Chapter III (2)

According to the three first Evangelists, Judas steps forth and kisses Jesus, in order by this preconcerted sign to indicate him to the approaching band as the individual whom they were to seize: according to the fourth gospel, on the contrary, Jesus advances apparently out of the garden (ἐξελθὼν) to meet them, and presents himself as the person whom they seek. In order to reconcile this divergency, some have conceived the occurrences thus: Jesus, to prevent his disciples from being taken, first went towards the multitude, and made himself known; hereupon Judas stepped forth, and indicated him by the kiss. [1871] But had Jesus already made himself known, Judas might have spared the kiss; for that the people did not believe the assertion of Jesus that he was the man whom they sought, and still waited for its confirmation by the kiss of the bribed disciple, is a supposition incompatible with the statement of the fourth gospel that the words I am he, made so strong an impression on them that they went backward and fell to the ground. Hence others have inverted the order of the scene, imagining that Judas first stepped forward and distinguished Jesus by the kiss, and that then, before the crowd could press into the garden, Jesus himself advanced and made himself known. [1872] But if Judas had already indicated him by the kiss, and he had so well understood the object of the kiss as is implied in his answer to it, Luke v. 48: there was no need for him still to make himself known, seeing that he was already made known; to do so for the protection of the disciples was equally superfluous, since he must have inferred from the traitor’s kiss, that it was intended to single him out and carry him away from his followers; if he did so merely to show his courage, this was almost theatrical: while, in general, the idea that Jesus, between the kiss of Judas, and the entrance of the crowd, which was certainly immediate, advanced towards the latter with questions and answers, throws into his demeanour a degree of hurry and precipitancy so ill suited to his circumstances, that the Evangelists can scarcely have meant such an inference to be drawn. It should therefore be acknowledged that neither of the two representations is designed as a supplement to the other, [1873] since each has a different conception of the manner in which Jesus was made known, and in which Judas was active in the affair. That Judas was guide to them that took Jesus, ὁδηγὸς τοῖς συλλαβοῦσι τὸν Ἰησοῦν (Acts i. 16), all the Evangelists agree. But while according to the synoptical account the task of Judas includes not only the pointing out of the place, but also the distinguishing of the person by the kiss, John makes the agency of Judas end with the indication of the place, and represents him after the arrival on the spot as standing inactive among the crowd (εἱστήκει δὲ καὶ Ἰούδας—μετ’ αὐτῶν, v. 5). Why John does not assign to Judas the task of personally indicating Jesus, it is easy to see: because, namely, he would have Jesus appear, not as one delivered up, but as delivering himself up, so that his sufferings may be manifested in a higher degree as undertaken voluntarily. We have only to remember how the earliest opponents of Christianity imputed the retirement of Jesus out of the city into the distant garden, as an ignominious flight from his enemies, [1874] in order to find it conceivable that there arose among the Christians at an early period the inclination to transcend the common evangelical tradition in representing his demeanour on his arrest in the light of a voluntary self-resignation.

In the synoptists the kiss of Judas is followed by the cutting question of Jesus to the traitor; in John, after Jesus has uttered the ἐγώ εἰμι, I am he, it is stated that under the influence of these commanding words, the multitude who had come out to seize him went backward and fell to the ground, so that Jesus had to repeat his declaration and as it were encourage the people to seize him. Of late it has been denied that there was any miracle here: the impression of the personality of Jesus, it is said, acted psychologically on those among the crowd who had already often seen and heard Jesus; and in support of this opinion reference is made to the examples of this kind in the life of Marius, Coligny, and others. [1875] But neither in the synoptical account, according to which there needed the indication of Jesus by the kiss, nor in that of John, according to which there needed the declaration of Jesus, I am he, does Jesus appear to be known to the crowd, at least in such a manner as to exercise any profound influence over them; while the above examples only show that sometimes the powerful impression of a man’s personality has paralyzed the murderous hands of an individual or of a few, but not that a whole detachment of civil officers and soldiers has been made, not merely to draw back, but to fall to the ground. It answers no purpose for Lücke to make first a few fall down and then the whole crowd, except that of rendering it impossible to imagine the scene with gravity. Hence we turn to the old theologians, who here unanimously acknowledge a miracle. The Christ who by word of his mouth cast down the hostile multitude, is no other than he who according to 2 Thess. ii. 8, shall consume the Antichrist with the spirit of his mouth, i.e. not the historical Christ, but the Christ of the Jewish and primitive Christian imagination. The author of the fourth gospel especially, who had so often remarked how the enemies of Jesus and their creatures were unable to lay hands on him, because his hour was not yet come (vii. 30, 32, 44 ff., viii. 20), had an inducement, now, when the hour was come, to represent the ultimately successful attempt as also failing at the first in a thoroughly astounding manner; especially as this fully accorded with the interest by which he is governed throughout the description of this whole scene—the demonstrating that the capture of Jesus was purely an act of his own free will. When Jesus lays the soldiers prostrate by the power of his word, he gives them a proof of what he could do, if to liberate himself were his object; and when he allows himself to be seized immediately after, this appears as the most purely voluntary self-sacrifice. Thus in the fourth gospel Jesus gives a practical proof of that power, which in the first he only expresses by words, when he says to one of his disciples: Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me twelve legions of angels (v. 53)?

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]