Evangelist from whom we learn it. [1844] If, according to the ordinary presupposition, the first and fourth gospels are of apostolic origin; why this silence as to the angel on the part of Matthew, who is believed to have been in the garden, why especially on the part of John, who was among the three in the nearer neighbourhood of Jesus? If it be said: because sleepy as they were, and at some distance, and moreover under cover of the night, they did not observe him: it must be asked, whence are we to suppose that Luke received this information? [1845] That, assuming the disciples not to have themselves observed the appearance, Jesus should have narrated it to them on that evening, there is, from the intense excitement of those hours and the circumstance that the return of Jesus to his disciples was immediately followed by the arrival of Judas, little probability; and as little, that he communicated it to them in the days after the resurrection, and that nevertheless this information appeared worthy of record to none but the third Evangelist, who yet received it only at second hand. As in this manner there is every presumption against the historical character of the angelic appearance; why should not this also, like all appearances of the same kind which have come under our notice, especially in the history of the infancy of Jesus, be interpreted by us mythically? Gabler has been before us in advancing the idea, that in the primitive Christian community the rapid transition from the most violent mental conflict to the most tranquil resignation, which was observable in Jesus on that night, was explained, agreeably to the Jewish mode of thought, by the intervention of a strengthening angel, and that this explanation may have mingled itself with the narrative: Schleiermacher, too, finds it the most probable that this moment, described by Jesus himself as one of hard trial, was early glorified in hymns by angelic appearances, and that this embellishment, originally intended in a merely poetical sense, was received by the narrator of the third gospel as historical. [1846]

The other feature peculiar to Luke, namely, the bloody sweat, was early felt to be no less fraught with difficulty than the strengthening by the angel. At least it appears to have been this more than anything else, which occasioned the exclusion of the entire addition in Luke, v. 43 and 44, from many ancient copies of the gospels. For as the orthodox, who according to Epiphanius [1847] rejected the passage, appear to have shrunk the most from the lowest degree of fear which is expressed by the bloody sweat: so to the docetic opinions of some who did not receive this passage, [1848] this was the only particular which could give offence. Thus in an earlier age, doubts were raised respecting the fitness of the bloody sweat of Jesus on dogmatical considerations: while in more modern times this has been done on physiological grounds. It is true that authorities are adduced for instances of bloody sweat from Aristotle [1849] down to the more recent investigators of nature; [1850] but such a phenomenon is only mentioned as extremely rare, and as a symptom of decided disease. Hence Paulus points to the ὡσεὶ (as it were), as indicating that it is not directly a bloody sweat which is here spoken of, but only a sweat which might be compared to blood: this comparison, however, he refers only to the thick appearance of the drops, and Olshausen also agrees with him thus far, that a red colour of the perspiration is not necessarily included in the comparison. But in the course of a narrative which is meant as a prelude to the sanguinary death of Jesus, it is the most natural to take the comparison of the sweat to drops of blood, in its full sense. Further, here, yet more forcibly than in relation to the angelic appearance, the question suggests itself: how did Luke obtain this information? or to pass by all questions which must take the same form in this instance as in the previous one, how could the disciples, at a distance and in the night, discern the falling of drops of blood? According to Paulus indeed it ought not to be said that the sweat fell, for as the word καταβαίνοντες, falling, refers not to ἱδρὼς, sweat, but to the θρόμβοι αἵματος, drops of blood, which are introduced merely for the purpose of comparison, it is only meant that a sweat as thick and heavy as falling drops of blood stood on the brow of Jesus. But whether it be said: the sweat fell like drops of blood to the earth, or: it was like drops of blood falling to the earth, it comes pretty much to the same thing; at least the comparison of a sweat standing on the brow to blood falling on the earth would not be very apt, especially if together with the falling, we are to abstract also the colour of the blood, so that of the words, as it were drops of blood falling on the ground, ὡσεὶ θρόμβοι αἵματος καταβαίνοντες εἰς τὴν γῆν, only ὡσεὶ θρόμβοι, as it were drops, would properly have any decided meaning. Since then we can neither comprehend the circumstance, nor conceive what historical authority for it the narrator could have had, let us, with Schleiermacher, rather take this feature also as a poetical one construed historically by the Evangelist, or better still, as a mythical one, the origin of which may be easily explained from the tendency to perfect the conflict in the garden as a prelude to the sufferings of Jesus on the cross, by showing that not merely the psychical aspect of that suffering was fore-shadowed in the mental trouble, but also its physical aspect, in the bloody sweat.

As a counterpoise to this peculiarity of Luke, his two predecessors have, as we have said, the twofold occurrence of the number three,—the three disciples taken apart, and the three retirements and prayers of Jesus. It has indeed been contended that so restless a movement hither and thither, so rapid an alternation of retirement and return, is entirely suited to the state of mind in which Jesus then was, [1851] and also, that in the repetition of the prayer there is correctly shown an appropriate gradation; a more and more complete resignation to the will of the Father. [1852] But that the two narrators count the retirements of Jesus, marking them by the expressions ἐκ δευτέρου and ἐκ τρίτου, at once shows that the number three was a point of importance to them; and when Matthew, though he certainly gives in the second prayer an expression somewhat different from that of the first, in the third makes Jesus only repeat the same words, τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον, and when Mark does this even the second time,—this is a significant proof that they were embarrassed how to fill up the favourite number three with appropriate matter. According to Olshausen, Matthew, with his three acts of this conflict, must be right in opposition to Luke, because these three attacks made on Jesus through the medium of fear, correspond to the three attacks through the medium of desire, in the history of the temptation. This parallel is well founded; it only leads to an opposite result to that deduced by Olshausen. For which is more probable; that in both cases the threefold repetition of the attack had an objective ground, in a latent law of the kingdom of spirits, and hence is to be regarded as really historical; or that it had merely a subjective ground in the manner of the legend, so that the occurrence of this number here, as certainly as above in the history of the temptation, points to something mythical? [1853]

If then we subtract the angel, the bloody sweat, and the precisely threefold repetition of the retirement and prayer of Jesus, as mythical additions, there remains so far, as an historical kernel, the fact, that Jesus on that evening in the garden experienced a violent access of fear, and prayed that his sufferings might be averted, with the reservation nevertheless of an entire submission to the will of God: and at this point of the inquiry, it is not a little surprising, on the ordinary view of the relation between our gospels, that even this fundamental fact of the history in question, is wanting in the Gospel of John.

§ 126.

RELATION OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL TO THE EVENTS IN GETHSEMANE. THE FAREWELL DISCOURSES IN JOHN, AND THE SCENE FOLLOWING THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE GREEKS.

The relation of John to the synoptical narratives just considered has, when regarded more closely, two aspects: first, he has not what the synoptists present; and secondly, instead of this he has something which it is difficult to reconcile with their statements.

As regards the first and negative side, it has to be explained how, on the ordinary supposition concerning the author of the fourth gospel and the correctness of the synoptical account, it happens that John, who according to the two first gospels was one of the three whom Jesus took with him, to be the more immediate witnesses of his conflict, passes in silence over the whole event? It will not suffice to appeal to his sleepiness during the scene; for, if this was a hindrance to its narration, all the Evangelists must have been silent on the subject, and not John alone. Hence the usual expedient is tried here also, and he is said to have omitted the scene because he found it already presented with sufficient care in the writings of the synoptists. [1854] But between the two first synoptists and the third there is here so important a divergency, as to demand most urgently that John, if he took their accounts into consideration, should speak a mediating word in this difference. If however, John had not the works of his predecessors lying before him, he might still, it is said, suppose that history to be sufficiently familiar to his readers as a part of evangelical tradition. [1855] But as this tradition was the source of the divergent representations of the synoptists, it must itself have early begun to exhibit variations, and to narrate the fact first in one way, then in another: consequently on this view also there was a call on the author of the fourth gospel to rectify these wavering accounts. Hence of late an entirely new supposition has been adopted, namely, that John omits the events in Gethsemane lest, by the mention of the strengthening angel, he should give any furtherance to the Ebionitish opinion that the higher nature in Christ was an angel, which united itself with him at baptism; and now as it might be inferred, again departed from him before the hour of suffering. [1856] But—not to urge that we have already found any hypothesis of this nature inadequate to explain the omissions in the Gospel of John—if this Evangelist wished to avoid any indication of a close relation between Jesus and angels, he must also have excluded other passages from his gospel: above all, as Lücke remarks, [1857] the declaration concerning the ascending and descending of angels upon him, i. 52; and also the idea, given indeed only as the conjecture of some bystanders, that an angel spake to him, ἄγγελος αὐτῷ λελάληκεν, xii. 29. If, however, he on any ground whatever, found special matter of hesitation in the appearance of the angel in the garden: this would only be a reason for omitting the intervention of the angel, with Matthew and Mark, and not for excluding the whole scene, which was easily separable from this single particular.

If the mere absence of the incident from the narrative of John is not to be explained, the difficulty increases when we consider what this Evangelist communicates to us instead of the scene in the garden, concerning the mental condition of Jesus during the last hours previous to his arrest. In the same place which the synoptists assign to the agony in the garden, John, it is true, has nothing, for he makes the capture of Jesus follow at once on his arrival in the garden: but immediately before, at and after the last meal, he has discourses inspired by a state of mind, which could hardly have as a sequel scenes like those which according to the synoptical narratives occurred in the garden. In the farewell discourses in John, namely, xiv.–xvii., Jesus speaks precisely in the tone of one who has already inwardly triumphed over approaching suffering; from a point of view in which death is quenched in the beams of the glory which is to come after; with a divine peace which is cheerful in the certainty of its immovability: how is it possible that immediately after, this peace should give place to the most violent mental emotion, this tranquillity, to a trouble even unto death, and that from victory achieved he should sink again into doubtful contest, in which he needed strengthening by an angel? In those farewell discourses, he appears throughout as one who from the plenitude of his inward serenity and confidence, comforts his trembling friends: and yet he now seeks spiritual aid from the drowsy disciples, for he requests them to watch with him; there, he is so certain of the salutary effects of his approaching death, as to assure his followers, that it is well for them that he should go away, else the Comforter παράκλητος would not come to them: here, he again doubts whether his death be really the will of the Father; there, he exhibits a consciousness which under the necessity of death, inasmuch as it comprehends that necessity, recovers freedom, so that his will to die is one with the divine will that he should die: here, these two wills are so at variance, that the subjective, submissively indeed, but painfully, bows to the absolute. And these two opposite states of mind are not even separated by any intervening incident of an appalling character, but only by the short space of time which elapsed during the walk from Jerusalem to the Mount of Olives, across the Kedron: just as if, in that brook, as in another Lethe, Jesus had lost all remembrance of the foregoing discourses.

It is true that we are here referred to the alternation of mental states, which naturally becomes more rapid in proportion as the decisive moment approaches; [1858] to the fact that not seldom in the life of believers there occurs a sudden withdrawal of the higher sustenance of the soul, an abandonment of them by God, which alone renders the victory nevertheless achieved truly great and admirable. [1859] But this latter opinion at once betrays its unintelligent origin from a purely imaginative species of thought (to which the soul can appear like a lake, ebbing or flowing according as the floodgates of the conducting canals are opened or closed), by the contradictions in which it is on all sides involved. The triumph of Christ over the fear of death is said only to appear in its true magnitude, when we consider, that while a Socrates could only conquer because he remained in the full possession of his mental energies, Christ was able to triumph over all the powers of darkness, even when forsaken by God and the fulness of his spirit, by his merely human soul ψυχὴ:—but is not this the rankest Pelagianism, the most flagrant contradiction of the doctrine of the church, as of sound philosophy, which alike maintain that without God, man can do no good thing, that only by his armour can man repel the shafts of the wicked one? To escape from thus contradicting the results of sober reflection, the imaginative thinker is driven to contradict himself, by supposing that in the strengthening angel (which, incidentally, contrary to the verbal significance of the text, is reduced to a merely internal vision of Jesus) there was imparted to Jesus, when wrestling in the extremity of his abandonment, an influx of spiritual strength; so that he thus would not, as it was at first vaunted, have conquered without, but only with Divine aid; if, in accordance with Luke, the angel be supposed to have appeared prior to the last, most violent part of the conflict, in order to strengthen Jesus for this ultimate trial. But rather than fall into so evident a self-contradiction, Olshausen prefers covertly to contradict the text, and hence transposes the order of the incidents, assuming, without further preliminary, that the strengthening came after the third prayer, consequently after the victory had been already gained, whence he is driven to the extreme arbitrariness of interpreting the phrase: καὶ γενόμενος ἐν ἀγωνίᾳ ἐκτενέστερον προσηύχετο, and being in an agony he prayed, as the pluperfect—he had prayed.

But setting aside this figurative representation of the cause which produced the sudden change of mood in Jesus; such a change is in itself burthened with many difficulties. Correctly speaking, what here took place in Jesus was not a mere change, but a relapse of the most startling kind. In the so-called sacerdotal prayer, John xvii. especially, Jesus had completely closed his account with the Father; all fear in relation to what awaited him lay so far behind the point which he had here attained, that he spent not a single word on his own suffering, and only spoke of the afflictions which threatened his friends; the chief subject of his communion with the Father was the glory into which he was about to enter, and the blessedness which he hoped to have obtained for his followers: so that his departure to the scene of his arrest has entirely the character of an accessory fact, merely consummating by external realization what was already inwardly and essentially effected. Now if Jesus after this closing of his account with God, once more opened it; if after having held himself already victor, he once more sank into anxious conflict: must he not have laid himself open to the remonstrance: why didst thou not, instead of indulging in vain anticipations of glory, rather occupy thyself betimes with earnest thoughts of the coming trial, that by such a preparation, thou mightest spare thyself perilous surprise on its approach? why didst thou utter the words of triumph before thou hadst fought, so as to be obliged with shame to cry for help at the on-coming of the battle? In fact after the assurance of already achieved victory expressed in the farewell discourses, and especially in the final prayer, the lapse into such a state of mind as that described by the synoptists, would have been a very humiliating declension, which Jesus could not have foreseen, otherwise he would not have expressed himself with so much confidence; and which, therefore, would prove that he was deceived in himself, that he held himself to be stronger than he actually found himself, and that he had given utterance to this too high self-valuation, not without a degree of presumption. Those who regard this as inconsistent with the equally judicious and modest character which Jesus manifests on other occasions, will find themselves urged to the dilemma, that either the farewell discourses in John, at least the final prayer, or else the events in Gethsemane, cannot be historical.

It is to be regretted that in coming to a decision in this case, theologians have set out rather from dogmatical prejudices than from critical grounds. Usteri’s assertion, at least, that the representation given in John of the state of mind of Jesus in his last hours is the only correct one, while that of the synoptists is unhistorical, [1860] is only to be accounted for by that author’s then zealous adherence to the paragraphs of Schleiermacher’s Dogmatik, wherein the idea of the impeccability of Jesus is carried to an extent which excludes even the slightest degree of conflict; for that, apart from such presuppositions, the representation given in John of the last hours of Jesus, is the more natural and appropriate, it might be difficult to prove. On the contrary, Bretschneider might rather appear to be right, when he claims the superiority in naturalness and intrinsic evidence of truth for the synoptists: [1861] were it not that our confidence in the decisions of this writer is undermined, by his dislike for the dogmatical and metaphysical purport of the discourses assigned to this period in John—a dislike which appears to indicate that his entire polemic against John originated in the discordance between his own critical philosophy of reflection, and the speculative doctrine of the fourth gospel.

John, indeed, as even the author of the Probabilia remarks, has not wholly passed over the anxiety of Jesus in relation to his approaching death; he has only assigned to it an earlier epoch, John xii. 27 ff. The scene with which John connects it takes place immediately after the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, when certain Greeks, doubtless proselytes of the gate, who had come among the multitude to the feast, wished to have an interview with him. With all the diversity of the circumstances and of the event itself, there is yet a striking agreement between what here occurs and what the synoptists place in the last evening of the life of Jesus, and in the seclusion of the garden. As Jesus here declares to his disciples, my soul is troubled even unto death, περίλυπός ἐστιν ἡ ψυχή μου ἕως θανάτου (Matt. xxvi. 38): so there he says: Now is my soul troubled, νῦν ἡ ψυχή μου τετάρακται (John xii. 27); as he here prays, that if it be possible, this hour may pass from him, ἵνα, εἰ δυνατόν ἐστι, παρέλθη ἀπ’ αὐτοῦ ἡ ὥρα (Mark xiv. 35): so there he entreats: Father, save me from this hour, πάτερ, σωσόν με ἐκ τῆς ὥρας ταύτης (John xii. 27); as here he calms himself by the restriction: nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt, ἀλλ’ οὐ τί ἐγὼ θέλω, ἀλλὰ τί σύ (Mark xiv. 36): so there, by the reflection: but for this cause came I to this hour, ἀλλὰ διὰ τοῦτο ἦλθον εἰς τὴν ὥραν ταύτην (John xii. 27); lastly, as here an angel appears strengthening Jesus, ἄγγελος ἐνισχύων (Luke xxii. 43): so there something happens which occasions the bystanders to observe that an angel spake to him, ἄγγελος αὐτῷ λελάληκεν (John xii. 29). This similarity has induced many of the more modern theologians to pronounce the incident in John xii. 27 ff., and that in Gethsemane identical; and after this admission the only question was, on which side the reproach of inaccurate narration, and more especially of erroneous position, ought to fall.

Agreeably to the tendency of the latest criticism of the gospels, the burthen of error in this matter has been more immediately cast on the synoptists. The true occasion of the mental conflict of Jesus is said to be found only in John, namely, in the approach of those Greeks who intimated to him through Philip and Andrew their wish for an interview with him. These persons doubtless wished to make the proposal that he should leave Palestine and carry forward his work among the foreign Jews; such a proposal held out to him the enticement of escape from the threatening danger, and this for some moments placed him in a state of doubt and inward conflict, which however ended by his refusing to admit the Greeks to his presence. [1862] Here we have the effects of a vision rendered so acute by a double prejudice, both critical and dogmatical, as to read statements between the lines of the text; for of such an intended proposal on the part of the Greeks, there is no trace in John; and yet, even allowing that the Evangelist knew nothing of the plan of the Greeks from these individuals themselves, there must have been some intimation in the discourse of Jesus that his emotion had reference to such a proposal. Judging from the context, the request of the Greeks had no other motive than that the solemn entrance of Jesus, and the popular rumour concerning him, had rendered them curious to see and know the celebrated man; and this desire of theirs was not connected with the emotion which Jesus experienced on the occasion, otherwise than that it led Jesus to think of the speedy propagation of his kingdom in the Gentile world, and of its indispensable condition, namely, his death. Here, however, the idea of his death is only mediately and remotely presented to the soul of Jesus; hence it is the more difficult to conceive how it could affect him so strongly, as that he should feel himself urged to beseech the Father for delivery from this hour; and if he were ever profoundly moved by the presentiment of death, the synoptists appear to place this fear in a more suitable position, in immediate proximity to the commencement of his sufferings. The representation of John is also deficient in certain circumstances, presented by the synoptists, which appear to vindicate the trouble of Jesus. In the solitude of the garden and the gloom of night, such an ebullition of feeling is more conceivable; and its unrepressed utterance to his most intimate and worthy friends is natural and justifiable. But according to John that agitation seized Jesus in the broad daylight, in a concourse of people; a situation in which it is ordinarily more easy to maintain composure, or in which at least it is usual, from the possibility of misconstruction, to suppress the more profound emotions.

Hence it is more easy to agree with Theile’s opinion, that the author of the fourth gospel has inserted the incident, correctly placed by the synoptists, in a false position. [1863] Jesus having said, as an introduction to the answer which he returned to the request of the Greeks, that they might see the man who had been so glorified by his entrance into the city: Yes, the hour of my glorification is come, but of glorification by death (xii. 23 f.): this led the narrator astray, and induced him, instead of giving the real answer of Jesus to the Greeks together with the result, to make Jesus dilate on the intrinsic necessity of his death, and then almost unconsciously to interweave the description of the internal conflict which Jesus had to experience in virtue of his voluntary sacrifice, whence he subsequently, in its proper place, omits this conflict. There is nothing strange in Theile’s opinion, except that he supposes it possible for the Apostle John to have made such a transposition. That the scene in Gethsemane, from his having been asleep while it was passing, was not deeply imprinted on his mind, and that it was besides thrust into the background of his memory by the crucifixion which shortly followed, might have been considered explanatory of an entire omission, or a merely summary account of the scene on his part, but by no means of an incorrect position. If notwithstanding his sleepiness at the time, he had taken any notice of the event, he must at least have retained thus much—that that peculiar state of mind in Jesus befel him close upon the commencement of his sufferings, in the night and in privacy: how could he ever so far belie his memory as to make the scene take place at a much earlier period, in the open day, and among many people? Rather than thus endanger the authenticity of the Gospel of John, others, alleging the possibility that such a state of mind might occur more than once in the latter part of the life of Jesus, deny the identity of the two scenes. [1864]

Certainly, between the synoptical representation of the mental conflict of Jesus and that given in John, besides the external difference of position, there exist important internal divergencies; the narrative in John containing features which have no analogy with anything in the synoptical account of the events in Gethsemane. It is true that the petition of Jesus in John for deliverance from this hour, is perfectly in unison with his prayer in the synoptists: but, on the other hand, there is no parallel to the additional prayer in John: Father, glorify thy name, πάτερ, δόξασόν σου τὸ ὄνομα (xii. 28): further, though in both accounts an angel is spoken of, yet there is no trace in the synoptists of the heavenly voice which in the fourth gospel occasions the belief that an angel is concerned. Such heavenly voices are not found in the three first gospels elsewhere than at the baptism and again at the transfiguration; of which latter scene the prayer of Jesus in John: Father, glorify thy name, may remind us. In the synoptical description of the transfiguration, it is true the expressions δόξα, glory and δοξάζειν, to glorify, are not found: but the Second Epistle to Peter represents Jesus as receiving in the transfiguration honour and glory, τιμὴν καὶ δόξαν, and the heavenly voice as coming from the excellent glory, μεγαλοπρεπὴς δόξα (i. 17 f.). Thus in addition to the two narratives already considered, there presents itself a third as a parallel; since the scene in John xii. 27 ff. is on the one side, by the trouble of spirit and the angel, allied to the occurrences in Gethsemane, while on the other side, by the prayer for glorification and the confirmatory voice from heaven, it has some affinity with the history of the transfiguration. And here two cases are possible: either that the narrative of John is the simple root, the separation of which into its constituent elements has given rise in a traditional manner to the two synoptical anecdotes of the transfiguration and the agony in the garden; or that these last are the original formations, from the fusing and intermingling of which in the legend the narrative of John is the mixed product: between which cases only the intrinsic character of the narratives can decide. That the synoptical narratives of the transfiguration and the agony in the garden are clear pictures, with strongly marked features, can by itself prove nothing; since, as we have sufficiently shown, a narrative of legendary origin may just as well possess these characteristics as one of a purely historical nature. Thus if the narrative in John were merely less clear and definite, this need not prevent it from being regarded as the original, simple sketch, from which the embellishing hand of tradition had elaborated those more highly coloured pictures. But the fact is that the narrative in John is wanting not only in definiteness, but in agreement with the attendant circumstances and with itself. We have no intimation what was the answer of Jesus to the Greeks, or what became of those persons themselves; no appropriate motive is given for the sudden anguish of Jesus and his prayer for glorification. Such a mixture of heterogeneous parts is always the sign of a secondary product, of an alluvial conglomeration; and hence we seem warranted to conclude, that in the narrative of John the two synoptical anecdotes of the transfiguration and the agony in the garden are blended together. If, as is apparently the case, the legend when it reached the fourth Evangelist presented these two incidents in faded colours, [1865] and in indistinct outline: it would be easy for him, since his idea of glorification (δοξάζειν) had the double aspect of suffering and exaltation, to confuse the two; what he gathered from the narrative of the agony in the garden, of a prayer of Jesus to the Father, he might connect with the heavenly voice in the history of the transfiguration, making this an answer to the prayer; to the voice, the more particular import of which, as given by the synoptists, was unknown to him, he gave, in accordance, with his general notion of this incident as a glory δόξα conferred on Jesus, the import: I have both glorified and will glorify again, καὶ ἐδόξασα, καὶ πάλιν δοξάσω, and to make it correspond with this divine response, he had to unite with the prayer of Jesus for deliverance that for glorification also; the strengthening angel, of which the fourth Evangelist had perhaps also heard something, was included in the opinion of the people as to the source of the heavenly voice; in regard to the time, John placed his narrative about midway between the transfiguration and the agony in the garden, and from ignorance of the original circumstances the choice in this respect was infelicitous.

If we here revert to the question from which we set out, whether we are rather to retain the farewell discourses in John as thoroughly historical, and renounce the synoptical representation of the scene in Gethsemane, or vice versâ: we shall be more inclined, considering the result of the inquiry just instituted, to embrace the latter alternative. The difficulty, that it is scarcely conceivable how John could accurately remember these long discourses of Jesus, Paulus has thought to solve, by the conjecture, that the apostle, probably on the next Sabbath, while Jesus lay in the grave, recalled to his mind the conversations of the previous evening, and perhaps also wrote them down. [1866] But in that period of depression, which John also shared, he would be scarcely in a condition to reproduce these discourses without obscuring their peculiar hue of unclouded serenity; on the contrary, as the author of the Wolfenbüttel fragments observes, had the narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus been committed to writing by the Evangelists in the couple of days after the death of Jesus, when they had no longer any hope, all promises would have been excluded from their gospels. [1867] Hence even Lücke, in consideration of the mode of expression in the farewell discourses, and particularly in the final prayer, being so peculiarly that of John, has relinquished the position that Jesus spoke in the very words which John puts into his mouth, i.e. the authenticity of these discourses in the strictest sense; but only to maintain the more firmly their authenticity in the wider sense, i.e. the genuineness of the substantial thoughts. [1868] Even this, however, has been attacked by the author of the Probabilia, for he asks, with especial reference to chap. xvii., whether it be conceivable that Jesus in the anticipation of violent death, had nothing of more immediate concern than to commune with God on the subject of his person, the works he had already achieved, and the glory to be expected? and whether it be not rather highly probable that the prayer flowed only from the mind of the writer, and was intended by him as a confirmation of his doctrine of Jesus as the incarnate word λόγος, and of the dignity of the apostles? [1869] This representation is so far true that the final prayer in question resembles not an immediate outpouring of soul, but a product of reflection—is rather a discourse on Jesus than a discourse from him. It presents everywhere the mode of thought of one who stands far in advance of the circumstances of which he writes, and hence already sees the form of Jesus in the glorifying haze of distance; an illusion which he heightens by putting his own thoughts, which had sprung from an advanced development of the Christian community, into the mouth of its Founder prior to its actual existence. But in the preceding farewell discourses also there are many thoughts which appear to have taken their shape from an experience of the event. Their entire tone may be the most naturally explained by the supposition, that they are the work of one to whom the death of Jesus was already a past event, the terrors of which had melted away in its blessed consequences, and in the devotional contemplation of the church. In particular, apart from what is said of the return of Christ, that era in the Christian cause which is generally called the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, is predicted in the declarations concerning the Paraclete, and the judgment which he would hold over the world (xiv. 16 ff. 25, xv. 26, xvi. 7 ff. 13 ff.), with a distinctness which seems to indicate light borrowed from the issue.

In relation, however, to the fact that the farewell discourses involve the decided foreknowledge of the immediately approaching result, the sufferings and death of Jesus (xiii. 18 ff., 33, 38, xiv. 30 f. xvi. 5 ff. 16, 32 f.), the narrative of John stands on the same ground with the synoptical one, since this also rests on the presupposition of the most exact prescience of the hour and moment when the sufferings will commence. It was not only at the last meal and on the departure to the Mount of Olives, that this foreknowledge was shown, according to the three first gospels, for in them as well as in John, Jesus predicts that the denial of Peter will take place before the cock crow; not only does the agony in the garden rest on the foreknowledge of the impending sufferings, but at the end of this conflict Jesus is able to say that now, at this very minute, the betrayer is in the act of approaching (Matt. xxvi. 45 f.). Paulus, it is true, maintains that Jesus saw from a distance the troop of guards coming out of the city, which, as they had torches, was certainly possible from a garden on the Mount of Olives: but without being previously informed of the plans of his enemies, Jesus could not know that he was the object of pursuit; and at any rate the Evangelists narrate the words of Jesus as a proof of his supernatural knowledge. But if according to our previous inquiry, the foreknowledge of the catastrophe in general could not proceed from the higher principle in Jesus, neither could that of the precise moment when it would commence; while that he in a natural way, by means of secret friends in the Sanhedrim, or otherwise, was apprised of the fatal blow which the Jewish rulers with the help of one of his disciples were about to aim at him in the coming night, we have no trace in our Evangelical accounts, and we are therefore not authorized to presuppose anything of the kind. On the contrary, as the above declaration of Jesus is given by the narrators as a proof of his higher knowledge, either we must receive it as such, or, if we cannot do this, we must embrace the negative inference, that they are here incorrect in narrating such a proof; and the positive conclusion on which this borders is, not that that knowledge was in fact only a natural one, but, that the evangelical narrators must have had an interest in maintaining a supernatural knowledge of his approaching sufferings on the part of Jesus; an interest the nature of which has been already unfolded.

The motive also for heightening the prescience into a real presentiment, and thus for creating the scene in Gethsemane, is easy of discovery. On the one hand, there cannot be a more obvious proof that a foreknowledge of an event or condition has existed, than its having risen to the vividness of a presentiment; on the other hand, the suffering must appear the more awful, if the mere presentiment extorted from him who was destined to that suffering, anguish even to bloody sweat, and prayer for deliverance. Further, the sufferings of Jesus were exhibited in a higher sense, as voluntary, if before they came upon him externally, he had resigned himself to them internally; and lastly, it must have gratified primitive Christian devotion, to withdraw the real crisis of these sufferings from the profane eyes to which he was exposed on the cross, and to enshrine it as a mystery only witnessed by a narrow circle of the initiated. As materials for the formation of this scene, besides the description of the sorrow and the prayer which were essential to it, there presented itself first the image of a cup ποτήριον, used by Jesus himself as a designation of his sufferings (Matt. xx. 22 f.); and secondly, Old Testament passages, in Psalms of lamentation, xlii. 6, 12, xliii. 5, where in the LXX. the ψυχὴ περίλυπος (soul exceeding sorrowful) occurs, and in addition to this the expression ἕως θανάτου (unto death) the more naturally suggested itself, since Jesus was here really about to encounter death. This representation must have been of early origin, because in the Epistle to the Hebrews (v. 7) there is an indubitable allusion to this scene.—Thus Gabler said too little when he pronounced the angelic appearance, a mythical garb of the fact that Jesus in the deepest sorrow of that night suddenly felt an accession of mental strength; since rather, the entire scene in Gethsemane, because it rests on presuppositions destitute of proof, must be renounced.

Herewith the dilemma above stated falls to the ground, since we must pronounce unhistorical not only one of the two, but both representations of the last hours of Jesus before his arrest. The only degree of distinction between the historical value of the synoptical account and that of John is, that the former is a mythical product of the first era of traditional formation, the latter of the second,—or more correctly, the one is a product of the second order, the other of the third. The representation common to the synoptists and to John, that Jesus foreknew his sufferings even to the day and hour of their arrival, is the first modification which the pious legend gave to the real history of Jesus; the statement of the synoptists, that he even had an antecedent experience of his sufferings, is the second step of the mythical; while, that although he foreknew them, and also in one instance had a foretaste of them (John xii. 27 ff.), he had yet long beforehand completely triumphed over them, and when they stood immediately before him, looked them in the face with unperturbed serenity—this representation of the fourth gospel is the third and highest grade of devotional, but unhistorical embellishment.

§ 127.

ARREST OF JESUS.

In strict accordance with the declaration of Jesus that even now the betrayer is at hand, Judas while he is yet speaking approaches with an armed force (Matt. xxvi. 47 parall., comp. John xvii. 3). This band, which according to the synoptists came from the chief priests and elders, was according to Luke led by the captains of the temple στρατηγοῖς τοῦ ἱεροῦ, and hence was probably a detachment of the soldiers of the temple, to whom, judging from the word ὄχλος, and from staves ξύλοι being mentioned among the weapons, was apparently joined a tumultuous crowd: according to the representation of John, who, together with the servants or officers of the chief priests and Pharisees, ὑπηρέταις τῶν ἀρχιερέων καὶ Φαρισαίων, speaks of a band σπεῖρα, and a captain χιλίαρκος, without mentioning any tumultuary force, it appears as if the Jewish magistrates had procured as a support a detachment of Roman soldiery. [1870]