ACCORDING to the Gospels, Jesus more than once, and while the result was yet distant, predicted to his disciples that sufferings and a violent death awaited him. Moreover, if we trust the synoptic accounts, he did not predict his fate merely in general terms, but specified beforehand the place of his passion, namely, Jerusalem; the time, namely, the approaching Passover; the persons from whom he would have to suffer, namely, the chief priests, scribes and Gentiles; the essential form of his passion, namely, crucifixion, in consequence of a judicial sentence; and even its accessory circumstances, namely, scourging, reviling, and spitting (Matt. xvi. 21; xvii. 12, 22 f.; xx.17ff.; xxvi. 12, with the parali., Luke xiii. 33). Between the Synoptics and the author of the fourth gospel, there exists a threefold difference in relation to this subject. Firstly and chiefly, in the latter the predictions of Jesus do not appear so clear and intelligible, but are for the most part presented in obscure figurativediscourses, concerning which the narrator himself confesses, that the disciples understood them not until after the issue (ii. 22.). In addition to a decided declaration that he will voluntarily lay down his life (x.15ff.), Jesus in this gospel is particularly fond of allud- ^{P.632} ing to his approaching death under the expressions, vovv, vi to lift iy, to be lifted up, in the application of which he seems to vacillate between his exaltation on the cross, and his exaltation to glory (iii. 14, viii. 28, xii. 32); he compares his approaching exaltation with that of the brazen serpent in the wilderness (iii. 14), as, in Matthew, he compares his fate with that of Jonah (xii. 40.); on another occasion he speaks of going away whither no man can follow him (vii.33ff.; viii. 21 f.), as, in the Synoptics, of a taking away of the bridegroom, which will plunge his friends into mourning (Matt. ix. 15 parall), and of a cup, which he must drink, and which his disciples will find it hard to partake of with him (Matt. xx. 22 parall.) The two other differences are less marked, but are still observable. One of them is, that while in John the allusions to the violent death of Jesus run in an equal degree through the whole gospel; in the Synoptics, the repeated and definite announcements of his deah are found only towards the end, partly immediately before, partly daring, the last journey; in earlier chapters there occurs, with the exception of the obscure discourse on the sign of Jonah, (which we shall soon see to be no prediction of death,) only the intimation of a removal (doubtless violent) of the bridegroom. The last difference is, that while according to the three first evangelists, Jesus imparts those predictions (again with the single exception of the above intimation, Matt. ix. 15,) only to the confidential circle of his disciples; in John, he utters them in the presence of the people, and even of his enemies.

In the critical investigation of these Gospel accounts, we shall proceed from the special to the general, in the following manner. First we shall ask: Is it credible that Jesus had a foreknowledge of so many particular features of the fate which awaited him? and next: Is even a general foreknowledge and prediction of his sufferings, on the part of Jesus, probable? in which inquiry, the difference between the representation of John, and that of the Synoptics, will necessarily come under our consideration.

There are two modes of explaining how Jesus could so precisely foreknow the particular circumstances of his passion and death: the one resting on a supernatural, the other on a natural basis. The former appears adequate to solve the problem by the simple position, that before the prophetic spirit, which dwelt in Jesus in the richest plenitude, his destiny must have lain unfolded from the beginning. As, however, Jesus himself, in his announcements of his "sufferings, expressly appealed to the Old Testament, the prophecies of which concerning him must be fulfilled in all points (Luke xviii. 31. comp. xxii. 37; xxiv.25ff.; Matt. xxvi. 54.); so the orthodox view ought not to despise this help, but must give to its explanation the modification, that Jesus, continually occupied with the prophecies of the Old Testament may have drawn those particularities out of them, by the aid of the spirit that dwelt within him. According to this, while the knowledge of the time of his passion remains consigned to his prophetic presentiment, unless he be supposed to have calculated this out of Daniel, or some similar source; Jesus must have come to regard Jerusalem as the scene of his suffering and death, by contemplating the fate of earlier prophets as a type of his own, the Spirit telling Mm, that where so many prophets had suffered death, there, a fortiori, must the Messiah also suffer (Luke xiii. 33.); that his death would be the sequel of a formal sentence, he must have gathered from Isai liii. 8, where a judgment Baaip is spoken of as impending over the servant of God, and from v. 12, where it is said that he was numbered with the transgressors, kv rotf dvopois iXoyicdf) (comp. Luke xxii. 37.); that his sentence would proceed from the rulers of his own people, he might perhaps have concluded from Ps. cxviii. 22, where the builders, olKodoovvreg, who reject the corner-stone, are, according to apostolic interpretation (Acts iv. 11), the Jewish rlers; that he would be delivered to the Gentiles, he might infer from the fact, that in several plaintive psalms, which are susceptible of a Messianic interpretation, the persecuting parties are represented as tsai. i.e. heathens; that the precise manner of his death would be crucifixion, he might have deduced, partly from the type of the brazen serpent which was suspended on a pole, Numb. xxi. 8 f. (comp. John iii. 14), partly from the piercing of the hands and feet, Ps. xxii. 17; LXX; lastly, that he would be the object of scorn and personal maltreatment, he might have concluded from passages such as v.7ff. in the Psalm above quoted, Isai 1, 6, etc. Now if the spirit which dwelt in Jesus, and which, according to the orthodox opinion, revealed to him the reference of these prophecies and types to his ultimate destiny, was a spirit of truth: this reference to Jesus must admit of being proved to be the true and original sense of those Old Testament passages. But, to confine ourselves to the principal pasages only, a profound grammatical and historical exposition has convincingly shown, for all who are in a condition to liberate themselves from dogmatic presuppositions, that in none of these is there any allusion to the sufferings of Christ. Instead of this, Isai. 1. 6, speaks of the ill usage which the prophets had to experience; of the calamities of the prophetic order, or more probably of the people of Israel; Ps. cxiii. of the unexpected deliverance and exaltation, of that people, or of one of their princes; while Ps. xxii. is the complaint of an oppressed exile. As to the 17th verse of this Psalm, which has been interpreted as having reference to the crucifixion of Christ, even presupposing the most improbable interpretation of ''"ixs by perfoderunt, this must in no case be understood literally but only figuratively, and the image would be derived, not from a crucifixion, ^{P.634} but from a chase, or a combat with wild beasts; hence the application of this passage to Christ is now only maintained by those with whom it would be lost labour to contend. According to the orthodox view, however, Jesus, in a supernatural manner, by means of his higher nature, discovered in these passages a pre-intimation of the particular features of his passion; but, in that case, since such is not the true sense of these passages, the spirit that dwelt in Jesus cannot have been the spirit of truth, but a lying spirit. Thus the orthodox expositor, so far as he does not exclude himself from the light dispensed by an unprejudiced interpretation of the Old Testament, is driven, for the sake of his own interest, to adopt the natural opinion: namely, that Jesus was led to such an interpretation of Old Testament passages, not by divine inspiration, but by a combination of his own.

According to this opinion, there was no difficulty in foreseeing that it would be the ruling sacerdotal party to which Jesus must succumb, since, on the one hand, it was pre-eminently embittered against Jesus, on the other, it was in possession of the necessary power; and equally obvious was it that they would make Jerusalem the theatre of his judgment and execution, since this was the centre of their strength; that after being sentenced by the rulers of his people, he would be delivered to the Romans for execution, followed from the limitation of the Jewish judicial power at that period: that crucifixion was the death to which he would be sentenced, might be conjectured from the fact that with the Romans this species of death was a customary infliction, especially on rebels; lastly, that scourging and reviling would not be wanting, might likewise be inferred from Roman custom, and the barbarity of judicial proceedings in that age. But, viewing the subject more nearly, how could Jesus so certainly know that erod, who had directed a threatening attention to his movements (Luke xiii. 31), would not forestall the sacerdotal party, and add to the murder of the Baptist, that of his more important follower? And even if he felt himself warranted in believing that real danger threatened him from the side of the hierarchy only (Luke xiii. 33.); what was his guarantee that one of their tumultuary attempts to murder him would not at last succeed (comp. John viii. 59; x. 31), and that he would not, as Stephen did at a later period, without any further formalities, and without a previous delivery to the Romans, find his death in quite another manner than by the Roman punishment of crucifixion? Lastly, how could he so confidently assert that the very next plot of his enemies, after so many failures, would be successful, and that the very next journey to the Passover would be his last? But the natural explanation also can call to its aid the Old Testament passages, and say: Jesus, whether by the application of a mode of nterpretation then current among his countrymen, or under the guidance of his own individual views, ^{P.635} gathered from the passages already quoted, a precise idea of the circumstances attendant on the violent end which awaited him as the Messiah. But if in the first place it would be difficult to prove, that already in the lifetime of Jesus all these various passages were referred to the Messiah; and if it be equally difficult to conceive that Jesus could independently, prior to the issue, discover such a reference: so it would be a case undistinguishable from a miracle, if the result had actually corresponded to so false an interpretation; moreover, the Old Testament oracles and types will not suffice to explain all the particular features in the predictions of Jesus, especially the precise determination of time.

If then Jesus cannot have had so precise a foreknowledge of the circumstances of his passion and death, either in a supernatural or a natural way; he cannot have had such a foreknowledge at all; and the minute predictions which the evangelists put into his mouth must be regarded as a vaticinium post eventum. Commentators who have arrived at this conclusion, have not failed to extol the account of John, in opposition to that of the Synoptics, on the ground that precisely those traits in the predictions of Jesus which, from their special character, he cannot have uttered, are only found in the Synoptics, while John attributes to Jesus no more than indefinite intimations, and distinguishes these from his own interpretation, made after the issue; a plain proof that in his gospel alone, we have the discourses of Jesus unfalsified, and in their original form. But, regarded more nearly, the case does not stand so that the fourth evangelist can only be taxed with putting an erroneous interpretation on the otherwis unfalsified declarations of Jesus: for in one passage, at least, he has put into his mouth an expression which, obscurely, it is true, but still unmistakably, determines the manner of his death as crucifixion; and consequently, he has here altered the words of Jesus to correspond with the result. We refer to the expression vipuOjjvai, to be lifted up: in those passages of the fourth gospel where Jesus speaks in a passive sense of the Son of Man being lifted up, this expression might possibly mean his exaltation to glory, although in iii. 14, from the comparison with the serpent m the wilderness, which was well known to have been elevated on a pole, even this becomes a difficulty; but when, as in viii. 28, he represents the exaltation of the Son of Man as the act of his enemies (orav inpuorjT erbv vlbv r. d), it is obvious that these could not lift him up immediately to glory, but only to the cross; consequently, if the result above stated be admitted as valid, John must himself have framed this expression,or at least have distorted the Aramaean words of Jesus, and hence he essentially falls under the same category with the synoptic writers. That the fourth evangelist, though ^{P.636} the passion and death of Jesus were to him past events, and therefore clearly present to his mind, nevertheless makes Jesus predict them in obscure expressions, this has its foundation in the entire manner of this writer, whose fondness for the enigmatical and mysterious here happily met the requirement, to give an unintelligible form to prophecies which were not understood.

There were sufficient inducements for the Christian legend thus to put into the mouth of Jesus, after the event, a prediction of the particular features of his passion, especially of the ignominious crucifixion. The more the Christ crucified became to the Jews a stumbling-block, and to the Greeks foolishness (1 Cor. i. 23), the more need was there to remove this offence by every possible means; and as, among subsequent events, the resurrection especially served as a retrospective cancelling of that shameful death: so it must have been earnestly desired to take the sting from that offensive catastrophe beforehand also, and this could not be done more effectually than by such a minute prediction. For as the most unimportant fact, when prophetically announced, gains importance, by thus being made a link in the chain of a higher knowledge: so the most ignominious fate, when it is predicted as part of a divine plan of salvation, ceases to be ignominious; above all, when the very person over whom such a fate impnds, also possesses the prophetic spirit, which enables him to foresee and foretell it, and thus not only suffers, but participates in the divine prescience of his sufferings, he manifests himself as the ideal power over those sufferings. But the fourth evangelist has gone still further on this track: he believes it due to the honour of Jesus to represent him as also the real power over his sufferings, as not having his life taken away by the violence of others, but as resigning it voluntarily (x. 17 f.); a representation which indeed already finds some countenance in Matt. xxvi. 53, where Jesus asserts the possibility of praying to the Father for legions of angels, in order to avert his sufferings.

IF in this manner we subtract from the declarations of Jesus concerning his approaching fate, attributed to him in the Gospels, all which regards the particular circumstances of this catastrophe; there still remains on the part of Jesus the general announcement, that suffering and death awaited him, and also that this part of his career was a fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies relative to the Messiah. As, however, the principal passages cited from the Old Testament, which treat of suffering and death, are only by mistake referred to the Messiah, while others, ^{P.637} as Dan. ix. 26; Zech. xii. 10, have not this signification: the orthodox, above all, must again beware of attributing so false an interpretation of these prophecies, to the supernatural principle in Jesus. That instead of this, Jesus might possibly, by a purely natural combination, have educed the general result, that since he had made the hierarchy of his nation his implacable enemies, he had, in so far as he was resolved not to swerve from the path of his destination, the worst to fear from their revenge and authority (John x.11ff.); that from the fate of former prophets (Matt. v. 12; xxi.33ff.; Luke xiii. 33 f.), and isolated passages bearing such an interpretation, he might prognosticate a similar end to his own career, and accordingly predict to his followers that earlier or later a violent death awaited him - this it would be a needless overstraining of the supernaturalistic view any longer to deny, and the rational mode of considering the subject should be admitted.

It may appear surprising if, after this admission, we still put the question, whether, according to the New Testament representation, it be probable that Jesus actually uttered such a prediction, since, certainly, a general announcement of his violent death is the least which the Gospel accounts appear to contain. But our meaning in the question is this: is the sequel, especially the conduct of the disciples, so described in the Gospels, as to be reconcileable with a prior disclosure of Jesus relative to the sufferings which awaited him?

Now the express statements of the evangelists do not merely tend to show that the disciples did not understand the discourses of Jesus on his coming death, in the sense that they did not know how to adjust these facts in their own minds, or to make them tally with their preconceived ideas concerning the Messiah, - a difficulty which drew from Peter the first time that Jesus announced his death, the exclamation: "Be it far from you, Lord, this shall not be to you;" for we find the words of Mark (ix. 32), But they understood not that saying, ol ds i'iyvoovv rb prjpa, thus amplified in Luke: and it was hid from them, that they perceived it not (ix. 45); and the latter evangelist on another occasion says: "and they understood none of these things, and this saying was: .)" expressions which appear to imply that the disciples absolutely did not understand what the words of Jesus meant.

Accordingly, the condemnation and execution of Jesus fall upon them as a blow for which they are entirely unprepared, and consequently annihilate all the hopes which they had fixed on him as the Messiah (Luke xxiv. 20 f.) "The chief priests and our rulers have crucified him." But ^{P.638} we trusted that he was the one who would have redeemed Israel."

Now, had Jesus spoken of his death to the disciples with such perfect openness (napprjaia, Mark viii. 32), they must necessarily have understood his clear words and detailed discourses, and had he besides shown them that his death was foreshadowed in the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, and was consequently a part of the Messiah's destination (Luke xviii. 31; xxii. 37), they could not, when his death actually ensued, have so entirely lost all belief in his Messiahship. It is true that the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist is wrong in his attempt to show in the conduct of Jesus, as described by the evangelists, indications that his death was unexpected even to himself; but, looking merely at the conduct of the disciples, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion which that writer draws, namely, that to judge by that conduct, Jesus cannot have made any antecedent disclosure to his disciples concerning his death; on the contrary, they appearto the very last moment to have held the common opinion on this matter, and only to have adopted the characteristics of suffering and death into their conception of the Messiah, after the death of Jesus had unexpectedly come upon them. At all events we have before us the following dilemma: either the statements of the evangelists as to the inability of the disciples to understand the predictions of Jesus, and their surprise at his death, are unhistorically exaggerated; or the decided declarations of Jesus concerning the death which awaited him, were composed ex evendi, indeed, it becomes doubtful whether he even in general predicted his death as a part of his Messianic destiny. On both sides, the legend might be led into unhistorical representations. For the fabrication of a prediction of his death in general, there were the same reasons which we have above shown to be an adequate motive for attributing to him a prognostication of the particular features of his passion: to the fiction of so total a want of compreension in the disciples, an inducement might be found, on the one hand, in the desire to exhibit the profoundness of the mystery of a suffering Messiah revealed by Jesus, through the inability of the disciples to understand it; on the other, in the fact that in the Gospel tradition the disciples were likened to unconverted Jews and heathens, to whom anything was more intelligible than the death of the Messiah.

In order .to decide between these alternatives, we must first examine whether, prior to the death of Jesus, and independently of that event, the Messianic ideas of the age included the characteristics of suffering and death. If already in the lifetime of Jesus it was the Jewish opinion that the Messiah must die a violent death, then it is highly probable that Jesus imbibed this idea as a part of his convictions, and communicated it to his disciples; who, in that case, could so much the less have remained uninstructed on this point, and overwhelmed by the actual result, in the degree alleged ^{P.639} by the evangelists. If, on the contrary, that idea was not diffused among his countrymen before the death of Jesus, it still remains possible that Jesus might arrive at that idea by his private reflection; but it is a prior possibility that the disciples were the first to adopt the characteristics of suffering and death into their conception of the Messiah, after they had been taught by the issue.

The question whether the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah was already diffused among the Jews in the time of Jesus, is one of the most difficult points of discussion among theologians, and one concerning which they are the least agreed. And the difficulty of the question does not he in the interests of party, so that it might be hoped that with the rise of impartial investigation, the subject would cease to be perplexed; for, as Staudlin has aptly shown, both the orthodox and the rationalist interest may alternately tend in each direction, and we in fact find theologians of both parties on both sides, The difficulty lies in the deficiency of information, and in the uncertainty of that which we do possess. If the Old Testament contained the doctrine of a suffering and dying Messiah, it might certainly thence be inferred with more than mere probability, that this doctrine existed among the Jews in the time of Jesus: as, however, according to the most recent researches, the Old Testament, while it doe indeed contain the doctrine of an expiation of the sins of the people to take place at the Messianic era (Ezek. xxxvi. 25; xxxvii. 23; Zach. xiii. 1; Dan. ix. 24.). has no trace of this expiation being effected by the suffering and death of the Messiah: there is no decision of the question before us to be expected from this quarter. The apocryphal books of the Old Testament he nearer to the time of Jesus; but as these are altogether silent concerning the Messiah in general, there can be no discussion as to their.containing that special feature. Again, if we turn to Philo and Josephus, the two authors who wrote soonest after the period in question, we find the latter silent as to the Messianic hopes of his nation; and though the former does indeed speak of Messianic times, and a Messiah-like hero, he says nothing ofi sufferings on his part. Thus there remain, as sources of information on this point, only the New Testament and the later Jewish writings.

In the New Testament, almost everything is calculated to give the impression, that a suffering and dying Messiah was unthought-of among the Jews who were contemporary with Jesus. To the majority of the Jews, we are told, the doctrine of a crucified ^{P.640} Messiah was a skandalon, and the disciples were at a loss to understand Jesus in his repeated and explicit announcements of his death. This does not look as if the doctrine of a suffering Messiah had been current among the Jews of that period; on the contrary, these circumstances accord fully with the declaration which the fourth evangelist puts into the mouth of the Jewish multitude, (xii. 34), namely, that they had heard in the law (nomoj) that the Christ abides for ever. Indeed, for a general acceptation of the idea of a suffering Messiah among the Jews of that period, even those theologians who take the affirmative side in this argument do not contend; but, admitting that the hope of a worldly Messiah whose reign was to endure for ever, was the prevalent one, they only maintain (and herein the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist agrees with them), that a less numerous party, according to Standlin, the Essenes; according to Hengstenburg, the better and more enlightened prt of the people in general-held the belief that the Messiah would appear in a humble guise, and only enter into glory through suffering and death. In support of this they appeal especially to two passages; one out of the third, and one out of the fourth gospel. When Jesus is presented as an infant in the temple at Jerusalem, the aged Simeon, among other prophecies, particularly concerning the opposition which her son would have to encounter, says to Mary: Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also (Luke ii. 35.); words which seem to describe her maternal sorrow at the death of her son, and consequently to represent the opinion, that a violent death awaited the Messiah, as one already current before Christ. Still more plainly is the idea of a suffering Messiah contained in the words which the fourth gospel makes the Baptist utter on seeing Jesus: Behold the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world (i. 29.)! This, viewed in its relation to Isa. liii., would in the mouth of the Baptst likewise tend to prove, that the idea of expiatory suffering on the part of the Messiah was in existence before the time of Jesus. But both these passages have been above shown to be unhistorical, and from the fact that the primitive Christian legend was led, a considerable time after the issue, to attribute to persons whom it held divinely inspired, a foreknowledge of the divine decree with respect to the death of Jesus, it can by no means be concluded, that this insight really existed prior to the death of Jesus. In conclusion, it is urged, that at least the evangelists and apostles refer to the idea of a suffering and dying Messiah in the Old Testament; from which it is thought warrantable to conclude, that this interpretation of the Old Testament passages connected with our present subject, was not unprecedented among the Jews. Certainly Peter (Acts iii. 18 f.; 1 Pet. i. 11 f.) and Paul (Acts xxvi. 22 f.; 1 Cor. xv. 3.) appeal to Moses and the

^{641} prophets as annunciators of the death of Jesus, and Philip, in his interview with the Ethiopian eunuch, interprets a passage in Isa. liii. of the sufferings of the Messiah: but as those teachers of the Church spoke and wrote all this after the event, we have no assurance that they did not assign to certain Old Testament passages a relation to the sufferings of the Messiah, solely in consequence of that event, and not by adopting a mode of interpretation previously current among their Jewish contemporaries.

If, according to this, the opinion that the idea in question already existed among the countrymen of Jesus during his lifetime, has no solid foundation in the New Testament; we must proceed to inquire whether that idea may not be found in the later Jewish writings. Among the earliest writings of this class now extant, are the Chaldee paraphrases of Onkelos and Jonathan; and the Targum, of the latter, who, according to rabbinical tradition, was a pupil of Hillel the elder, is commonly cited as presenting the idea of a suffering Messiah, because it refers the passage, Isa. Iii. 13. - liii. 12, to the Messiah. But with respect to the interpretation of this passage in the Targum of Jonathan, it is the singular fact, that while the prophecies which it contains are in general interpreted Messian-ically, yet so often as suffering and death are spoken of, either these ideas are avoided with marked design, and for the most part by some extremely forced expedient, or are transferred to a different subject, namey, the people of Israel: a significant proof that to the author, suffering and violent death appeared irreconcileable with the idea of the Messiah, But this, we are told, is the beginning of that aberration from the true sense of the sacred text, into which the later Jews were seduced by their carnal disposition, and their hostility to Christianity: the more ancient interpreters, it is said, discovered in this passage of Isaiah a suffering and dying Messiah. It is true that Abenezra, Abarbanel and others, testify that many ancient teachers referred Isa. liii. to the Messiah: but some of their statements leave it by no means clear that those more ancient interpretations are not as partial as that of Jonathan; and in relation to ^{P.642} all of them it remains uncertain, whether the interpreters of whom they speak reach as far back as the age of Jonathan, which is highly improbable with respect to those parts of the book Sohar wherein the passage in question is referred to a suffering Messiah. The writing which, together with that of Jonathan, may be regarded as the nearest to the time of Jesus, namely, the apocryphal fourth book of Esdras, drawn up, according to the most probable computation, shortly after the destruction of Jerusalem under Titus, does indeed mention the death of the Messiah: not however as a painful one, but only as a death which, after the long duration of the Messianic kingdom, was to precede the general resurrection. The idea of great calamities, the birth-throes, as it were, of the Messiah, (Matt. xxiv. 8), which would usher in the Messianic times, was undoubtedly disseminated before Christ; and equally early there appears to have been placed in the front of these ills, which wer to press upon the people of Israel in particular, the Antichrist, whom the Christ would have to oppose (2 Thess. ii. 3 f.); but since he was to annihilate this adversary in a supernatural manner, with the spirit of his mouth, this involved no suffering for the Messiah. Nevertheless, there are to be found passages in which a suffering of the Messiah is spoken of, and in which this suffering is even represented as vicarious, on behalf of the people: but first, this is only a suffering, and no death of the Messiah; secondly, it befals him either before his descent into earthly life, in his pre-ex-istence, or during the concealment in which he keeps himself from his birth until his appearance as Messiah: ft lastly, the antiquity of these ideas is doubtful, and according to certain indications, they could only be dated after the destruction of the Jewish state by Titus. Meanwhile, Jewish writings are by no means destitute of passages, in whih it is directly asserted that a Messiah would perish in a violent manner: but these passages relate, not to the proper Messiah, the offspring of David, but to another, from among the posterity of Joseph and Ephraim, who was appointed to hold a subordinate position in relation to the former. This Messiah ben Joseph was to precede the Messiah ben David, to unite the ten tribes of the former kingdom of Israel with the two tribes of the kingdom of Judah, but after this to perish by the sword in the battle with Gog and Magog: a catastrophe to which Zech. xii. 10. was referred. But of this second, dying Messiah, any certain traces are lacking ^{P.643} before the Babylonian Gemara, which was compiled in the fifth and sixth centuries after Christ, and the book Sohar, the age of which is extremely doubtful.

Although, according to this, it cannot be proved, and is even not probable, that the idea of a suffering Messiah already existed among the Jews in the time of Jesus: it is still possible that, even without such a precedent, Jesus himself, by an observation of circumstances, and a comparison of them with Old Testament narratives and prophecies, might corne to entertain the belief that suffering and death were a part of the office and destination of the Messiah; and if so, it would be more natural that he should embrace this conviction gradually in the course of his public ministry, and that he should chiefly have confined his communications on the subject to his intimate friends, than that he should have had this conviction from the beginning, and have expressed it before indifferent persons, indeed enemies. The latter is the representation of John; the former, of the Synoptics.

In relation also to the declarations of Jesus concerning the object and effects of his death, we can, as above in relation to the announcement of the death itself, distinguish a more natural, from a more suprariatural point of view. When Jesus in the fourth gospel likens himself to the true shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep (x. 11, 15); this may have the perfectly natural sense, that he is determined not to swerve from his office of shepherd and teacher, even though, in the prosecution of it, death should threaten him (the moral necessity of his death); the foreboding expression in the same gospel (xii. 24), that except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone, but if it die it brings forth much fruit, admits of an equally rational explanation, as a figurative representation of the victorious power which martyrdom gives to an idea and conviction (the moral efficacy of his death): lastly, that which is so often repeated in the Gospel of John, namely, that it is good fo the disciples that Jesus should go away, for without his departure the comforter will not come to them, who will glorify him in them, may be supposed to express the perfectly natural consideration of Jesus, that without the removal of his sensible presence, the hitherto so material ideas of the disciples would not be spiritualized (the psychological efficacy of his death).The words of Jesus at the institution of the sacramental supper, belong-more to the supernaturalistic mode of view. For if that which the intermediate evangelists make him say on this occasion-that the cup presented is the blood of the new testament, (Mark xiv. 24), and the new testament in his blood, (Luke xxii. 20), might appear to signify no more than that, as by the bloody sacrifice at Sinai was sealed the covenant of this ancient people with God, so by his (the ^{P.644} Messiah's) blood would be sealed in a higher sense the community of the new covenant, gathering round him: in the account of Matthew, on the contrary, when he makes Jesus add, that his blood "will be shed for many for the remission of sins," the idea of the covenant sacrifice is blended with that of an expiatory sacrifice: and also in the two other evangelists by the addition: which is shed "for many," or "for you," the transition is made from the covenant sacrifice to the expiatory sacrifice. Further, when in the first gospel (xx. 28.) Jesus says, he must give his life a ransom for many, this is doubtless to be referred to Isa. liii., where, according to a notion current among the Hebrews (Isa. 43. 3; Prov. xxi. 18), the death of the servant of God is supposed to have a propitiatory relation to the rest of mankind.

Thus Jesus might by psychological reflection come to the conviction that such a catastrophe would be favourable to the spiritual development of his disciples, and that it was indispensable for the spiritualizing of their Messianic ideas, indeed, in accordance with national conceptions, and by a consideration of Old Testament passages, even to the idea that his Messianic death would have an expiatory efficacy. Still, what the Synoptics make Jesus say of his death, as a sin offering, might especially appear to belong rather to the system which was developed after the death of Jesus; and what the fourth evangelist puts into his mouth concerning the Paraclete, to have been conceived ex eventu: so that, again, in these expressions of Jesus concerning the object of his death, there must be a separation of the general from the special.

ACCORDING To The Gospel accounts, Jesus predicted his resurrection in words not less clear than those in which he announced his death, and also fixed the time of its occurrence with singular precision. As often as he said to his disciples, the Son of man will be crucified, he added: .And the third day he shall rise again, (Matt. xvi. 21; xvii. 23; xx. 19. parall. comp. xvii. 9; xxvi. 32. parall.).

But of this announcement also it is said, that the disciples did not understand it; so little, indeed, that they "debated among themselves what the rising from the dead should mean" (Mark ix. 10.); and in consistency with this want of comprehension, they, after the death of Jesus, exhibit no trace of a recollection that his resurrection had been foretold to them, no spark of hope that this prediction would be fulfilled. When the friends of Jesus had taken down his body from the cross, and laid it in the grave, they undertook (John xix. 40.)-or the women reserved to ^{P.645} themselves (Mark xvi. 1; Luke xxiii. 56.), the task of embalming him, which is only performed in the case of those who are regarded as the prey of corruption; when, on the morning which, according to the mode of reckoning in the New Testament, opened the day which had been predetermined as that of the resurrection, the women went to the grave, they were so far from thinking of a predicted resurrection, that they were anxious about the probable difficulty of rolling away the stone from the grave (Mark xvi. 3.); when Mary Magdalene, and afterwards Peter, found the grave empty, their first thought, had the resurrection been predicted, must have been, that it had now actually taken place: instead of this, the former conjectures that the body may have been stolen (John xx. 2), while Peter merely wonders, without coming to any definite conjecture (Luke xxiv. 12.); when the women told the disciples of the angelic apparition which they had witnessed, and discharged the commission given them by the angel, the disciple partly regarded their words as idle tales (Luke xxiv. 11), and were partly moved to fear and astonishment when Mary Magdalene, and subsequently the disciples going to Emmaus, assured the eleven, that they had themselves seen the risen one, they met with no credence (Mark xvi. 11. 13), and Thomas still later did not believe even the assurance of his fellow-apostles (John xx. 25.); lastly, when Jesus himself appeared to the disciples in Galilee, all of them did not even then cast off doubt (oi( de e)distasan, Mark xxviii. 17.). All this we must, with the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist, find incomprehensible, if Jesus had so clearly and decidedly predicted his resurrection.

It is true, that as the conduct of the disciples, after the death of Jesus, speaks against such a prediction on the part of Jesus, so the conduct of his enemies appears to speak for it. For when, according to Matt, xxvii.62ff., the chief priests and Pharisees entreat Pilate to set a watch at the grave of Jesus, they allege as a reason for their request, that Jesus while yet alive had said: "After three days I will rise again." But this narrative of the first gospel, which we can only estimate at a future point in our investigation, at present decides nothing, but only falls to one side of the dilemma, so that we must now say: if the disciples really so acted after the death of Jesus, then neither can he have decidedly foretold his resurrection, nor can the Jews in consideration of such a prediction have placed a watch at his grave; or, if the two latter statements be true, the disciples cannot have so acted.

It has been attempted to blunt the edge of this dilemma, by attributing to the above predictions, not the literal sense, that the deceased Jesus would return out of the grave, but only the figurative sense that his doctrine and cause, after having been apparently ^{P.646} crushed, would again expand and flourish. As the Old Testament prophets, it was said, represent the restoration of the people of Israel to renewed prosperity, under the image of a resurrection from the dead (Isai. xxvi. 19; Ezek. xxxvii.); as they mark the short interval within which, under certain conditions, this turn of things was to be expected, by the expression; in two or three days will the Lord revive the smitten one, and raise the dead (Hos. vi. 2), a statement of time which Jesus also uses indefinitely for a short interval (Luke xiii. 32); so by the declaration that he will rise on the third day after his death, he intends to say no more than that even though he may succumb to the power of his enemies and be put to death, still the work which he has begun will not come to an end, but will in a short time go forward with a fresh impetus. This merely figurative mode of speaking adopted by Jesus, the apostles, after Jesus had actually risen in the body, understod literally, and regarded them as prophecies of his personal resurrection. Now that in the prophetic passages adduced, the expressions have only the alleged figurative sense, is true; but these are passages the whole tenor of which is figurative, and in which, in particular, the depression and death which precede the revivification are themselves to be understood only in a figurative sense. Here, on the contrary, all the foregoing expressions: paradidosqai, staurousqai ktl. (to be delivered, condemned, crucified, killed, etc.) are to be understood literally; hence all at once, with the words egerqhnai and anasthnai to enter on a figurative meaning, would be an unprecedented abruptness of transition: not to mention that passages such as Matt. xxvi. 32., where Jesus says: "After I am risen again I will go before you into Galilee" can have no meaning at all unless egeiresqai be understood literally. In this closely consecutive series of expressions, which must be taken in a purely literal sense, there is then no warrant, and even no inducement, to understand the statement of time which is connected with them, otherwise than also literally, and in its strictly etymological meaning. Thus if Jesus really used these words, and in the same connection in which they are given by the evangelists, he cannot have meant to announce by them merely the speedy victory of his cause; his meaning must have been, that he himself would return to life in three days after his violent death. As however Jesus, judging from the conduct of his disciples after his death, cannot have announced his resurrection in plain words; other commentators have resigned themselves to the admission, that the evangelists, after the issue, gave to the discourses of Jesus a ^{P.647} definiteness which, as uttered by him, they did not possess; that they have not merely understood literally, what Jesus intended figuratively, of the revival of his cause after his death, but in accordance with their erroneous interpretation, have so modified his words that, as we now read them, we must certainly understand them in a literal sense; yet that not all the discourses of Jesus are altered in this manner, here and there his original expressions still remain.

ACCORDING to the fourth gospel, Jesus, at the very beginning of his ministry, in figurative language, referred his enemies, the Jews, to his future resurrection (ii.19ff.). On his first Messianic visit to Jerusalem, and when, after the abuse of the market in the temple had provoked him to that exhibition of holy zeal of which we have formerly spoken, the Jews require a sign from him, by which he should legitimatize his claim to be considered a messenger of God, who had authority to adopt such violent measures, Jesus gives them this answer, "Destroy this temple, and after three days I will raise it up." The Jews took these words in the sense, which, since they were spoken in the temple, was the most natural, and urged, in reply to Jesus, that as it had taken forty years to build this temple, he would scarcely be able, if it were destroyed, to rebuild it in three days; but the evangelist informs us, that this was not the meaning of Jesus, an that he here spoke (though indeed the disciples were not aware of this until after his resurrection,) of the temple of his body, (naoj tou swmatoj au)tou): i.e. under the destruction and rebuilding of the temple, he alluded to his death and resurrection. Even if we admit, what however the most moderate expositors deny, that Jesus could properly (as he is also represented to have done in Matthew, xii.39ff.), when the Jews asked him for a visible and immediate sign, refer them to his resurrection as the greatest, and for his enemies the most overwhelming miracle in his history: still he must have done this in terms which it was possible for them to understand (as in the above passage of Matthew, where he expresses himself quite plainly). But the expressions of Jesus, as here given, could not possibly be understood in this sense. For when one who is in the temple, speaks of the destruction of this temple, every one will refer his words to the building itself. Hence Jesus when he uttered the words "this temple," must have pointed to his body with his finger; as, indeed, is generally presupposed by the friends of this interpretation. But, in the first place, the evan gelist says nothing of such a gesture, notwithstanding that it lay in ^{P.648} his interest to notice this, as a support of his interpretation. In the second place, Gabler has with justice remarked, how ill-judged and ineffective it would have been, by the addition of a mere gesture to give a totally new meaning to a speech, which verbally, and therefore logically, referred to the temple. If, however, Jesus used this expedient, the motion of his finger could not have been unobserved; the Jews must rather have demanded from him how he could be so arrogant as to call his body the temple, vabg or even if not so, still, presupposing that action, the disciples could not have remained in the dark concerning the meaning of his words, until after the resurrection.

By these difficulties modern exegetes have felt constrained to renounce John's explanation of the words of Jesus, as erroneous and made ex eventu, and to attempt to penetrate, independently of the evangelist's explanation, into the sense of the enigmatical saying which he attributes to Jesus. The construction put upon it by the Jews, who refer the words of Jesus to a real destruction and rebuilding of the national sanctuary, cannot be approved, without imputing to Jesus an extravagant example of vain-glorious boasting, at variance with the character which he elsewhere exhibits. If on this account search be made for some figurative meaning which may possibly be assigned to the declaration, there presents itself first a passage in the same gospel (iv.21ff.) where Jesus announces to the woman of Samaria, that the time is immediately coming, in which the Father will no longer be worshipped exclusively in Jerusalem but will, as a Spirit, receive spiritual worship. Now in the present pssage also, the destruction of the temple might, it is said, have signified the abolition of the temple-service at Jerusalem, supposed to be the only valid mode of worship. This interpretation is confirmed by a narrative in the Acts (vi. 14.). Stephen, who, as it appears, had adopted the above-expressions of Jesus, was taxed by his accusers with declaring, that "Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered," in which words a change of the Mosaic religious institutions, without doubt a spiritualization of them, is described as a sequel to the destruction of the temple. To this may be added a passage in the synoptic Gospels. Nearly the same words which in John are uttered by Jesus himself, appear in the two first Gospels (Matt. xxvi. 60 f.; Mark xiv. 57 f.) as the accusation of false witnesses against him; and here Mark, in addition, designated the temple which is to be destroyed, as one "made with hands," xeiropoihtoj, and the new one which is to be ^{P.649} built, as another, made without hands, a)lloj a)xeiropoihtoj, whereby he appears to indicate the same contrast between a ceremonial and a spiritual religious system. By the aid of these passages, it is thought, the declaration in John may be explained thus: the sign of my authority to purify the temple, is my ability in a short time to introduce in the place of the Jewish ceremonial worship, a spiritual service of God; i.e. I am authorized to reform the old system, in so far as I am qualified to found a new one. It is certainly a trivial objection to this explanation, that in John the object is not changed, as in Mark, where the temple which is to be built is spoken of as "another," but instead of this, is indicated by the word au)ton, as the same with the one destroyed; since, indeed, the Christian system of religion in relation to the Jewish, may, just as the risen body of Jesus in relation to the dead one, be conceived as at once identical and different, inasmuch as in both cases the substance is the same, while the transitory accidents only are supposed to be removed. But it is a more formidable objection which attaches itself to the determination of time, ev rpialy rmfpaig. That this expression is also used indefinitely and proverbially, in the sense of a short interval of time in general, is not adequately proved by the two passages which are usually appealed to with this view; for in them the third day, by being placed in connection with the second and first (Hos. vi. 2; Luke xiii. 32: shmeron kai aurion kai th trith) is announced as a merely relative and proximate statement, whereas in our passage it stands alone, and thus presents itself as an absolute and precise determination of time. Thus alike invited and repelled by both explanations, theologians take refuge in a double sense, which holds the middle place either between the interpretation of John and the symbolical one last stated, or between the interpretation of John and that of the Jews; so that Jesus either spoke at once of his body which was to be killed and again restored to life, and of the modification of the Jewish religion which was to be effected, chiefly by means of that death and resurrection; or, in order to repel the Jews, he challenged them to destroy their real temple, and on this condition, never to be fulfilled, promised to build another, still, however, combining with this ostensible sense for the multitude, an esoteric sense, which was only understood by the disciples after the resurrection, and according to which the naoj (temple) denoted his body. But such a challenge addressed to the Jews, together with the engagement appended to it, would have been an unbecoming manifestation of petulence, and the latent intimtion to the disciples, a useless play on words; besides that, in general, a double meaning either of the one or the ^{P.650} other kind is unheard of in the discourse of a judicious man.

As, in this manner, the possibility of explaining the passage in John might be entirely despaired of, the author of the Probabilia appeals to the fact that the Synoptics call the witnesses, who allege before the judgment seat that Jesus had uttered that declaration "false witnesses;" from which he concludes, that Jesus never said what John here attributes to him, and thus gains an exemption from the explanation of the passage, since he regards it as a figment of the fourth evangelist, whose object was both to explain the calumniations of the accusers, and also to nullify them by a mystical interpretation of his words, But, on the one hand, it does not follow, from the fact that the Synoptics call the witnesses false, that, in the opinion of the evangelists, Jesus had never said anything whatever of that whereof they accused him; for he might only have said it somewhat differently (lusate, not lusw), or have intended it in a diffeent sense (figuratively instead of literally): on the other hand, if he said nothing at all of this kind, it is diffiult to explain how the false witnesses should come to choose that declaration, and especially the remarkable phrase, "in three days."

If, according to this, on every interpretation of the expression, except the inadmissible one relative to the body of Jesus, the words kv rpialy rinepatg form a difficulty: a resource might be found in the narrative of the Acts, as being free from that determination of time. For here Stephen is only accused of saying, "This Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this (holy) place and change the customs that Moses gave." What is false in this allegation (for the witnesses against Stephen also are described as marturej yeudeij) might be the second proposition, which speaks in literal terms of a changing of the institutes of Moses, and instead of this, Stephen, and before him Jesus, may very probably have said in the figurative signification above developed.

Meanwhile, this expedient is not at all needful, so far as any insurmountable difficulty in the words ev rpialy iepaig, is concerned. As the number 3 is used proverbially, not only in connection with 2 or 4 (Prov. xxx. 15, 18, 21, 29; Wis. xxiii. 21; xxvi. 25), but also by itself (Wis. xxv. 1, 3.); so the expression, in three days, if it were once, in combination with the second and first day, become common as an indefinite statement of time, might probably at length be applied in the same sense when standing alone. Whether the expression should signify a long or a short period would then depend on the connection: here, in opposition to the construction of a great and elaborate building, to the real, natural erection of which, as the Jews directly remark, a long series of years was required, the expression can only be understood as denoting the shortest time.

^{P.651} A prediction, or even a mere intimation of the resurrection, is therefore not contained in these words.

As, here, Jesus is said to have intimated his resurrection beforehand, by the image of the destroying and rebuilding of the temple, so, on another occasion, he is supposed to have queited the type of the prophet Jonah with the same intention (Matt. xii.39ff. comp. xvi. 4; Luke xi.29ff. When the scribes and Pharisees desired too see a sign from him, Jesus is said to have repulsed their demand by the reply, that to so evil a generation no sign shall be given, but the sign of the prophet Jonah, which in the first passage of Matthew, Jesus himself explains thus: as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale,, so also the Son of man will pass three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. In the second passage, in which Matthew attributes this declaration to Jesus he does not repeat the above interpretation; while Luke, in the parallel passage, explains it simply thus: For as Jona was a sign to the Jfinevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation. Now against the possibility of Jesus having himself given the interpretation of the sign of Jonah which Matthew puts into his mouth, v. 40, a variety of objections may be urged. It is indeed scarcely a tenable argument, that Jesus cannot have spoken of three days and three nights, which he would pass in the heart of the earth, because he only lay in the grave one day and two nights: since the phraseology of the New Testament decidedly has the peculiarity, of designating the abode of Jesus in the grave as of three days' duration, because it touched upon the evening of the day before the Sabbath, and the morning of the day after it; and if this one day, together with two nights, were once taken for three whole days, it would only be a round way of expressing this completeness, to add to the days the nights also, which, besides, would naturally follow in the comparison with the three days and three nights of Jonah, But if Jesus gave the explanation of the sign of Jonah which Matthew attributes to him, this would have been so clear a prediction of his resurrection, that for the same reasons which according to the above observations, are opposed to the literal predictions of that event, we must conclude that Jesus cannot have given this explanation. At all events it must have led the disciples who, according to v. 49, were present, to question Jesus, and in that case it is not to be understood why he did not make the subject perfectly clear, and thus announce his resurrection in plain words. But if he cannot have done this, because then the disciples could not have acted after his death as they are said to have done in the Gospel accounts: neither can he, by that comparison of the fate which awaited him with that of Jonah, have called forth from his disciples a question, which, if proposed to him, he must have answered; but which, judging from the sequel, he cannot have answered. ^{P.652}

On these grounds, modern critics have pronounced the explanation of the shmeion Iona in Matthew, to be an interpretation made post eventum by the evangelist, and by him falsely attributed to Jesus. According to them, Jesus indeed directed the attention of the Pharisees to the sign of Jonah, but only in the sense in which Luke makes him explain it: namely, that as Jonah himself, by his mere appearance and preaching of repentance, without miracles, had sufficed as a sign from God to the Ninevites; so his own contemporaries, instead of craving for miracles, should be satisfied with his person and preaching. This interpretation is the only one which accords with the tenor of the discourse of Jesus, even in Matthew, and more particularly with the parallel between the relation of the Ninevites to Jonah, and that of the queen of the south to Solomon. As it was the wisdom of Solomon, by which the latter felt herself attracted from the ends of the earth; so, in Jonah, even according to the exression of Matthew, it was solely his preaching, (khrugma) which brought the Ninevites to repentance. It might be supposed that the future tense in Luke: "So also shall the Son of man be to this generation (a sign)," cannot be referred to Jesus and his preaching as manifested at that moment, but only to something future, as his resurrection: but this in reality points either to the future judgment Kplais, in which it will be made manifest, that as Jonah was reckoned a sign to the Ninevites, so was the Son of man to the Jews then living; or to the fact that when Jesus spoke these words, his appearance had not yet attained its consummation, and many of its stages lay yet in futurity. Nevertheless, it must have been at an early period, as we see from the first gospel, that the fate of Jonah was placed in a typical relation to the death and resurrection of Jesus, since the primitive Church anxiously searched through the Old Testament for types and propheces of the offensive catastrophe which befel their Messiah.

There are still some expressions of Jesus in the fourth gospel, which have been understood as latent prophecies of the resurrection. The discourse on the corn of wheat, xii. 24., it is true, too obviously relates to the work of Jesus as likely to be furthered by his death, to be here taken into further consideration. But in the farewell discourses in John there are some declarations, which many are still inclined to refer to the resurrection. When Jesus says: "I will not leave you comfortless, I will come to you; yet a little time, and the world sees me no more, but you see me; a little while, and you shall not see me, and again a little while and you shall see me, etc." (xiv.18ff., xvi.16ff.); many believe that these expressions, with the relation between "a little while, and again a little while;" the opposition between e)mfanizein hmin -toij maqhtaij- kai ou)xi tw kosmw (manifest to you (the disciples) and not to the world) the words ^{P.653} "I shall see you again, and you shall see," which appear to indicate a strictly personal interview, -can be referred to nothing else than the resurrection, which was precisely such a reappearance after a short removal, and moreover a personal reappearance granted to the friends of Jesus alone. But this promised reappearance is at the same time described by Jesus in a manner which will not suit the days of the resurrection. If the words "because I live" (xiv. 19), denote his resurrection, we are at a loss to know what can be meant by the succeeding clause, "you shall live also." Again, Jesus says that on that reappearance his disciples will know his relation to the Father, and will no more need to ask anything of him (xiv. 20., xvi. 23); yet even on the very last day of their intercourse with him after the resurrection, they ask a question of him, (Acts i. 6), and one which from the point of view of the fourth gospel is altogether senseless. Lastly, when he proises that to him who loves him, he and the Father will come, and make their abode with him, it is perfectly clear that Jesus here speaks not of a corporeal return, but of his spiritual return, through the parousia. Nevertheless, even this explanation has its difficulties, since, on the other hand, the expressions you shall see me, and I shall see you, will not entirely suit that purely spiritual return: hence we must defer the solution of this apparent contradiction until we can give a more complete elucidation of the discourses in which these expressions occur. In the meantime we merely observe, that the farewell discourses in John, being admitted, even by the friends of the fourth gospel, to contain an intermixture of the evangelist's own thoughts, are the last source from which to obtain a proof on this subject.

After all, there might seem to be a resource in the supposition, that though Jesus did not indeed speak of his future resurrection, it was not the less foreknown by him. Now if he had a foreknowledge of his resurrection, either he obtained it in a supernatural manner, by means of the prophetic spirit, the higher principle that dwelt within him, by means of his divine nature, if that be preferred: or he knew it in a natural manner, by the exercise of his human reason. But a supernatural foreknowledge of that event, as well as of his death, is inconceivable, owing to the relation in which Jesus places it to the Old Testament. Not merely in passages such as Luke xviii. 31. (which, as prophecies, can no longer have an historical value for us after the result of our last inquiry), does Jesus represent his resurrection, together with his passion and death, as a "fulfilment of all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of Man" but even after the issue, he admonishes his disciples that they ought to believe all that the prophets have spoken, namely, that Christ ought to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory (Luke xxiv. 25 f.).

^{P.654} According to the sequel of the narrative, Jesus forthwith expounded to these disciples (going to Eminaus) all the passages of scripture relating to himself, beginning at Mtoses and all the prophets, to which further on (v. 44) the psalms are added; but no single passage is given us as having been interpreted by Jesus of his resurrection, except that it would follow from Matt. xii. 39 f., that he regarded the fate of the prophet Jonah as a type of his own; and regarding the subsequent apostolic interpretation as an echo of that of Jesus, it might be concluded, that he, as afterwards the apostles, found such prophecies chiefly in Ps. .xvi. 8 if., (Acts ii.25ff., xiii. 35.); Isai. liii. (Acts viii.32ff.), Isai Iv. 3., (Acts xiii. 34), and possibly also in Hos. vi. 2. But the fate of Jonah has not even an external similarity to that of Jesus; and the book which narrates his hstory carries its object so completely in itself, that whoever may ascribe to it or to one of its particulars, a typical relation to events in futurity, assuredly mistakes its true sense and the design of its author. Isai. Iv. 3. is so obviously irrelevant that one can scarcely conceive how the passage could be brought into special connection with the resurrection of Jesus. Isai. liii. refers decidedly to a collective subject perpetually restored to life in new members. Ilosca vi. has a figurative reference, not to be mistaken, to the people and state of Israel. Lastly, the principal passage, Ps. xvi. can only be interpreted of a pious man, who by the help of the Lord hopes to escape from the danger of death, not in the sense that he, like Jesus, would rise again from the grave, but that he would not be laid there, that is, obviously, not for the present, and with the understanding, that when his time should come, he must pay the tribute of nature: which, again, will not apply to Jesus. Thus if a supernatural principle in Jesus, a prophetic spirit, caused him to discover a pre-intimation of his resurrection in these Old Testament histories and passages; then, as no one of them really contained such a pre-intimation, the spirit in him cannot have been the spirit of truth, but must have been a lying spirit, the supernatural principle in him, not a divine, but a demoniacal principle. If, in order to avoid this consequence, cupranaturalists who are accessible to a rational interpretation of the Old Testament, resort to their only remaining expedient, of regarding the foreknowledge of Jesus concerning his resurrection as purely natural and human: we must reply, that the resurrection, conceived as a miracle, was a secret of the divine counsels, to penetrate into which, prior to the issue, was an impossibility to a human intelligence; while viewed as a natural result, it was a chance the last to be calculated upon, apart from the supposition of an apparent death planned by Jesus and his colleagues.

Thus the foreknowledge, as well as the prediction of the ^{P.655} resurrection, was attributed to Jesus only after the issue; and in fact, it was an easy matter, with the groundless arbitrariness of Jewish exegesis, for the disciples and the authors of the New Testament to discover in the Old, types and prophecies of the resurrection. Not that they did this with crafty design, according to the accusation of the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist, and others of his class: but as he who has looked at the sun, long sees its image wherever he may turn his gaze; so they, blinded by their enthusiasm for the new-Messiah, saw him on every page of the only book they read, the Old Testament, and in the conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, founded in the genuine feeling that he had satisfied their deepest need, a conviction and a feeling which we also still honour, they laid hold on supports which have long been broken, and which can no longer be made tenable by the most zealous efforts of an exegesis which is behind the times.

NOT only did Jesus, according to the Gospel accounts, predict that he should return to life three days after his death; but also that at a later period, in the midst of the calamities which would issue in the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, he should come in the clouds of heaven, to close the present period of the world, and by a general judgment, open the future age (Matt. xxiv. and xxv; Mark xiii; Luke xvii. 22-37; xxi 5-36.).

As Jesus for the last time went out of the temple (Luke has not this circumstance), and his disciples (Luke says indefinitely, some) admiringly drew his attention to the magnificent building, he assured them that all which they then looked on, would be destroyed from its foundations (Matt. xxiv. 1, 2. parall.). On the question of the disciples, when this would happen, and what would be the sign of the Messiah's coming, which in their idea was associated with such a crisis (v. 3), Jesus warns them not to be deceived by persons falsely giving themselves out to be the Messiah, and by the notion that the expected catastrophe must follow immediately on the first prognostics; for wars and rumors of wars, risings of nation against nation and kingdom against kingdom, famine, pestilence, and earthquakes in divers places, would be only the beginning of the sorrows which were to precede the advent of the Messiah (v. 4-8). They themselves, his adherents, must first suffer hatred, persecution, and the sword; perfid, treachery, deception by false prophets, lukewarmness and general corruption of morals, would prevail among men; but at the same time the news of the Messiah's kingdom must be promulgated through the whole world. Only after all this, could the end of the present period of the world arrive, until when, he who would partake of the blessedness of the future, must endure with 656 constancy (v. 9-14). A nearer presage of this catastrophe would be the fulfilment of the oracle of Daniel (ix. 27), the standing of the abomination of desolation in the holy place (according to Luke xxi. 20, the encompassing of Jerusalem with armies). When this should take place, it would be high time for the most precipitate flight (according to Luke, because the devastation of Jerusalem would be at hand, an event which he more nearly particularizes in the address of Jesus to the city, xix. 43 f.: thine enemies shall cast a trench, about you, and compass you round, and keep you in on every side, and shall lay you even with the ground, and your children within you; and they shall not leave in you one stone upon another}. At this juncture, all who should have hindrances to rapid departure would be deserving of compassion, and it would be in the highest degree desirable that the recommended flight should not fall in an unfavourable season; for then would commence unexampled tribulation (according to Luke, v. 24, consisting chiefly in many of the people of Israel perishing by the sword, in others being carried away captive, and in Jerusalem being trodden down of the Gentiles for a predetermined period): a tribulation which only the merciful abridgment of its duration by God, for the sake of the elect, could render supportable (v. 15-22). At this time would arise false prophets and Messiahs, seeking to delude by miracles and signs, and promising to show the Messiah in this or that place: whereas a Messiah who was concealed anywhere, and must be sought out, could not be the true one; for his advent would be like the lightning, a sudden and universal revelation, of which the central point would be Jerusalem, the object of punishment on account of its sin (v. 23-28). Immediately after this time of tribulation, the darkening of the sun and moon, the falling of the stars, and the shaking of all the powers of heaven, would usher in the appearance of the Messiah, who, to the dismay of the dwellers on the earh, would come with great glory in the clouds of heaven, and immediately send forth his angels to gather together his elect from all the corners of the earth (v. 29-31). By the fore-named signs the approach of the described catastrophe would be as certainly discernible, as the approach of summer by the budding of the fig-tree; the existing generation would, by all that was true, live to witness it, though its more precise period was known to God only (v. 32-36). But, after the usual manner of mankind (what follows, Mark and Luke partly have not at all, partly, not in this connection), they would allow the advent of the Messiah, as formerly the deluge, to overtake them in thoughtless security (v. 37- 39): and yet it would be an extremely critical period, in which those who stood in the closest relation to each other, would be delivered over to entirely opposite destinies (v. 40, 41). Hence watchfulness would be requisite, as in all cases where the period of a decisive issue is uncertain: an admonition whic is then illustrated by the image of the master of the house and the thief (v. 43, 44); of the servant to whom his lord, when about to travel, entrusted the rule ^{P.657} of his house (v. 45-51); of the wise and foolish virgins (xxv.l- 13); and lastly, of the talents (v. 14-30). Hereupon follows a description of the solemn judgment, which the Messiah would hold over all nations, and in which, according as the duties of humanity were observed or neglected, he would award blessedness or misery (v. 31-46).

Thus in these discourses Jesus announces that shortly (eu)qewj, xxiv. 29.) after that calamity, which (especially according to the representation in Luke's gospel) we must identify with the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, and within the term of the contemporary generation (v. 34), he would visibly make his second advent in the clouds, and terminate the existing dispensation. Now as it will soon be eighteen centuries since the destruction of Jerusalem, and an equally long period since the generation contemporary with Jesus disappeared from the earth, while his visible return and the end of the world which he associated with it, have not taken place: the announcement of Jesus appears so far to have been erroneous. Already in the first age of Christianity, when the return of Christ was delayed longer than had been anticipated, there arose, according to 2 Peter iii. 3 f., scoffers, asking: where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue a they were from the beginning of the creation. In modern times, the inference which may apparently be drawn from the above consideration, to the disadvantage of Jesus and the apostles, has been by no one more pointedly expressed than by the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist. No promise throughout the whole Scriptures, he thinks, is on the one hand more definitely expressed, and on the other, has turned out more flagrantly false, than this, which yet forms one of the main pillars of Christianity. And he does not see in this a mere error, but a premeditated deception on the part of the apostles (to whom, and not to Jesus himself, he attributes that promise, and the discourses in which it is contained); a deception induced by the necessity of alluring the people on whose contributions they wished to subsist, by the promise of a speedy reward; and discernible by the boldness of their attempts to evade the doubts springing from the protracted delay of the return of Christ: Paul, for example, in the second epistle to the Thessalonians, sheltering himself in ob- ^{P.658} scure phrases; and Peter, in his second epistle, resorting to the preposterous expedient of appealing to the divine mode of reckoning time, in which a thousand years are equal to one day.

Such inferences from the discourse before us would inflict a fatal wound on Christianity; hence it is natural that exegetes should endeavour by all means to obviate them. And as the whole difficulty consists in Jesus having apparently placed an event now long past, in immediate chronological connection with one still future, three expedients are possible: either to deny that Jesus in part spoke of something now past, and to allege that he spoke solely of what is still future; or to deny that a part of his discourse relates to something still future, and thus to refer the entire prediction to what is already lying in the past; or lastly, to admit that the discourse of Jesus does indeed partly refer to something which is still future to us, but either to deny that he places the two series of events in immediate chronological succession, or to maintain that he has also noticed what is intermediate.

Some of the Fathers of the Church, as Irenaeus and Hilary, living still in the primitive expectation of the return of Christ, and at the same time not so practised in regular exegesis, as to be incapable of overlooking certain difficulties attendant on a desirable interpretation-referred the entire prediction, from its beginning in Matt. xxiv. to its end in Matt, xxv., to the still future return of Christ to judgment. But as this interpretation admits that Jesus in the beginning of his discourse uses the destruction of Jerusalem as a type of the final catastrophe, it virtually nullifies itself. For what does that admission signify, but that the discourse of Jesus, in the first instance, produces the impression that he spoke of the destruction of Jerusalem, i.e. of something now past, and that only more extended reflection and combination can give it a relation to something still lying in futurity?

To modern rationalism, based as it was on naturalistic principles, the hope of the second advent of Christ was in every form annihilated. Hence, not scrupling at any excgetical violence for the sake of removing from scripture what was discordant with its preconceived system, it threw itself on the opposite side, and hazarded the attempt to refer the discourses in question, in their entire tenor, solely to the destruction of Jerusalem, and the events which immediately preceded and followed it. According to this interpretation, the end spoken of is only the cessation of the Judeo-Gentile economy of the world; what is said of the advent of Christ in the clouds, is only a figurative description of the promulgation and triumph of his doctrine; the assembling of the nations to judgment, and the ^{P.659} sending of some into blessedness, and others into condemnation, is an image of the happy consequences which would result from embracing the doctrine and cause of Jesus, and the evil consequences attendant on indifference or hostility to them. But in this explanation there is a want of similarity between the symbols and the ideas represented, which is not only unprecedented in itself, but particularly inconceivable in this case; since Jesus is here addressing minds of Jewish culture, and must therefore be aware that what he said of the Messiah's advent in the clouds, of the judgment, and the end of the existing period of the world, would be understood in the most literal sense.

It thus appears that the discourse of Jesus will not as a whole, admit of being referred either to the destruction of the Jewish state, or to the events at the end of the world; it would therefore be necessarily referred to something distinct from both, if this twofold impossibility adhered alike to all its parts. But the case is not so; for while on the one hand, what is said Matt. xxiv. 2, 3,15ff. of the devastation of the temple, cannot be referred to the end of the world: on the other hand, what is predicted xxv.31ff. of the judgment to be held by the Son of man, will not suit the destruction of Jerusalem. As, according to this, in the earlier part of the discourse of Jesus, the destruction of Jerusalem is the predominant subject, but in the subsequent part, the end of all things; it is possible to make a division, so as to refer the former to the more proximate event, the latter to the more remote one. This is the middle path which has been taken by the majority of modern exegetes, and here the onl question is: where is the partition to be made? As it must present a space of time within which the whole period from the destruction of Jerusalem to the last day may be supposed to fall, and which therefore would include many centuries, it must, one would think, be plainly indicated, so as to be easily and unanimously found. It is no good augury for the plan, that this unanimity does not exist, that, on the contrary, the required division is made in widely different parts of the discourse of Jesus.

Thus much on the one hand appeared to be decided: that at least the close of the 25th chapter, from v. 31, with its description of the solemn tribunal which the Messiah, surrounded by his angels, would hold over all nations, cannot be referred to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. Hence many theologians believed that they could fix the boundary here, retaining the relation to the end of the Jewish state until xxv. 30, and at this point making the transition to the end of the world. On the very first glance at this explanation, it must appear strange that the great chasm which it supposes to exist between v. 30 and 31, is marked simply by a de. ^{P.660} Moreover, not only are the darkening of the sun and moon, earthquakes, and falling of the stars, understood as a mere image of the subversion of the Jewish state and worship; but when xxiv. 31, it is said of the Messiah, that he will come in the clouds, this is supposed to mean, invisibly: with power-only observable by the effects he produces; with great glory-with such as consists in the conclusions which may be drawn from those effects; while the angels who gather together the nations by the sound of the trumpet, are supposed to represent the apostles preaching the gospel. Quite erroneously, appeal is made, in support of this merely figurative meaning, to the prophetic pictures of the divine day of judgment, Isa. xiii.9ff.; xxiv.18ff.; Jer. iv. 23 f.; Ezek. xxxii.7ff.; Joel iii.3ff.; Amos viii. 9,; further, to descriptions such as Judges v. 20; Acts ii. xvii. ff. In those prophetic passages, real eclipses of the sun and moon, earthquakes, and the like, are intended, and are described as prdigies which will accompany the predicted catastrophe; the song of Deborah, again, celebrates a real participation of heaven in the battle against Sisera, a participation which in the narrative, iv. 15., is ascribed to God himself, in the song, to his heavenly hosts; lastly, Peter expects, that the outpouring of the spirit will be succeeded by the appearances in the heavens, promised among the signs of the great day of the Lord.

The attempt to effect a division near the end of the discourse, at xxv. 30, fails from its rendering much that goes before incapable of explanation; the next expedient is to retreat as far towards the beginning as possible, by considering how far it is inevitable to recognise a relation to the immediate future. The first resting place is after xxiv. 28; for what is said, up to this point, of war and other calamities, of the abomination in the temple, of the necessity for speedy flight, in order to escape unprecedented misery, cannot be divested of a reference to the destruction of Jerusalem without the greatest violence: while what follows concerning the appearance of the Son of man in the clouds, etc. just as imperatively demands an application to the last day. But in the first place, it appears incomprehensible how the enormous interval, which on this explanation also, is supposed to fall between the one portion of the discourse and the other, can be introduced between two verses, of all others, whichMatthew connects by an adverb expressive of the shortest possible time (eu)qewj). It has been sought to remove this inconvenience by the assertion that evOeug does not here signify the quick succession of the one incident on the other, but only the unexpected occurrence of an event, and that consequently, what is here said amounts merely to this: suddenly, at some period (how distant, is undetermined) after the calamities attendant on the destruction of Jerusalem, the Messiah will visibly appear. Such an ^{P.661} interpretation of eu)qewj is, as Olshausen correctly perceives, merely a desperate resource: but even were it otherwise, it would afford no real aid, since not only does Mark in his parallel passage, v. 24, by the words, "in those days, after that tribulation," (e)n e)keinaij taij h(meraij meta thn qliyin e)keinhn) place the events which he proceeds to mention, in uninterrupted chronological succession with those which he had before detailed; but also, shortly after this point in each of the narratives (Matt. v. 34 parall), we find the assurance that all this will be witnessed by the existing generation. As thus the opinion, that from v. 29, everything relates to the return of Christ to judge the world, was threatened with annihilation by v. 34; the word genea, as the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist complains, was put to the torture, that it might cease to bear witness against this mode of division. At one time it is made to signify the Jewish nation; at another the adherents of Jesus; and of both the oe and the other Jesus is supposed to say, that it will (how many generations hence being left uncertain) be still in existence on the arrival of that catastrophe. So to explain the verse in question, that it may not contain a determination of time, is even maintained to be necessary on a consideration of the context, v. 35: for as in this Jesus declares it impossible to determine the period of that catastrophe, he cannot immediately before have given such a determination, in the assurance that his contemporaries would yet live to see ajl of which he had been speaking. But this alleged necessity so to interpret the word genea, has long been dissipated by the distinction between an inexact indication of the space of time, beyond which the event will not be deferred (genea), and the precise determination of the epoch at which it will occur; the former Jesus gives, the latter he declares himself unable to give. But the very possibility of interpreting genea in the above manner vanishe, when it is considered, that in connection with a verb of time, and without anything to imply a special application, genea cannot have any other than its original sense: i.e. generation, age; that in a passage aiming to determine the signs of the Messiah's advent, it would be very unsuitable to introduce a declaration which, instead of giving any information concerning the arrival'of that catastrophe, should rather treat of the duration of the Jewish nation, or of the Christian community, of which nothing had previously been said; that, moreover, already at v. 33, in the words "when you shall SEE all these things, know etc," it is presupposed that the parties addressed would witness the approach of the event in question; and lastly, that in another passage (Matt. xvi. 28. parall.) the certainty of living to see the coming of the Son of man is asserted not simply of this generation but of some standing here whereby it is shown in the most decisive manner, that in the present passage also, ^{P.662} Jesus intended by the above expression the race of his contemporaries. who were not to have become extinct before that catastrophe should occur. Unable to deny this, and yet anxious to separate as widely as possible the end of the world here announced, and the age of Jesus, others would iind in the declaration before us nothing more than this: the events hitherto described will begin to be fulfilled in the present age, though their complete fulfilment may yet be deferred many centuries. But when already at v. 8 the subject is said to be the beginning of the tribulation, while from v. 14, we have a description of the end of the present period of the world, which that tribulation would introduce, and it is here (v. 34) said, the existing generation shall not pass away, until all these things be fulfilled: we must inevitably understand by panta tauta, (all these things,) not merely the beginning, but also the last-mentioned events at the end of the world.

Thus there is still at v. 34 something which must be referred to an event very near to the time of Jesus: hence the discourse of Jesus cannot from so early a point as v. 29, refer to the end of the world, an epoch so far distant; and the division must be made somewhat further on, after v. 35 or 42. But on this plan, expressions are thrown into the first part of the discourse, which resist the assigned application to the time of the destruction of Jerusalem the glorious advent of Christ in the clouds, and the assembling of all nations by angels (v. 30 f.), must be regarded as the same extravagant figures, which formerly forbade our acceptance of another mode of division.

Thus the declaration v. 34 which, together with the preceding symbolical discourse on the rig-tree (v. 32 f.), and the appended asseveration (v. 35), must refer to a very near event, has, both before and after it, expressions which can only relate to the more distant catastrophe: hence it has appeared to some as a sort of oasis in the discourse, having a sense isolated from the immediate context. Schott, for instance, supposes that, up to v. 26, Jesus had been speaking of the destruction of Jerusalem; that at v. 27 he does indeed make a transition to the events at the end of the present period of the world; but that at v. 32, he reverts to the original subject, the destruction of Jerusalem: and only at v. 36 proceeds again to ^{P.663} speak of the end of the world. But this is to hew the text in pieces, out of desperation. Jesus cannot possibly have spoken with so little order and coherence; still less can he have so linked his sentences together as to give no intimation of such abrupt transitions.

Nor is this imputed to him by the most recent critics. According to them, it is the evangelist who has joined together, not in the best order, distinct and heterogeneous declarations of Jesus. Matthew, indeed, admits Scliulz, imagined that these discourses were spoken without intermission, and only arbitrariness and violence can in this respect sever them from each other: but hardly did Jesus himself deliver them in this consecutive manner, and with this imprint of unity, The various phases of his coming, thinks Sieffert, his figurative appearance at the destruction of Jerusalem, and his literal appearance at the last day, though they may not have been expressly discriminated, were certainly not positively connected by Jesus; but subjects which he spoke of in succession, were, from their obscurity confused together by the evangelist. And as in this instance there recurs the difference between Matthew and Luke, that what Matthew represents as being spoken on a single occasion, Luke distributes into separat discourses; to which it is also to be added, that much of what Matthew gives, Luke either has not, or has it in a different form: therefore Schleiermacher believed himself warranted to rectify the composition of Matthew by that of Luke, and to maintain that while in Luke the two separate discourses, xvii.22ff. and xxi.5ff., have each their appropriate connection and their indubitable application, in Matthew (chap. xxiv. and xxv), by the blending of those two discourses, and the introduction of portions of other discourses, the connection is destroyed, and the application obscured. According to this, the discourse, Luke xxi. taken alone, contains nothing which outsteps the reference to the capture of Jerusalem and the accompanying events. Yet here also (v. 27) we find the declaration, Then shall they see the Son of Man coming in a cloud, and when Schleiermacher explains this as a mere image representing the revelation of the religious signifiance of the political and natural events before described, he falls into a violence of interpretation which overturns his entire opinion as to the mutual relation of these accounts. If, then, in the connection of the end of all things with the destruction of Jerusalem, Matthew by no means stands alone, but is countenanced by Luke, to say nothing of Mark, whose account in this instance is an extract from Matthew; we may, it is true, conclude, that as in other discourses of Jesus, so perhaps in this also, many things whiph were uttered at different times are associated; but there is nothing to warrant ^{P.664} the supposition, that precisely what relates to the two events, which in our idea are so remote from each other, is the foreign matter, especially since we see, from the unanimous representation of the remaining New Testament writings, that the primitive Church expected, as a speedy issue, the return of Christ, together with the end of the present period of the world (1 Cor. x. 11; xv. 51; 1'hil. iv. 5; 1 Thess. iv.15ff.; James v. 8; 1 Pet. iv. 7; 1 John ii. 18; Rev. i. 1, 3; iii. 11; xxii. 7, 10, 12, 20.).

Thus it is impossible to evade the acknowledgment, that in this discourse, if we do not mutilate it to suit our own views, Jesus at first speaks of the destruction of Jerusalem, and further on and until the close, of his return at the end of all things, and that he places the two events in immediate connection. There remains, therefore, but one expedient for vindicating the correctness of his announcement, namely, on the one hand, to assign the coming of which he speaks to the future, but, on the other hand, to bring it at the same time into the present-instead of a merely future, to make it a perpetual coming. The whole history of the world, it is said, since the first appearance of Christ, is an invisible return on his part, a spiritual judgment which he holds over mankind. of this, the destruction of Jerusalem (in our passage until v. 28) is only the first act; in immediate succession (v. 29 fF.) comes the revolution effected among mankind by the publication of the gospel; a revolution wich is to be carried on in a series of acts and epochs until the end of all things, when the judgment gradually effected in the story of the world, will be made known by an all-comprehending, final revelation. But the famous utterance of the poet, spoken from the inmost depth of modern conviction, is ill-adapted to become the key of a discourse, which more than any other has its root in the point of view proper to the ancient world. To regard the judgment of the world, the coming of Christ, as something successive, is a mode of conception in the most direct opposition to that of the New Testament. The very expressions by which it designates that catastrophe, as "that day" or "the last day," show that it is to be thought of as momentary; the "end of the age" (v. 3), concerning the signs of which the apostles inquire, and which Jesus elsewhere (Matt, xiii. 39.) represents under the image of the harvest, can only be the final close of the course of the world, not something which is gradually effected during this course; when Jesus compares his coming to lightning (xxiv. 27), and to the entrance of the thief in the night (v. 43), he represents it as one sudden event, and not as a series of events. If we consider in addition to this the extravagant figures, which it is not less necessary to suppose on this ^{P.665} interpretation, than on the above-mentioned reference of the 24th chapter to the destruction of Jerusalem, it will appear necessary to abstain from this expedient, as from all the previous ones.

Thus the last attempt to discover in the discourse before us the immense interval which, looking from our position in the present clay, is fixed between the destruction of Jerusalem and the end of all things, having failed; we are taught practically that that interval lies only in our own conception, which we are not justified in introducing into the text. And when we consider that we owe our idea of that interval only to the experience of many centuries, which have elapsed since the destruction of Jerusalem: it cannot be difficult to us to imagine how the author of this discourse, who had not had this experience, might entertain the belief that shortly after the fall of the Jewish sanctuary the world itself, of which, in the Jewish idea, that sanctuary was the centre, would also come to an end, and the Messiah appear in judgment.

The result just obtained involves a consequence, to avoid which has been the object of all the futile attempts at explanation hitherto examined: if namely, Jesus conceived and declared that the fall of the Jewish sanctuary would be shortly followed by his visible return and the end of the world, while it is now nearly 1800 years since the one catastrophe, and yet the other has not arrived; it follows that in this particular he was mistaken. .Hence expositors, who so far yield to exegetical evidence, as to agree with us in the above conclusion concerning the meaning of the discourse before us, seek from dogmatical considerations to evade this legitimate consequence.

Hengstenberg, as is well known, has advanced, in relation to the history of the Hebrew prophets, the following theory, which has met with approval from other expositors. To the spiritual vision of these men, he says, future things presented themselves not so much through the medium of time, as of space-as it were, in great pictures; and thus, as is the case in paintings or perspective views, the most distant object often appeared to them to stand immediately behind the nearest, foreground and background being intermingled ^{P.666} with each other: and this theory of a perspective vision we are to apply to Jesus, especially in regard to the discourse in question. But we may here cite the appropriate remark of Paulus, that as one, who in a perspective externally presented, does not know how to distinguish distances, labours under an optical delusion, i.e. errs: so likewise in an internal perspective of ideas, if such there be, the disregard of distances must be pronounced an error; consequently this theory does not show that the above men did not err, but rather explains how they easily might err.

Even Olshausen considers this theory, which he elsewhere adopts, insufficient in the present case to remove all appearance of error on the part of Jesus; and he therefore seeks to derive special grounds of justification, from the particular nature of the event predicted. In the first place, he regards it as indispensable to the full moral influence of the doctrine of Christ's return, that this catastrophe should be regarded as possible, indeed probable, at any moment. This consideration may indeed justify such enunciations as Matt, xxiv.37ff., where Jesus admonishes to watchfulness, because no one can know how soon the decisive moment may arrive; but by no means such as xxiv. 34, where he declares that within the term of the existing generation, all will be fulfilled. For one whose mind is in a healthy state, conceives the possible as possible, the probable as probable; and if he wishes to abide by the truth, he so exhibits them to others: he, on the contrary, by whom the merely possible or probable isconceived as the real, is under a mistake; and he who, without so conceiving it himself, yet for a moral or religious object, so represents it to others, permits himself to use a pious fraud. Olshausen further avails himself of a position already noticed, namely, that the opinion that the advent of Christ is at hand, is a true one, inasmuch as the entire history of the world is a coming of Christ; though not so as to exclude his final coming at the end of all things. But if it is proved that Jesus jepresented his literal, final coming as near at hand, while, in fact, only his figurative perpetual coming occurred in the period indicated: he has confused these two modes of his coming. The last argument which Olshausen adduces, that because the acceleration or delay of the return of Christ depends on the conduct of men, consequently on their free-will, his prophecy is only to be understood conditionally, stands or falls with the first; for to represent something conditional as unconditional, is to creat a false impression.

Sieffert, likewise, regards the grounds on which Olshausen seeks to free the assertions of Jesus concerning his return from the imputation of error, as inadequate; nevertheless he holds it an impossibility to the Christian consciousness, to ascribe an erroneous expectation to Jesus. In no case would this furnish a warrant, ^{P.667} arbitrarily to sever from each other those elements in the discourse of Jesus which refer to the nearer event, from those which in our view refer to the more remote one: rather, if we had reasons for holding such an error on the part of Jesus inconceivable, we must deny in general that the discourses on the second advent, in which those two sets of materials are so inextricably interwoven, originated with him. But, looking from the orthodox point of view, the question is not: what will it satisfy the Christian consciousness of the present day to believe or not to believe concerning Christ? but, what stands written concerning Christ? and to this the above consciousness must accommodate itself as it best may. Considering the subject rationally however, a feeling resting on presuppositions, such as the so-called Christian consciousness, has no voice in matters of science; and as often as it seeks to intermeddle with them, is to be reduced to order by the simple reprimand: Mulier taceat in ecclesia ( Let woman be silent in the church! )

But have we no other grounds for questioning that Jesus really uttered the predictions contained in Matt. xxiv. and xxv. parall.? In pursuing this inquiry, we may first take our stand on the assertion of supernaturalistic theologians, that what Jesus here predicts, he could not know in the natural way of reasonable calculation, but only in a supernatural manner, Even the main fact, that the temple would be destroyed and Jerusalem laid waste, could not, according to this opinion, be so certainly foreknown. Who could conjecture, it is asked, that the Jews would carry their frantic obstinacy so far as to render such an issue inevitable? Who could calculate, that precisely such emperors, would send such procurators, as would provoke insurrection by their baseness and pusillanimity? Still more remarkable is it, that many particular incidents which Jesus foretold, actually occurred. The wars, pestilence, earthquakes, famines, which he prophesied, may be shown in the history of the succeeding times; the persecuton of his followers really took place; the prediction that there would be false prophets, and even such as would, by promises of miracles, allure the people into the wilderness (Matt. xxiv. 11. 24 ff. parall), may be compared with a strikingly similar passage from Josephus, describing the last times of the Jewish state; the encompassing of Jerusalem with armies, mentioned by Luke, with the trench, which he elsewhere (xix. 43 f.) speaks of as being cast about the city, may be recognized in the circumstance recorded by Josephus, that Titus caused Jerusalem to be enclosed by a wall; lastly it may also excite astonishment that the declarations, there shall not be left one stone upon a stone.

When on the orthodox point of view, from the impossibility of foreseeing such particulars in a natural manner, it is concluded that Jesus had a supernatural insight into the future; this conclusion is here attended not only with the same difficulty as above, in connection with the announcement of his death and resurrection, but with another also. In the first place, according to Matthew (xxiv. 15), and Mark (xiii. 14), Jesus represented the first stage of the catastrophe as a fulfilment of the prophecy of Daniel concerning an abomination of desolation, and consequently referred Dan, ix. 27. (comp. xi. 31., xii. 11.) to an event at the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. For what Paulus maintains, namely, that Jesus here only borrows an expression from Daniel, without regarding that declaration of the prophet as a prophecy concerning something which in his time (the time of Jesus) was still future-is here rendered especially inconceivable by the addition: let him that reads understand. Now it may be regrded as an established point in the modern criticism and explanation of the Old Testament, that the above passages in Daniel have reference to the desecration of the temple by Antiochus Epiphanes; consequently, the interpretation of them which the evangelists here lend to Jesus is a false one. But to proceed to the difficulty which is peculiar to the prophecy in Matt. xxiv. xxv.: only one side of it, that relating to Jerusalem, has been fulfilled: the other, that relating to the return of Jesus and the end of the world, remains unfulfilled. Such a half-true prophecy as this cannot have been drawn by Jesus from his higher nature, and he must have been left in this matter to his human faculties. But that he should be able, by means of these, to foresee a result, dependent on so many fortuities as was the destruction of Jerusalem, with its particular circumstances, appears inconceivable; and hence the conjecture arises, that these discourses, in the definiteness which they now possess, were not uttered priorto the issue, consequently not by Jesus, but that they may have been put into his mouth as prophecies after the issue. Thus Kaiser, for example, is of opinion that Jesus threatened a terrible fate to the temple and the nation by means of the Romans, conditionally, in case the nation did not accept salvation from the Messiah, and described this fate in prophetic types; but that the unconditional form and the more precise delineations were given to his discourse post eventum. Credner also infers, from the circumstance, that incidents accompanying the destruction of Jerusalem are put into the mouth of Jesus as prophecies, that the three first Gospels cannot have been composed ^{P.669} before this event. It must certainly be supposed that the prophecy, as we have it in the two first Gospels, was formed immediately after or even during the issue, since here the appearance of the Messiah is predicted as an event that would immediately succeed the fall of Jerusalem, which in later years could no longer be the expectation. As this immediate chronological connection of the two catastrophes is not so expressly made by Luke, it has been supposed that this evangelist gives the prophecy as it was modified by experience, that the Messiah's advent and the end of the world had in no way followed close on the destruction of Jerusalem.

In opposition to these two opinions, that the prophecy in question had a supernatural source, and that it was only made after the issue; it is sought, in a third quarter, to show that what is here predicted, Jesus might really have known in a natural way. While, on the one hand, it is held in the highest degree astonishing that the result should have so closely corresponded with the most minute features of the prophecy of Jesus: on the other hand, there are expositors by whom this correspondence is called in question. The encompassing of Jerusalem with armies, say they, is precisely what Titus, according to Josephus, pronounces impossible to be effected; it is predicted that a trench (xarac) would be cast about the city, while Josephus informs us, that after the first attempt at forming an embankment (xwma) had been rendered useless, by an act of incendiarism on the part of the besieged, Titus desisted from his scheme; of false Messiahs, arising in the interval between the death of Jesus and the desruction of Jerusalem, history says nothing; the commotions among nations, and the natural phenomena, in that period, are far from being so important as they are here represented; but above all, in these prophecies, especially as they are given in Matthew and Mark, it is not the destruction of Jerusalem which is predicted, but solely that of the temple: plain divergencies of the prophecy from the result, which would not exist, if either a supernatural glance into the future, or a vaticinium post eventum were concerned. According to these theologians, we are on the wrong track in seeking the counterpart of these prophecies forwards, in the result; since it was backwards, on types presented in the past, that the authors looked.

A mass of such types was furnished by the Jewish conception of the circumstances ^{P.670} which would precede the advent of the Messiah. False prophets and Messiahs, war, famine and pestilence, earthquakes and commotions in the heavens, prevalent corruption of manners, persecution of the faithful servants of Jehovah, were held to be the immediate harbingers of the messianic kingdom. Moreover, in the prophets there are descriptions of the tribulation which would presage and accompany the day of the coming of Jehovah (Isa. xiii. 9 ff.; Joel i. 15, ii. 1 ff. 10 ff., iii. 3 ff., iv. 15 f.; Zeph.i. 14 ff.; Hagg. ii. 7; Zech. xiv. 1 ff.; Mat. iii. 1 ff), or which would precede the messianic kingdom of the saints (Dan. vii.-xii.), as also expressions in later Jewish writings, so analogous with our evangelical prediction, as to put it beyond question, that the description which it gives of the time of the Messiah's advent is drawn from a circle of ideas which had long been current among the Jews.

Another question is, whether the principal feature in the picture before us, the destruction of the temple and the devastation of Jerusalem, as introductory to the coming of the Messiah, may also be shown to have made part of the popular conception in the time of Jesus. In Jewish writings we find the notion, that the birth of the Messiah would coincide with the destruction of the sanctuary; but this idea was obviously first formed after the fall of the temple, in order that a fountain of consolation might spring out of the lowest depth of misery. Josephus finds in Daniel, together with what relates to Antiochus, a prophecy of the annihilation of the Jewish state by the Romans; but as this is not the primary object in any of the visions in Daniel, Josephus might first make this interpretation after the issue, in which case it would prove nothing as to the time of Jesus. Nevertheless, it is conceivable, that already in the time of Jesus, the Jews might attribute to the prophecies of Daniel a reference to events yet future, although these prophecies in fact related to a far earlier period; and they might do so on the same grounds as those on which the Christians of the present age still look forward to the full realization of Matt. xxiv. and xxv. As immediately after the fall of the kingdom made of iron mixed with clay, and of the horn that speaks blasphemies and makes war against the saints, the coming of the Son of man in the clouds, and the commencement of the everlasting kingdom of the saints, is prophesied, while this result had not by any means succeeded the defeat of Antiochus: there was an inducement still to look to the future, not only for the heavenly kingdom, but also, since they were made immediately to precede it, for the calamities caused by the kingdom ^{P.671} of iron and clay; among which calamities, by analogy with what was predicted of the horn, the desecration of the temple was conspicuous. But while the prophecy in Daniel includes only the desecration of the temple and the interruption of the worship, together with (the partial) destruction of the city: in the discourse before us complete destruction is predicted to the temple; and likewise to the city, not merely in Luke, where the expressions are very marked, but undoubtedly in the two other Evangelists also, as appears to be indicated by the exhortation to hasty flight from the city; which prediction of total destruction, as it is not contained in the type, can apparently have been gathered only from the result. But in the first place, the description in Daniel with the expressions shamem and hishkhiyth (ix. 26 f., xii. 11), which the LXX. translates by erhmwsij, desolation, and diafqeirw, I destroy, may easily be also understood of a total destruction; and secondly, if once, in connexion with the sins of the nation, the temple and city had been destroyed and the people carried away captive, every enthusiastic Israelite, to whom the religious and moral condition of his fellow-countrymen appeared corrupt and irremediable, might thenceforth expect and predict a repetition of that former judgment. According to this, even those particulars in which, as we have seen in the foregoing section, Luke surpasses his fellow-narrators in definiteness, are not of a kind to oblige us to suppose, either a supernatural foreknowledge, or a vaticinium post eventum: on the contrary, all may be explained by a close consideration of what is narrated concerning the first destruction of Jerusalem in 2 Kings xxv.; 2 Chron. xxxvi.; and Jer. XXXIX. 52.
There is only one point which Jesus, as the author of this discourse, could not have gathered from any types, but must have drawn entirely from himself: namely, the declaration that the catastrophe which he described would arrive within the present generation. This prediction we must hesitate to derive from a supernatural knowledge, for the reason, already noticed, that it is only half fulfilled : while the other side of the fact, the striking fulfilment of at least the one half of the prophecy, might incline us to distrust the supposition of a merely natural calculation, and to regard this determination of time as a feature introduced into the discourse of Jesus after the issue. Meanwhile, it is clear from the passages cited at the conclusion of the last section, that the apostles themselves expected the return of Christ to take place within their lifetime; and it is not improbable that Jesus also believed that this event, together with the ruin of the city and temple, which according to Daniel was to precede it, was very near at hand. The more general part of the expectation, namely, the appearing at some future time in the clouds of heaven, to awake the dead, to sit in judgment, and to found an everlasting kingdom, would necessarily, from a consideration of Daniel, where such a coming is ascribed to the Son of man, be contemplated by Jesus as a part of his own destiny, so soon as he held {P.672}
himself to be the Messiah; while, with regard to the time, it was natural that he should not conceive a very long interval as destined to elapse between his first messianic coming in humiliation, and his second, in glory.
One objection to the genuineness of the synoptical discourses on the second advent, is yet in reserve; it has, however, less weight in our point of view than in that of the prevalent criticism of the gospels. This objection is derived from the absence of any detailed description of the second advent of Jesus in the Gospel of John. It is true that the fundamental elements of the doctrine of Christ's return are plainly discoverable in the fourth gospel also. Jesus therein ascribes to himself the offices of the future judgment, and the awaking of the dead (John v. 22-30); which last is not indeed numbered among the concomitants of the advent of Christ in the synoptical gospels, but not seldom appears in that connexion elsewhere in the New Testament (e.g. 1 Cor. xv. 23; I Thess. iv. 16). When Jesus, in the fourth gospel, sometimes denies that he is come into the world for judgment (iii. 27, viii. 15, xii. 47), this refers only to his first presence on earth, and is limited by opposite declarations, in which he asserts that he is come into the world for judgment (ix. 39, comp. viii. i6), to the sense that the object of his mission is not to condemn but to save, and that his judgment is not individual or partial; that it consists, not in an authoritative sentence proceeding subjectively from himself, but in an objective act proceeding from the intrinsic tendency of things, a doctrine which is significantly expressed in the declaration, that him who hears his word without believing he judges not, but the word, which he has spoken, shall judge him in the last day (o logoV on elalhsa, krinei auton en th escath hmera, xii 48). Further, when the Jesus of John's gospel says of the believer: ou krinetai, he is not judged, eij krisin ou)k erxetai, he shall not come into judgment (iii. i8, v. 24), this is to be understood of a judgment with a condemnatory issue; when on the contrary, it is said of the unbeliever: hdh kekritai, he is judged already (iii. i8), this only means that the assigning of the merited lot to each is not reserved until the future judgment at the end of all things, since each one iii his inward disposition bears within himself the fate which is his due. This does not exclude a future solemn act of judgment, wherein that which has at present only a latent existence will be made matter of awful revelation; for in the very passage last quoted we find the consignment to condemnation, and elsewhere the awarding of future blessedness (v. 28 f., vi. 39 f., 54) associated with the last day and the resurrection.

In like manner, Jesus says in Luke also, in the same connexion in which he describes his return as a still future, external catastrophe, xvii. 20 f. The kingdom of God cometh not with observation; {P.673} neither shall they say, lo here! or, lo there! for behold the kingdom of God is within you. A certain interpretation of the words uttered by the Jesus of John's gospel, supposes him even to intimate that his return was not far distant. The expressions already mentioned in the farewell discourses, in which Jesus promises his disciples not to leave them comfortless, but, after having gone to the Father, shortly (xvi. i6) to come again to them (xiv. 3, 18), are not seldom understood of the return of Christ at the last day; but when we hear Jesus say of this same return, that he will therein reveal himself only to his disciples, and not to the world (xiv. 19, comp. 22), it is impossible to think of it as the return to judgment, in which Jesus conceived that he should reveal himself to good and bad without distinction. There is a particularly enigmatical allusion to the coming of Christ in the appendix to the fourth gospel, chap. xxi. On the question of Peter as to what will become of the apostle John, Jesus here replies, "if I will that he remain till I come, what is that to you?" (v. 22) whence, as it is added, the Christians inferred that John would not die, since they supposed the coming (erxesqai) here spoken of; to be the final return of Christ, in which those who witnessed it were to be changed, without tasting death (i Cor. xv. 51). But, adds the author correctively, Jesus did not say, the disciple would not die, but only, if he willed that he should tarry till he came, what was that to Peter? Hereby the Evangelist may have intended to rectify the inference in two ways. Either it appeared to him erroneous to identify the remaining until Jesus came, with not dying, i.e. to take the coming of which Jesus here spoke for the last, which would put an end to death; and in that case he must have understood by it an invisible coming of Christ, possibly in the destruction of Jerusalem; or, he held it erroneous that what Jesus had only said hypothetically; even if he willed the given case, that was no concern of Peter's, should be understood categorically, as if such had really been the will of Jesus; in which case the e)rxomai would retain its customary sense.

If, according to this, all the main features of the doctrine of the second advent are put into the mouth of Jesus in the fourth gospel also, still we nowhere find anything of the detailed, graphic description of the external event, which we read in the synoptical gospels. This relation between the two representations, creates no slight difficulty on the ordinary view of the origin of the gospels, and especially that of the fourth. If Jesus really spoke of his return so fully and solemnly as the synoptists represent him to have done, and treated of the right knowledge and observation of the signs as something of the highest importance ; it is inconceivable that the author of the fourth gospel could pass over all this, if he were an immediate disciple of Jesus. The usual mode of accounting for such an omission, by the supposition that he believed this part of the teaching ^{P.674} of Jesus to be sufficiently known from the synoptical gospels, or from oral tradition, is the more inadequate here in proportion as all which bears a prophetic character, especially when relating to events at once so much longed for and dreaded, is exposed to misinterpretation; as we may see from the rectification just noticed, which the author of John xxi. found it necessary to apply to the opinion of his contemporaries concerning the promise given by Jesus to John. Thus, in the present case, an explanatory word would have been highly seasonable and useful, especially as the representation of the first gospel, which made the end of all things follow immediately on the destruction of Jerusalem, must be the more an occasion of doubt and offence the nearer the latter event came, and in a still greater degree when it was past. And who was more capable of affording such enlightenment than the favourite disciple, particularly if, according to Mark xiii.3, he was the only Evangelist who had been present at the discourse of Jesus on this subject? Hence, here again, a special reason for his silence is sought in the alleged destination of his gospel for non-judaical, idealizing Gnostics, whose point of view those descriptions would not have suited, and were therefore omitted. But precisely in relation to such readers, it would have been a culpable compliance, a confirmation in their idealizing tendency, had John, out of deference to them, suppressed the real side of the return of Christ. The apostle must rather have withstood the propensity of these people to evaporate the external, historical part of Christianity, by giving due prominence to it; as, in his epistle, in opposition to their Docetism. he lays stress on the corporeality of Jesus: so, in opposition to their idealism, he must have been especially assiduous to exhibit in the return of Christ the external facts by which it would be signalized. Instead of this, he himself speaks nearly like a Gnostic, and constantly aims, in relation to the return of Christ, to resolve the external and the future into the internal and the present. Hence there is not so much exaggeration, as Olshausen supposes, in the opinion of Fleck, that the representation of the doctrine of Jesus concerning his return in the synoptical gospels, and that given in the fourth, exclude each other, for if the author of the fourth gospel be an apostle, the discourses on the second advent which the three first Evangelists attribute to Jesus, cannot have been so delivered by him, and vice versa. We, however, as we have said, cannot avail ourselves of this argument, having long renounced the pre-supposition that the fourth gospel had an apostolic origin. But, on our point of view, we can fully explain the relation which the representation of the fourth gospel bears to that of the synoptists. In Palestine, where the tradition recorded by the three first gospels was formed, the doctrine of a solemn advent of the Messiah which was there prevalent, and which Jesus embraced, was received in its whole breadth into the Christian belief: whereas in the Hellenistic-theosophic circle in which the fourth ^{P.675} gospel arose, this idea was divested of its material envelopment, and the return of Christ became the ambiguous medium between a real and an ideal, a present and a future event, which it appears in the fourth gospel.

IN The three first Gospels the principal enemies of Jesus are the Pharisees and scribes, who saw in him the most ruinous opponent of their institutions; together with the chief priests and elders, who, as the heads of the external temple-worship and the hierarchy founded upon it, could have no friendly feeling towards one who on every opportunity represented as the main point, the internal service of G-od with the devotion of the mind. Elsewhere we find among the enemies of Jesus the Sadducees (Matt. xvi. 1; xxii.23ff. parall. coinp. Matt. xvi.6ff. parall), to whose materialism much in his opinions must have been repugnant; and the Herodian party (Mark iii, 6; Matt. xxii. 1G parall.) who, having been unfavourable to the Baptist, were naturally so to his successor. The fourth gospel, though it sometimes mentions the chief priests and Pharisees, the most frequently designates the enemies of Jesus by the general expression: "the Jews;" an expression which proceeds from a later, Christian point of view.

The four evangelists unanimously relate, that the more defined machinations of the Pharisaic-hierarchical party against Jesus, took their rise from an offence committed by the latter against the prevalent rules concerning the observation of the Sabbath. When Jesus had cured the man with the withered hand, it is said in Matthew: the Pharisees went out and held a council against him, how they might destroy him (xii. 14. comp. Mark iii. 6; Luke vi. 11.); and in like manner John observes, on the occasion of the Sabbath cure at the pool of Bethesda: therefore the Jews persecuted Jesus, and after mentioning a declaration of Jesus, proceeds; therefore the Jews sought the more to kill him (v. 16, 18.).

^{P.676} But immediately after this commencing point, the synoptic account of the relation in question diverges from that of John. In the Synoptics, the next offence is given by the neglect of washing before meals on the part of Jesus and his disciples, with the sharp invectives which, when called to account on the subject, he launched forth against the spirit of petty observance, and the hypocrisy and spirit of persecution with which it was united in the Pharisees and lawyers; after all which it is said, that the latter conceived a deep animosity against him, and tried to sift him and entrap him by dangerous questions, in order to obtain grounds of accusation against him (Luke xi. 38-54. comp. Matt. xv.1ff.; Mark vii.1ff.). On his last journey to Jerusalem, the Pharisees gave Jesus a warning against Herod (Luke xiii. 31) which apparently had no other object than to induce him to leave the country. The next important cause of offence to the hierarchical party, was the striking homage paid to Jesus by the peopleon his entrance into Jerusalem, and the purification of the temple which he immediately undertook: but they were still withheld from any violent measures towards him by the strength of his interest with the people (Matt. xxi. 15 f.; Mark ix. 18; Luke xix. 39, 47 f.), which was the sole reason why they did not possess themselves of his person, after the severe manner in which he had characterized them, in the parable of the husbandmen of the vineyard (Matt. xxi. 45 f. parall.). After these events, it scarcely needed the anti-pharisaic discourse Matt, xxiii. to make the chief priests, the scribes and elders, i.e. the Sanhedrin, assemble in the palace of the high priest, shortly before the Passover, for a consultation, that they might take Jesus by subtlety and kill him (Matt. xxvi. 3 fF. parall).

In the fourth gospel, also, the great number of the adherents of Jesus among the people is sometimes, it is true, described as the reason why his enemies desired to seize him (vii. 32, 44, comp. iv.1ff.), and his solemn entrance into Jerusalem embitters them here also (xii. 19.); sometimes their murderous designs are mentioned without any motive being stated (vii. 1, 19, 25, viii. 40); but the main cause of offence in this gospel, lies in the declarations of Jesus concerning his exalted dignity. Even on the occasion of the cure of the lame man on the Sabbath, what chiefly irritated the Jews was that Jesus justified it by appealing to the uninterrupted agency of God as his Father, which in their opinion was a blasphemous making of himself equal with God (v. 18); when he spoke of his divine mission, they sought to lay hold on him (vii. 30. comp. viii. 20); on his asserting that he was before Abraham, they took up stones to cast at him (viii. 59); they did the same when he declard that he and the Father were one (x. 31), and when he asserted that the Father was in him and he in the Father, they again attempted to seize him (x. 39.). But that which, according to the fourth gospel, turns the scale, and causes the hostile party to take a formal resolution against Jesus, is the resuscitation ^{P.677} of Lazarus. When this act was reported to the Pharisees, they and the chief priests convened a council of the Sanhedrin, in which the subject of deliberation was, that if Jesus continued to perform so many signs, all would at length adhere to him, and then the Koman power would be exerted to the destruction of the Jewish nation; whereupon the high priest Caiaphas pronounced the momentous decision, that it was better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish. His death was now determined upon, and it was enjoined on every one to point out his abode, that he might be arrested (xi.46ff.).

With regard to this difference modern criticism observes, that we should not at all comprehend the tragical turn of the fate of Jesus from the synoptic accounts, and that John alone opens to us a glance into the manner in which, step by step, the breach between the hierarchical party and Jesus was widened; in short, that in this point also the representation of the fourth gospel shows itself a pragmatical one, which that of the other Gospels is not. But what it is in which the Gospel of John exhibits superiority in gradation and progress, it is difficult to see, since the very first definite statement concerning the incipient enmity (v. 18.) contains the extreme of the offence "making himself equal with God" and the extreme of the enmity they sought to kill him); so that all which is narrated further concerning the hostility of the Jews is mere repetition, and the only fact which presents itself as a step towards more decided measures is the resolution of the Sanhedrin, chap. xi. This species of gradation, however, is not wanting in the synoptic account also: here we have the transition from the indefinite laying wait for Jesus, and the communing what might be done to him, (Luke xi. 54; vi. 11), or as it is more precisely given in Matthew (xii. 14), and in Mark (iii. 6), the taking counsel how they might destroy him, to the definite resolve as to the manner and the time (Matt. xxvi. 4 f. parall.). But it is especially made a reproach to the three first evangelists, that in passing over the resurrection of Lazarus, they have omitted that incident which gave the final impulse to the fate of Jesus, If we, on the contrary, in virtue of the above result of our criticism of this miraculous narrative, must rather praise the Synoptics, that they do not represent as the turning point in the fate of Jesus, an incident which never really happened: so the fourth evangelist, by the manner in which he relates the murderous resolve towhich it was the immediate inducement, by no means manifests himself as one whose authority can be held by us a sufficient warrant for the truth of his narrative. The circumstance that he ascribes to the high priest the gift of prophecy (without doubt in accordance with a superstitious idea of his age), and regards his ^{P.678} speech as a prediction of the death of Jesus, would certainly not by itself prove that he could not have been an apostle and eye-witness: But it has with justice been held a difficulty, that our evangelist designates Caiaphas as the high priest of that year, (xi. 49), and thus appears to suppose that this dignity, like many Roman magistracies, was an annual one; whereas it was originally held for life, and even in that period of Roman ascendancy, was not a regular annual office, but was transferred as often as it pleased the arbitrariness of the Romans. To conclude on the authority of the fourth gospel, in opposition to the general custom, and notwithstanding the silence of Josephus, that Annas and Caiaphas, by a private agreement, held the office for a year by turns, is an expedient to which those may resort whom it pleases; to take Iviavrav indefinitely for xpovov, is, from the twofold repetition of the same expression v. 51 and xviii. 13, inadmissible: that at that perio the high priesthood was frequently transferred from one to another, and some high priests were not allowed to remain in their office longer than a year, did not justify our author in designating Caiaphas as the high priest of a particular year, when in fact he rilled that post for a series of years, and certainly throughout the duration of the public agency of Jesus; lastly, that John intended to say that Caiaphas was high priest in the year in which Jesus died, without thereby excluding earlier and later years, in which he also held the office, is an equally untenable position. For if the time in which an incident occurs is described as a certain year, this mode of expression must imply, that either the incident the date of which is to be determined, or the fact by which that date is to be determined, is connected with the term of a year. Thus either the author of the fourth gospel must have been of the opinion, that from the death of Jesus, to which this decision of Caiaphas was the initiative step, a lenitude of spiritual gifts, including the gift of prophecy to the high priest of that period, was dispensed throughout that particular year, and no longer; or, if this be a far-fetched explanation, he must have imagined that Caiaphas was high priest for the term of that year only. L cke concludes that as, according to Josephus, the high priest of that period held his office for ten years successively, therefore John cannot have meant, by the expression a)rxiereuj tou e)niautou e)keinou that the office of high priest was an annual one; whereas the author of the Probabilia, on the ground that the evidence of this meaning in the words of the gospel, is far more certain than that John is its author, reverses this proposition, and concludes, that as the fourth gospel here presents an idea concerning the duration of the office of high priest which could not be entertained in Palestine, therefore its author cannot have been a native of Palestine.

^{P.679} Of the further statements also, as to the points in which Jesus gave offence to the hierarchy of his nation, those which the synoptists have alone, or in common with John, are credible; those which are peculiar to the latter, not so. Among those which are common to both sides, the solemn entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, and the strong attachment of the people to him, were equally natural causes of offence with his discourses and actions in opposition to the sabbatical institutions, in whatever the latter may have consisted; on the contrary, the manner in which, according to the fourth gospel, the Jews take offence at the declarations of Jesus concerning himself as the Son of God, is, according to our earlier analysis, as inconceivable, as it is consistent with the common order of things that the polemical tone towards the Pharisees which the first evangelists all lend to Jesus, should irritate the party attacked. Thus no new or more profound insight into the causes and motives of the reaction against Jesus, is to be obtained from the fourth gospel: but the information which the Synoptics have preserved to us fully suffices to make that fact intelligible.

ALTHOUGH it had been resolved In the council of the chief priests and elders, that the feast time should be allowed to pass over before any measures were taken against Jesus, because any act of violence against him in these days might easily excite an insurrection, on the part of his numerous adherents among the visitants to the feast (Matt. xxvi. 5; Mark xiv. 2); yet this consideration was superseded by the facility with which one of his disciples offered to deliver him into their hands. Judas, surnamed Iscariot, doubtless on account of his origin from the Jewish city of Kerioth (Josh. xv. 25), went, according to the Synoptics, a few days before the pass-over, to the heads of the priesthood, and volunteered to deliver Jesus quietly into their hands, for which service they promised him money, according to Matthew, thirty pieces of silver (arguria, Matt. xxvi.14ff. parall.). of such an antecedent transaction between Judas and the enemies of Jesus, the fourth gospel not only says nothing, but apears moreover to represent the matter as if Judas had not formed the determination of betraying Jesus to the priesthood, until the last supper, and had then promptly put it into execution. The same entering (of Satan into Judas, which Lulte (xxii. 3.) places before his first interview with the chief priests, and before any preparation had been made for Jesus and his disciples to eat is represented by the author of the fourth gospel as occurring at this meal, before Judas left the company (xiii. 27); a proof, as it appears, that in the opinion of this evangelist Judas now first made his traitorous visit. He does indeed observe, before the meal (xiii. 2), that the devil had put it into the heart of Judas to betray Jesus, and this is commonly regarded as the parallel of Luke's "Satan entered into him," being understood to imply the formation of the treacherous resolve, in consequence of which Judas went to the chief priests: but if he had previously been in treaty with them, the betrayal was already completed and it is then not easy to perceive what can be meant by the words ei)shlqen ei)j au)ton o( satanaj on the occasion of the last meal, since the summoning of those who were to seize Jesus was no new diabolical resolution, but only the execution of that which had already been embraced. The expresion in John v. 27 only obtains an entirely consistent sense in distinction from v. 2, when the fidXteiv elq rfjv napdiav in the latter, is understood of the rising of the thought, the daeWely in the former, of the ripening of this thought into resolution, the supposition that Judas had pledged himself to the chief priests before the meal being thus excluded. In this manner, however, the statement of the sy-noptists that Judas, some time before the perpetration of his treacherous act, made a bargain with the enemies of Jesus, stands in contradiction with that of John, that he only put himself in league with them immediately before the deed; and here L cke decides in favour of John, maintaining it to be after his departure from the last supper (xiii. 30), that Judas made that- application to the chief priests which the Synoptics (Matt. xxvi. 14 f. parall.) place before the meal. But this decision of L cke's is founded solely on deference to the presupposed authority of John; for even if, as he remars, Judas could very well obtain an interview with the priests when night had commenced: still, regarding the matter apart from any presuppositions, the probability is beyond comparison stronger on the side of the Synoptics, who allow some time for the affair, than on that of John, according to whom it is altogether sudden, and Judas, truly as if he were possessed, rushes out when it is already night to treat with the priests, and immediately hurry to the deed.

Concerning the motives which induced Judas to league himself with the enemies of Jesus, we learn from the three first Gospels no more than that he received money from the chief priests. This would indicate that he wras actuated by covetousness, especially according to the narrative in Matthew, where Judas, before he promises to betray Jesus, puts the question, What will you give me? Clearer light is thrown on this subject by the statement of the fourth ^{P.681} gospel (xii.4ff.), that on the occasion of the meal in Bethany, Judas was indignant at the anointing, as an unnecessary expenditure, that he carried the purse, and acted the thief in that office; from which it might be supposed that the avarice of Judas, no longer satisfied by his peculations on the funds of the society, hoped to reap a more considerable harvest by betraying Jesus to the rich and powerful sacerdotal party. We must hold ourselves under obligation to the author of the fourth gospel, that by the preservation of these particulars, which are wanting in the other evangelists, he has made the act of Judas somewhat more comprehensible, so soon as his statements are shown to have an historical foundation. We have shown above, however, how improbable it is that, had that censure really proceeded from Judas, the legend should have lost this trait: how probable, on the other hand, a legendary origin of it, it is easy to discern. The meal at Bethany stood in the Gospel tradition near to the end of the life of Jesus, an end brought about by the treachery of Judas how easily might the thought arise in some one, that the narrow-minded censure of a noble prodigality could only come from the covetous Judas? That the censure at the same time turned upon the propriety of selling the ointment for the benefit of the poor, could in the mouth of Judas be only a pretext, behind which he concealed his selfishness: but advantage to himself from the sale of the ointment could not be expected by him, unless he allowed himself to purloin some of the money saved; and this again he could not do, unless he were the purse-bearer. If it thus appear possible for the statement that Judas was a thief and had the bag, to have had an unhistorical origin: we have next to inquire whether there are any reasons for supposing that such was actually the case. Here we must take into consideration another point on which the Synoptics and John differ, namely, the foreknowledge of Jesus that Judas would betray him. In th synoptic Gospels, Jesus first manifests this knowledge at the last supper, consequently at a time in which the deed of Judas had virtually been perpetrated; and apparently but a short time before, Jesus had so little presentiment that one of the twelve would be lost to him, that he promised them all, without exception, the honour of sitting on twelve thrones of judgment in the palingenesia (Matt. xix. 28.). According to John, on the contrary, Jesus declares shortly before the time of the last Passover but one, consequently a year before the result, that one of the twelve is a devil, meaning, according to the observation of the evangelist, Judas, as his future betrayer (vi. 70.); for, as it had been observed shortly before (v. 64), Jesus knew from the beginning, who should betray him. According to this, Jesus knew from the beginning of his acquaintance with Judas, that this disciple would prove a traitor; and not merely -did he foresee this external issue, but also, since he knew what was in man (John ii. 25), he must have penetrated the motives of Judas, namely, covet- ^{P.682} ousness and love of money. And if so, would he have made him purse-bearer, i.e. placed him in a position in which his propensity to seek gain by any means, even though dishonest, must have had the most abundant nourishment? Would he have made him a thief by giving him opportunity, and thus, as if designedly, have brought up in him a betrayer for himself? Considered simply in an economical point of view, who entrusts a purse to one of whom he knows that he robs it? Then, in relation to the idea of Jesus as a moral teacher, who places the weak in a situation which so constantly appeals to his weak point, as to render it certain that he will sooner or later give way to the temptation? No truly: Jesus assuredly did not so play with the souls immediately entrusted to him, did not exhibit to them so completely the opposite of what he taught them to pray for, lead us not into temptation (Matt. vi. 13), as to have made Judas, of whom he foreknew that he would become his betrayer out of covetousness, the purse-beaer of his society; or, if he gave him this office, he cannot have had such a foreknowledge.

In order to arrive at a decision in this alternative, we must consider that foreknowledge separately, and inquire whether, apart from the treasurership of Judas, it be probable or not? We shall not enter on the question of the psychological possibility, because there is always freedom of appeal to the divine nature of Jesus; but with regard to the moral possibility it is to be asked, whether presupposing that foreknowledge, it be justifiable in Jesus to have chosen Judas among the twelve, and to have retained him within this circle? As it was only by this vocation that his treachery as such could be rendered possible; so Jesus appears, if he foresaw this treachery, to have designedly drawn him into the sin. It is urged that intercourse with Jesus afforded Judas the possibility of escaping that abyss: but Jesus is supposed to have foreseen that this possibility would not be realized. It is further said that even in other circles the evil implanted in Judas would not the less have developed itself in a diferent form: a proposition which has a strong tinge of fatalism. Again, when it is said to be of no avail to a man that the evil, the germ of which lies within him, should not be developed, this appears to lead to consequences which are repudiated by the apostle Paul, Rom. iii. 8; vi. 1 f. And regarding the subject in relation to feeling merely, how could Jesus endure to have a man, of whom he knew that he would be his betrayer, and that all instruction would be fruitless to him, as his constant attendant throughout the whole period of his public life? Must not the presence of such a person have every hour interfered with his confidential intercourse with the rest of the twelve? Assuredly they must have been weighty motives, for the sake of which Jesus imposed on himself anything so repugnant and difficult. Such motives or objects must either have had relation to Judas, and thus have consisted in the design to make him better which however was ^{P.683} preluded by the decided foreknowledge of his crime; or they must have had relation to Jesus himself and his work, i.e. Jesus had the conviction that if the work of redemption by means of his death were to be effected, there must be one to betray him. But for the purpose of redemption, according to the Christian theory, the death of Jesus was the only indispensable means: whether this should be brought about by a betrayal, or in any other way, was of no moment, and that the enemies of Jesus must, earlier or later, have succeeded in getting him into their power without the aid of Judas, is undeniable. That the betrayer was indispensable in order to bring about the death of Jesus exactly at the Passover, which was a type of himselff-with such trivialities it will scarcely be attempted to put us off in these days.

If then we are unable to discover any adequate motive which could induce Jesus, advertently to receive and retain in his society his betrayer in the person of Judas: it appears decided that he cannot beforehand have known him to be such. Schleiermacher, in order that he may not infringe on the authority of John by denying this foreknowledge, prefers doubting that Jesus chose the twelve purely by his own act, and supposes that this circle was rather formed by the voluntary adherence of the disciples; since it would be more easy to justify the conduct of Jesus, if he merely refrained from rejecting Judas when he spontaneously offered himself, than if he drew him to himself by free choice. But hereby the authority of John is still endangered, for it is he who makes Jesus say to the twelve: You have not chosen me, but I have chosen you (xv. 16. comp. vi. 76.); moreover, even dismissing the idea of a decided act of election, still for any one to remain constantly with Jesus there needed his permission and snction, and even these he could not, acting humanly, give to a man of whom he knew that, by means of this relation to himself, he would be enabled to mature the blackest crime. It is said, however, that Jesus put himself entirely into the divine point of view, and admitted Judas into his society for the sake of the possibility of reformation which he yet foreknew would never be realized; but this Would be a divine inhumanity, not the conduct of the Godman. If, according to this, it is extremely difficult to maintain as historical the statement of the fourth gospel, that Jesus from the beginning knew Judas to be his betrayer: so it is equally easy to discern what even without historical foundation might lead to such a representation.

It would be natural to suppose, that the fact of Jesus being betrayed by one of his own disciples, would be injurious to him in the eyes of his enemies, even if we did not know that Celsus, in the character of a Jew, reproached Jesus that he was betrayed by one of those whom he called his disciples, as a proof that he was less able to attach his followers ^{P.684} to himself than every robber-chief. Now as the injurious consequences to be drawn from the ignominious death of Jesus, appeared to be most completely obviated by the assertion that he had long foreknown his death: so, the arguments against Jesus derived from the treachery of Judas, might seem to be most effectually repelled by the statement, that he had penetrated into the character of the traitor from the first, and could have escaped what his treason prepared for him; since this would involve the inference that he had exposed himself to the effects of his faithlessness by his own free will, and out of higher considerations. This method included a second advantage, which attaches to the enunciator of every prediction alleged to be fulfilled, and which the fourth evangelist naively makes his Jesus express, when, after the exposure of the betrayer, he puts into his mouth the words: "I tell you before it happens, that when it comes to pass, you may believe that I am he" (xiii. 19.), in fact, the best motto for every vaticinium post eventum. These two objects were the more completely attained, the earlier the period in the life of Jesus to which this foreknowledge was referred; from which it is to be explained why the author of the fourth gospel, not satisfied with the ordinary representation, that Jesus predicted his betrayal by Judas at the last supper, placed his knowledge on this subject in the beginning of the connection between him and Judas.

This early knowledge on the part of Jesus concerning the treachery of Judas being dismissed as unhistorical, there would be room for the statement that Judas carried the purse of the society; since this particular only appeared incompatible with the above foreknowledge, while, if Jesus was in general mistaken in Judas, he might, under this error, have entrusted the funds to him. But by the proof that the representation of John, in relation to the knowledge of Jesus concerning his betrayer, is a fictitious one, its credibility in this matter is so shaken, that no confidence can be placed in the other statement. If the author of the fourth gospel has embellished the relation between Jesus and Judas on the side connected with Jesus, he can scarcely have left the side of Judas unadorned; if he has introduced the fact, that Jesus was betrayed, by making Jesus foresee this part of his destiny, his other statement, that Judas had beforehand exhibited his avarice by a dishonest use of the common purse, may easily be nly an introduction to the fact, that Jesus was betrayed by Judas.

^{P.685} But even though we renounce the information given by John concerning the character and motives of Judas: we still retain, in the fore-mentioned statement of the Synoptics, the most decided intimation that the chief motive of his deed was covetousness.

FROM the earliest to the latest time there have been persons, who have held opinions at issue with this view of the New Testament writers concerning the motives of Judas, and with their entirely reprobatory judgment upon them (comp. Acts i. 16. ff.); and this divergency has arisen partly out of an exaggerated supranatu-ralism, and partly out of a rationalist bias.

An over-strained supernaturalism, proceeding from the point of view presented in the New Testament itself, namely, that the death of Jesus, decreed in the divine plan of the world for the salvation of mankind, might even regard Judas, by whose treachery the death of Jesus was brought about, as a blameless instrument in the hand of Providence, a co-operator in the redemption of mankind. He might be placed in this light by the supposition that he had knowledge of that divine decree, and that its fulfilment was the object at which he aimed in betraying Jesus. We actually find this mode of viewing the subject on the part of the gnostic sect of the Cainites, who, according to the ancient writers on heresies, held that Judas had liberated himself from the narrow Jewish opinions of the other disciples and attained to the gnosis, and accordingly betrayed Jesus because he knew that by his death the kingdom of the inferior spirits who ruled the world would be overthrown. Others in the early Church admitted tht Judas betrayed Jesus out of covetousness; maintaining, however, that he did not anticipate the death of Jesus as a consequence of his betrayal, but supposed that he would, as he had often previously done, escape from his enemies by an exertion of his supernatural power: an opinion which forms the transition to the modern methode of justifying the traitor.

As the above mentioned supernaturalistic exaltation of Judas by the Cainites immediately proceeded from their antagonistic position with respect to Judaism, in virtue of which they had made it a principle to honour all who were blamed by the Jewish authors ^{P.686} of the Old Testament, and the judaizing authors of the New, and vice versa: so Rationalism, especially in its first indignation at the long subjection of the reason to the fetters of authority, felt a certain delight both in divesting of their nimbus those biblical personages who according to its views had been too zealously deified by orthodoxy, and also in defending and elevating those who were condemned or depreciated by the latter. Hence, in the Old Testament, the exaltation of Esau over Jacob, of Saul over Samuel; in the New, of Martha over Mary, the eulogiums on the doubting Thomas, and now the apology even for the traitor Judas. According to some, he became a criminal out of injured honour: the manner in which Jesus reproved him at the meal at Bethany, and, in general, the inferior degree of regard which he experienced in comparison with other disciples, converted his love for his teacher into hatred and revenge. Others have preferred the conjecture preserved by Theophylact, that Judas may havehoped to see Jesus this time also escape from his enemies. Some have taken up this idea in the supernaturalistic sense, supposing it to be the expectation of Judas that Jesus would set himself at liberty by an exertion of his miraculous power; others consistently with their point of view have supposed that Judas may probably have expected that if Jesus were taken prisoner the people would raise an insurrection in his favour and set him at liberty. These opinions represent Judas as one who, in common with the other disciples, conceived the Messianic kingdom as an earthly and political one, and hence was discontented that Jesus so long abstained from availing himself of the popular favour, in order to assume the character of the Messianic ruler. Instigated either by attempts at bribery on the part of the Sanhedrin, or by the rumour of their plan to seize Jesus in secret after the feast, Judas sought to forestall this project, which must have been fatal to Jesus, and to bring about his arrest befor the expiration of the feast time, in which he might certainly hope to see Jesus liberated by an insurrection, by which means he Would be compelled at last to throw himself into the arms of the people, and thus take the decisive step towards the establishment of his dominion. When he heard Jesus speak of the necessity of his being captured, and of his rising again in three days, he understood these expressions as an intimation of the concurrence of Jesus in his plan; under this mistake, he partly failed to hear, and partly misinterpreted, his additional admonitory discourse; and especially understood the words: What you do, do quickly, as an actual encouragement to the execution of his design, he took the thirty pieces of silver from the priests either to conceal his real intentions under the appearance of covetousness, and thus to lull every suspicion on their part; or, because, while he ^{P.687} expected an exaltation to one of the first places in the kingdom of his master, he was not unwilling to combine with it even that small advantage. But Judas had miscalculated in two points: first, in not considering that after the feasting of the paschal night, the people would not be early on the alert for an insurrection; secondly, in overlooking the probability, that the Sanhedrin would hasten to deliver Jesus into the hands of the Romans, from whom a popular insurrection would hardly suffice to deliver him. Thus Judas is supposed to be either an honest man misunderstood, or a deluded one, who however was of no common character, but exhibited even in his despair the wreck of apostolic greatness; or, he is supposed, by evil means, indeed to have sought the attainment of an object, which was nevertheless good. Neander imagines the two opposite opinions concerning Jesus, the supernatural and the natural, to have presented themselves to the mind of Judas in the form of a dilemma, so that he resoned thus: if Jesus is the Messiah, a delivery into the hands of his enemies will, owing to his supernatural power, in no way injure him, but will, on the contrary, serve to accelerate his glorification; if, on the other hand, he is not the Messiah, he deserves destruction. According to this, the betrayal was merely a test, by which the doubting disciple meant to try the rnessiahship of his master.

Among these views, that which derives the treachery of Judas from wounded ambition, is the only one which can adduce a positive indication in its favour: namely, the repulse which the traitor drew on himself from Jesus at the meal in Bethany. But against such an appeal to this reproof we have already, on another occasion, applied the remark of the most recent criticism, that its mildness, especially as compared with the far more severe rebuke administered to Peter, Matt. xvi. 23, must forbid our attributing to it such an effect as the rancour which it is supposed to have engendered in Judas; while that in other instances he was less considered than his fellow-disciples, we have nowhere any trace.

All the other conjectures as to what was properly the motive of the deed of Judas, can only be supported by negative grounds, i.e. grounds which make it improbable in general that his project had a bad aim, and in particular, that his motive was covetousness; a positive proof, that he intended to further the work of Jesus, and especially that he was actuated by violent political views of the Messiah's kingdom, is not to be discovered. That Judas had in general no evil designs against Jesus is argued chiefly from the fact, that after the delivery of Jesus to the Romans, and the inevitable-ness of his death had come to his knowledge, he fell into despair; this being regarded as a proof that he had expected an opposite result. But not only does the unfortunate result of crime, as Paulus thinks, but also its fortunate result, that, is, its success, exhibit ^{P.688} that which had before been veiled under a thousand extenuating pretexts, in all the blackness of its real form." Crime once become real, once passed into act, throws off the mask which it might wear while it remained merely ideal, and existed in thought alone; hence, as little as the repentance of many a murderer, when he sees his victim he before him, proves that he did not really intend to commit the murder; so little can the anguish of Judas, when he saw Jesus beyond rescue, prove that he had not beforehand contemplated the death of Jesus as the issue of his deed.

But, it is further said, covetoirsness cannot have been the motive of Judas; for if gain had been his object, he could not be blind to the fact that the continued charge of the purse in the society of Jesus, would yield him more than the miserable thirty pieces of silver (from 20 to 25 thalers, of our money), a sum which among the Jews formed the compensation for a wounded slave, being four months' wages. But these thirty pieces of silver are in vain sought for in any other narrator than Matthew. John is entirely silent as to any reward offered to Judas by the priests; Mark and Luke speak indefinitely of money dpyvpiov, which they had promised him; and Peter in the Acts (i. 18.) merely mentions a reward, piadbs, which Judas obtained. Matthew, however, who alone has that definite sum, leaves us at the same time in no doubt as to the historical value of his statement. After relating the end of Judas, (xxvii. 9 f.,) he cites a passage from Zcchariah (xi. 12 f.; he ascribes it by mistake to Jeremiah), wherei likewise thirty pieces of silver appear as a price at which some one is valued. It is true that in the prophetic passage the thirty pieces of silver are not given as purchase money, but as hire; he to whom they are paid is the prophet, the representative of the Lord, and the smallness of the sum is an emblem of the slight value which the Jews set upon the divine benefits, so plentifully bestowed on them. But how easily might this passage, where there was mention of a shamefully low price (ironically a goodly price Pn TIN), at which the Israelites had rated the speaker in the prophecy, remind a Christian reader of his Messiah, who, in any case, had been sold for a paltry price compared with his value, and hence be led to determine by this passage, the price which was paid to Judas for betraying Jesus. Thus the thirty pieces of silver, triakonta a)rguria, present no support to those who would prove that it could not be the reward which made Judas a traitor; for they leave us as ignorant as ever how great or how small was the reward which Judas received. Neither can we, with Neander, conclude that the sum was trifling from Matth. xxvii.6ff.; Acts i. 18, where it is said that a field, a)gron, was purchased with the reward assigned to the treachery of Judas; since, even apart from the historical value of that statement, hereafter to ^{P.689} be examined, the two expressions adduced may denote a larger or a smaller piece of land, and the additional observations of Matthew, that it was destined to bury strangers in, will not allow us to think of a very small extent. How the same theologian can discover in the statement of the two intermediate evangelists, that the Jewish rulers had promised Judas money, dpyvpiov, an intimation that the sum was small, it is impossible to conceive.- Far more weighty is the observation above made with a different aim, that Jesus would scarcely have appointed and retained as purse-bearer one whom he knew to be covetous even to dishonesty; from which Neander directly infers that the fourth evangelist, when he derived the remark of Judas at the meal in Bethany from his covetousness, put a false construction upon it, in consequence of the idea which ultimately prevailed respecting Judas, and especially added the accusation, that Judas robbed the common fund, out of his own imagination. But in pposition to this it is to be asked, whether in Neander's point of view it be admissible to impute to the apostle John, who is here understood to be the author of the fourth gospel, so groundless a calumny-for such it would be according to Neander's supposition; and, in our point of view, it would at least be more natural to conclude, that Jesus indeed knew Judas to be fond of money, but did not until the last believe him to be dishonest, and hence did not consider him unfit for the post in question. Neander observes in conclusion: if Judas could be induced by money to betray Jesus, he must have long lost all true faith in him. This indeed follows of necessity, and must be supposed in every view of the subject; but this extinction of faith could of itself only lead him to go back, directly (John vi. 66.); in order to prompt him to meditate treachery there must be a further, special incitement, which, intrinsically, might just as well be covetousness, as the views which are attributed to hm by Neander and others.

That covetousness, considered as such an immediate motive, suffices to explain the deed of Judas, I will not maintain; I only contend that any other motives are neither stated nor anywhere intimated in the Gospels, and that consequently every hypothesis as to their existence is built on the air.

ON The First Day of Unleavened Bread, in the evening of which the paschal lamb was to be slain, consequently, the day before the feast properly speaking which however commenced on that evening, i.e. the 14th of Nisan, Jesus, according to the two first evangelists, in compliance with a question addressed to him by the disciples, sent-Matthew leaves it undecided which and hov many, Mark says, two disciples, whom Luke designates as Peter and John, to ^{P.690} Jerusalem (perhaps from Bethany), to bespeak a place in which he miwht partake of the Passover with them, and to make the further arrangements (Matt. xxvi.17ff. parall.).

The three narrators do not altogether agree as to the directions which Jesus gave to these disciples. According to all, he sends them to a man of whom they had only to desire, in the name of their master, a place in which to celebrate the Passover, in order at once to have their want supplied: but first, this locality is more particularly described by the two intermediate evangelists than by Matthew, namely, as a large upper room, which was already furnished and prepared for the reception of guests; and secondly, the manner in which they were to find the owner, is described by the former otherwise than by the latter. Matthew makes Jesus merely say to the disciples, that they were to go "to such a man;" the others, that, being come into the city, they would meet a man bearing a pitcher of water, hom they were to follow into the house which he should enter, and there make their application to the owner. In this narrative there have been found a multitude of difficulties, which G abler has assembled in a special treatise. At the very threshold of the narrative it occasions surprise, that Jesus should not have thought of any preparation for the Passover until the last day, indeed, that he should even then have needed to be reminded of it by the disciples, as the two first evangelists tell us: for, owing to the great influx of people at the time of the Passover (2,700,000, according to Josephus), the accomodations in the city were soon disposed of, and the majority of the strangers were obliged to encamp in tents before the city. It is the more remarkable, then, that, notwithstanding all this, the messengers of Jesus find the desired chamber disengaged, and not only so, but actually kept in reserve by the owner and prepared for a repast, as if he had had a presentiment that it would be bespoken by Jess. And so confidently is this reckoned on by Jesus that he directs his disciples to ask the owner of the house, not whether he can obtain from him a room in which to eat the Passover, but merely-where the guest-chamber appropriated to this purpose may be? or, if we take Matthew's account, he directs them to say to him that he will eat the Passover at his house; to which it must be added that, according to Mark and Luke, Jesus even knows what kind of chamber will be assigned him, and in what part of the house it is situated. But the way in which, according to these two evangelists, the two disciples were to find their way to the right house, is especially remarkable. The words i-uyere dc n)v -noA.ly Trpbc rbv delva in Matthew (v. 18), sound as if Jesus had named the person to whom the disciples were to go, but that the narrator either would not or could not repeat it: whereas in the two other evangelists, Jesus indicates the house into which they were to enter, by means of a person whom they would met ^{P.691} carrying a vessel of water. Now how could Jesus in Bethany, or wherever else he might be, foreknow this accidental circumstance, unless, indeed, it had been preconcerted that at this particular time a servant from the house should appear with a vessel of water, and thus await the messengers of Jesus? To the rationalist expositors everything in our narrative appeared to point to a preconcerted arrangement; and this being presupposed, they believed that all its difficulties would at once be solved. The disciples, dispatched so late, could only find a room disengaged if it had heen previously bespoken by Jesus; he could only direct; them to address the owner of the house so categorically, if he had already previously made an arrangement with him; this would explain the precise knowledge of Jesus as to the locality, and, lastly, (the point from which this explanation gets out,) his certainty that the disciples would meet a man carrying water from that particular house. This circumlocutory mannerof indicating the house, which might have been avoided by the simple mention of the owners name, is supposed to have been adopted by Jesus, that the place where he intended to keep the Passover might not be known before the time to the betrayer, who would otherwise perhaps have surprised him there, and thus have disturbed the repast.

But such is not at all the impression produced by the Gospel narrative. of a preconcerted arrangement, of a previous bespeaking of the apartment, it says nothing; .on the contrary, the words, they found as he had said to them, in Mark and Luke, seem intended to convey the idea that Jesus was able to predict every thing as they afterwards actually found it; a solicitous fore-eight is nowhere indicated, but rather a miraculous foreknowledge. Here, in fact, as above in the procuring of the animal for the entrance into Jerusalem, we have a twofold miracle: first, the fact that everything stands ready to supply the wants of Jesus, and tluit no one is able to withstand the power of his name: secondly, the ability of Jesus to fake cognizance of distant circumstances, and to predict the merest fortuities. It must create surprise that, forcibly as this supernaturalistic conception of the narrative before us urges itself upon the reader, Olshausen himself seeks to elude it, by arguments which would nullfy most of the histories of miracles, and which we are accustomed to hear only from rationalists. To the impartial expositor, he says, the narrative does not present the slightest warrant for a miraculous interpretation, (we almost fancy ourselves transported into the commentary of Paulus); if the narrators intended to recount a miracle, they must have expressly observed that no previous arrangement had been made (precisely the ^{P.692} rationalist demand-if a cure were meant to be recognized as a miracle, the application of natural means must have been expressly denied); moreover the object of such a miracle is not to be discerned, a strengthening of the faith of the disciples was not then necessary, nor was it to be effected by this unimportant miracle, after the more exalted ones which had preceded it: grounds on which the thoroughly similar narrative of the procuring of the ass for the entrance, which Olshausen upholds as a miracle, would be equally excluded from the sphere of the supernatural.

The present narrative, indeed, is so strikingly allied to the earlier one just mentioned, that in relation to their historical reality, the same judgment must be passed on both. In the one as in the other, Jesus has a want, the speedy supply of which is so cared for by God, that Jesus foreknows to the minutest particular the manner in which if is to be supplied; in the one he needs a guest chamber, as in the other an animal on which to ride; in the one as in the other, he sends out two disciples, to bespeak the thing required; in the one he gives them as a sign by which to find the right house-a man carrying water whom they are to meet, as in the other they have a sign in the circumstance of the ass being tied where two roads meet; in the one as in the other, he directs his disciples simply to mention him to the owner, in the one case as the master, diddanaA-of, in the other, as the lord, Kvpiog, in order to ensure unhesitating compliance with his demand; in both instances the result closely corresponds to is prediction. In the narrative more immediately under our consideration, as in the earlier one, there is wanting an adequate object, for the sake of which so manifold a miracle should have been ordained; while the motive which might occasion the development of the miraculous narrative in the primitive Christian legend is obvious. An Old Testament narrative, to which we have already had occasion to refer in connection with the earlier miracle, is still more strikingly recalled by the one before us. After disclosing to Saul that he was destined to be King of Israel, Samuel, as a sign of the truth of this more remote announcement, foretells whom Saul will meet on his return homewards: namely, first two men with the information that his father's asses are found; then three others, who will be carrying animals for sacrifice, bread and wine, and will offer him some of the bread etc. (1 Sam. x. 1 f): from which we see by what kind of predictions the Hebrew legend made its prophets attest their inspiration.

As regards the relation of the Gospels to each other, the narrative of Matthew is commonly placed far below that of the two other Synoptics, and regarded as the later and more traditional. The circumstance of the man carrying water, especially, is held to have belonged to the original fact, but to have been lost in tradition before the narrative reached Matthew, who inserted in its place the ^{P.693} enigmatical "go to such a man."

But we have seen, on the contrary, that the Seiva. presents no difficulty; while the circumstance of the water-bearer is in the highest degree enigmatical. Still less is the omission of Matthew to designate the two commissioned disciples as Peter and John, an indication that the narrative of the third gospel is the more original one. For when Schleiermacher says that this trait might easily be lost in the course of transmission through several hands, but that it could scarcely have been added by a later hand, the latter half of his proposition, at least, is without foundation. There is little probability that Jesus should have assigned so purely economical an office to the two most eminent disciples; whereas it is easy to conceive that in the first instance it was simply narrated, as by Matthew, that Jesus sent the disciples or some disciples, that hereupon the number was fixed at two, perhaps from the narrative of the procuring of the ass, and that at length, as the appointment had relation to a task which was ultimately of high importance, the preparing of the last meal of Jesus, these places were filled by the two chief apostles, so that in this instance even Mark appears to have kept nearer to the original fact, since he has not adopted into his narrative the names of the two disciples, which are presented by Luke.

Not only does the fourth evangelist omit all mention of the above arrangements for the paschal meal; he also widely diverges from the Synoptics in relation to the meal itself. Independently of the difference which runs throughout the description of the scene, and which can only be hereafter considered, he appears, in regard to the time of the meal, to represent it as occurring before the pass-over, as decidedly as it is represented by the Synoptics to be the paschal meal itself.

When we read in the latter, that the day on which the disciples were directed by Jesus to prepare for the meal, was already the first day of unleavened bread when the Passover must be killed (Matt. xxvi. 17 parall.); we cannot suppose the meal in question to have been any other than the paschal; further, when the disciples ask Jesus, "Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?" when it is hereupon said of the disciples, that they made ready the Passover, (Matt. v. 19 parall), and of Jesus, that when evening was come, he sat down with the twelve, (v. 20): the meal to which they here sat down appears to be marked ^{P.694} out even to superfluity as the paschal, even if Luke (xxii. 15.) did not make Jesus open the repast with the words: "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you."

When, on the other hand, the fourth gospel commences its narrative of the last meal with the statement of time: before the feast of the Passover, (xiii. 1); the supper, which is mentioned immediately after, (v. 2) appears also to happen before the Passover; especially as throughout John's description of this evening, which, especially in relation to the discourses accompanying the meal, is very ample, there is not any notice or even allusion, to indicate that Jesus was on this occasion celebrating the Passover. Further, when Jesus after the meal addresses the traitor with the summons, what you do, do quickly; this is misunderstood by the rest of the disciples to mean, JBuy those things that we have need of against the feast, (v. 29). Now the requirements for the least related chiefly to the paschal meal, and consequently the meal just concluded cannot have been the paschal. Again, it is said, xviii. 28., that on the following morning, the Jews would not enter the Gentile prailorium, lest they should be defiled; but that they might eat the Passover: from which it would seem that the paschal meal was yet in prospect. To this it may be added that this same succeeding day, on which Jesus was crucified, is called the preparation of the Passover, i.e. the day on the evening of which the paschal lamb was to be eaten; moreover, when it is said of the second day after the meal in question, being that which Jesus passed in the grave: that sabbath day was a high day; this peculiar solemnity appears to have proceeded from the circumstance, that on that sabbath fell the iirst day of the Passover, so that the paschal lamb was not eaten on the evening on which Jesus was arrested, but on the evening of his burial.

These divergencies are so important, that many expositors, in order to prevent the evangelists from falling into contradiction with each other, have here also tried the old expedient of supposing that they do not speak of the same thing, that John intends to describe an altogether different repast from that of the Synoptics. According to this view, the deipnon of John was an ordinary evening meal, doubtless in Bethany; on this occasion Jesus washed the disciples' i'eet, spoke of the betrayer, and after Judas had left the company, added other discourses of a consoling and admonitory tendency, until at length, on the morning of the 14th of Nisan, he summoned the disciples to depart from Bethany and proceed to Jerusalem in the words: Arise, let us go hence (xiv. 31.). Here the synoptic account may be interposed, since it represents the two disciples as being sent forward to Jerusalem to prepare for the paschal meal, and then records its celebration, concerning which John is silent, and only ^{P.695} takes up the thread of the narrative at the discourses delivered after the paschal meal (xv.1ff.). But this attempt to avoid contradiction by referring the respective narratives to totally different events, is counteracted by the undeniable identity of many features in the two meals. Independently of isolated particulars which are found alike in both accounts, it is plain that John, as well as the Synoptics, intends to describe the last meal of which Jesus partook with his disciples. This is implied in the introduction to John's narrative; for the proof which is there said to be given of Jesus having loved his own to the end, (eij teloj) may be the most suitably referred to his last moments of companionship with them. In like manner, the discourses after the meal point to the prospect of immediate separation; and the meal and discourses are, in John also, immediately followed by the departure to Gethsemane and the arrest of Jesus. It is true that, according to the above opinion, these las-named incidents are connected only with those discourses which were delivered on the occasion of the later meal, omitted by John (xv. 17.); but that between xiv. 31. and xv. 1. the author of the fourth gospel intentionally omitted the whole incident of the paschal meal, is a position which, although it might appear to explain with some plausibility the singular "Arise, let us go hence," no one will now seriously maintain. But even admitting such an ellipsis, there still remains the fact that Jesus (xiii. 38.) foretells to Peter his denial with this determination of time: "the cock shall not crow," which he could only make use of at the last meal, and not, as is here presupposed, at an earlier one. Thus this expedient must be relinquished, and it must be admitted that all the evangelists intend to speak of the same meal, namely, the last of which Jesus partook with his disciples. And in making this admission, the fairness which we owe to every authr, and which was believed to be due in a peculiar degree to the authors of the Bible, appeared to demand an inquiry whether, although they represent one and the same event with great divergencies in several respects, yet nevertheless both sides may not be correct. To obtain an affirmative result of this inquiry it must be shown, as regards the time, either that the three first evangelists, as well as the fourth, do not intend to describe a paschal meal, or that the latter, as well as the former, does so intend.

In an ancient fragment it is sought to solve the problem in the first method by denying that Matthew places the last meal of Jesus at the proper time for the paschal meal, the evening of the 14th of Nisan, and his passion on the first day of the feast of the Passover, the 15th of Nisan; but one does not see how the express indications respecting the Passover in the Synoptics can be neutralized. ^{P.696}

Hence it has been a far more general attempt in recent times, to draw John to the side of the other evangelists. His expression before the feast of the Passover, (xiii. 1), was thought to be divested of its difficulty by the observation that it is not immediately connected with the supper delnvov, but only with the statement that Jesus knew that his hour was come, and that he loved his own to the end; it is only in the succeeding verse that there is any mention of the meal, to which therefore that determination of time does not refer. But to what then can it refer? to the knowledge that his hour was come? this is only an incidental remark; or to the love which endured to the end'? but to this so special a determination of time can only refer, if an external proof of love be intended, and such an one is presented in his conduct at the meal, which consequently remains the point to which that determination of the day must apply. It is therefore conjectured further that te words npb rrjs soprfjf were used out of accommodation to the Greeks for whom John wrote: since that people, did not, like the Jews, begin their day with the evening, the meal taken at the beginning of the first day of the Passover, would appear to them to be taken on the evening before the Passover. But what judicious writer, if he supposes a misconstruction possible on the part of the reader, chooses language which can only serve to encourage that misconstruction? A still more formidable difficulty is presented by xviii. 28, where the Jews, on the morning after the imprisonment of Jesus, will not enter the judgment hall lest they should be defiled, but that they may eat the Passover. Nevertheless it was supposed that passages such as Deut. xvi. 1, 2., where all the sacrifices to be killed during the time of the Passover are denoted by the expression Pessah, authorize the interpretation of to pasxa in this place of the remaining sacrifices to be offered during the paschal week, and especially of the Chagiga, whicli was to be consumed towards the end of the first feast day. But as Mosheim has correctly remarked, from the fact that the paschal lamb, together with the rest of the sacrifices to be offered during the feast of the Passover was designated pasxa it by no means follows that these can be so designated with the exclusion of the paschal lamb. On the other hand, the friends of the above view have sought to show the necessity of their mode of interpretation, by observing that for the eating of the Passover which was celebrated late in the evening, consequently at the beginning of the succeeding day, the entering of a Gentile house in the morning, being a defilement which lasted only through the current day, would have been no disqualification; but that it would have been such for the partaking of the Chagiga, which was eaten in the afternoon, consequently on the same day on which the defilement was contracted: so that only this, and ^{P.697} not the Passover, can have been intended. But first, we do not know whether entrance into a Gentile house was a defilement for the day merely; secondly, if such were the case, the Jews, by a defilement contracted in the morning, would still have disqualified themselves from participating in the preparatory proceedings, which fell on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan; as, for example, the slaying of the lamb in the outer court of the temple. Lastly, in order to interpret the passage xix. 14. in consistency with their own view, the harmonists understand "the preparation of the Passover" to mean the day of preparation for the sabbath in the Easter week; a violence of interpretation which at least finds no countenance in xix. 31., where the Parasceve is said to be the preparation for the sabbath, since from this passage it only appears, that the evangelist conceived the first day of the Passover as occurring that year on the sabbath.

These difficulties, which resist the reference of the narrative in John to a real paschal meal, appeared to be obviated by a presupposition derived from Lev. xxiii. 5; Numb. ix. 3; and a passage in Joseph us; namely, that the paschal lamb was eaten, not on the evening from the 14th to the 15th, but on that from the 13th to the 14th of Nisan, so that between the paschal meal and the first feast day, the 15th of Nisan, there fell a working day, the 14th. On this supposition, it would be correct that the day following the last paschal meal taken by Jesus, should be called, as in John xix. 14,, the preparation of the Passover, because it was actually a day of preparation for the feast day; it would also be correct that the following sabbafh should be called "great" (xix. 31), since it would coincide with the first day of the feast. But the greatest difficulty, which lies in John xviii. 28. remains unsolved; for on this plan the words, that they might eat the Passover, must since the paschal meal would be already past, be understood of the unleavened bread, which was eaten also during the succeeding feast days: an interpretation which is contrary to all the usages of language. If to this it be added, that the supposition of a working day falling between the Passover and the first feast day, has no foundation in the Pentateuch and Josephus, that it is decidedly opposed to later custom, and is in itself extremely improbable; this expedient cannot but be relinquished.

Perceiving the impossibility of effecting the reconciliation of the Synoptics with John by this simple method, other expositors have resorted to a more artificial expedient. The appearance of the evangelists having placed the last meal of Jesus on different days, is alleged to have its truth in the fact, that either the Jews or Jesus ^{P.698} celebrated the Passover on another than the usual day. The Jews, say some, in order to avoid the inconvenience arising from the circumstance, that in that year the first day of the Passover fell on a Friday, so that two consecutive days must have been solemnized as a sabbath, deferred the paschal meal until the Friday evening, so that on the day of the crucifixion they had still to beware of defilement; Jesus, however, adhering strictly to the law, celebrated it at the prescribed time, on the Thursday evening: so that the Synoptics are right when they describe the last meal of Jesus as an actual celebration of the Passover; and John also is right when he represents the Jews as, the day after, still looking forward to the eating of the paschal lamb. In this case, Mark would be wrong in his statement, that on the day when they killed the Passover, (v. 12), Jesus also caused it to be prepared; but the main point is, that though in certain cases the Passover was celebrated in a later month, it was still on the 15th day; there is nowhere any trace of a transference to a later day of the same month. It has therefore been a more favourite supposition that Jesus anticipated the usual time of eating the Passover. From purely personal motives, some have thought, foreseeing that at the proper time of the paschal supper he should be already lying in the grave, or at least not sure of lite until that period, he, like those Jews who were prevented from journeying to the feast, and like all the Jews of the present day, without a sacrificed lamb, and with mere substitutes for it, celebrated a commemorative Passover. But in the first place, Jesus would not then, as Luke says, have kept the Passover on the day on which the Passover must be killed, and secondly, in the merely commemorative celebration of the Passover, though the prescribed locality (Jerusalem) is dispensed with, the regular time (the evening from the 14th to the 15th Nisan) is inviolably observed: wh'ereas in the case of Jesus the reverse would hold, and he would have celebrated the Passover at the usual place, but at an unusual time, which is without example. To shield the alleged transposition of the Passover by Jesus from the charge of being unprecedented and arbitrary, it has been maintained that an entire party of his contempo-raries joined in celebrating the Passover earlier than the great body of the nation. It is known that the Jewish sect of the Caraites or Scripturalists differed from the Rabbinites or Traditionalists especially in the determination of the new moon, maintaining that the practice of the latter in fixing the new moon according to astronomical calculation was an innovation, whereas they, true to the ancient, legal practice, determined it according to an empirical observation of the phase of the new luminary. Now in the time of Jesus, we are told, the Sadducees, from whom the Caraites are said to have sprung, determined the time of the new moon, and with it that of the estival of the Passover, which was dependent upon it, ^{P.699} differently from the Pharisees; and Jesus, as the opponent of tradition and the friend of scripture, favoured their practice in this matter. But not to insist that the connection of the Caraites with the ancient Sadducees is a mere conjecture; it was a wellfounded objection put forth by the Caraites, that the determination of the new moon by calculation did not arise until after the destruction of the temple by the Romans: so that at the time of Jesus such a difference cannot have existed; nor is there besides any indication to be discovered that at that time the Passover was celebrated on different days by different parties, Supposing, however, that the above difference as to the determining of the new moon already prevailed in the time of Jesus, the settling of it according to the phase, which Jesus is supposed to have followed, would rather have resulted in a later than an earlier celebration of the Passover; so that some have actually conjectured that more probably Jesus followed the astronomical calculation.

Besides what may thus be separately urged against every attempt at an amicable adjustment of the differences between the evangelists, as to the time of the last supper; there is one circumstance which is decisive against all, and which only the most recent criticism has adequately exposed. With respect, namely, to this contradiction, the case is not so that among passages for the most part harmonious, there appear only one or two statements of an apparently inconsistent sense of which it might be said that the author had here used an inaccurate expression, to be explained from the remaining passages: but, that all the chronological statements of the Synoptics tend to show that Jesus must have celebrated the Passover, all those of John, on the contrary, that he cannot have celebrated it. Thus there stand opposed to each other two differing series of Gospel passages, which are manifestly based on two different views of the fact on the part of the narrators: hence, as Sieffert remarks, to persist in disuting the existence of a divergency between the evangelists, can no longer be regarded as scientific exposition, but only as unscientific arbitrariness and obstinacy.

Modern criticism is therefore constrained to admit, that on one side or the other there is an error; and, setting aside the current prejudices in favour of the fourth gospel, it was really an important reason which appeared to necessitate the imputation of this error to the Synoptics. The ancient Fragment attributed to Apollinaris, mentioned above, objects to the opinion that Jesus suffered on the great day of unleavened bread, that this would have been contrary to the law and in recent times also it has been observed, that the day following the last meal of Jesus is treated on all sides so entirely as a working day, that it cannot be supposed the first day of the Passover, nor, ^{P.700} consequently, the meal of the previous evening the paschal meal. Jesus does not solemnize the day, for he goes out of the city, an act which was forbidden on the night of the Passover; nor, do his friends, for they begin the preparations for his burial, and only leave them unfinished on account of the arrival of the next day, the sabbath; still less do the members of the Sanhedrin keep it sacred, for they not only send their servants out of the city to arrest Jesus, but also personally undertake judicial proceedings, a trial, sentence, and accusation before the Procurator; in general, there appears, throughout, only the fear of desecrating the following day, which commenced on the evening of the crucifixion, and nowhere any solicitude about the current one: clear signs that the synoptic representation of the meal as a paschal one, is a later error, since in the remaining narrative of the synopfists themselves, there is evidence, not easy to be mistaken, of the real fact, that Jesus was crucified before the Passover. These observations are certainly of weight. It is true that the first, relative to the conduct of Jesus, might perhaps be invalidated by the contradiction existing between the Jewish decisions as to the law cited; while the last and strongest may be opposed by the fact, that trying and giving sentence on the sabbaths and feast days Was not only permitted among the Jews, but there was even a larger place for the administration of justice on such days, on account of the greater concourse of people; so, also, according to the New Testament itself, the Jews sent out officers to seize Jesus on the great day rkpa peydri of the Feast of Tabernacles (John vii. 44 f.), and at the Feast of Dedication they were about to stone him (John x. 31), while Herod caused Peter to be imprisoned during the days of unleavened bread; though indeed he intended to defer the public sentencing and execution until after the Passover (Acts xii. 2 f.). In proof that the crucifixion of Jesus might take place on the feast of he Passover, it is urged that the execution was performed by Roman soldiers and that moreover, even according to Jewish custom, it was usual to reserve the execution of important criminals for a feast time, in order to make an impression on a greater multitude. But only thus much is to be proved: that during the feast time, and thus during the Passover, on the five intermediate and less solemn days, criminals were tried and executed, not that this was admissible also on the first and last days of the Passover, which ranked as sabbaths; and thus we read in the Talmud that Jesus was crucified on the erev pesah, i.e. the evening before the Passover. It would be another ^{P.701} thing if, as Dr. Baur strives to prove, the execution of criminals, as a sanguinary expiation for the people, belonged to the essential significance of the Passover, as a feast of expiation, and hence the custom, noticed by the evangelists, of liberating a prisoner at the feast had been only the reverse side to the execution of another, presenting the same relation as that between the two goats and the two sparrows in the Jewish offerings of atonement and purification.

It is certainly very possible that the primitive Christian tradition might be led even unhistorically to associate the last supper of Jesus with the paschal lamb, and the day of his death with the feast of the Passover. As the Christian supper represented in its form, the Passover, and in its import, the death of Jesus: it was natural enough to unite these two points-to place the execution of Jesus on the first day of the Passover, and to regard his last meal, at which he was held to have founded the Christian supper, as the paschal meal. It is true that presupposing the author of the first gospel to have been an apostle and a participator in the last meal of Jesus, it is difficult to explain how he could fall into such a mistake. At least it is not enough to say, with Theile, that the more the last meal partaken with their master transcended all paschal meals in interest to the disciples, the less would they concern themselves as to the time of it, whether it occurred on the evening of the Passover, or a dayearlier. For the first evangelist does not leave this undetermined, but speaks expressly of a paschal meal, and to this degree a real participator, however long he might write after that evening, could not possibly deceive himself. Thus on the above view, the supposition that the first evangelist was an eye-witness must be renounced, and he must be held, in common with the two intermediate ones, to have drawn his materials from tradition. The difficulty arising from the fact, that all the Synoptics, and consequently all those writers who have preserved to us the common Gospel tradition, agree in such an error, may perhaps be removed by the observation, that just as generally as in the Judaso-christian communities, in which the Gospel tradition was originally formed, the Jewish Passover was still celebrated, so generally must the effort present itself to give that feast a Christian import, by referring it to the death and the last meal of Jesus.

But it is equally easy, presupposing the correctness of the synoptic determination of time, to conceive how John might be led erroneously to place the death of Jesus on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, and his last meal on the previous evening. If, namely, this evangelist found in the circumstance that the legs of the crucified Christ were not broken, a fulfiment of the words "Not a bone ^{P.702} of him shall be broken," (Exod. xii. 46.); this supposed relation between the death of Jesus and the paschal lamb, might suggest to him the idea, that at the same time in which the paschal lambs were killed, on the afternoon of the 14th of Nisan, Jesus suffered on the cross and gave up the ghost; in which case the meal taken the evening before was not the paschal meal. Tims we can conceive a possible cause of error on both sides, and since the internal difficulty of the synoptic determination of time, namely, the manifold violations of the first day of the Passover, is in some degree removed by the observations above cited, and is counterpoised by the agreement of three evangelists: our only course is to acknowledge an irreconcileable contradiction between the respective accounts, without venturing a decision as to which is the correct one.

NOT only in relation to the time of the last meal of Jesus, but also in relation to what passed on that occasion, there is a divergency between the evangelists. The chief difference lies between the Synoptics and the fourth gospel: but, on a stricter comparison, it is found that only Matthew and Mark closely agree, and that Luke diverges from them considerably, though on the whole he is more accordant with his predecessors than with his successor.

Besides the meal itself, the following features are common to all the accounts: that, during the meal, the coining betrayal by Judas is spoken of; and that, during or after the rncal, Jesus predicts to Peter his denial. As minor differences we may notice, that in John, the mode of indicating the traitor is another and more precise than that described by the other evangelists, and has a result of which the latter are ignorant; and that, further, in the fourth gospel the meal is followed by prolonged farewell discourses, which are not found in the synopfists: but the principal difference is, that while according to the Synoptics Jesus instituted the Lord's sapper at this final meal, in John he instead of this washes the disciples' feet.

The three Synoptics have in common the instituting of the Lord's supper, together with the announcement of the betrayal, and the denial; but there exists a divergency between the two first and the third as to the order of these occurrences, for in the former the announcement of the betrayal stands first, in the latter, the instituting of the tSupper; while the announcement of Peter's denial, in Luke, apparently takes place in the room in which the repast had been held, in the two other evangelists, on the way to the mount of ^{P.703} Olives. Again, Luke introduces some passages which the two first evangelists either do not give at all, or not in this connection: the contention for pre-eminence and the promise of the twelve thrones, have in their narratives a totally different position; while what passes in Luke on the subject of the swords is in them entirely wanting.

In his divergency from the two first evangelists, Luke makes some approximation to the fourth. As John, in the washing of the disciples' feet, presents a symbolical act having reference to ambitious contention for pre-eminence, accompanied by discourses on humility: so Luke actually mentions a contention for pre-eminence, and appends to it discourses not entirely without affinity with those in John; further, it is in common with John that Luke makes the observations concerning the betrayer occur at the opening of the repast, and after a symbolical act; and lastly, that he represents the announcement of Peter's denial as having been delivered in the room where the repast had been held.

The greatest difficulty here naturally arises from the divergency, that the institution of the Lord's supper, unanimously recorded by the Synoptics, is wanting in John, who in its stead relates a totally different act of Jesus, namely the washing of the disciples' feet. Certainly, by those who, in similar cases, throughout the whole previous course of the Gospel narrative, have found a sufficient resource in the supposition, that it was the object of John to supply the omissions of the earlier Gospels, the present difficulty is surmounted as well, or as ill, as any other. John, it is said, saw that the institution of the Supper was already narrated in the three first evangelists in a way which fully agreed with his own recollection; hence he held a repetition of it superfluous. But if, among the histories already recorded in the three first Gospels, the fourth evangelist really intended to reproduce only those in the representation of which he found something to rectify or supply: why does he give anoter edition of the story of the miraculous feeding, in which he makes no emendation of any consequence, and at the same time omit the institution of the Lord's supper? For here the divergencies between the Synoptics in the arrangement of the scene, and the turn given to the words of Jesus, and more especially the circumstance that they, according to his representation, erroneously, make that institution occur on the evening of the Passover, must have appeared to him a reason for furnishing an authentic account. In consideration of this difficulty, the position that the author of the forth gospel was acquainted with the synoptic writings, and designed to complete and rectify them, is now, indeed, abandoned; but it is still maintained that he was acquainted with the common oral tradition, and supposed it known to his readers also, and on this ground, it is alleged, he passed over the institution of the Supper as a history ^{P.704} generally known. But that it should be the object of an Gospel writing to narrate only the less known, omitting the known, is an idea which cannot be consistently entertained. Written records imply a mistrust of oral tradition; they are intended not merely as a supplement to this, but also as a means of fixing and preserving it, and hence the capital facts, being the most spoken of, and therefore the most exposed to misrepresentation, are precisely those which written records can the least properly omit. Such a fact is the founding of the Lord's supper, and we find, from a comparison of the different New Testament accounts, that the expressions with which Jesus instituted it must have early received additions or mutilations; consequently, it is the last particular which John should have omitted. But, it is further said, the narrating of the institution of the Lord's supper was of no importance to the object of the fourth gospel, How so? With regard to its general object, the convincing of its reades that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, (xx. 31), was it of no importance to communicate a scene in which he appears as the founder of a new covenant? and in relation to the special object of the passage in question, namely, the exhibiting of the love of Jesus as a love which endured to the end (xiii. 1), would it have contributed nothing to mention how he offered his body and blood as meat and drink to his followers, and thus realized his words in John vi.? But, it is said, John here as elsewhere, only concerns himself with the more profound discourses of Jesus, for which reason he passe? over the institution of the Supper, and begins his narrative with the discourse connected with the washing of the disciples' feet. Nothing, however, but the most obdurate prejudice in favour of the fourth gospel, can make this discourse on humility appear more profound than what Jesus says of the partaking of his body and blood, when instituting the Lord's supper.

But the main point is that harmonists should show us in what part of John's narrative, if we are to believe that he presupposed Jesus to have instituted the Supper at this last meal, he can have made the alleged omission that they should indicate the break at which that incident may be suitably introduced. On looking into the different commentaries, there appears to be more than one place excellently adapted to such an insertion. According to Olshausen, the end of the 13th chapter, after the announcement of Peter's denial, presents the interval in which the institution of the Supper must be supposed to occur; herewith the repast closed, and the succeeding discourses from xiv. 1. were uttered by Jesus after the general rising from table, and while standing in the chamber. But, here, it appears as if Olshausen, for the sake of obtaining a resting place between xiii. 38. and xiv. 1., had resigned himself to the delusion of supposing that the words "Arise, let us go hence," at which he makes Jesus rise from table and deliver the rest of his discourse standing, are found at the end of the 13th chapter, whereas they do not occur until the end of the 14th. Jesus had been speaking of going whither his disciples could not follow him, and had just rebuked the rashness of Peter, in volunteering to lay down life for his sake, by the prediction of his denial: here, at xiv.1ff., he calms the minds of the disciples, whom this prediction had disturbed, exhorting them to faith, and directing their attention to the blessed effects of his departure. Repelled by the firm coherence of this part of the discourse, other commentators, e. g. Paulus, retreat to xiii. 30., and are of opinion that the institution of the Supper may be the most fitly introduced after the withdrawal of Judas, for the purpose of putting his treachery into execution, since this circumstance might naturally excite in Jesus those thoughts concerning his death which he at the basis of the institution. But even rejecting the opinion of L cke and others, that "when he went out," should be united to "Jesus said." It is unquestionable that the words of Jesus v. 31, "Now is the Son of man glorified" and what he says further on (v. 33) of his speedy departure, have an immediate reference to the retiring of Judas. For the verb doxazein in the fourth gospel always signifies the glorification of Jesus, to which he is to be led by suffering; and with the departure of the apostate disciple to those who brought suffering and death on Jesus, his glorification and his speedy death were decided. The verses 31 - 33 being thus inseparably connected with v. 30; the next step is to carry the institution of the Supper somewhat lower, and place it where this connection may appear to cease: accordingly, L cke makes it fall between v. 33 and 34, supposing that after Jesus (v. 31-33) had composed the minds of the disciples, disturbed and shocked by the departure of the traitor, and had prepared them for the sacred meal, he at v. 34 f., annexes to the distribution of the bread and wine the new commandment of love. But, as it has been elsewhere remarked, since at v. 36 Peter asks Jesus, in allusion to v. 33, whither he will go, it is impossible that the Supper can have been instituted after the declaration of Jesus v. 33; for otherwise Peter would have interpreted the expression "I go," by the "body given" and the "blood shed," or in any case would rather have felt prompted to ask the meaning of these latter expressions. Acknowledging this, Neander retreats a verse, and inserts the Supper between v. 32 and 38; but he thus violently severs the obvious connection between the words "shall straightway glorify him" in the former verse, and the words "yet a little while I am with you" in the latter.

It is, therefore, necessary to retreat still further than Neander, or even Paulus: but as from v. 30 up to v. 18, the discourse turns uninterruptedly ^{P.706} on the traitor, and this discourse again is inseparably linked to the washing of the disciples' feet and the explanation of that act, there is no place at which the institution of the Supper can be inserted until the beginning of the chapter. Here, however, according to one of the most recent critics, it may be inserted in a way which perfectly exonerates the author of the gospel from the reproach of misleading his reader by an account which is apparently continuous, while it nevertheless passes over the Supper. For, says this critic, from the very beginning John does not profess to narrate anything of the meal itself, or what was concomitant with it, but only what occurred after the meal; inasmuch as the most natural interpretation of deipnou genomenou is: after the meal was ended, while the words "he rises from supper," plainly show that the washing of the disciples' feet was not commenced until after the meal. But after the washing of the feet is concluded, it is said of Jesu, that he "sat down again" anapeswn palin (v. 12), consequently the meal was not yet ended when he commenced that act, and by the words he rises from supper, it is meant that he rose to wash the disciples' feet from the yet unfinished meal, or at least after the places had been taken preparatory to the meal. Again, deipnou genomenou does not mean: after a meal was ended, any more than the words tou Ihsou genomenoj e)n Beqania (Matt. xxvi. 6.) mean: "after Jesus had been in Bethany;" as the latter expression is intended by Matthew to denote the time the residence of Jesus in Bethany, so the former is intended by John to denote the course of the meal itself, Hence he thereby professes to inform us of every remarkable occurrence connected with that meal, and in omitting to mention the institution of the Lord's supper, which was one of its features, he incurs the reproach of having given a deficient narrative, indeed of having left out precisely what is most important. Instead of this highest extremity of John's account, Kern has recently taken the lowest, and has placed the institution of the Supper after the words, "Arise, let us go hence" (xiv. 31); whereby he assigns to it the improbable and indeed unworthy position, of an act only occurring to Jesus when he is preparing to depart.

Thus viewing the subject generally, there is no conceivable motive why John, if he spoke of this last evening at all, should have omitted the institution of the Lord's supper; while, on descending to a particular consideration, there is in the course of his narrative no point where it could be inserted: hence nothing remains but to conclude that he does not mention it because it was unknown to him. But as a means of resisting this conclusion, theologians, even such as acknowledge themselves unable to explain the omission of the institution, rely on the observation, that a rite so universally prevalent in the primitive Church as was the Lord's supper, cannot possibly have been unknown to the fourth evangelist, whoever he ^{P.707} may have been. Certainly, he knew of the Lord's supper as a Christian rite, for this may be inferred from his 6th chapter, and unavoidably he must have known of it; it may, however, have been unknown to him under what circumstances Jesus formally instituted this observance. The referring of so revered an usage to the authority of Jesus himself was an object of interest to this evangelist; but from unacquaintance with the synoptic scene, and also from a partiality for the mysterious, which led him to put into the mouth of Jesus expressions unintelligible at the moment, and only to be explained by the issue, he effected this purpose, not by making Jesus actually institute the rite, but by attributing to him obscure expressions about the necessity of eating his flesh and drinking his blood, which, being rendered intelligible only by the rite of the Lord's supper introduced into the Church after his death, might be regarded as an indirect institution of that rite.

As John omits the institution of the Lord's supper, so the sy-noptists omit the washing of the disciples' feet: but it cannot be maintained with equal decision that they were therefore ignorant of this incident; partly on account of its inferior importance and the more fragmentary character of this part of the synoptic narrative; and partly because, as has been above remarked, the contention for pre-eminence in Luke v. 24 ff, has appeared to many expositors to be connected with the washing of the disciples' feet, as the inducement to that action on the part of Jesus, But as regards this contention for pre-eminence, we have shown above, that being unsuited to the tenor of the scene before us, it may owe its position only to a fortuitous association of ideas in the narrator: while the washing of the disciples' feet, in John, might appear to be a legendary development of a synoptic discourse on humility. In Matthew (xx.26ff.) Jesus admonishes his disciples that he among them who would be great must be the servant (diakonoj) of the others, just as he himself came "not to be served but to serve" and in Luke (xxii. 27), he expresses the same thought in the question: "Which is greater, he that sits at meat or he that serves?" and adds, "but I am among you as he that serves." Now it is certainly probable that Jesus might see fit to impress this lesson on the disciples through the medium of their senses, by an actual serving (diakonein) among them, while they played the part of those sitting at table; but it is equally probable, since the Synoptics are silent respecting such a measure, that either the legend, before it reached the fourth evangelist, or this writer himself, spun the fact out of the dictum. Nor is it necessary to suppose that the above declaration ^{P.708} came to him as having been uttered at the last meal of Jesus, in accordance with the representation of Luke; for it naturally resulted from the expressions "to recline at meat", and diakonein (to serve), that this symbolizing of the relation which they denote should be attached to a meal, and this meal might on easily conceivable grounds appear to be the most appropriately represented as the last.

According to Luke's representation, Jesus on this occasion addresses the disciples as those who had continued with him in his temptations, and as a reward for this fidelity promises them that they shall sit with him at table in his kingdom, and seated on thrones, judge the twelve tribes of Israel (v. 28-30). This appears incongruous with a scene in which he had immediately before announced his betrayal by one of the twelve, and in which he immediately after predicted his denial by another; at a time, moreover, in which the temptations properly so called, were yet future. After what we have already observed in relation to the entire character of the scene in Luke, we can hardly seek the reason for the insertion of this fragment of a discourse, in anything else than a fortuitous association of ideas, in which the contention about rank among the disciples might suggest the rank promised to them by Jesus, and the discourse on sitting at table and serving, the promise that the disciples should sit at table with Jesus in his Messianic kingdom.

In the succeeding conversation Jesus says to his disciples figuratively, that now it will be necessary to buy themselves swords, so hostilely will they be met on all sides, but is understood by them literally, and is shown two swords already in the possession of the society. Concerning this passage I am inclined to agree with Schleiermacher, who is of opinion that Luke introduced it here as a prelude to Peter's use of the sword in the ensuing narrative. The other divergencies in relation to the last meal will come under review in the course of the following investigations.

IN The Statement That Jesus from the beginning knew who would be his betrayer, the fourth gospel stands alone; but all four of the evangelists concur in testifying that at his last meal he predicted his betrayal by one of his disciples.

But in the first place there is this difference: while according to Matthew and Mark the discourse respecting the betrayer opens the scene, and in particular precedes the institution of the Lord's supper (Matt. xxvi.21ff.; Mark xiv.18ff.); Luke represents Jesus as not speaking of the betrayer until after the beginning of the meal, and the institution of the commemorative rite;

^{P.709} and in John what relates to the betrayer goes forward during and after the washing of the disciples' feet (xiii. 10-30.). The intrinsically trivial question, which evangelist is here right, is extremely important to theologians, because its decision involves the answer to another question, namely, whether the betrayer also partook of the ritual supper. It neither appeared consistent with the idea of that supper as a feast of the most intimate love and union, that a virtual alien like Judas should participate in it, nor did it seem to accord with the love and compassion of the Lord, that he should have permitted an unworthy disciple by this participation to aggravate his guilt. So undesirable a view of the facts was believed to be avoided by following the arrangement of Matthew and Mark, and making the designation of the betrayer precede the institution of the Supper: for as it was known from John, that as soon as Judas saw himself detected and exposed, he withdrew from the company, it would hence appear that Jesus did not institute the Supper until after the retirement of the traitor. But this expedient is founded on nothing but an inadmissible incorporation of the narrative of John with that of the Synoptics. For the withdrawal of Judas is mentioned only by the fourth evangelist; and he alone needs the supposition of such a circumstance, because according to him, Judas now first entered into his transactions with the enemies of Jesus, and thus, in order to come to terms with them, and obtain the requisite force, needed a somewhat longer time. In the Synoptics there is no trace of the betrayer having left the company; on the contrary, everything in their narrative appears to imply that Judas, first on the general departure from the room in which the repast had been taken, instead of going directly to the garden, went to the chief priests, of whom he at once, the agreement having been made beforehand, received the necessary force for the arrest of Jesus. Thus whether Luke or Matthewbe right in the arrangement of the scene, all the Synoptics intimate that Judas did not leave the company before the general departure, and consequently that he partook of the ritual Supper.

But also as to the manner in which Jesus pointed out his betrayer, there exists no slight divergency between the evangelists. In Luke Jesus only makes the brief remark that the hand of his betrayer is with him on the table, whereupon the disciples ask among themselves, who it can be that is capable of such a deed? In Matthew and Mark he says, first, that one of those who are present will betray him; and when the disciples individually ask him, Lord, is it I? he replies: he that dips his hand with, me in the dish; until at last, after a woe has been denounced on the traitor, according to Matthew, Judas also puts that question, and receives an affirmative answer. In John, Jesus alludes to the betrayer during and after the washing of the disciples' feet, in the observations, that not all the disciples present are clean, and that ^{P.710} on the contrary the scripture must be fulfilled: "he that eats bread with me, has lifted up his heel against me." Then he says plainly, that one of them will betray him; the disciples look inquiringly at each other, wondering of whom he speaks, when Peter prompts John, who is lying next to Jesus, to ask who is the traitor? Jesus replies, he to whom he shall give a sop, which he immediately does to Judas, with an admonition to hasten the execution of his project; whereupon Judas leaves the company.

Here again the harmonists are at once ready to incorporate the different scenes with each other, and render them mutually consistent. According to them, Jesus, on the question of each disciple whether he were the traitor, first declared aloud that one of his companions at table would betray him (Matthew): hereupon John asked in a whisper which of them he meant, and Jesus also in a whisper made the answer, he to whom he should give the sop (John); then Judas, likewise in a whisper, asked whether it were he, and Jesus in the same manner replied in the affirmative (Matthew); lastly, after an admonition from Jesus to be speedy, the betrayer left the company (John). But that the question and answer interchanged between Jesus and Judas were spoken in a whisper, Matthew, who alone communicates them, gives no intimation, nor is this easily conceivable without presupposing the improbable circumstance, that Judns reclined on the one side of Jesus, as John did on the other; if, however, the colloquy were uttered aloud the disciples could not, as John narrates, have so strangely misunderstood the words, "What you do, do quickly," and the supposition of a stammering question on the side of Judas, and a low-toned answer from Jesus, cannot be seriously held a satisfactory explanation. Nor is it probable that Jesus, after having already made the declaration: he who dippcth with me in the dish will betray me, would for the more precise indication of the traitor have also given him a sop; it is rather to be supposed that these are but two different modes of reporting the same particular. But when once this is admitted, as it is by Paulus and Olshausen, so much is already renounced either in relation to the one narrative or the other, that it is inconsistent to resort to forced suppositions, in order to overcome the difficulty involved in the explicit answer which Matthew makes Jesus give to the traitor: and it should rather be allowed that we have before us two divergent accounts, of which the one was not so framed that it deficiencies might be supplied by the other.

Having, with Sieffert and Fritzsche, attained this degree of insight, the only remaining question is: to which of the two narratives must we give the preference as the original? Sieffert has answered this question very decidedly in favour of John; not merely, as he maintains, because he shares in the prejudice which attributes to that evangelist the character of an eye-witness; but also because his narrative is in this part, by its intrinsic evidence of truthfulness, and the vividness of its scenes, advantageously distinguished from that of Matthew, which presents no indications of an autoptical origin. For example, while John is able to describe with the utmost minuteness the manner in which Jesus indicated his betrayer; the narrative of the first gospel is such as to induce the conjecture that its author had only received the general information, that Jesus had personally indicated his betrayer.

It certainly cannot be denied, that the direct answer which Jesus gives to Judas in Matthew (v. 25) has entirely the appearance of having been framed, without much fertility of imagination, to accord with the above general information; and in so far it must be regarded as inferior to the moro indirect, and therefore more probable mode of indicating the traitor, in John. But in relation to another feature, the result of the comparion is different. In the two first evangelists Jesus says: "he who has dipped or who dips with me," in John, "he to whiom I shall give a sop when I have dipped it," a difference in which the greater preciseness of the indication, and consequently the inferior probability, is on the side of the fourth gospel. In Luke, Jesus designates the traitor merely as one of those who are sitting at meat with him; and as regards the expression o( e)mbayaj (the one who dips etc.) in Matthew and Mark, the interpretation given of it by Kuin l and Henneberg, who suppose it to mean one of the party at table, leaving it uncertain which, is not so mistaken as Olshausen represents it to be. For, first, to the question of the several disciples, is it I? Jesus might see fit to return an evasive answer; and secondly, the above answer, as Kuin l has correctly remarked, stands in the relation of an appropriate climax to the previous declaration: one of you shal betray me (v. 21), since it presents that aggravating circumstance of the betrayal, fellowship at table. Even if the authors of the two first Gospels understood the expression in question to imply, that Judas in particular dipped his hand in the dish with Jesus, and hence supposed this second declaration to have indicated him personally: still the parallel passage in Luke, and the words "one of the twelve," which in Mark precede o( e)mbaptomenoj, show that originally the second expression was merely an amplification of the former, though from the wish to have a thoroughly unequivocal designation of the betrayer on the part of Jesus, it was early interpreted in the other more special sense.

When, however, a legendary exaggeration of the preciseness of the indication is once admitted, the manner in which the fourth gospel describes that indication must be included in the series of progressive representations, and according to Sieffert, it must have been the original from which all te rest proceeded. But if we beforehand renounce the affirma- ^{P.713} tive reply to Judas, "you have said it", in Matthew, the mode of designation in John is the most definite of all; for the intimation: one of my companions at table, is comparatively indefinite, and even the expression: he who dips with me in the dish, is a less direct sign of the traitor, than if Jesus had himself dipped the morsel and presented it to him. Now is it in the spirit of the ancient legend, if Jesus really gave the more precise designation, to lose its hold of this, and substitute one less precise, so as to diminish the miracle of the foreknowledge exhibited by Jesus? Assuredly not; but rather the very reverse holds true. Hence we conclude that Matthew, together with the unhistorically precise, has yet at the same time preserved the historically less precise; whereas John has entirely lost the latter and has retained only the former.

After thus renouncing what is narrated of a personal designation of the traitor by Jesus, as composed post eventum, there yet remains to us the general precognition and prediction on the part of Jesus, that one of his disciples and companions at table would betray him. But even this is attended with difficulties. That Jesus received any external notification of treason brooding against him in the circle of his confidential friends, there is no indication in the Gospels: he appears to have gathered this feature of his destiny also out of the scriptures alone. He repeatedly declares that by his approaching betrayal the scripture will be fulfilled (John xiii. 18; xvii. 12. comp. Matt. xxvi. 24. parall), and in the fourth gospel (xiii. 18), he cites as this scripture the words: "He that eats bread with me, has lifted up his heel against me," from Ps. xli. 10. This passage in the Psalms refers either to the well-known perfidious fiends of David, Ahithophcl and Mephibosheth, or, if the Psalm be not the composition of David, to some unknown individuals who stood in a similar relation to the poet. There is so little trace of Messianic significance, that even Thol ck and Olshausen acknowledge the above to be the original sense. But according to the latter, in the fate of David was imaged that of the Messiah; according to the former, David himself, under a divine impulse often used expressions concerning himself, which contained special allusions to the fate of Jesus. When, however, Thol ck adds: David himself, under the influence of inspiration, did not always comprehend this more profound sense of his expressions; what is this but a confession that by the interpretation of such passages as relating to Christ there is given to them another sense than that in which their author originally intended them? Now that Jesus deduced from this passage of the 41st Psalm, that it would be his lot to be betrayed by a friend, in the way of naturalreflection, is the more inconceivable, because there is no indication to be discovered that this Psalm was interpreted Messianically among the Jews: while that such an interpretation was a result of the divine knowledge in Jesus is ^{P.714} impossible, because it is a false interpretation. It is rather to be supposed, that the passage in question was applied to the treachery of Judas only after the issue. It is necessary to figure to ourselves the consternation which the death of the Messiah must have produced in the minds of his first adherents, and the solicitous industry with which they endeavoured to comprehend this catastrophe; and to remember that to a mind of Jewish culture, to comprehend a fact or doctrine was not to reconcile it with consciousness and reason, but to bring it into harmony with scripture. In seeking such a result, the primitive Christians found predicted in the oracles of the Old Testament, not only the death of the Messiah, but also his falling by means of the perfidy of one of his friends, and even the subsequent fate and end of this traitor (Matt, xxvii. 9 f.; Acts i. 20.); and as the most striking Old Testament authority for the betrayal, there presented itself the above passage from Ps. xli., where the author coplains of maltreatment from one of his most intimate friends. These vouchers from the Old Testament might be introduced by the writers of the Gospel history either as reflections from themselves or others by way of appendix to their narrative of the result, as is done by the authors of the first gospel and the Acts, where they relate the end of Judas: or, what would be more impressive, they might put them into the mouth of Jesus himself before the issue, as is done by the author of the fourth gospel in the present instance. The Psalmist had meant by ''an? pas one who generally was accustomed to eat bread with him: but this expression might easily come to be regarded as the designation of one in, the act of eating bread with the subject of the prophecy; and hence it seemed appropriate to choose as the scene for the delivery of the prediction, a meal of Jesus with his disciples, and for the sake of proximity to the end of Jesus to make this meal the last. For the rest, the precise words of the psam were not adhered to, for instead of "he who eats bread with me," was substituted either the synonymous phrase "with me on the table," as in Luke; or, in accordance with the representation of the Synoptics that this last was a paschal meal, an allusion to the particular sauce used on that occasion: "he who dips with me in the dish," as in Mark and Matthew. This, at first entirely synonymous with the expression o( trwgwn, as a designation of some one of his companions at table, was soon, from the desire for a personal designation, misconstrued to mean that Judas accidentally dipped his hand into the dish at the same moment with Jesus, and at length the morsel dipped into the dish by Judas at the same time with Jesus, was by the fourth evangelist converted into the sop presented by Jesus to his betrayer.

There are other parts also of this scene in John, which, instead of having a natural character, as Sieffert maintains, must rather be pronounced artificial. The manner, in which Peter has to use the 714 intervention of the disciple leaning on Jesus' bosom, in order to obtain from the latter a more definite intimation concerning the betrayer, besides being foreign to the Synoptics, belongs to that un-historical colouring which, as we have above shown, the fourth gospel gives to the relation of the two apostles. Moreover, to disguise an indication of Judas in the evil character of the traitor, beneath an action of friendliness, as that of giving him the sop, must retain something untruthful and revolting, whatever may be imagined of objects which Jesus might have in view, such as the touching of the traitor with compunction even at that hour. Lastly, the address, What you do, do quickly, after all that can be done to soften it, is still harsh, a kind of braving of the impending catastrophe; and rather than resort to any refinements in order to justify these words as spoken by Jesus, I prefer agreeing with the author of the Probabilia, who sees in them the effort of the fourth evangelist to improve on theordinary representation, according to which Jesus foreknow the betrayal and refrained from preventing it, by making him even challenge the traitor to expedite his undertaking, Besides the betrayal, Jesus is said to have predicted the denial by Peter, and to have fixed the precise time of its occurrence, declaring that before the cock should crow (Mark says twice) on the following morning, Peter would deny him three times (Matt. xxvi.33ff. parall.); which prediction, according to the Gospels, was exactly accomplished. It is here observed on the side of nationalism, that the extension of the prophetic gift to the cognizance of such merely accessory circumstances as the crowing of coclcs, must excite astonishment; as also that Jesus, instead of warning, predicts the result as inevitable: a feature which calls to mind the Fate of the Greek tragedy, in which a man, in spite of his endeavour to avoid what the oracle has predicted of him, nevertheless fulfils its inexorable decree. Paulus will not admit either ou) fwnhsei shmeron o( a)lektwr, or a)parneisqai, to have been spoken in their strict verbal signification, but gives to the entire speech of Jesus only this indecisive and problematical sense: so easily to be shaken is the imagined firmness of this disciple, that between the present moment and the early morning, events may arise which would cause him more than once to stumble and be unfaithful to his master. But this is not the right mode of removing the difficulty of the Gospel narrative. The words attributed to Jesus so closely agree with the subsequent event, that the idea of a merely fortuitous coincidence is not to be here entertained. Occuring as they do in a tissue of prophecies post eventum, WE must rather suppose that after Peter had really denied Jesus more than once during that night, the announcement of such ^{P.715} a result was put into the mouth of Jesus, with the common marking of time by the crowing of the cock, and the reduction of the instances of denial to three. That this determination of time and number was permanent in the Gospel tradition, (except that Mark, doubtless arbitrarily, for the sake of balancing the three times denying by another number, speaks of the twice crowing of the cock,) appears to be explained without any great difficulty by the familiarity of the expressions early choosen, and the ease with which they could be retained in the memory.

Just as little claim to be regarded as a real prophecy has the announcement of Jesus to the rest of his disciples that they will all of them be offended because of him in the coming night, that they will forsake him and disperse (Matt. xxvi. 31. parall. comp. John xvi. 32.); especially as the evangelists themselves, in the words: For it is written, "I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad," point out to us the Old Testament passage (Zech. xiii. 7), which, first sought out by the adherents of Jesus for the satisfaction of their own difficulties as to the death of their master, and the melancholy consequences which immediately ensued, was soon put into the mouth of Jesus as a prophecy of these consequences.

IT Was At The Last meal, according to the Synoptics, with whom the apostle Paul also agrees (1 Cor. xi. 23 ft ), that Jesus gave to the unleavened bread and the wine which, agreeably to the custom of the paschal feast, he, as head of the family, had to distribute among his disciples, a relation to his speedily approaching death. During the repast, we are told, he took bread, and after givino-thanks, broke it and gave it to his disciples with the declaration: "This is my body," touto e)sti to swma mou, to which Paul and Luke add: "which is given (or broken) for you," uper umwn didomenon - klwmenon; in like manner, according to Paul and Luke after supper, he presented to them a cup of wine with the words: This is my blood of the new testament, touto e)sti to ai(ma mou, thj kainhj diaqhkhj, or according to Paul and Luke: the new testament in my blood, which is shed for many, or for you, kainh diaqhkh e)n tw ai(mati mou, to peri pollwn ekxunomenon, to which Matthew adds: for the remission of sins, ei)j a)fesin a(martiwn, and Paul, what he and Luke previously give in reference to the bread: Do this, touto poieite (Paul, with the wine, as often as you drink it, o(sakij a)n pinhte) in remembrance of me, ei)j thn e)mhn a)namnhsin.

The controversy between the different confessions as to the meaning of these words, whether they signify a transmutation of bread ^{P.716} and wine into the body and blood of Christ, or a presence of the body and blood of Christ with and beneath those elements, or lastly the symbolizing of the body and blood of Christ by bread and wine, may be pronounced obsolete, and ought not to be any longer pursued, at least exegetically, because it is founded on a misplaced distinction. It is only when transmitted to a modern age, and to the occidental mind, in which the forms of thought are more abstract, that what the ancient oriental understood by the words, touto e)stin divides itself into the above variety of possible significations; and if we would obtain a correct conception of the idea which originally suggested the expression, we must cease to discriminate thus. To explain the words in question as implying a transmutation of the substance, is to go too far, and to be too definite; to understand them of an existence cum et sub specie etc. is too much of a refinement; while to translate them: this signifies, is too limited and meagre an interpretation. To the writers of our Gospels, the bread in the commemorative supper was the body of Christ: but had they been asked, whether the bread were transmuted, they would have denied it; had they been spoken to of a partaking of the body with and under the form of bread, they would not have understood it; had it been inferred that consequently the bread merely signified the body, they would not have been satisfied.

Thus to dispute further on this point is a fruitless labour; it is a more interesting question, whether Jesus merely intended this peculiarly significant distribution of bread and wine as a parting demonstration of attachment to his disciples, or whether he designed that it should be celebrated by his disciples in memory of him after his departure. If we had only the account of the two first evangelists, and this is admitted even by orthodox theologians, there would be no solid ground for the latter supposition; but the words, "Do this in remembrance of me," which are added by Paul and Luke, appear decisive of the fact that Jesus purposed the founding of a commemorative meal, which according to Paul, the Christians were to celebrate, "until he comes." Concerning this very addition, however, it has been of late conjectured that it may not have been originally uttered by Jesus, but that in the celebration of the Lord's supper in the primitive Church, the presiding member of the community, in disributing the elements, may have exhorted the rest to continue the repetition of this meal in remembrance of Christ, and that from this primitive Christian ritual the above words were added to the address of Jesus, This conjecture should not be opposed by an exaggerated estimate of the authority of the apostle Paul, such as that of Olshausen, who infers from the words, "I have received of the Lord," that he here delivers an immediate revelation from Christ, indeed, that Christ himself speaks through him: since, as even Suskind ^{P.717} has admitted, and as Schulz has recently shown in the most convincing manner, the phrase parelabon apo tou Kuriou cannot signify an immediate reception, but only a mediate transmission from the individual specified. If, however, Paul had not that addition from Jesus himself, still Suskind thinks himself able to prove that it must have been communicated, or at least confirmed, by an apostle, and is of opinion, in the manner of his school, that by a series of abstract distinctions, he can define certain boundary lines which must in this case prevent the intrusion of an unhistorical tradition. But the severe attention to evidence which characterizes our own day, ought not to be expected from an infant religious society, between the distant portions of which there was not yet any organized connection, or for the most part any other than oral communication. On the other hand, however, we must not be induced to regard the words touto poiete etc.. as a later addition to the address of Jesus, on false grounds,such as, that it would have been repugnant to the humility of Jesus to found a rite in remembrance of himself; nor must we rate too highly the silence of the two first evangelists, in opposition to the testimony of Paul.

Perhaps this point may be decided by means of another more general question, namely, what led Jesus to make this peculiarly significant distribution of bread and wine among his disciples? Orthodox theologians seek to remove as far as possible from the person of Jesus, as divine, all progress, and especially a gradual or sudden origination of plans and resolutions not previously present in his mind; hence, according to them, there lay in Jesus from the beginning, together with the foreknowledge of his destiny, and his entire plan, the design to institute this supper, as a commemorative rite to be observed by his Church; and this opinion may at least appeal for support, to the allusions implying that he already contemplated the institution a year beforehand, attributed to Jesus in the sixth chapter of the fourth gospel.

This is certainly an insecure support, for, as a previous inquiry has shown, those allusions, totally unintelligible before the institution of the Supper, cannot have proceeded from Jesus, but only from the evangelist.:); Further, as, viewing the subject generally, it appeared to annul the reality of the human nature in Jesus, to suppose that all lay foreseen and prepared in him from the first, or at least from the beginning of his mature age; nationalism has maintained, on the contrary, that the idea of the symbolical act and words in question did not arise in Jesus until the last evening. According to this view, at the sight of the broken bread and the outpoured wine, Jesus had a foreboding of his near and violent death; he saw in the former an image of his body which was to be put to death, and in the latter of his blood which was to be shed; and this mo-^{P.718} mentary impression was communicated by him to his disciples. But such a tragical impression could only be felt by Jesus if he contemplated his death as a near event. That he did so with a greater distinctness at the last meal, is thought to be proved by the assurance which, according to all the Synoptics, he gave to his disciples, that he would no more drink of the fruit of the vine until he drank it new in the kingdom of his Father; so that, as there is no ground for supposing a vow of abstinence on his part, he must have foreseen that his end would arrive within the next few days. If, however, we observe how in Luke this assurance in relation to the wine is preceded by the declaration of Jesus, that he will no more eat the Passover until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God, it appears probable that originally the fruit of the vine also was understood not as wine in general, but as specially the beverage of the Passover; of which a trace may perhaps be discovered in the expression of Matthew and Mark, this "fruit of the vine." Meals in the Messianic kingdom were, in accordance with the ideas of the age, often spoken of by Jesus, and he may have expected that in that kingdom the Passover would be observed with peculiar solemnity. "When therefore he declares that he will no more partake of this meal in the present age, aluv, but only in the future; iirst, this does not apply to eating and drinking in general, and hence does not mean that his sojourn in this pre-messianic world was to have an end within the next few days, but only within the space of a year; nor, secondly, does it necessarily involve the idea that this change was to be introduced by his death, for he might even yet expect that the kingdom of the Messiah would commence during his life.

Meanwhile, to deny every presentiment of his end on the part of Jesus in these last days of his life, is on the one hand, not warranted by our previous examination; and on the other, would compel us to doubt the institution of the ritual supper by Jesus, which we can hardly do in opposition to the testimony of Paul. It is moreover easily conceivable, that the continually increasing involvement of his relation to the Jewish hierarchy, might at length bring to Jesus the conviction that his death was inevitable, and that in a moment of emotion he might even fix the next Passover as the term which he should not survive. Thus each of the supposed cases appears possible: either that, owing to a thought suggested by the impressiveness of the moment, at the last Passover which he celebrated with his disciples, he made bread and wine the symbols of his body which was to be slain and his blood which was to be shed; or that for some time previously he had embraced the design of be-cuieathing such a commemorativemeal to his adherents, in which case he may very probably have uttered the words preserved by Paul and Luke. But before this intimation of the death of Jesus had ^{P.719} been duly appropriated by the disciples, and received into their conviction, they were overtaken by the actual catastrophe, for which therefore, they might be regarded as wholly unprepared.

ACCORDING to the Synoptic 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 (Matth. xxi. 17; Luke xxii. 39), went to the Mount of Olives, into a garden called Gethsemano (Matth. xxvi. 30, 36, parall.). John, who gives the additional particular that the garden lay over the brook Kedron, does not represent him as departing there 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 Synoptics 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 to 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 Dumber three, which thus doubly figure in the narrative of the two tost 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

^{P.720} 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 dyuvia which ensued, the sweat of Jesus was as it were groat drops of Hood falling to the ground.

From the earliest time this scene in Gethscmane 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; Vanini boldly extolled his own demeanour in the face of execution as superior to that of Jesus; and in the E'vangelium Nicodemi, Satan concludes from this scene that Christ is a mere man.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, 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 t'ae 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 te will of the Father, to the divine. As however, in the first place, this appeared to introduce an inad-m'ssible division in the nature of Jesus; and in the second place, even a fi'ar experienced by his human nature in the prospect of appro ching bodily sufferings appeared umvorthv 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. The effort to free the sorrow of Jesus from all reference to ^{P.721} physical suffering, or to his own person, attained its highest pitch in the ecclesiastical tenet, that Jesus by substitution was burdened with the guilt of all mankind, and vicariously endured the wrath of God against that guilt. Some have even supposed that the devil himself wrestled with Jesus. 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 (potherion) 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 Synoptics, 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. Tims, 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 te idea of the evangelists, in Gethscmane 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; 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 Hcumann's hypothesis, that in addition to his inward sorrow, Jesus had contracted a cold in the clayey ground traversed by the Kedron. 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;; or a confused blending of all the different kinds of sorrow, selfish and sympathetic, sensual and spiritual, as been presupposed. Paulus explains "if it be possible, let this cup ^{P.722} 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. 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; that, moreover, the shrinking of physical nature at the prospect of annihilation belongs to the essential conditions of life: indeed, that the purer the human nature in an individual, the more susceptible is it in relation to suffering and annihilation; that the conquest over suffering intensely appreciated is greater than a stoical r even a Socratic insensibility.

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 ivith fear and trembling by all the celestial powers, did, not need the strengthening of the angel, one ^{P.723} 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. 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, how are we to suppose that Luke received this information? 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 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 story 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 anelic appearances, and that this embellishment, originally intended in a merely poetical sense, was received by the narrator of the third gospel as historical.

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 Epiphanias 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,)) this was the only particular which could give offence. Thus in an earlier age, age, ^{P.724} 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 down to the more recent investigators of nature: but such a phenomenon is only mentioned as extremely rare, and as a symptom of decided disease. Hence Paulus points to the term 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 "falling" refers not to sweat, but to the "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 bood, so that of the words, as it were drops of blood "falling on the ground, 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 foreshadowed 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 ^{P.725} a movement hither and there, so rapid an alternation of retirement and return, is entirely suited to the state of mind in which Jesus then was, 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. But that the two narrators count the retirements of Jesus, marking them by the expressions "a second time" an "a third time" ( e)k deuterou and e)k tritou,) 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, rov avrbv koyov, 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 he medium of fear, correspond to the three attacks through the medium of desire, in the story 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 story of the temptation, points to something mythical?

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 story in question, is wanting in the Gospel of John.

The relation of John to the synoptic narratives just considered has, when regarded more closely, two aspects: first, he has not what the Synoptics present; and secondly, instead of this he has something which it is difficult to reconcile with their statements. ^{P.726} How, on the ordinary supposition about the author of the fourth gospel and the correctness of the synoptic account, does it happen 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 Synoptics. But between the two first Synoptics 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 Gospel tradition. But as this tradition was the source of the divergent representations of the Synoptics, 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 strenghtening angel, he should give any furtherance to the Ebionite 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. 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 clse relation between Jesus and angels, he must also have excluded other passages from his gospel: above all, as L cke remarks, 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 had spoken to him, 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 Synoptics

^{P.727} 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 synoptic 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 immoveability: how is it possible that immediately after, this peace should give place to the most violent mental emotion, this tranquillity, to a trouble even to 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, e 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 napdKrjTof 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 erusalem 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; 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 ad-rnirable. 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 ^{P.728} 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 ipvxfi: but is not this the rankest Pela-gianism, 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 iolent 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: "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 burdened 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 did you not, instead of indulging in vain anticipations of glory, rather occupy yourself betimes with earnest thoughts of the coming trial, that by such a preparation, you niightest spare thyselt perilous surprise on its approach? why did you utter the words of triumph before you hadst fought, so as to be obliged with shame RETIREMENT To The MOUNT of OLIVES ^{P.729} 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 Synoptics, 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 Synoptics is unhistorical, is only to be accounted for by that author's then zealous adherence to the paragraphs of Schleiermacher's Dogmalik, 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, Bretsclmeider might rather appear to be right, when he claims the superiority in naturalness and intrinsic evidence of truth for the Synoptics: were it not that our confidence in the decisions of this writer is undermined, by his dislike for the dogmtical 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.27ff. 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 Synoptics place in the last evening of the life of Jesus, and in the seclusion of the garden. As Jesus here declares to his disciples, ^{P.730} "my soul is troubled even to death," (Matt. xxvi. 38): so there he says: "Now is my soul troubled," (John xii. 27); as he here prays, that if it be possible, this hour may pass from him, (Mark xiv. 35): so there he entreats: "Father, save me from this hour," (John xii. 27); as here he calms himself by the restriction: nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will," (Mark xiv. 36): so there, by the reflection: "but for this cause came I to this hour,"(John xii. 27); lastly, as here an angel appears strengthening Jesus, (Luke xxii. 43): so there something happens which occasions the bystanders to observe that an angel said to him, (John xii. 29). This similarity has induced many of the more modern theologians to pronounce the incident in John xii.27ff., 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 burden of error in this matter has been more immediately cast on the Synoptics. 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. Here we have the effects of avision 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 evangelis 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 ^{P.731} 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 Synoptics appear to place this fear in a more suitable position, in immediate proximity to the beginning of his sufferings. The representation of John is also deficient in certain circumstances, presented by the Synoptics, 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 br , daylight, in a cohcourse of people; a situation in which it is ordinarily more easy to maintain composure, or in which at least it is visual, from the possibility of misconstruction, to suppress the more profound emotion.

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 Synoptics, in a false position. 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, from which 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 beginning of his sufferings, in the night and in privacy: how could he ever so far bely 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.

^{P.732} Certainly, between the synoptic 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 synoptic 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 Synoptics: but, on the other hand, there is no parallel to the additional prayer in John: "Father, glorify your name," (xii. 28); further, though in both accounts an angel is spoken of, yet there is no trace in the Synoptics 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 your name, may remind us. In the synoptic description of the transfiguration, it is true, the expressions doca, glory, and docazein, to glorify, are not found: but the Second Epistle of Peter represents Jesus as receiving in the transfiguration honour and glory, and the heavenly voice as "coming from the excellent glory" (. 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.27ff. 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 story 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 synoptic stories 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 synoptic 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 inlirnation what was the answer of Jesus to the Greeks, or wha 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 synoptic stories 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, and in indistinct outline; it would be easy for him, since his idea of glorification 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 story of the transfiguration, making this an answer to the prayer; to the voice, the more particular import of which, as given by the Synoptics, was unknown to him, he gave, in accordance with his general notion of this incident as a glory conferred on Jesus, the import: "I have both glorified and will glorify again," 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 soiirce 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 synoptic representation of the scene in Gethsemane, or vice versa: 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. 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 Wolfenb ttel fragments observes, had the narrative of the words and deeds of Jesus been committed to writing bythe 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. Hence even L cke, in consideration of the mode of expression in the farewell discourses, and particularly in the final prayer, has relinquished the position that Jesus spoke in the vf- .vrds 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. 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 nowed only from the mind of the writer, and was intended by him as a confirmation of his doctrine of Jesus as the incarnate word Logos, and of the dignity of the apostles? 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 oe 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 word (xiv.16ff. 25. xv. 26. xvi.7ff.13ff.), with a distinctness which seems to indicate light borrowed from the issue.

In relation, however, to the fact that the farewell discourses in volve the decided foreknowledge of the immediately approaching re suit, the sufferings and death of Jesus (xiii.18ff. 33, 38; xiv. 30 f. xvi.5ff. 16, 32 f.), the narrative of John stands on the same ground with the synoptic 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 ^{P.733} 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 Sanhedrin, or otherwise, was apprized of the fatal blow which the Jewish rulers with the help of one of his disciples were about to aim at him in the corning night, we have no trace in our Gospel 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 Gospel 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 th prayer which were essential to it, there presented itself first the image of a cap Trorpiov, used by Jesus himself as a designation of his sufferings (Matt. xx. 22 f.); and secondly, Old Testament passages in Psalms of lamentation, 43. 6, 12; 43. 5., where in the LXX. the "soul exceeding sorrowful" occurs, and in addition to this the expression tw qanatw (to death) the more naturally suggested itself, since ^{736} 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 synoptic 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 Synoptics 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 Synoptics, 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.27ff.), he had yet long beforehand completely triumphed over them, and when they stood mmediately before him, looked them in the face with imperturbed serenity, this representation of the fourth gospel is the third and highest grade of devotional, but unhistorical embellishment.

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 xviii. 3.). This band, which according to the Synoptic came from the chief priests and elders, was according to Luke led by the captains of the temple and hence was probably a detachment of the soldiers of the temple, to whom, judging from the word oxloj, and from staves culoi 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, speaks of a band speira, and a captain xiliarxoj, without mentioning any tumultuary force, it appears as if the Jewish magistrates had procured as a support a detachment of Roman soldiery.

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; ^{P.737} according to the fourth gospel, on the contrary, Jesus advances apparently out of the garden 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. 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" (e)gw ei)mi) 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 ino the garden, Jesus himself advanced and made himself known. 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 designd as a supplement to the other, 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, o(dhgoj touj sullabousi ton Ihsoun (Acts i. 16), all the evangelists agree. But while according to the synoptic 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 (v. 5). Why John does not assign to Judas the task of personally indicating Jesus, it is ^{P.738} 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, in order to find it conceivable, that there arose among the Christians at an early period the inclination to transcend the common Gospel tradition in representing his demeanour on his arrest in the light of a voluntary self-resignation.

In the Synoptics the kiss of Judas is followed by the cutting question of Jesus to the traitor; in John, after Jesus has uttered the egw eimi (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 Harms, Coligny, and others, But neither in the synoptic 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 inflence 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 L cke 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 a 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 ^{P.739} Jesus, 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: "Do you think 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 eack a peculiar trait. Not to mention that both particularize the ear as the light 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 Synoptics do not name Peter, it has been sought to explain in different ways. The spposition that they wished to avoid compromising the apostle, who at the time of the composition of their Gospels was yet living, belongs to the justly exploded fictions of an exegesis framed on the false principle of supplying conjectu-rally 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, is too sweeping an accusation as regards Matthew, though he does indeed leave unnamed indifferent persons, such as Jairus, or Bartimaeus; but that the real Matthew, or even the common Gospel tradition, thus early and generally should have lost the name from an story 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 story was originally current with- ^{P.740} out the mention of any name, (and why should not a less distinguished adherent of Jesus-for from the Synoptics 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, 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 only meant to examine it, and then told what must be done for the purpose of healing 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 himslf, 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 Gospel history.

Here, immediately before he is led away, the Synoptics 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 similai 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. ^{P.741} 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 story, 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. 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.

FROM The Place of arrest the Synoptics 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.57ff. parall., John xviii. 12 fF.). The important rank of Annas renders this representation of John as conceivable as the silence of the Synoptics is explicable on the ground that the ex-high priest had no power of deciding in this cause. But it is the 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 charactr of his gospel, preserved the examination before Armas as being omitted by the Synoptics, while he passed by that before Caiaphas, because it was described with sufficient particularity by his predecessors. This opinion, that John and the Synoptics 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 Synoptics 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 (vwijpBTTjrt, 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 hint 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 Synoptics 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 evangelit 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. 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 ^{P.743} a)pesteilen 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. As the general possibility of such a grammatical expedient 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 gar 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 oun, which is not merely indicative that a subject is continued, but also that it is resumed. 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 synoptic one, that his narrative cannot be complete.

We turn therefore to the account of the Synoptics, 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 firsi 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 da the Sanhedrin 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 uard, 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 ^{P.744} be given to the representation of the third gospel, which makes them assemble at daybreak only; 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 fiave 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," thus making it appear, if not that the members of the Sanhedrin 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. It may be said that to the sentence of death already passed in the night, was added n 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, theit 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, thesingle 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.

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 Sanhedrin, whether he actually maintained that he was the Messiah (the Son of God)? To this question according to the two former he ^{P.745} at once replies in the affirmative, in the words su legeij, (you have said (so),) and e)gw ei)mi (I am,) and adds that hereafter or immediately 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 a man shall sit on the right hand of the power of God; whereupon all eagerly ask: Are you 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. 1. 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 cicumstances, 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 Sanhedrin, 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 ap' a)rti of Matthew ought to be referred only to kaqhmenon etc.,, because it would not suit e)rxomenon etc. 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 offenceagainst 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, in Luke, from "the men that held Jesus;' in Mark, on the contrary, those who began to spit in the face of Jesus must have been some of those (who had just before con- ^{P.747} demned him, since he distinguishes the "servants" from them; and in Matthew also, who, without introducing a new nominative proceeds merely with "then they began" it is plainly the members of the Sanhedrin 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. In John, the maltreatment consists in a blow on the cheek with the palm of the hand, 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 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. According to Olshausen, the spirit of prophecy did not scorn to predict these rudenesses in detail, and at the same lime to describ the state of mind which the holy One of God opposed to the unholy multitude. He correctly adduces in relation to this scene Isai. 1. 6 f.; (LXX.); I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to them that pL cked off the hair: I hid not my face from shame and spitting etc, (comp. Mic. iv. 14.); and for the manner, in which Jesus bore all this, the well known passage Isai. 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: 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 Jsus; and it will hardly be chosen to suppose that Jesus effected silence with this view; while to deduce from mere chance a coincidence which certainly, as Olshausen says, extends to minutias, 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 it if it had not been their intention thus to exhibit the fulfilment of Old Testament oracles.

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 Synoptics, 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.

According to all the evangelists, it was in this court avkfj 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 his habitation, there exists an apparent divergency between the fourth gospel and the Synoptics. 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 tar 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 tral 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, rjv 3s KOI per' avruv 6 Herpes oru$ nat deppcuvopevos (v. 18). Now, when further on, the narrative of the second and third denial is opened with nearly the ^{P.748} same words: "And Simon Peter stood and warmed himself" (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 Synoptics 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 Anns 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. 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 knovi 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 misake, 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 Synoptics 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 ^{P.749} to John the first denial is uttered on the very entrance of Peter, to a damsel that kept the door, iraidiotci) Gvpupog (v. 17); in the Synoptics, in the inner court, where Peter sat at the fire, to a damsel naiSioKri (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 if.), after Peter was gone out into the porch; 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 hapens 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 Synoptics 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 nrrative the connection of the sword-stroke given in the garden with the name of Peter. 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 as well as to swear 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. JSfot only did the older, supernaturalistic 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 ^{P.750} that they Lave 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 Synoptics); 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); G. Before the relative of Malchus (3rd in John); 7. Before one who professes to detect him by his Ga'lilean 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 jiltmum inter rog ationes facta uno paroxyismo, pro una nutnera-tur. 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 three times (trij) in the mouth of Jess was only a round number intended to express a repeated denial, as also that Peter, once entangled in the confusion of a supposed necessity for falsehood, would be more likely to repeat his asseverations to 6 or 7 than merely to three inquirers, 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, 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 ^{P.751} 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 outside (Matt. v. 69) or beneath (Mark v. 66) in the court and it is thus implied that Jesus was in an inner or upper apartment of the palace: it mut 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. But of such a removal of Jesus Luke knows nothing; and his expression, the Lord turned and looked on Peter, 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 he 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 ^{P.753} 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 the sorrowful remembrance of the words of the master, with the force of a penetrating glance, pierce the nmost soul of the disciple.

ON Hearing That Jesus Was Condemned to death, Judas, according to the first gospel (xxvii.3ff.) 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 S;nhedrists, 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 had we find in the Acts of the Apostles (i.16ff.) 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 aKekdapa, 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 Kuin l: here we need only briefly adduce the principal expedients for this purpose. As the divergency lay chiefly in the words d-nriyaro, he hanged himself, in Matthew, and 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 dnriyaro in various ways; this word being interpreted at one time as signifying only the torments of a guilty conscience, at another, a disease consequent on these, at another, any death chosen out of melancholy and despair;and to this it has been thought that the statement 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 prhnhj genomenoj to aphgcato, understanding it merely to express as a circumstance what aphgcato expresses as an act: and accordingly maintaining that if the latter should be rendered se suspendit, the former should be translated by suspensus.

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 (aTnjyfaro) 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 falling headlong. But since Matthew evidently intends in his expression aphgcato to ^{P.754} 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. The author of a treatise on the fate of Judas in Schmidt's Bibliothek 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 cold not have omitted the other half.

After thus witnessing the total failure of the attempts at reconciliation in relation to the first difference; we have now to inquire whether the other, relative to the acquisition of the piece of ground can be more easily adjusted. It consists in this: according to Matthew, it is the members of the Sanhedrin who, after the suicide of Judas, purchase a field with the money which he had left behind (from a potter moreover-a particular which is wanting in the Acts); whereas, according to the Acts, Judas himself purchases the piece of ground, and on this very spot is overtaken by sudden death; and from this difference there results another, namely, that according to the latter account, it was the blood of the betrayer shed on the piece of ground, according to the former, the blood of Jesus cleaving to the purchase money, which caused the ground to be named the field of Blood. Now here Matthew's manner of expressing himself is so precise, that it cannot well be twisted so as to favor the other narrative: but the word ekthsato (purchased or acquired) in the Acts presents inviting facilities for its adaptation to Matthew. By the reward of treachery, Judas acquired a field such, it is said, is the meaning in the Acts not immediately, but mediately; since by returning the money he gave occasion for the purchase of a piece of ground; not for himself, but for the Sanhedrin or the public good. But however numerous the passages adduce! in which ktasqai has the signification: to acquire for another, still in such instances it is necessary that the other party for whom one acquires should be specified or intimated, and when this is not the case, as in the passage in the Acts, it retains the ^{P.755} original meaning: to acquire for one's self. This Paulus felt, and hence gave the facts the following tarn: the terrible fall of Judas into a lime pit was the cause of this piece of ground being purchased by the Sanhedrin, and thus Peter might very well say of Judas ironically, that in death by the fall of his corpse he had appropriated to himself a fine property. But in the first place this interpretation is in itself strained; and in the second, the passage cited by Peter from the Psalms: "let his habitation be desolate," shows that he thought of the piece of ground as the real property of Judas, and as being judicially doomed to desolation as the scene of his death.

According to this, neither the one difference nor the other admits of a favourable reconciliation; indeed the existence of a real divergency was admitted even by Salmasius, and Hase thinks that he can explain this discrepancy, without endangering the apostolic origin of the two statements, from the violent excitement of those days, in consequence of which only the general fact that Judas committed suicide was positively known, and concerning the more particular circumstances of the event, various reports were believed. But in the Acts nothing is said of suicide, and that two apostles, Matthew and Peter, (if the first gospel be supposed to proceed from the former, the discourse in the Acts from the latter,) should have remained so entirely in the dark concerning the death of their late colleague, a death which took place in their immediate vicinity, that one of them represented him as dying by accident, the other voluntarily, is difficult to believe. That therefore only one of the two accounts can be maintaind as apostolic, has been correctly perceived by the author of the above-mentioned treatise in Schmidt's Biblio-thek. And in choosing between the two he has proceeded on the principle that the narrative the least tending to glorification is the more authentic; from which he gives the preference to the account in the Acts before that in the first gospel, because the former has not the glorifying circumstances of the remorse of Judas, and his confession of the innocence of Jesus. But, it is ever the case with two contradictory narratives, not ordy that if one stands it excludes the other, but also that if one falls it shakes the other: hence, if the representation of the facts which is attested by the authority of the apostle Matthew be renounced, there is no longer any warrant for the other, which professedly rests on the testimony of the apostle Peter.

If then we are to treat the two narratives on the same footing, namely as legends, with respect to which it is first to be discovered how far their historical nucleus extends, and how far they consist of traditional deposits: we must, in order to be clear on the subject, consider the data which form the roots of the two narratives. Here we find one which is common to both, with two others of which ^{P.756} each has one peculiarly to itself. The datum common to both narratives is, that there was in Jerusalem a piece of ground which was called the field of blood, or in the original tongue, according to the statement of the Acts, akeldama As this information is concurrently given by two narratives in other respects totally divergent, and as, besides, the author of the first gospel appeals to the actual practice of his day in proof that the field was called by this name: we cannot well doubt the existence of a piece of ground so named. That it really had a relation to the betrayer of Jesus is less certain, since our two narratives give different accounts of this relation: the one stating that Judas himself bought the property, the other that it was not purchased until after his death, with the thirty pieces of silver. We can therefore draw no further conclusion than that the primitive Christian legend must have early attributed to that field of blood a relation to the betrayer But the reason wherefore this relation took various forms is to be sought in the other datum from which our narratives proceed, namely, in the Old Testament passages, which the authors cite (from different sources, however,) as being fulfilled by the fate of Judas. In the passage of the Acts, Ps. Ixix. 25, and Ps. cix. 8. are quoted in this manner. The latter is a psalm which the first Christians from among the Jews could not avoid referring to the relation of Judas to Jesus. For not only does the author, alleged to be David, but doubtless a much later individual, dilate from the opening of the psalm on such as speak falsely and insidiously against him, and return him hatred for his love, but from v. 6, where the curses commence, he directs himself against a particular person, so that the Jewish expositors thought of Doeg, David's calumniator with Saul, and the Christians just as naturally of Judas. From this psalm is gathered the verse which, treating of the transfer of one office to another, appearedperfectly to suit the case of Judas. The other Psalm, it is true, speaks more vaguely of such as hate and persecute the author without cause, yet this also is ascribed to David, and is so similar to the other in purport and style, that it might be regarded as its parallel, and if curses might be applied to the betrayer out of the former, they might be so out of the latter, Now if Judas had actually bought with the wages of his treachery a piece of land, which from being the scene of his horrible end, subsequently remained waste: it was a matter of course to refer to him precisely those passages in this psalm which denounce on the enemies the desolation of their habitation s-navn;. As, however, from the divergency of Matthew, the fact, that Judas himself bought that piece of ground and came to his end upon it, is doubtful: while it can scarcely be supposed that the piece of land on which the betrayer of Jesus met his end would be so abhorrent to the Jews ^{P.757} that they would let it he waste as a land of blood; it is more probable that this name had another origin no longer to be discovered, and was interpreted by the Christians in accordance with their own ideas; so that we must not derive the application of the passage in the Psalms, and the naming of that waste piece of land, from an actual possession of it by Judas, but on the contrary, we must refer to those two causes the existence of the legend, which ascribes such a possession to Judas. For if the two psalms in question were once applied to the betrayer, and if in one of them the desolation of his epaulij (LXX.) was denounced, he must have previously been in possession of such an epaulij, and this, it was thought, he would probably have purchased with the reward of his treason. Or rather, that out of the above Psalms the desolation of the e)paulij was a particular specially chosen, appears to have been founded on the natural presupposition, that the curse would be chiefly manifested in relation to someting which he had acquired by the wages of his iniquity; added to the circumstance that among the objects anathematized in the psalm, the one most capable of being bought was the e)paulij. This conception of the facts was met in the most felicitous manner by the field lying near Jerusalem, which, the less was known of the origin of its name and of the horror attached to it, might the more easily be applied by the primitive Christian legend to its own purposes, and regarded as the desolate habitation, e)paulij e(rhmwmenh, of the betrayer.

Instead of these passages from the Psalms, the first gospel cites as being fulfilled by the last acts of Judas, a passage which it attributes to Jeremiah, but to which nothing corresponding is to be found except in Zech. xi. 12f., from which it is now pretty generally admitted that the evangelist substituted one name for the other by mistake. How Matthew might be led by the fundamental idea of this passage an unreasonably small price for the speaker in the prophecy to an application of it to the treachery of Judas, who for a paltry sum had as it were sold his master, has been already shown.

Now the prophetic passage contains a command from the Lord to the author of the prophecy, to cast the miserable sum with which he had been paid, into the house of the Lord, and which, it is added, was also done. The person who casts down the money is in the prophecy the same with the speaker, and consequently with him who is rated at the low price, because the sum here is not purchase money but hire, and hence is received by the person so meanly estimated who alone can cast it away again: in the application of the evangelist, on the contrary, the sum being considered as purchase money, another than the one so meanly estimated was to be thought of as receiving and casting away the sum. If the one sold for so paltry a price was Jesus: he who received the money and finally rejected it could be no other than his betrayer. Hence it is said of the latter, that he cast down the pieces of silver ^{P.758} in the temple (e)n tw naw) corresponding to the phrase beth yhwh wa'ashlik 'otho' in the prophetic passage, although these very words happen to be absent from the extremely mutilated citation of Matthew. But in apposition to the beth yhwh, wherein the money was cast, there stood besides el hayoser. The LXX. translates: ei)j ton xwneuthrion, into the melting furnace; now, it is with reason conjectured that the pointing should be altered thus: el hayyoser, and the word rendered: into the treasury; the author of our gospel adhered to the literal translation by kerameuj, potter. But what the potter had to do here, why the money should be given to him, must at first have been as incomprehensible to him as it is to us when we adhere to the common reading.

Here however there occurred to his recollection the field of blood, to which, as we gather from the Acts, the Christian legend gave a relation to Judas and hence resulted the welcome combination, that it was probably that iield for which the thirty pieces ofsilver were to be given to the potter. As, however, it was impossible to conceive the potter as being in the temple when receiving the money, and yet according to the prophetic passage the pieces of silver were cast into the temple: a separation was made between the casting into the temple and the payment to the potter. If the former must be ascribed to Judas, if he had thus once cast away the money, he himself could no longer purchase the piece of ground from the potter, but this must be done by another party, with the money which Judas had cast away. Who this party is must be followed of course: if Judas gave up the money, he would give it up to those from whom he had received it; if he cast it into the temple, it would fall into the hands of the fulers of the temple: thus in both ways it would revert to the Sanhedrin.

The object of the latter in purchasing the ground was perhaps drawn from the use to which that waste place was actually appropriated. Lastly, if Judas cast away again the reard of his treachery, this, it must be inferred, could only be out of remorse. To make Judas manifest remorse, and thus win from the traitor himself a testimony to the innocence of Jesus, was as natural to the conception of the primitive Christian community, as to convert Pilate, and to make Tiberius himself propose in the Roman senate the deification of Christ. But how would the remorse of Judas further manifest itself? A return to the right on his part, was not only unattested by any facts, but was besides far too good a lot for the traitor: hence repentance must have become in him despair, and he must have chosen the end of the well-known traitor in the story of Da- ^{P.759} vid, Ahithophel, of whom it is said, 2 Sam. xvii. 23: anesth kai aphlqen - kai aphgcato, he arose, and went and hanged himself, as of Judas here: he departed, and went and hanged himself.

A tradition referred to Papias appears to be allied to the narrative in the Acts rather than to that of Matthew. Oecumenius, quoting the above collector of traditions, says, that Judas, as an awful example of impiety, had his body distended to such a degree, that a space where a chariot could pass was no longer sufficiently wide for him, and that at last being crushed by a chariot, he burst asunder and all his bowels were pressed out. The latter statement doubtless arose from a misconstruction of the ancient legend; for the chariot was not originally brought into immediate contact with the body of Judas, but was merely used as a measure of his size, and this was afterwards erroneously understood as if a chariot in passing had crushed the swollen body of Judas. Hence, not only in Theophylact and in an ancient Scholium, without any distinct reference to Papias, but also in a Catena with an express citation of his eceghseij, we actually find the fact narrated without that addition. The monstrous swelling ofJudas, spoken of in this passage, might, it is supposed, originally be only an explanation of the displacing and protrusion of the viscera, and in like manner the dropsy into which Theophylaet represents him as falling, might be regarded as an explanation of this swelling: when, however, in Ps. cix., applied in the Acts to Judas, amongst other maledictions, we read: "so let it (cursing) come into his bowels like water" (v. 18): it appears possible that the dropsical disease, nosoj uderikh, may have been also taken from this passage; as also one of the features in the monstrous description which Papias gives of the condition of Judas, namely, that from the enormous swelling of his eyelids he could no longer see the light of day, might remind us of the other Psalm applied to Judas, where, among the curses this is enumerated: Let their eyes be darkened that they see not, a hindrance to sight which when once the swollen body of Judas was presupposed, must necessarily assume the form of a swelling up of the eyelids. If then the tradition which is allied to the account in Acts i. developed its idea of the end of Judas chiefly in correspondence Avith the ideas presented in these two Psalms; and if in that passage of the Acts itself the account of the connection of Judas with the piece of ground is derived from the same source: it is no farfetched conjecture that what is said in the Acts concerning the end of the betrayer may have had a similar origin. That he died an early death may be historical; but even if not so, in Psalm cix. in the very same verse (v. 8) which contains the transfer of the office to another, an early death is predicted for the betrayer in the words: "Let his days be few," and it might almost be believed that the death by falling headlong also was gathered from Ps. Ixix. 22. where it is said: Let their table become a snare before them.

Thus we scarcely know with certainty concerning Judas even so much as that he came to a violent and untimely death, for if, as was natural, after his departure from the community of Jesus, he retired so far as the knowledge of its members was concerned, into an obscurity in which all historical information as to his further fate was extinguished: the primitive Christian legend might without hindrance represent as being fulfilled in him all that the prophecies and types of the Old Testament threatened to the false friend of the Son of David, and might even associate the memory of his crime with a well-known desecrated place in the vicinity of Jerusalem.

ACCORDING To All The Evangelists It was in the morning when the Jewish magistrates, after having declared Jesus worthy of death, caused him. to be led away to the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate (Matt, xxvii.1ff. parall; John xviii. 28.). According to Matthew and Mark, Jesus was bound preparatory to his being conducted before Pilate, according to John xviii. 12., immediately on his arrest in the garden; Luke says nothing of his being bound. To this measure of sending him to Pilate they were compelled, according to John xviii. 31, by the circumstance that the Sanhedrin was deprived of the authority to execute the punishment of death (without the concurrence of the Roman government): but at all events the Jewish rulers must in this instance have been anxious to call in the agency of the Romans, since only their power could afford security against an uproar among the people, qoruboj e)n tw law, which the former feared as a result of the execution of Jesus during the feast time (Matt. xxvi. 5. parall.).

Arrived at the Praetorium, the Jews, according to the representation of the fourth gospel, remained without, from fear of levitical defilement, but Jesus was led into the interior of the building: so that Pilate must alternately have come out when he would speak to the Jews, and have gone in again when he proceeded to question Jesus (xviii.28ff.). The Synoptics in the sequel represent Jesus as in the same locality with Pilate and the Jews, for in them Jesus immediately hears the accusations of the Jews, and answers them in the presence of Pilate. Since they, as well as John, make the condemnation take place in the open air, (after the condemnation they represent Jesus as being led into the Praetorium, Matt, xxvii. 27., and Matthew, like John, xix. 13., describes Pilate ascending the judgment seat (bhma), which according to Josephus stood in the open air,) without mentioning any change of place in connection with the trial: they apparently conceived the whole transaction to have passed on the outer plce, and supposed, in divergency from John, that Jesus himself was there.

The first question of Pilate to Jesus is according to all the Gospels: Are you the king of the Jews" suei) o( basileuj twn Ioudaiwn, i.e. the Messiah? In the two first evangelists this question is not introduced by any accusation on the part of the Jews (Matt. v. 11, Mark v. 2); in John, Pilate, stepping out of the Pra;torium, asks the Jews what accusation they have to bring against Jesus (xviii. 29), on which they insolently reply: If he were not a malefactor, we would not have delivered him up to you: an answer by which they could not expect to facilitate their obtaining from the Roman a ratification of their sentence, but only to embitter him. After Pilate, with surprising mildness, has rejoined that they may take him and judge him according to their law apparently not supposing a crime involving death and the Jews have opposed to this permission their inability to administer the punishment of death: the procurator re-enters and addresses to Jesus the definite question: ^{P.762} Are you the king of the Jews? which thus here likewise has no suitable introduction. This is the case only in Luke, who first adduces the accusations of the Sanhedrists against Jesus, that he stirred up the people and encouraged them to refuse tribute to Csesar, giving himself out to be Christ a king (xriston basilea xxiii. 2.).

If in this manner the narrative of Luke enables us to understand how Pilate could at once put to Jesus the question whether he were the king of the Jews; it leaves us in all the greater darkness as to how Pilate, immediately on the affirmative answer of Jesus, could without any further inquiries declare to the accusers that he found no fault in the accused. He must first have ascertained the grounds or the want of grounds for the charge of exciting the populace, and also have informed himself as to the sense in which Jesus claimed the title of king of the Jews, before he could pronounce the words "I find no fault in this man." In Matthew and Mark, it is true, to the affirmation of Jesus that he is the king of the Jews is added his silence, in opposition to the manifold accusations of the Sanhedrists-a silence which surprises Pilate; and this is not followed by a precise declaration that no fault is to be found in Jesus, but merely by the procurator's attempt to set Jesus at liberty by coupling him with arabbas: still what should move him even to this attempt does not appear from the above Gospels. On the other hand, this point is sufficiently clear in the fourth gospel. It is certainly surprising that when Pilate asks whether he be really the King of the Jews, Jesus should reply by the counter-question, whether he say this of himself or at the suggestion of another. In an accused person, however conscious of innocence, such a question cannot be held warrantable, and hence it has been sought in every possible way to give the words of Jesus a sense more consonant with propriety: but the question of Jesus is too definite to be a mere repulse of the accusation as absurd, and too indefinite to be regarded as an inquiry, whether the Procurator intended the title basileuj twn Ioudaiwn in the Roman sense (af' e(autou) or in the Jewish (alloi soi ei)pon).- And Pilate does not so understand it, but as an unwarrantable question to which it is a mark of his indulgence that he replies in the first instanc, it is true, with some impatience, by the second counter-question, whether he be a Jew, and thus able of himself to have information concerning a crime so specifically Jewish; but hereupon he good-naturedly adds that it is the Jews and their rulers by whom Jesus has been delivered to him, and that he is therefore at liberty to speak more particularly of the crime which these lay to his charge. Now on this Jesus gives Pilate an answer which, added to the impression of hjs whole appearance, might certainly induce in the Procurator a conviction of his innocence. He replies, namely, that his kingdom is "not of this world" and adduces as a proof of this, the peaceful, passive conduct of his adherents on his ^{P.763} arrest (v. 36). On the further question of Pilate, whether, since Jesus has thus ascribed to himself a kingdom, although no earthly one, he then claims to be a king? he replies that certainly he is so, but only in so far as he is born to be a witness to the truth: whereupon follows the famous question of Pilate: tij e)stin a)lhqeia; (What is truth?) Although in this latter reply of Jesus we cannot but be struck by its presenting the peculiar hue of thought which characterizes the author of the fourth gospel, in the use of the idea of truth, as we were before surprised at the unwarrantable nature of the counter-question of Jesus: still this account in John renders it conceivable how Pilate could immediately step forth and declare to the Jews that he found no fault in Jesus. But another point might easily create suspicion against this narrative of John. According to him the trial of Jesus went forward in the interior of the Praetorium, which no Jew would venture to enter: who then are we to sppose heard the conversation of the Procurator with Jesus, and was the informant who communicated it to the author of the fourth gospel? The opinion of the older commentators that Jesus himself narrated these conversations to his disciples after the resurrection, is renounced as extravagant; the more modern idea that perhaps Pilate himself was the source of the information concerning the trial, is scarcely less improbable, and rather than take refuge, with L cke, in the supposition that Jesus remained at the entrance of the Praetorium, so that those standing immediately without might with some attention and stillness (?) have heard the conversation, I should prefer appealing to the attendants of the Procurator, who would scarcely be alone with Jesus. Meanwhile it is easily conceivable that we have here a conversation, which owes its origin solely to the evangelist's own combination, and in this case we need not bestow so much labour in ascertaining the precise sense of Pilate's question: what is tuth? since this would only be an example of the fourth evangelist's favourite form of dialogue, the contrast of profound communications on the part of Jesus, with questions either of misapprehension or of total unintelligence on the part of the hearers; as xii. 34. the Jews ask: who is this Son of man? so here Pilate: what is truth?

Before the introduction of Barabbas, which in all the other evangelists comes next in order, Luke has an episode peculiar to himself. On the declaration of Pilate that he finds no guilt in the accused, the chief priests and their adherents among the multitude persist in asserting that Jesus stirred up the people by his agency as a teacher from Galilee to Jerusalem: Pilate notices the word Galilee, asks whether the accused be a Galilean, and when this is confirmed, he seizes it as a welcome pretext for ridding himself of the ungrateful business and sends Jesus to the Tetrarch of Galilee, Herod Antipas, at that time in Jerusalem in observance of the ^{P.765} feast; perhaps also designing as a secondary object, what at least was the result, to conciliate the petty prince by this show of respect for his jurisdiction. This measure, it is said, gave great satisfaction to Herod, because having heard much of Jesus, he had long been desirous to see him, in the hope that he would perhaps perform a miracle. The Tetrarch addressed various questions to him, the Sanhedrists urged vehement accusations against him, but Jesus gave no answer: whereupon Herod with his soldiers betook themselves to mockery, and at length, after arraying him in a gorgeous robe, sent him back to Pilate (xxiii.4ff.). This narrative of Luke's, whether we consider it in itself or in its relation to the other Gospels, has much to astonish us. If Jesus as a Galilean really belonged to the jurisdiction of Herod, as Pilate, by delivering the accused to him, appears to acknowledge: how came Jesus (and the question is equally difficult whether we regard him as the sinless Jesus of the orthdox system, or as the one who in the story of the tribute-penny manifested his subjection to the existing authorities) to withhold from him the answer which was his due? and how was it that Herod without any further procedures, sent him away again from his tribunal? To say, with Olshausen, that the interrogation before Herod had elicited the fact that Jesus was not born in Nazareth and Galilee, but in Bethlehem, and consequently in Judea, is on the one hand an inadmissible appeal to the story of the birth of Jesus, of the statements in which there is no further trace in the whole subsequent course of Luke's gospel; and on the other hand, a totally accidental birth in Judea, such as that represented by Luke, the parents of Jesus, and even Jesus himself, being both before and after resident in Galilee, would not have constituted Jesus a Judajan; but above all we must ask, through whom was the Judajan origin of Jesus brought to light, since it is said of Jesus that he gave no answer, while accordingto all the information we possess, that origin was totally unknown to the Jews? It would be preferable to explain the silence of Jesus by the unbecoming manner of Herod's interrogation, which manifested, not the seriousness of the judge, but mere curiosity; and to account for his being sent back to Pilate by the fact, that not only the arrest, but also a part of the ministry of Jesus had occurred within the jurisdiction of Pilate. But why do the rest of the evangelists say nothing of the entire episode? Especially when the author of the fourth gospel is regarded as the apostle John, it is not easy to see how this omission can be explained. The common plea, that he supposed the fact sufficiently known from the Synoptics, will not serve here, since Luke is the sole evangelist who narrates the incident, and thus it does not appear to have been very widely spread; the conjecture, that it may probably have appeared to him too unimportant, loses all foundation when it is considered that John does not scorn to mention the leading away to Annas, which nevertheless was equally indecisive; and in general, the narrative of these events in John is, as Schleiermacher himself confesses, so consecutive that it nowhere presents a break in which such an episode could be inserted. Hence even Schleiermacher at last takes refuge in the conjecture that possibly the sending to Herod may have escaped the notice of John, because it happened on an opposite side to that on which the disciple stood, through a back door; and that it came to the knowledge of Luke because his informant had an acquaintance in the household of Herod, as John had in that of Annas: the former conjecture, however, is figuratively as well as literally nothing more than a back door; the latter, a fiction which is but the effort of despair.

Certainly if we renounce the presupposition that the author of the fourth gospel was an apostle, we lose the ground of attack against the narrative of Luke, which in any case, since Justin knows of the consignment to Herod, is of very early origin. Nevertheless, fist, the silence of the other evangelists in a portion of their common history, in which, with this exception, there prevails an agreement as to the principal stages in the development of the fate of Jesus; and secondly, the internal difficulties of the narrative, remain so suspicious, that it must still be open to us to conjecture, that the story arose out of the effort to place Jesus before all the tribunals that could possibly be gathered together in Jerusalem; to make every authority not hierarchical, though treating him with ignominy, still either explicitly or tacitly acknowledge his innocence; and to represent him as maintaining his equable demeanour and dignity before all. If this be probable with respect to the present narrative, in which the third evangelist stands alone: a similar conjecture concerning the leading away to Annas, in which we have seen that the fourth evangelist stands alone, would only be warded off by the ci cumstance that this scene is not described in detail, and hence presentsno internal difficulties.

After Jesus, being sent back by Herod, was returned upon his hands, Pilate, according to Luke, once more called together the Sanhedrists and the people, and declared, alleging in his support the judgment of Herod as accordant with his own, his wish to dismiss Jesus with chastisement; for which purpose he might avail himself of the custom of releasing a prisoner at the feast of the Passover. This circumstance, which is somewhat abridged in Luke, is more fully exhibited in the other evangelists, especially in Matthew. As the privilege to entreat the release of a prisoner belonged to the people, Pilate, well knowing that Jesus was persecuted by the rulers out of jealousy, sought to turn to his advantage the better disposition of the people towards him; and in order virtually to oblige them to free Jesus, whom, partly out of mockery of the Jews, part- ^{P.766} ly to deter them from his execution as degrading to themselves, he named the Messiah or King of the Jews, he reminded them that their choice lay between him and a notable prisoner, Barabbas, whom John designates as a robber, lhsthj, but Mark and Luke as one who was imprisoned for insurrection and murder. This plan however failed, for the people, suborned, as the two first evangelists observe, by their rulers, with one voice desired the release of arabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus.

As a circumstance which had especial weight with Pilate in favour of Jesus, and moved him to make the proposal relative to Barabbas as urgently as possible, it is stated by Matthew that while the procurator sat on his tribunal, his wife, in consequence of a disturbing dream, sent to him a warning to incur no responsibility in relation to that just man (xxvii. 19.). Not only Paulus, but even Olshausen, explains this dream as a natural result of what Pilate's wife might have heard of Jesus and of his capture on the preceding evening; to which may be added as an explanatory conjecture, the notice of the Evangelium Nicodemi, that she was pious, and judaizing. Nevertheless, as constantly in the New Testament, and particularly in the Gospel of Matthew, dreams are regarded as a special dispensation from heaven: so this assuredly in the opinion of the narrator happened non sine numine; and hence it should be possible to conceive a motive and an object for the dispensation. If the dream were really intended to prevent the death of Jesus, taking the orthodox point of view, in which this death was necessary for the salvation of man, we must be led to the opinion of some of the ancients, that it may have been the devil who suggested that dream to the wife of the procuratoi, in order to hinder the propitiatory death; if on the contrary, the dream were not intended to prevent the death of Jesus, its object must have been limited to Pilate or his wife. But as far as Pilate was concerned, so late a warning could only aggravate his guilt, without sufficing to deter him from the step alreadyhalf taken; while that his wife was converted by means of this dream, as many have supposed, is totally unattested by history or tradition, and such an object is not intimated in the narrative. But, as the part which Pilate himself plays in the Gospel narrative is such as to exhibit the blind ^{P.767} hatred of the fellow-countrymen of Jesus in contrast with the impartial judgment of a Gentile: so his wife is made to render a testimony to Jesus, in order that, not only out of the mouth of babes and sucklings (Matt. xxi. 16.). but also out of the mouth of a weak woman, praise might be prepared for him; and to increase its importance it is traced to a significant dream. To give this an appearance of probability, similar instances are adduced from profane history of dreams which have acted as presentiments and warnings before a sanguinary catastrophe: but the more numerous are these analogous cases, the more is the suspicion excited that as the majority of these, so also the dream in our Gospel passage, may have been fabricated after the event, for the sake of heightening its tragical effect.

When the Jews, in reply to the repeated questions of Pilate, vehemently and obstinately demand the release of Barabbas and the crucifixion of Jesus, the two intermediate evangelists represent him as at once yielding to their desire; but Matthew first interposes a ceremony and a colloquy (xxvii.24ff.). According to him Pilate calls for water, washes his hands before the people, and declares himself innocent of the blood of this just man. The washing of the hands, as a protestation of purity from the guilt of shedding blood, was a custom specifically Jewish, according to Deut. xxi. 6 f. It has been thought improbable that the Eoman should have here intentionally imitated this Jewish custom, and hence it has been contended, that to any one who wished so solemnly to declare his innocence nothing would more readily suggest itself than the act of washing the hands, But that an individual, apart from any allusion to a known usage, should invent extemporaneously a symbolical act, or even lhat he should merely fal in with the custom of a foreign nation, would require him to be deeply interested in the fact which he intends to symbolize. That Pilate, however, should be deeply interested in attesting his innocence of the execution of Jesus, is not so probable as that the Christians should have been deeply interested in thus gaining a testimony to the innocence of their Messiah: from which there arises a suspicion that perhaps Pilate's act of washing his hands owes its origin to them alone. This conjecture is confirmed, when we consider the declaration with which Pilate accompanies his symbolical act: "I am innocent of the blood of this just man," A)qwoj ei)mi a)po tou ai(matoj toutou: u(meij o)yesqe. For that the judge should publicly and emphatically designate as a just man, dikaioj, one whom he was nevertheless delivering over to the severest infliction of the law, this even Paulus finds so contradictory, that he here, contrary to his usual mode of exposition, supposes that the narrator himself expresses in these words his own interpretation of Pilate's symbolical act. It is surprising that he is not ^{P.768} also struck by the equal improbability of the answer which is attributed to the Jews on this occasion. After Pilate has declared himself guiltless of the blood of Jesus, and by the addition: see you to it, has laid the responsibility on the Jews, it is said in Matthew that all the people cried: His Hood be on us and on our children, To ai(ma au)tou e)f' h(maj kai e)pi ta tekna h(mwn. But this is obviously spoken from the point of view of the Christians, who in the miseries which shortly after the death of Jesus fell with continually increasing weight on the Jewish nation, saw nothing else than the payment of the debt of blood which they had incurred by the crucifixion of Jesus: so that this whole episode, which is peculiar to the first gospel, is in the highest degree suspicious.

According to Matthew and Mark, Pilate now caused Jesus to be scourged, preparatory to his being led away to crucifixion. Here the scourging appears to correspond to the virgis ceedere, which according to Roman usage preceded the securi percutere, and to the scourging of slaves prior to crucifixion. In Luke it has a totally different character. While in the two former evangelists it is said: When he had scourged Jesus, he delivered him to be crucified, in Luke Pilate repeatedly (v. 16 and 22) makes the proposal: having chastised him I will let him go, paideusaj ou)n au)ton a)polusw, i.e. while there the scourging has the appearance of a mere accessory of the crucifixion, here it appears to be intended as a substitute for the crucifixion: Pilate wishes by this chastisement to appease the hatred of the enemies of Jesus, and induce them to desist from demanding his execution. Again, while in Luke the scourging does not actually take place, because the Jews willin no way accede to the repeated proposal of Pilate: in John the latter causes Jesus to be scourged, exhibits him to the people with the purple robe and the crown of thorns, and tries whether his p&iable aspect, together with the repeated declaration of his innocence, will not mollify their embittered minds: this, however, proving also in vain (xix. 1 if.). Thus there exists a contradiction between the evangelists in relation to the scourging of Jesus, which is not to be conciliated after the method of Paulus, namely, by paraphrasing the words in Matthew and Mark thus: "Jesus, whom he had already before scourged in order to save him, suffered this in vain, since he was still delivered over to crucifixion." But, acknowledging the difference in the accounts, we must only ask, which of the two has the advantage as regards historical probability? Although it is certainly not to be proved that scourging before cruci-fixion was a Roman custom admitting no exception: stll, on the other hand, it is a purely harmonistic effort to allege, that scourging was only made to precede crucifixion in cases where the punishment was intended to be particularly severe, and that consequently Pilate, ^{P.769} who had no wish to be cruel to Jesus, can only have caused him to be scourged with ihe special design which Luke and John mention, and which is also to be understood in the narratives of their predecessors. It is far more probable that in reality the scourging only took place as it is described by the two first evangelists, namely, as an introduction to the crucifixion, and that the Christian legend (to which that side of Pilate's character, in virtue of which he endeavoured in various ways to save Jesus, was particularly welcome as a testimony against the Jews) gave such a turn even to the fact of the scourging as to obtain from it a new attempt at release on the part of Pilate. This use of the fact is only incipient in the third gospel, for here the scourging is a mere proposal of Pilate: whereas in the fourth, the scourging actually takes place, and becomes an additional act in the drama.

With the scourging is connected, in the two first Gospels and the fourth, the maltreatment and mockery of Jesus by the soldiers, who attired him in a purple robe, placed a crown of thorns on his head, put, according to Matthew, a reed in his hand, and in this disguise first greeted him as King of the Jews, and then smote and maltreated him. Luke does not mention any derision on the part of the soldiers here, but he has something similar in his narrative of the interrogation of Jesus before Herod, for he represents this prince with his men of war, as mocking Jesus, and sending him back to Pilate in a gorgeous robe, (e)sqhj lampra). Many suppose that this was the same purple robe which was afterwards put on Jesus by the soldiers of Pilate; but it must rather have been three times that Jesus had to wear this disguise, if we take the narrative of John into the account, and at the same time refuse to attribute error to any of the Synoptics: first in the presence of Herod (Luke); secondly before Pilate brought Jesus forth to the Jews, that he might excite their compassion with the words: Behold the man, ide o( a)nqrwpoj (John); thirdly, after he was delivered to the soldiers for crucifixion (Matthew and Mark). This repetition is as improbable as it is probable that the one disguising of Jesus, which had come to the knowledge of the evangelists, was assigned by them to different places and times, and ascribed to different persons.

While in the two first Gospels the process of trial is already concluded before the scourging, and in the third, on the rejection of his proposal to scourge and release Jesus by the Jews, Pilate forthwith delivers him to be crucified: in the fourth evangelist the scene of the trial is further developed in the following manner. When even the exhibition of Jesus scourged and disguised avails nothing, but his crucifixion is obstinately demanded, the procurator is incensed, ^{P.770} and cries to the Jews, that they may take him and crucify him themselves, for he finds no fault in him. The Jews reply, that according to their law he must die, since he had made himself the Son of God; a remark which affects Pilate with a superstitious fear, so that he once more leads Jesus into the Praetorium, and inquires concerning his origin (whether it be really heavenly), on which Jesus gives him no answer, and when the procurator seeks to alarm him by reminding him of the power which he possesses over his life, refers to the higher source from from which he had this power. Pilate, after this reply, seeks (yet more earnestly than before) to release Jesus; but at last the Jews hit upon the right means of making him accede to their will, by throwing out the intimation that, if he release Jesus who has opposed himself to Csesar as an usurper, he cannot be Caesar's friend. Thus, intimidated by the possibility of his being calumniated to Tiberius, he mounts the tribunal, and, since he cannot prosecutehis will, betakes himself to derision of the Jews in the question, whether they then wish that he should crucify their king? Whereupon they, keeping to the position which they had last taken with such evident effect, protest that they will have no king but Aeisar. The procurator now consents to deliver Jesus to be crucified, for which purpose, as the two first evangelists remark, the purple mantle was removed, and he was again attired in his own clothes.

EVEN Concerning the Progress of Jesus To The Place of crucifixion there is a divergency between the Synoptics and John, for according to the latter Jesus himself carried his cross there (xix. 17), while the former state that one Simon a Cyrenian bore it in his stead (Matt, xxvii. 32. parall.). The commentators indeed, as if a real agreement were assumed as a matter of course, reconcile these statements thus: at first Jesus himself endeavoured to bear the cross, but as the attempt, made it obvious that he was too much exhausted, it was laid on Simon. But when John says: And he bearing his cross went forth to Golgotha, where they crucified him, e)chlqen ei)j ton legomenon Kraniou Topon, o( legetai E)braisti Golgoqa, o(pou au)ton e)staurwsan, he plainly presupposes that the Cross was borne by Jesus on the way there. But the statement so unanimously given by the Synoptics respecting the substitution of Simon appears the less capable of being rejected, the more difficult it is to discover a. motive which might lead to its fabication. On the contrary, this individual trait might very probably have remained unknown in the circle in which the fourth gospel had its origin, and the author might ^{P.771} have thought that, according to the general custom, Jesus must have carried his cross. All the Synoptics designate this Simon as a Cyrenian, i.e. probably one who had come to Jerusalem to the feast, from the Lybian city of Gyrene, where many Jews resided. According to all, the carrying of the cross was forced upon him, a circumstance which can as little be urged for as against the opinion that he was favourable to Jesus. According to Luke and Mark, the man came directly out of the country, drr' dypov, and as he attempted to pass by the crowd advancing to the place of crucifixion, he was made use of to relieve Jesus. Mark designates him yet more particularly as the father of Alexander and Rufus, who appear to have been noted persons in the primitive Church (comp. Rom. xvi. 13; Acts xix. 33. (?); 1 Tim. i. 20. (?); 2 Tim. iv. 14 (?) ). On the way to the place of execution according to Luke, there followed Jesu.s, lamenting him, a great company, consisting especially of women, whom he however admonished to weep rather for themselves and their children, in prospect of the terrible time, which would soon come upon them (xxiii.27ff.). The details are taken partly from the discourse on the second advent, Luke xxi. 23; for as there it is said, "woe to those who are giving birth, and those who are suckling children, in those days" so here Jesus says, that the days are coming in which "the barren and those who have not borne children" will be pronounced blessed; partly from Hosea x. 8., for the words "then shall they begin to say to the mountains, etc." are almost exactly the Alexandrian translation of that passage.

The place of execution is named by all the evangelists Golgotha, and they all interpret this designation by kraniou topoj the place of a skull, or Kranion a skull (Matthew v. 33 parall.). From the latter name it might appear that the place was so called because it resembled a skull in form; whereas the former interpretation, and indeed the nature of the case, renders it probable that it owed its name to its destination as a place of execution, and to the bones and skulls of the executed which were heaped up there. Where this place was situated is not known, but doubtless it was out of the city; even that it was a hill, is a mere conjecture.i The course of events after the arrival at the place of execution is narrated by Matthew (v.34ff.) in a somewhat singular order. First, he mentions the beverage offered to Jesus; next, he says that after they had nailed him to the cross, the soldiers shared his clothes among them; then, that they sat down and watched him; after this he notices the superscription on the cross, and at length, and not as if supplying a previous omission, but with a particle expressive of succession in time (tote), the fact that two thieves were crucified with him. Mark follows Matthew, except that instead of the statement about the watching of the cross, he has a determination of the time at which Jesus was crucified: while Luke more correctly relates first the crucifixion of the two malefactors with Jesus, and then the casting of lots for the clothes; and the same order is observed by John. But it is inadmissible on this account to transpose the verses in Matthew (34. 37. 38. 35. 36), as has been proposed; and we must rather abandon the author of the first gospel to the charge, that in his anxiety not to omit any of the chief events at the crucifixion of Jesus, he has neglected the natural order of time.

As regards the mode of the crucifixion there is now scarcely any debated point, if we except the question, whether the feet as well as the hands were nailed to the cross. As it lay in the interest of the orthodox view to prove the affirmative: so it was equally important to the rationalist system to maintain the negative. From Justin Martyr down to Hengstenberg and Olshausen, the orthodox find in the nailing of the feet of Jesus to the cross a fulfilment of the prophecy Ps. xxii. 17., which the LXX. translates: wrucan xeiraj mou kai podaj, but it is doubtful whether the original text really speaks of piercing, and in no case does it allude to crucifixion: moreover the passage is nowhere applied to Christ in the New Testament. To the rationalists, on the contrary, it is at once more easy to explain the death of Jesus as a merely apparent death, and only possible to conceive how he could walk immediately after the resurrection, when it is supposed that his feet were left unwounded: but the case shouldrather be stated thus: if the historical evidence go to prove that the feet also of Jesus were nailed, it must be concluded that the resuscitation and the power of walking shortly after, either happened supernaturally or not at all. of late there have stood opposed to each other two learned and profound investigations of this point, the one by Paulus against, the other by Bahr, in favour of the nailing of the feet. From the Gospel narrative, the former opinion can principally allege in its support, that neither is the above passage in the Psalms anywhere used by the evangelists, though on the presupposition of a nailing of the feet it was so entirely suited to their mode of accounting for facts, nor in the story of the resurrection is there any mention of wounds in the feet, together with the wounds in the hands and side (John xx. 20. 25. 27.). The other opinion appeals not without reason to Luke xxiv. 39., where Jesus invites the disciples to behold his hands and his feet: it is certainly not here said that the feet were pierced, but it is difficult to understan, how Jesus should have pointed out his feet merely to produce a conviction of the reality of his body. The fact that among the Fathers of the Church, those who, living before Constantine, might be acquainted with the mode of crucifixion from personal observation, as Justin and Tertullian, suppose the feet of Jesus to have been nailed, is of weight. It might indeed be concluded from the remark of the latter: Qui (Christus) solus a populo tain insigniter crucifixus est, that for the sake of the passage in the Psalms these Fathers supposed that in the crucifixion of Christ his feet also were pierced by way of exception; but, as Tertullian had before called the piercing of the hands and feet the propria atrocia crucis, it is plain that the above words imply, not a special manner of crucifixion, but the special manner of death by crucifixion, which does not occur in the Old Testament, and by which therefore Jesus was distinguished from all the characters therein celebrated. Among the passages in profane writers, the most important is that of Plautus, in which, to mark a crucifixion, as extraordinarily severe, it is said: offigantur bis pedes, bis brachia. Here the question is: does the extraordinary feature lie in the bis , so that the nailing of the feet as well as of the hands only once is presupposed as the ordinary usage; or was the bis offigere of the hands, i.e. the nailing of both the hands, the usual practice, and the nailing of the feet an extraordinary aggravation of the punishment? Every one will pronounce the former alternative to be the most accordant with the words. Hence it appears to me at present, that the balance of historical evidence is on the side of those who maintain that the feet as well as the hands of Jesus were nailed to the cross.

It was before the crucifixion, according to the two first evangelists, that there was offered to Jesus a beverage, which Matthew (v. 34) describes as vinegar mingled with gall, Mark (v. 23) as wine mingled with myrrh, but which, according to both, Jesus refused to accept. As it is not understood with what object gall could be mixed with the vinegar, the xolh of Matthew is usually explained, by the aid of the esmurnismenon of Mark, as implying bitter vegetable ingredients, especially myrrh; and then either wine is actually substituted for vinegar, or the latter is understood as sour wine in order that the beverage offered to Jesus may thus appear to have been the stupefying draught consisting of wine and strong spices, which, according to Jewish usage, was presented to those about to be executed, for the purpose of blunting their susceptibility to pain. But even if the text admitted of this reading, and the words of this interpretation, Matthew would assuredly protest strongly against the real gall and the vinegar being thus ^{P.774} explained away from his narrative, because by this means he would lose the fulfilment of the passage in the psalm of lamentation elsewhere used Messianically: (LXX) "they gave me also gall for my food, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink" (Ps. Ixix. 21.). Matthew incontestably means, in accordance with this prophecy, real gall with vinegar, and the comparison with Mark is only calculated to suggest the question, whether it be more probable that Mark presents the incident in its original form, which Matthew has remodelled into a closer accordance with the prophecy; or that Matthew originally drew the particular from the passage in the Psalm, and that Mark so modified it as to give it an appearance of greater historical probability?

In order to come to a decision on this question we must take the two other evangelists into consideration. The presentation to Jesus of a drink mingled with vinegar is mentioned by all four, and even the two who have the vinegar mingled with gall, or the myrrhed wine, as the first drink offered to Jesus, mention afterwards the offering of simple vinegar. According to Luke, this offering of vinegar was an act of derision committed by the soldiers not very long after the crucifixion, and before the beginning of the darkness (v. 36 f.); according to Mark, shortly before the end, three hours after the darkness came on, one of the bystanders, on hearing the cry of Jesus: my God, my God etc, presented vinegar to him, likewise in derision, by means of a spongo fixed on a reed (v. 36); according to Matthew, one of the bystanders, on the same cry, and in the same manner, presented vinegar to him, but with a benevolent intention, as we gather from the circumstance that the scoffers wished to deterhim from the act (v. 48 f.); whereas in John it is on the exclamation: I thirst, that some fill a sponge with vinegar from a vessel standing near, and raise it on a stem of hyssop to the mouth of Jesus (v. 29). Hence it has been supposed that there were three separate attempts to give a beverage to Jesus: the first before the crucifixion, with the stupefying drink (Matthew and Mark); the second after the crucifixion, when the soldiers in mockery offered him some of their ordinary beverage, a mixture of vinegar and water calledposca (Luke); and the third, on the complaining cry of Jesus (Matt. Mark and John)4 But it the principle of considering every divergent narrative as a separate event be once admitted it must be consistently carried out: if the beverage mentioned by Luke must be distinguished from that of Matthew and Mark on account of a difference in the time, then must that of Matthew be distinguished from that of Mark on account of the difference in the design; and, again, the beverage mentioned by ohn must not be regarded as the same with that of the two first Synoptics, since it follows a totally different exclamation. Thus ^{P.775} we should obtain in all five instances in which a drink was offered to Jesus, and we should at least be at a loss to understand why Jesus after vinegar had already been three times presented to his lips, should yet a fourth time have desired to drink. If then we must resort to simplification, it is by no means only the beverage in the two first Gospels, and that in the fourth, which, on account of the agreement in the time and manner of presentation, are to be understood as one; but also that of Mark (and through this the others) must be pronounced identical with that of Luke, on account of their being alike offered in derision. Thus there remain two instances of a drink being offered to Jesus, the one before the crucifixion, the other after; and both have a presumptive support from history, the former in the Jewish custom of giving a stupefying draught to persons about to be executed, the other in the Roman custom, according to which the soldiers on their expeditions, and the completing an execution was consideed as such, were in the habit of taking with them their posca. But together with this possible historical root, there is a possible prophetic one in Ps. Ixix., and the two have an opposite influence: the latter excites a suspicion that the narrative may not have anything historical at its foundation; the former throws doubt on the explanation that the whole story has been spun out of the prophecies.

On once more glancing over the various narratives, we shall at least find that their divergencies are precisely of a nature to have arisen from a various application of the passage in the Psalms. The eating of gall and the drinking of vinegar being there spoken of, it appears as if in the first instance the former particular had been set aside as inconceivable, and the fulfilment of the prophecy found in the circumstance, (very possibly historical, since it is mentioned by all the four evangelists,) that Jesus had vinegar presented to him when on the cross. This might either be regarded as an act of compassion, as by Matthew and John, or of mockery, with Mark and Xiuke. In this manner the words: they gave me vinegar to drink, iwere indeed literally fulfilled, but not the preceding phrase: "in my thirst;" hence the author of the fourth gospel might think it probable that Jesus actually complained of thirst, i.e. cried out, "I thirst!" an exclamation, which he expressly desgnates as a fulfilment of the scripture, by which we are doubtless to understand the above passage in the Psalms (comp. Ps. xxii. 16.), Indeed, since he introduces the phrase "that the scripture might be fulfilled," by saying that "Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished," he almost appears to mean that the fulfilment of the prophecy was the sole object of Jesus in uttering that exclamation: but a man suspended on the cross in the agonies of death is not the one to occupy himself with such typological trifling this is only the part of his biographer who finds himself in perfect ease. Even this addition, however, only showed the fulfilment of ^{776} one half of the Messianic verse, that relating to the vinegar; there still remained what was said of the gall, which, as the concentration of all bitterness, was peculiarly adapted to be placed in relation to the suffering Messiah. It is true that the presentation of the gall, Xo&fj, as meat, Ppupa, which the prophecy strictly taken required, was still suppressed as inconceivable: but it appeared to the first evangelist, or to 1he authority which he here follows, quite practicable to introduce the gall as an ingredient in the vinegar, a mixture which Jesus might certainly be unable to drink, from its unpalata-bleness. More concerned about historical probability than prophetic connection, the second evangelist, with reference to a Jewish custom, and perhaps in accordance with historical fact, converted the vinegar mingled with gall, into wine mingled with myrrh, and made Jesus reject this, doubtless from a wish to avoid stupefaction. As however the narrative of the vinegar mingled with gall reached these two eangelists in company with the original one of the presentation of simple vinegar to Jesus; they were unwilling that this should be excluded by the former, and hence placed the two side by side. But in making these observations, as has been before remarked, it is not intended to deny that such a beverage may have been offered to Jesus before the crucifixion, and afterwards vinegar also, since the former was apparently customary, and the latter, from the thirst which tormented the crucified, natural: it is merely intended to show, that the evangelists do not narrate this circumstance, and under such various forms, because they knew historically that it occurred in this or that manner, but because they were convinced dogmatically that it must have occurred according to the above prophecy, which however they applied in different ways.

During or immediately after the crucifixion Luke represents Jesus as saying: Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do (v. 34); an intercession which is by some limited to" the soldiers who crucified him, by others, extended to the real authors of his death, the Sanhedrists and Pilate. However accordant such a prayer may be with the principles concerning love to enemies elsewhere inculcated by Jesus (Matt. v. 44), and however great the internal probability of Luke's statement viewed in this light: still it is to be observed, especially as he stands alone in giving this particular, that it may possibly have been taken from the reputed Messianic chapter, Is. liii., where in the last verse, the same from which the words: he was numbered with the transgressors.

^{P.777} All the evangelists agree in stating that two malefactors Svo KaKovpyoi (Matthew and Mark call them Agoraf thieves) were crucified, one on each side of Jesus; and Mark, if his 28th verse be genuine, sees in this a literal fulfilment of the words: he was numbered with the transgressors, which, according to Luke xxii. 37., Jesus had the evening before quoted as a prophecy about to be accomplished in him. of the further demeanour of these fellow-sufferers, John says nothing; the two first evangelists represent them as riviling Jesus (Matt, xxvii. 44; Mark xv. 32.); whereas Luke narrates that only one of them was guilty of this offence, and that he was rebuked by the other (xxiii.39ff.). In order to reconcile this difference, commentators have advanced the supposition, that at first both criminals reviled Jesus, but that subsequently one of them was converted by the marvellous darkness; more modern ones have resorted to the supposition of an enallage numeri: but without doubt those only are right who adit a real difference between Luke and his predecessors. It is plain that the two first evangelists knew nothing of the more precise details which Luke presents concerning the relation of the two malefactors to Jesus. He narrates, namely, that when one of them derided Jesus by calling upon him, if he were the Messiah, to deliver himself and them, the other earnestly rebuked such mockery of one with whom he was sharing a like fate, and moreover as a guilty one with the guiltless, entreating for his own part that Jesus would remember him when he should corne into his kingdom (basileia); whereupon Jesus gave him the promise that he should that very day be with him in Paradise.

In this scene there is nothing to create difficulty, until we come to the words which the second malefactor addresses to Jesus. For to expect from one suspended on the cross a future coming to establish the Messianic kingdom, would presuppose the conception of the whole system of a dying Messiah, which before the resurrecion the apostles themselves could not comprehend, and which therefore, according to the above representation of Luke, a thief must have been beforehand with them in embracing. This is so improbable, that it cannot excite surprise to find many regarding the conversion of the thief on the cross as a miracle, and the supposition which commentators call in to their aid, namely, that the man was no common criminal, but a political one, perhaps concerned in the insurrection of Barabbas, ony serves to render the incident still more inconceivable. For if he was an Israelite inclined to rebellion, and bent on liberating his nation from the Roman yoke, his idea of the Messiah was assuredly the most incompatible with the acknowledgment ^{P.778} as such, of one so completely annihilated in a political view, as Jesus then was. Hence we are led to the question, whether we have here a real history and not rather a creation of the legend? Two malefactors were crucified with Jesus: thus much was indubitably presented by history (or did even this owe its origin to the prophecy, Isai. liii. 12.?). At first they were suspended by the side of Jesus as mute figures, and thus we find them in the narrative of the fourth evangelist, into whose region of tradition only the simple statement, that they were crucified with Jesus, had penetrated. But it was not possible for the legend long to rest contented with so slight a use of them: it opened their mouths, and as only insults were reported to have proceeded from the bystanders, the two malefactors were at first made to join in the general derision of Jesus, without any more particular account being given of their words (Matt, and Mark). But the malefactors admitted of a still better use. If Pilate had borne witnes in favour of Jesus; if shortly after, a Roman centurion-indeed, all nature by its miraculous convulsions-had attested his exalted character: so his two fellow-suiFerers, although criminals, could not remain entirely impervious to the impression of his greatness, but, though one of them did indeed revile Jesus agreeably to the original form of the legend, the other must have expressed an opposite state of feeling, and have shown faith in Jesus as the Messiah (Luke). The address of the latter to Jesus and his answer are besides conceived entirely in the spirit of Jewish thought and expression; for according to the idea then prevalent, paradise was that part of the nether world which was to harbour the souls of the pious in the interval between their death and the resurrection: a place in paradise and a favourable remembrance in the future age were the object of the Israelite's petition to God, as here to the Messiah; and it was believed concerning a man distinguished for piety that he could conduct those who ere present at the hour of his death into paradise. To the cross of Jesus was affixed, according to the Roman custom, a superscription (Mark and Luke), or a title (John) which contained his accusation rrv alriav avrov (Matthew and Mark,) consisting according to all the evangelists in the words: 6 flaaiXevg rwv 'lovdaluv the King of the Jews. Luke and John state that this superscription was couched in three different tongues, and the latter informs us that the Jewish rulers were fully alive to the derision which this form of superscription reflected on their nation, and on this account entreated Pilate, but in vain, for an alteration of the terms (v. 21 f.).

^{P.779} Of the soldiers, according to John four in number, who crucified Jesus, the evangelists unanimously relate that they parted the clothes of Jesus among themselves by lot. According to the Roman law de bonis damnatorum the vestments of the executed fell as spolia to the executioners, and in so far that statement of the evangelists has a point of contact with history. But, like most of the features in this last scene of the life of Jesus, it has also a point of contact with prophecy. It is true that in Matthew the quotation of the passage Ps. xxii. 18. is doubtless an interpolation; but on the other hand the same quotation is undoubtedly genuine in John (xix. 24.); that the scripture might be fulfilled which says, "they parted my raiment among them, and for my vesture they cast lots." Here also, according to the assertion of orthodox expositors, David the author of te Psalm, under divine guidance, in the moments of inspiration chose such figurative expressions as had a literal fulfilment in Christ. Rather we must say, David, or whoever else may have been the author of the Psalm, as a man of poetical imagination used those expressions as mere metaphors to denote a total defeat; but the petty, prosaic spirit of Jewish interpretation, which the evangelists shared without any fault of theirs, and from which orthodox theologians, by their own fault however, have not perfectly liberated themselves after the lapse of eighteen centuries, led to the belief that those words must be understood literally, and in this sense must be shown to be fulfilled in the Messiah. Whether the evangelists drew the circumstance of the casting of lots for the clothes more from historical information which stood at their command, or from the prophetic passage which they variously interpreted, must be decided by a comparison of their narratives. These present the divergency, that while according tothe Synoptics all the clothes were parted by lot, as is evident from the words: diemerisanto ta i(matia au)tou ballontej klhron "they parted his garments, casting lots," in Matthew (v. 35), and the similar turn of expression in Luke (v. 34), but still more decidedly from the addition of Mark: "what every man should take" (v. 24): in John it is the coat or tunic, alone for which lots are cast, the other garments being parted equally (v. 23 f.). This divergency is commonly thought of much too lightly, and is tacitly treated as if the synoptic representation were related to that of John as the indefinite to the definite. Kuin l in consideration of John translates the words diemerisanto ta i(matia of Matthew thus: partim dimdebant, partim ire sortem conjiciebant: but the meaning is not to be thus distributed, for the diepspiavro they parted states what they did, the ballontej klhron casting lots, how they did it: besides Kuinb'l passes in total silence over the words "what each should get," because they undeniably ^{P.780} imply that lots were cast for several articles: while according to John the lots had reference only to one garment. If it be now asked, which of the two contradictory narratives is the correct one, the answer given from the point of view to which the comparative criticism of the Gospels has at present attained is, that the eye-witness John gives the correct particulars, but the Synoptics had merely received the indefinite information, that in parting the clothes of Jesus the soldiers made use of the lot, and this, from unacquaintance vith the more minute particulars, they understood as if lots had been cast for all the garments of Jesus. But not only does the circumstance that it is John alone who expressly cites the passage in the Psalms prove that he had an especial view to that passage: but, in general, this divergency of the evangelists is precisely what might be expected from a difference in the interpretation of that supposed prophecy. When the Psalm speaks of the parting of the garments and a castin of lots for the vesture: the second particular is, according to the genius of the Hebrew language which abounds in parallelism, only a more precise definition of the first, and the Synoptics, correctly understanding this, make one of the two verbs a participle. One however who did not bear in mind this peculiarity of the Hebrew style, or had an interest in exhibiting the second feature of the prophecy as specially fulfilled, might understand the and, which in reality was indicative only of more precise definition, as denoting addition, and thus regard the casting of lots and the distribution as separate acts. Then the imatismoj which was originally a synonym of imatia must become a distinct garment, the closer particularization of which, since it was not in any way conveyed in the word itself, was left to choice. The fourth evangelist determined it to be the xitwn tunic, and because he believed it due to his readers to show some cause for a mode of procedure with respect to this garment, no different from the equal distribution of the others, he intimated that the reason why it was chosen to cast lots for the tunic rather than to divide it, probably was that it had no seam (arrafoj) which might render separation easy, but was woven in one piece ufantoj d' olou. Thus we should have in the fourth evangelist exactly the same procedure as we have found on the side of the first, in the story of the entrance into Jerusalem; in both cases the doubling of a trait originally single, owing to a false interpretation of the Waw in the Hebrew parallelism; the only difference being that the first evangelist in the passage referred to is less arbitrary than the fourth is here, for he at least spares us the tracing out of the reason why two asses must then have been required for one rider. The more evident it thus becomes that the representation of the point in question in the dif- ^{P.781} ferent evangelists is dependent on the manner in which each interpreted that supposed prophecy in the Psalms: the less does a sure historical knowledge appear to have had any share in their representation, and hence we remain ignorant whether lota were cast on the distribution of the clothes of Jesus, indeed whether in general a distribution of clothes took place under the cross of Jesus; confidently as Justin appeals in support of this very particular to the acts of Pilate, which he had never seen.

Of the conduct of the Jews who were present at the crucifixion of Jesus, John tells us nothing; Luke represents the people as standing to look on, and only the rulers dpevrsg and the soldiers as deriding Jesus by the summons to save himself if he were the Messiah, to which the latter adds the offer of the vinegar (v.35ff.); Matthew and Mark have nothing here of mockery on the part of the soldiers, but in compensation they make not only the chief priests, scribes, and elders, but also the passers-by vent insults against Jesus (v.39ff.;29ff.). The expressions of these people partly refer to former discourses and actions of Jesus; thus, the sarcasm: You that would destroy the temple and build it again in three days, save yourself (Matt, and Mark), is an allusion to the words of that tenor ascribed to Jesus; while the reproach: he saved others, himself he cannot save, or save yourself (in all three), refers to his cures. Partly however the conduct of the Jews towards Jeus on the cross, is depicted after the same Psalm of which Tertullian justly says, that it contains totam Christi passionem. When it is said in Matthew and Mark: "And they that passed by reviled him, wagging their heads and saying..." (Luke says of the rulers "they derided him ), this is certainly nothing else than a mere reproduction of what stands in Ps. xxii. 8. (LXX.), "All they that see me laugh me to scorn, they shoot out the lip and shake the head" and the words which are hereupon lent to the Sanhedrists in Matthew: "He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he will have him," are the same with those of the following verse in that Psalm: pepoiqen e)pi ton qeon, r(usasqw nun ei) qelei au)ton: ei)pen gar o(ti Qeou ei)mi ui(oj "He trusted in the Lord that he would deliver him: let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him." Now though the taunts and shaking of the head on the part of the enemies of Jesus may, notwithstanding that the description of them is drawn according to the above Old Testament passage, still very probably have really happened: it is quite otherwise with the words which are attributed to these mockers. Words which, like those above quoted, are in the Old Testament put into the mouth of the enemies of the godly, could not be adopted by the Sanhedrists without their voluntarily ^{P.783} assuming the character of the ungodly: which they would surely have taken care to avoid. Only the Christian legend, if it once applied the Psalm to the sufferings of Jesus, and especially to his last hours, could attribute these words to the Jewish rulers, and find therein the fulfilment of a prophecy.

The two first evangelists do not tell us that any one of the twelve was present at the crucifixion of Jesus: they mention merely several Galilean women, three of whom they particularize: namely, Mary Magdalene; Mary the mother of James the less and of Joses; and, as the third, according to Matthew, the mother of the sons of Zebedee, according to Mark, Salome, both which designations are commonly understood to relate to the same person (Matt. v. 55 f.; Mark v. 40 f.); according to these evangelists the twelve appear not yet to have reassembled after their flight on the arrest of Jesus. In Luke, on the contrary, among all his acquaintance, whom he represents as beholding the crucifixion (v. 49) the twelve would seem to be included: but the fourth gospel expressly singles out from among the disciples the one whom Jesus loved, i.e. John, as present, and among the women, together with Mary Magdalene and the wife of Cleopas, names instead of the mother of James and John, the mothr of Jesus himself. Moreover, while according to all the other accounts the acquaintances of Jesus stood afar off according to the fourth gospel John and the mother of Jesus must have been in the closest proximity to the cross, since it represents Jesus as addressing them from the cross, and appointing John to be his substitute in the filial relation to his mother (v.25ff.). Olshausen believes that he can remove the contradiction which exists between the synoptic statement and the presupposition of the fourth gospel as to the position of the friends of Jesus, by the conjecture that at first they did indeed stand at a distance, but that subsequently some approached near to the cross: it is to be observed, however, in opposition to this, that the Synoptics mention that position of the adherents of Jesus just at the close of the scene of crucifixion and death, immediately before the taking down from the cross, and thus presuppose that they had retained this position until the end of the scene; a state of the case which cannot but be held entirely consistent with the alarm which filled the minds of the disciples during those days, and still more wih feminine timidity. If the heroism of a nearer approach might perhaps be expected from maternal tenderness: still, the total silence of the Synoptics, as the interpreters of the common Gospel tradition, renders the historical reality of that particular doubtful. The Synoptics cannot have known any thing of the presence of the mother of Jesus at the cross, otherwise they would have mentioned her as the chief person, before all the other women; nor does any thing appear to have been known of a more intimate relation between her and John: at least in the Acts (i. 12 f.) the mother of Jesus is supposed to be with the twelve in general, his brothers, and the women of the society. It is at least not so easy to understand how the memory of that affecting presence and remarkable relation could be lost, as to conceive how the idea of them might originate in the circle from which the fourth gospel proceeded. If this circle be imagined as one in which the apostle John enjoyed peculiar veneration, on which account our gospel drew him out of the trio of the more confidential associates of Jesus, and isolated him as the beloved disciple: it will appear that nothing could be more strikingly adapted to confirm this relation than the statement that Jesus bequeathed, as it were, the dearest legacy, his mother (in reference to whom, as well as to the alleged beloved disciple, it must have been a natural question, whether she had left the side of Jesus in this last trial), to John, and thus placed this disciple in his stead, made him vicarius Christi.

As the address of Jesus to his mother and the favourite disciple is peculiar to the fourth gospel: so, on the other hand, the exclamation, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Qee mou qee mou, i)nati me e)gkatelipej; is only found in the two first Gospels (Matt. v. 46; Mark v. 34). This exclamation, with the mental state from which it proceeded, like the agony in Gethsemane, constitutes in the opinion of the Church a part of the vicarious suffering of Christ. As however in this instance also it was impossible to be blind to the difficulties of the supposition, that the mere corporeal suffering, united with the external depression of his cause, overwhelmed Jesus to such a degree that he felt himself forsaken by God, while there have been both before and after him persons who, under sufferings equally severe, have yet preserved composure and fortitude: the opinion of the Church has here also, in addition to the natural corporeal and spiritual affliction, supposed as the true cause of that state of mind in Jsus, a withdrawal of God from his soul, a consciousness of the divine wrath, which it was decreed that he should bear in the stead of mankind, by whom it was deserved as a punishment. How, presupposing the dogma of the Church concerning the person of Christ, a withdrawal of God from his soul is conceivable, it is the part of the defenders of this opinion themselves, to decide. Was it the human nature in him which felt so forsaken? Then would its unity with the divine have been interrupted, and thus the very basis of the personality of Christ, according to the above system, removed. Or the divine? In that case the second person in the Godhead would have been separated from the first. As little can it have been the God-man, consisting of both natures, that felt forsaken by God, since the very essence of this is the unity and inseparableness of the divine and the human. Thus urged by the self-contradiction of this supernaturalistic explanation, to fall ^{P.784} back on the natural mode of accounting for the above exclamation by the sense of external suffering, and yet repelled from the idea that Jesus should have been so completely subdued by this, commentators have attempted to mollify the sense of the exclamation. It consists of the opening words of Ps. xxii., a passage which is classical for this last scene in the life of Jesus. Now this Psalm begins with a complaining description of the deepest suffering, but in the course of its progress soars into joyful hope of deliverance; hence it has been supposed that the words which Jesus immediately utters do not give his entire experience, and that in thus reciting the first verse he at the same time quotes the whole psalm and especially its exulting close, just as if he meant to say: It is true that I, like the author of this psalm, appear now forsaken of God, but in me, as in him, the divine succour will only be so much the more glorified. But if Jesus uttered this exclamation with a view to the bystanders, and in rder to assure them that his affliction would soon be merged in triumph, he would have chosen the means the least adapted to his purpose, if he had uttered precisely those words of the Psalm which express the deepest misery; and instead of the first verse he would rather have chosen one from the 10th to the 12th, or from the 20th to the end. If however in that exclamation he meant merely to give vent to his own feeling, he would not have chosen this verse if his actual experience in these moments had been, not what is there expressed, but what is described in the succeeding verses. Now if this experience was his own, and if, all supernatural grounds of explanation being dismissed, it proceeded from his external calamities; we must observe that one who, as the Gospels narrate of Jesus, had long included suffering and death in his idea of the Messiah, and hence had regarded them as a part of the divine arrangements, could scarcely complain of them when they actually arrived as an abandonment by God; rather, on the above supposition, we should be led to think that Jesus had found himself deceived in the expectations which he had previously cherished, and thus believed himself forsaken by God in the prosecution of his plan. Bat we could only resort to such conjectures if the above exclamation of Jesus were shown to have an historical foundation. In this respect the silence of Luke and John would not, it is true, be so serious a difficulty in our eyes, that we should take refuge in explanations like the following: John suppressed the exclamation, lest it should serve to countenance the Gnostic opinion, by admitting the inference that the Godhead which was insusceptible of suffering, departed from Jesus in that moment. But the relation of the words of Jesus to the 22d Psalm does certainly render this particular suspicious. If the Messiah was once conceived of as suffering, and if that Psalm was used as a sort of programme of his suffering, for which it was by no means necessary as an inducement that Jesus should have really quoted one of its verses on the cross: the opening words of the Psalm which are expressive of the deepest suffering must appear singularly adapted to be put into the mouth of the crucified Messiah. In this case the derisive speech of the bystanders, he callethfor Elijah etc, can have had no other origin than this-that the wish for a variety of taunts to complete this scene after the model of the psalm, was met by the similarity of sound between the Eloi in the exclamation lent to Jesus, and the name of Elijah which was associated with the Messiah.

Concerning the last words which the expiring Jesus was heard to utter, the evangelists differ. According to Matthew and Mark, it was merely a loud voice, fwnh megalh, with which he departed (v. 50, 37); according to Luke, it was the petition: Father, into your hands I commend my spirit, (v. 46); while according to John it was on the brief expression: it is finished, tetelestai, that he bowed his head and expired (v. 30). Here it is possible to reconcile the two first evangelists with one or other of the succeeding ones by the supposition, that what the former describe indefinitely as a loud cry, and what according to their representation might be taken for an inarticulate expression of anguish, the others, with more particularity, give in its precise verbal form. It is more difficult to reconcile the two last Gospels. For whether we suppose that Jesus first commended his soul to God, and hereupon cried: it is finished; or vice versa; botheollocations are alike opposed to the intention of the evangelists, for the expression of Luke cannot be rendered, as Paulus would have it, by: soon after he had said this, he expired; and the very words of the exclamation in John define it as the last utterance of Jesus; the two writers forming different conceptions of the closing words. In the account of Luke, the common form of expression for the death of Jesus: paredwke to pneuma (he delivered up his spirit) appears to have been interpreted as an actual commending of his soul to God on the part of Jesus, and to have been further developed with reference to the passage Ps. xxxi. 5: "Lord into your hands I commend my spirit," (LXX), a passage which from the strong resemblance of this Psalm to the 22nd would be ^{P.786} apt to suggest itself. Whereas the author of the fourth gospel appears to have lent to Jesus an expression more immediately proceeding from his position in relation to his Messianic office, making him express in the word rerisarai it is finished the completion of his work, or the fulfilment of all the prophecies (with the exception, of course, of what could only be completed and fulfilled in the resurrection).

Not only these last words, however, but also the earlier expressions of Jesus on the cross, will not admit of being ranged in the succession in which they are generally supposed. The speeches of Jesus on the cross are commonly reckoned to be seven; but so many are not mentioned by any single evangelist, for the two first have only one: the exclamation, my God, my God, etc. Luke has three: the prayer of Jesus for his enemies, the promise to the thief, and the commending of his spirit into the hands of the Father; John has likewise three, but all different: the address to his mother and the disciple, with the exclamations, "I thirst" and "It is finished." Now the intercessory prayer, the promise and the recommendation of Mary to the care of the disciple, might certainly be conceived as following each other: but the diyw and the Hli come into collision, since both exclamations are followed by the same incident, the offering of vinegar by means of a sponge on a reed. When to ths we add the entanglement of the tetelestai with the pater etc., it should surely be seen and admitted, that no one of the evangelists, in attributing words to Jesus when on the cross, knew or took into consideration those lent to him by the others; that on the contrary each depicted this scene in his own manner, according as he, or the legend which stood at his command, had developed the conception of it to suit this or that prophecy or design.

A special difficulty is here caused by the computation of the hours. According to all the Synoptics the darkness prevailed from the sixth hour until the ninth hour, (in our reckoning, from twelve at midday to three in the afternoon); according to Matthew and Mark it was about the ninth hour that Jesus complained of being forsaken by God, and shortly after yielded up the ghost; according to Mark it was the third hour wra trith (nine in the morning) when Jesus was crucified (v. 25). On the other hand, John says (xix. 14.) that it was about the sixth hour, (when according to Mark Jesus had already hung three hours on the cross,) that Pilate first sat in judgment over him. Unless we are to suppose that the sun-dial went backward, as in the time of Hezekiah, this is a contradiction which is not to be removed by a violent alteration of the reading, nor by appealing to the "about" in John, or to the inability of the disciples to take note of the hours under such afflictive cirsumstances; at the utmost it might perhaps ^{P.787} be cancelled if it were possible to prove that the fourth gospel hroughout proceeds upon another mode of reckoning time than that used by the Synoptics.

ACCORDING To The Gospel accounts, the death of Jesus was accompanied by extraordinary phenomena. Three hours before, we are told, a darkness diffused itselfj and lasted until Jesus expired (Matt, xxvii. 45. parall.); in the moment of his death the veil of the temple was torn asunder from the top to the bottom, the earth quaked, the rocks were rent, the graves were opened, and many bodies of departed saints arose, entered into the city, and appeared to many (Matt. v.51ff. parall.). These details are very unequally distributed among the evangelists: the first alone has them all; the second and third merely the darkness and the rending of the veil; while the fourth knows nothing of all these marvels.

We will examine them singly according to their order. The darkness (skotia) which is said to have arisen while Jesus hung on the cross, cannot have been an ordinary eclipse of the sun, caused by the interposition of the moon between his disc and the earth, since it happened during the Passover, and consequently about the time of the full moon. The Gospels however do not directly use the terms "eclipse of the sun"; the two first speaking only of darkness in general, and though the third adds with somewhat more particularity: skotoj egeneto ef' olhn thn ghn, "and there was darkness over all the earth", still this might be said of any species of widely extended obscuration. Hence it was an explanation which lay near at hand to refer this darkness to an atmospheric, instead of an astronomical cause, and to suppose that it proceeded from obscuring vapours in the air, such as are especially wont to precede earthquakes. That such obscurations of the atmosphere may be diffused over whole countries, is rue; but not only is the statement that the one ^{P.788} in question extended ef' olhn thn ghn, i.e, according to the most natural explanation, over the entire globe, to be subtracted as an exaggeration of the narrator: but also the pre-supposition, evident in the whole tenor of their representation, that the darkness had a supernatural cause, appears destitute of foundation from the want of any adequate object for such a miracle. Since then, with these accessory features, the event does not in itself at once carry the conviction of its credibility, it is natural to inquire if it have any extrinsic confirmation.

The Fathers of the Church appeal in its support to the testimony of heathen writers, among whom Phlegon especially in his xronikoi is alleged to have noticed the above darkness; but on comparing the passage preserved by Eusebius, which is apparently the one of Phlegon alluded to, we find that it determines merely the Olympiad, scarcely the year, and in no case the season and day of this darkness. More modern apologists appeal t similar cases in ancient history, of which Wetstein in particular has made a copious collection. He adduces from Greek and Roman writers the notices of the eclipses of the sun which occurred at the disappearance of Romulus, the death of Caesar, and similar events; he cites declarations which contain the idea that eclipses of the sun betoken the fall of kingdoms and the death of kings; lastly he points to Old Testament passages (Isai. 1.3; Joel iii. 20; Amos viii. 9; comp. Jer. xv. 9.) and rabbinical dicta, in which either the obscuring of the light of day is described as the mourning garb of God, or the death of great teachers compared with the sinking of the sun at mid-day, 1 or the opinion advanced that at the death of exalted hierarchical personages, if the last honours are not paid to them, the sun is wont to be darkened. But these parallels, instead of being supports to the credibility of the Gospel narrative, are so many premises to the conclusion, that we have here also nothing more tan the mythical offspring of universally prevalent ideas, - a Christian legend, which would make all nature put on the weeds of mourning to solemnize the tragic death of the Messiah. The second prodigy is the rending of the veil of the temple, doubtless the inner veil before the Holy of Holies. It was thought possible to interpret this rending of the veil also as a natural event, by regarding it as an effect of the earthquake. But, as Lightfoot has already justly observed, it is more conceivable that an earthquake should rend stationary fixed bodies such as the rocks subsequently mentioned, than that it should tear a pliant, loosely hung curtain. Hence Paulus supposes that the veil of the temple was stretched and fastened not only above but also below and at the sides. But first, this is a mere conjecture: and secondly, if the earthquake shook the walls of the temple so violently, as to tear a veil which even though stretched, was still pliant; such a convulsion would rather have caused a part of the building to fall, as is said to have been the case in the Gospel of the Hebrews: unless it be chosen to add, with Kuin l, the conjecture that the veil was tender from age, and might therefore be torn by a slight concussion. That our narrators had no such causes in their minds is proved by the fact that the second and third evangelists are silent concerning the earthquake, and that the first does not mention it until after the rending of the veil. Thus if this event really happened we must regard it as a miracle. Now the object of the divine Providence in effecting such a miracle could only have been this to produce in the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus a deep impression of the importance of his death and to furnish the first promulgators of the gospel with a fact to which they might appeal in support of their cause. But. as Schleiermaeher has shown, nowhere else in the New Testament, either in the apostolic epistles or in the Acts, or even in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in connection with the subject of which it could scarcely fail to be suggested, is this event mentioned: on the contrary, with the exception of this bare synoptic notice, every trace of it is lost; which could scarcely have been the case if it had really formed a ground of apostolical argument. Thus the divine purpose in ordaining this miracle must have totally failed; or, since this is inconceivable, it cannot have been ordained for this object; in other words, since neither any other object of the miracle, nor yet a mode in which the event might happen naturally can be discovered, it cannot have happened at all. In another way, certainl, a peculiar relation of Jesus to the veil of the temple is treated of m the Epistle to the Hebrews. While before Christ, only the priests had access into the holy place, and into the Holy of Holies only the high priest might enter once in the year with the blood of atonement; Christ, as the eternal high priest, entered by his own blood into the holy place within the veil, into the Holy of holies in heaven, whereby he became the forerunner, npodpofiog, of Christians, and opened access to them also, founding an eternal redemption, aluviov Mrpuaiv (vi. 19 f.; ix. 6, 12; x. 19 f.). Even Paulus finds in these metaphors so close an affinity to our narrative that he thinks it possible to number the latter among those fables which according to Henke's definitions are to be derived e figurato genere dicendi; at least the event, even if it ^{P.790} really happened, must have been especially important to the Christians on account of its symbolical significance, as interpreted by the images in the Epistle to the Hebrews: namely, that by Christ's death the veil of the Jewish worship was rent asunder, and access to God opened to all by means of worship in the Spirit. But if, as has been shown, the historical probability of the event in question is extremely weak, and on the other hand, the causes which might lead to the formation of such a narrative without historical foundation very powerful; it is more consistent, with Schleiermacher, entirely to renounce the incident as historical, on the ground that so soon as it began to be the practice to represent the office of Christ under the images which reign throughout the Epistle to the Hebrews, indeed, in the very earliest dawn of this kind of doctrine, on the first reception of the Gentiles, who were left free from the burden of Jewish observances, and who thus remained without participation in the Jewish sacrfices, such representations must have entered into the Christian hymns (and the Gospel narratives).

On the succeeding particulars of the earthquake and the rending of the rocks, we can only pronounce a judgment in connection with those already examined. An earthquake by which rocks are disparted, is not unprecedented as a natural phenomenon: but it also not seldom occurs as a poetical or mythical embellishment of the death of a distinguished man; as, for example, on the death of Caesar, Virgil is not content with eclipsing the sun, but also makes the Alps tremble with unwonted commotion. Now as we have only been able to view the prodigies previously mentioned in the latter light, and as, besides, the historical validity of the one before us is weakened by the fact that it rests solely on the testimony of Matthew; we must pronounce upon this also in the words of Fritzsche: Messiae obitum atrocibus ostentis, quibus, quantus vir quummaxime exspirasset, orbi terrarum indicaretur, illustrem esse aportebat.

The last miraculous sign at the death of Jesus, likewise peculiar to the first evangelist, is the opening of the graves, the resurrection of many dead persons, and their appearance in Jerusalem. To render this incident conceivable is a matter of unusual difficulty. It is neither in itself clear how it is supposed to have fared with these ancient Hebrew saints, after their resurrection; ) nor ^{P.791} is anything satisfactory to be discovered concerning a possible object for so extraordinary a dispensation. Purely in the resuscitated themselves the object cannot apparently have lain, for had it been so, there is no conceivable ground why they should be all awaked precisely in the moment of the death of Jesus, and not each at the period prescribed by the course of his own development. But if the conviction of others was the object, this was still less attained than in the miracle of the rending of the veil, for not only is any appeal to the apparition of the saints totally wanting in the apostolic epistles and discourses, but also among the evangelists, Matthew is the only one by whom it is recorded.

A special difficulty arises from the position which the determination of time: "after his resurrection" occupies between the apparently consecutive stages of the event. For if we connect these words with what precedes, and thus suppose that at the moment of the death of Jesus, te deceased saints were only reanimated, and did not come out of their graves until after his resurrection, this would have been a torment for the damned rather than a guerdon for the holy; if, on the contrary, we unite that determination of time to what follows, and thus interpret the evangelist's meaning to be, that the resuscitated saints did indeed come out of their graves immediately on their being reanimated at the moment that Jesus died, but did not go into the city until after his resurrection, any reason for the latter particular is sought in vain. It is but an inartificial way of avoiding these difficulties to pronounce the whole passage an interpolation, without any critical grounds for such a decision. A more dexterous course is pursued by the rationalist expositors, when they endeavour to subtract the miraculous from the event, and by this means indirectly to remove the other difficulties. Here, as in relation to the rending of the veil, the earthquake is regarded as the chief agent: this, it is said, laid open several tombs, particularly those of some prophets, which were found empty, because the bodies had either been removed by the shock, or become decomposed, or fallen a prey to wild beasts. After the resurrection of Jesus, those who were friendly to him in Jerusalem being filled with thoughts of resurrection from the dead, these thoughts, together with the circumstance of the graves being found empty, excited in them dreams and visions in which they believed that they beheld the pious ancestors who had been interred in those graves. But the fact of the graves being found empty would scarcely, even united with the news of the resurrection of Jesus, have sufficed to produce such visions, unless there had previously prevailed among the Jews the expectation that the Messiah would recall to life the departed saints

^{P.792} of Israel. If however this expectation existed, it would more probably give birth to the legend of a resurrection of the saints coincident with the death of Jesus than to dreams; from which Hase wisely discards the supposition of dreams, and attempts to find a sufficient explanation of the narrative in the emptiness of the graves on the one hand, and the above Jewish expectation on the other. But on a nearer view it appears that if once this Jewish idea existed there needed no real opening of the graves in order to give rise to such a myth: accordingly Schneckcnburger has left the emptiness of the graves out of his calculation. When, however, he yet speaks of visionary appearances which were seen by the adherents of Jesus in Jerusalem, under the excitement produced by his resurrection, he is not less inconsequent than Hase, when he omits the dreams and yet retains the laying open of the graves; for these two particulars being connected as cause and effect, if one of them be renounced as unhistorical, so also must the other.

In opposition to this view it is remarked, not without an appearance of reason, that the above Jewish expectation does not suffice to explain the origin of such a rnythus. The actual expectation may be more correctly stated thus. From the epistles of Paul (1 Thess. iv. 16; comp. 1 Cor. xv. 22 f.), and more decidedly from the Apocalypse (xx. 4 f.), we gather that the first Christians anticipated, as a concomitant of the return of Christ, a resurrection of the saints, who would thenceforth reign with Christ a thousand years; only at the end of this period, it was thought, would the rest of the dead arise, and from this second resurrection the former was distinguished as the first resurrection f) dvdaraoig r TtpuTi), or the resurrection of the just r&v dmatuv (Luke xiv. 14?), in place of which Justin has the holy resurrection rj ayia dvdaraaigS But this is the Christianized form of the Jewish idea; for the latter referred, not to the return, but to the first advent of the Messiah, and to a resurrection of Iraelites only. Now in the statement of Matthew likewise, that resurrection is assigned to the first appearance of the Messiah; for what reason, however, it is there connected with his death, there is certainly no indication in the Jewish expectation taken in and by itself, while in the modification introduced by the adherents of Jesus there would appear rather to have lain an inducement to unite the resurrection of the saints with his own; especially as the connecting of it with his death seems to be in contradiction with the primitive Christian idea elsewhere expressed, that Jesus was the "first-begotten from the dead," (Col. i. 18; Rev. i. 5), "the first fruits of those who sleep" (1 Cor. xv. 20). But we do not know whether this idea was universal, and if some thought it due to the Messianic dignity of Jesus to regard him as the first who rose from the dead, there are obvious ^{P.793} motives which might in oNier cases led to the representation that already at the death of Jesus there was a resurrection of saints. First there was an external motive: among the prodigies at the death of Jesus an earthquake is mentioned, and in describing its violence it was natural to add to the rending of the rocks another feature which appears elsewhere in accounts of violent earthquakes, namely, the opening of the graves: here then was an inviting hinge for the resurrection of the saints. But there was also an internal motive: according to the ideas early developed in the Christian community, the death of Jesus was the specially efficacious point in the work of redemption, and in particular the descent into Hades connected with it (1 Pet. iii. 19 f.) was the means of delivering the previously deceased from this abode; hence from these ideas there might result an inducement to represent the bonds of the grave as having been burst asunder for the ancient saints precisely in the moment of the death of Jesus. Besides, by this position, yet more decidedly than by a connection with the resurrection of Jesus, the resuscitation of the righteous was assigned to the first appearance of the Messiah, in accordance with the Jewish idea, which might very naturally be echoed in such a narrative, in the Judaizing circles of primitive Christendom; while at the same time Paul and also the author of the Apocalypse already assigned the first resurrection to the second and still future advent of the Messiah. It was then apparently with reference to this more developed idea, that the words after his resurrection were added as a restriction, probably by the author of the first gospel himself.

The Synoptics conclude their description of the events at the death of Jesus, with an account of the impression which they made more immediately on the Roman centurion whose office it' was to watch the crucifixion. According to Luke (v. 47) this impression was produced by to genomenon (what was done), i.e, since he had beforehand mentioned the darkness, by the departure of Jesus with an audible prayer, that being the particular which he had last noticed; indeed Mark, as if expounding Luke, represents the exclamation: truly this man was the Son of God as being called forth from the centurion by the circumstance that Jesus so cried out, and gave up the ghost kraugaj ecepneusen(v. 39).

Now in Luke, who gives a prayer as the last utterance of Jesus, it is possible to conceive that this edifying end might impress the centurion with a favourable opinion of Jesus: but how the fact of his expiring with a loud cry could lead to the inference that he was the Son of God, will in no way appear. Matthew hoever gives the most suitable relation to the words of the centurion, when he represents them as being called forth by the earthquake and the other prodigies which accompanied the death of Jesus: were it not that the historical reality of this speech of the centurion must stand or fall with its alleged causes. In Matthew and Mark this officer expresses the conviction that Jesus is in truth the Son of God, in Luke, that he is a righteous man. The evangelists in citing the former expression evidently intend to convey the idea that a Gentile bore witness to the Messiahship of Jesus; but in this specifically Jewish sense the words cannot well have been understood by the Roman soldier: we might rather suppose that he regarded Jesus as a Son of God in the heathen sense, or as an innocent man unjustly put to death, were it not that the credibility of the whole synoptic account of the events which signalize the death of Jesus being shaken, this, which forms the top stone as it were, must also be of doubtful security; especially when we look at the narrative of Luke, who besides the impression on the centurion adds that on the rest of the spectators, and makes them return to the city with repentance and mourning-a trait which appears to represent, not so probably what the Jews actually felt and did, as wht in the opinion of the Christians they ought to have felt and done.

WHILE the Synoptics represent Jesus as hanging on the cross from the wpa ivvdrr), i.e. three in the afternoon, when he expired, until the otpia, i.e. probably about six in the evening, without anything further happening to him: the fourth evangelist interposes a remarkable episode. According to him, the Jews, in order to prevent the desecration of the coming sabbath, which was a peculiarly hallowed one, by the continued exposure of the bodies on the cross, besought the procurator that their legs might be broken and that they might forthwith be carried away. The soldiers, to whom this task was committed, executed it on the two criminals crucified with Jesus; but when they perceived in the latter the signs o"F life having already become extinct, they held such a measure superfluous in his case, and contended themselves with thrusting a spear into his side, whereupon there came forth blood and water (xix. 31-37.).

This event is ordinarily regarded as the chief voucher for the reality of the death of Jesus, and in relation to it the proof to be drawn from the Synoptics is held inadequate. According to the reckoning which gives the longest space of time, that of Mark, Jesus hung on the cross from the third to the ninth hour, that is, six hours, before he died; if, as to many it has appeared probable, in the two other Synoptics the beginning of the darkness at the sixth hour marks also the beginning of the crucifixion, Jesus, according to them, hung only three hours living on the cross; and if we presuppose in John the ordinary Jewish mode of reckoning the hours, and attribute to him the same opinion as to the period of the death of Jesus, it follows, since he makes Pilate pronounce judgment on him only about the sixth hour, that Jesus must have died after ^{P.795} hanging on the cross not much more than two hours. But crucifixion does not in other cases kill thus speedily. This may be inferred from the nature of the punishment, which does not consist in the infliction of severe wounds so as to cause a rapid loss of blood, but rather in the stretching of the limbs, so as to produce a gradual rigidity; moreover it is evident from the statements of the evangelists themselves, for according to them Jesus, immediately before the moment which they regard as the last, had yet strength to utter a loud cry, and the two thieves crucified with him were still alive after that time; lastly, this opinion is supported by examples of individuals whose life has lasted for several days on the cross, and who have only at length expired from hunger and similar causes. Hence Fathers of the Church and older theologians advanced the opinion, that the , which would not have ensued so quickly in a natural way, was accelerated supernaturally, either by himself or by God; hysicians and more modern theologians have appealed to the accumulated corporeal and spiritual sufferings of Jesus on the evening of the night prior to his crucifixion but they also for the most part leave open the possibility that what appeared to the evangelists the supervention of death itself, was only a swoon produced by the stoppage of the circulation, and that the wound with the spear in the side first consummated the death.

But concerning this wound itself, the place, the instrument, and the manner of its infliction-concerning its. object and effects, there has always been a great diversity of opinion. The instrument is called by the evangelist a oy%ri, which may equally signify either the light javelin or the heavy lance; so that we are left in uncertainty as to the extent of the wound. The manner in which the wound was inflicted he describes by the verb vvaoetv, which sometimes denotes a mortal wound, sometimes a slight scratch, indeed, even a thrust which does not so much as draw blood; hence we are ignorant of the depth of the wound: though since Jesus, after the resurrection, makes Thomas lay only his ringers in the print of the nails, but, in or even merely on the wound in the side, his hand (John xx. 27), the stroke of the spear seems to have made a considerable wound. But the question turns mainly on the place in which the wound was made. This John describes as the nkevpa side, and certainly if the spear entered the leftside between the ribs and penetrated into the heart, death must inevitably have ensued: but the above expression may just as properly imply the right side as the left, and in either side any spot from the shoulder to the hip. Most of these points indeed would be at once decided, if the object of the soldier had been to kill Jesus, supposing he should not be already dead; in this case he would doubtless have pierced Jesus in the ^{P.796} most fatal place, and as deeply as possible, or rather, have broken his legs, as was done to the two thieves: but since he treated Jesus otherwise than his fellow sufferers, it is evident that in relation to him he had a different object, namely, in the first place to ascertain by this stroke of the spear, whether death had really taken place-a conclusion which he believed might securely be drawn from the flowing of blood and water out of the wound.

But this result of the wound is in fact the subject on which there is the least unanimity. The Fathers of the Church, on the ground that blood no longer flows from corpses, regarded the blood and water, aifia KOL vdup, which flowed from the corpse of Jesus as a miracle, a sign of his superhuman nature. More modern theologians, founding on the same experience, have interpreted the expression as a hendiadys, implying that the blood still flowed, and that this was a sign that death had not yet, or not until now taken place. As however blood is itself a fluid, the water vdup added to the Hood alpa cannot signify merely the fluid state of the latter, but must denote a peculiar admixture which the blood flowing from the side of Jesus contained. To explain this to themselves, and at the same time obtain the most infallible proof of death, others have fallen on the idea that the water mixed with the blood came out of the pericardium, which had been pierced by the spear, and in which, especially in such as die undersevere anguish, a quantity of fluid is said to be accumulated. But- besides that the piercing of the pericardium is a mere supposition- on the one hand, the quantity of such fluid, where no dropsy exists, is so trifling, that its emission would not be perceptible; and on the other hand, it is only a single small spot in front of the breast where the pericardium can be so struck that an emission outward is possible: in all other cases, whatever was emitted would be poured into the cavity of the thorax. Without doubt the idea which was present in the evangelist's mind was rather the fact, which may be observed in every instance of blood-letting, that the blood so soon as it has ceased to take part in the vital process, begins to divide itself into placenta and serum,' and he intended by representing this separation as having already taken place in the blood of Jesus, to adduce a proof of his real death. But whether this outflow of blood and water in perceptible separation be a possible proof of death, wheher Hase and Winer be right when they maintain that on deep incisions in corpses the blood sometimes flows in this decomposed state, or the fathers, when they deem this so unprecedented that it must be regarded as a miracle in Jesus, this is another question. A distinguished anatomist has explained the state of the fact to me in the ^{P.797} following manner. Ordinarily, within an hour after death the blood begins to coagulate in the vessels, and consequently no longer to flow on incisions; only by way of exception in certain species of death, as nervous fevers, or suffocation, does the blood retain its fluidity in the corpse. Now if it be chosen to place the death on the cross under the category of suffocation-which however, from the length of time that crucified persons have often remained alive, and in relation to Jesus especially, from his being said to have spoken to the last, appears impracticable; or if it be supposed that the wound in the side followed so quickly on the instant of death that it found the blood still fluid, a supposition which is discordant with the narratives, for they state Jesus to have been already dead at three in the afternoon, while the bodies must have been taken away only at six in the evening: then, if the spear struck one of the larger blood vessels, blood would have flowed, but without water; if however Jesu had already been dead about an hour, and his corpse was in the ordinary state: nothing at all would have flowed. Thus either blood or nothing: in no case blood and water, because the serum smb. placenta are not separated in the vessels of the corpse as in the basin after blood-letting. Hardly then had the author of this trait in the fourth gospel himself seen the alpa Kal vdup flowing out of the side of Jesus, as a sign that his death had taken place: rather, because after blood-letting he had seen the above separation take place in the blood as it lost its vitality, and because he was desirous to show a certain proof of the , he represented those separate ingredients as flowing out of his wounded corpse.

The evangelist assures us, with the most solicitous earnestness, that this really happened to Jesus, and that his account is trustworthy, as being founded on personal observation (v. 35). According to some, he gives this testimony in opposition to docetic Gnostics, who denied the true corporeality of Jesus: but wherefore then the mention of the water? According to others, on account of the noteworthy fulfilment of two prophecies by that procedure with respect to the body of Jesus: but, as L cke himself says, though John does certainly elsewhere, even in subordinate points, seek a fulfilment of prophecy, he nowhere attaches to it so extraordinary a weight as he would here have done according to this supposition. Hence it appears the most natural supposition that the evangelist intended by those assurances to confirm the truth of the , and that he merely appended the reference to the fulfilment of Scripture as a secondary illustrative addition. The absence of an historical indication, that as early as the period of the composi- ^{P.798} tion of the fourth gospel, there existed a suspicion that the was only apparent, does not suffice, in the paucity of information at our command concerning that period, to prove that a suspicion so easy of suggestion had not actually to be combated in the circle in which the above gospel arose, and that it may not have given occasion to the adduction of proofs not only of the resurrection of Jesus, but also of his death. Even in the Gospel of Mark a similar effort is visible. When this evangelist, in narrating Joseph's entreaty for the body of Jesus, says: And Pilate marvelled if he were already dead (v. 44): this suggests the idea that he lent to Pilate an astonishment which he must have heard expressed by many of his contemporaries concerning the rapidity with which the had ensued; and when he proceeds to state that the procurator obtained from the centurion certain information that Jesus had been some time dead, ndXat. d-xiOave; it appears as if he wished, in silencing th doubt of Pilate, to silence that of his contemporaries also; but in that case he can have known nothing of a wound with a spear, and its consequences, otherwise he would not have left unnoticed this securest warrant of death having really taken place: so that the representation in John has the appearance of being a fuller development of a tendency of the legend already visible in Mark.

This view of John's narrative is further confirmed by his citation of Old Testament passages, as fulfilled in this event. In the stroke of the spear he sees the fulfilment of Zech. xii. 10. (better translated by John than by the LXX), where the Lord says to the Israelites IT?? T;JX nx iix laarii they shall look on him whom they Rave pierced, in the sense, that they will one day return to him whom they had so grievously offended. The word 137, to pierce, understood literally, expresses an act which appears more capable of being directed against a man than against the Lord: this interpretation is supported by the variation in the reading TN; and it must have been confirmed by the succeeding context, which proceeds in the third person thus: and they shall mourn for him, as one mournethfor Ais only son, and shall be in bitterness for him, as one that is in bitterness for his first-born. Hence the Rabbis interpreted this passage of the Messiah ben Joseph, who would be pierced by the sword in battle, and the Christians might refer it, as they did so many passages in Psalms of lamentation, to their Messiah, at first understanding the piercing either figuratively or as implying the nailing of the hands (and feet) in crucifixion (comp. Rev. i. 7.); until at last some one, who desired a more decisive proof of death than crucifixion in itself afforded, interpreted it as a special piercing with the spear.

If then this trait of the piercing with the spear proceeded from the combined interests of obtaining a proof of death, and a literal ^{P.799} fulfilment of a prophecy: the rest must be regarded as merely its preparatory groundwork. The piercing was only needful as a test of death, if Jesus had to be early taken down from the cross, which according to Jewish law (Deut. xxi. 22; Josh. viii. 29, x. 26 f.- an exception occurs in 2 Sam. xxi.6ff.) must in any case be before night; but in particular in the present instance (a special circumstance which John alone notes), before the beginning of the Passover. If Jesus died unusually soon, and if the two who were crucified with him were yet to be taken down at the same time, the death of the latter must be hastened by violent means. This might be done likewise by means of a strike of the spear: but then the piercing, which in Zech. xii. 10. was predicted specially of the Messiah, would equally happen to others. Thus in their case it would be better to choose the breaking of the legs, which would not indeed instantaneously superinduce death, but which yet made it ultimately certain as a consequence of he mortification produced by the fracture. It is true that the crurifragium appears nowhere else in connection with crucifixion among the Romans, but only as a separate punishment, for slaves, prisoners of war, and the like. But it was not the less suitable in a prophetic point of view; for was it not said of the Paschal lamb with which Jesus was elsewhere also compared (1 Cor. v. 7.); not a bone of him shall be broken (Exod. xii. 46.)? so that both the prophecies were fulfilled, the one determining what should happen exclusively to Jesus, the other what should happen to his fellow-sufferers, but not to him.

ACCORDING To Roman Custom The Body of Jesus must have remained suspended until consumed by the weather, birds of prey, and corruption;% according to the Jewish, it must have been interred in the dishonourable burying place assigned to the executed:but the Gospel accounts inform us that a distinguished adherent of the deceased begged his body of the procurator, which, agreeably to the Roman law,( was not refused, but was immediately delivered to him (Matt. xxvi. 57 parall.). This man, who in all the Gospels is named Joseph, and said to be derived from Arimathea, was according to Matthew a rich man and a disciple of Jesus, but the latter, as John adds, only in secret; the two intermediate evangelists describe him as an honourable member of the high council, in which character, Luke remarks, he had not given his voice for the condemnation of Jesus, and they both represent him as cherishing Messianic expectations. That we have here a personal description gradually developed into more and more precisenes is evident. In ^{P.800} the first gospel Joseph is a disciple of Jesus and such must have been the man who under circumstances so unfavourable did not hesitate to take charge of his body; that, according to the same gospel, he was a rich, man (a)nqrwpoj plousioj) already reminds us of Isai. liii. 9., which might possibly be understood of a burial with the rich, and thus become the source at least of this predicate of Joseph of Arimathea. That he entertained Messianic ideas, as Luke and Mark add, followed of course from his relation to Jesus; that he was a "counsellor" as the same evangelists declare, is certainly a new piece of information: but that as such he could not have concurred in the condemnation of Jesus was again a matter of course; lastly, that he had hitherto kept his adherence to Jesus a secret, as John observes, accords with the peculiar position in relation to Jesus which this evangelist gives to certain exalted adherents, especially to Nicodemus, who is subsequently associated with Joseph. Hence it must not be at once supposed that the additional particulars which each succeeding evangelist gives, rest on historical information which he possessed over and above that of his predecessors.

While the Synoptics represent the interment of Jesus as being performed by Joseph alone, with no other beholders than the women, John, as we have observed, introduces Nicodemus as an assistant; a particular, the authenticity of which has been already considered in connection with the first appearance of Nicodemus. This individual brings spices for the purpose of embalming Jesus; a mixture of myrrh and aloes, in the quantity of about a hundred pounds. In vain have commentators laboured to withdraw from the word Mrpa, which John here uses, the signification of the Latin libra, and to substitute a smaller weight: the above surprising quantity is however satisfactorily accounted for by the remark of Olshausen, that the superfluity was a natural expression of the veneration of those men for Jesus. In the fourth gospel the two men perform the office of embalming immediately after the taking down of the body from the cross, winding it in linen clothes after the Jewish practice; in Luke the women, on their returnhome from the grave of Jesus, provide spices and ointments, in order to commence the embalming after the Sabbath (xxiii. 56; xxiv. 1.); in Mark they do not buy the sweet spices dpupara until the Sabbath is past (xvi. 1.); while in Matthew there is no mention of an embalming of the body of Jesus, but only of its being wrapped in a clean linen cloth (xxvii. 59.).

Here it has been thought possible to reconcile the difference between Mark and Luke in relation to the time of the purchase of the spices, by drawing over one of the two narrators to the side of the other. It appeared the most easy to accommodate Mark to Luke by the supposition of an enallage tempo-sum; his verb ^{P.801} jfydpaoav, they bought, used in connection with the day after the Sabbath, being taken as the pluperfect, and understood to imply, in accordance with the statement of Luke, that the women had the spices in readiness from the evening of the burial. But against this reconciliation it has already been remarked with triumphant indionation by the Fragmentist, that the aorist, standing between a determination of time and the statement of an object, cannot possibly signify anything else than what happened at that time in relation to that object, and thus the words fijopaoav dpufiara, they bought sweet spices, placed between "The sabbath being past," and "that they might come and anoint him," can only signify a purchase made after the sabbath had elapsed, Hence Michaelis, who undertook to vindicate the histories of the burial and resurrection from the charge of contradiction urged by the Fragmentist, betook himself to the opposite measure, and sought to confom Luke to Mark. When Luke writes: "And they returned, and bought sweet spices and ointments," he does not, we are told, mean that they had made this purchase immediately after their return, and consequently on the evening of the burial: on the contrary, by the addition "and rested the Sabbath day, according to the commandment," he himself gives us to understand that it did not happen until the sabbath was past, since between their return from the grave and the beginning of the sabbath at six in the evening, there was no time left for the purchase. But when Luke places his e(toimasan (they prepared) between "being returned" and "they rested", this can as little signify something occurring after the rest of the sabbath, as in Mark the similarly placed word can signify something which had happened before the sabbath. Hence more recent theologians have perceived that each of you two evangelists must be allowed to retain the direct sense of his words: nevertheless they have believed it possible to free both the one and the other from the appearance of error by the supposition that the spices prepared before the sabbath were not sufficient, and that the women, agreeably to Mark's statement, really bought an additional stock after the sabbath. But there must have been an enormous requirement of spices if first the hundred pounds weight contributed by Nicodemus had not sufficed, and on this account the women on the evening before the sabbath had laid ready more spices, and then these too were found insufficient, so that they had to buy yet more on the morning after the sabbath.

Thus however, in consistency, it is necessary to solve the second ^{P.802} contradiction which exists between the two intermediate evangelists unitedly and the fourth, namely, that according to the latter Jesus was embalmed with a hundred weight of ointment before being laid in the grave, while according to the former the embalming was deferred until after the sabbath. But as far as the quantity was concerned, the hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes were more than enough: that which was wanting, and had to be supplied after the sabbath, could only relate to the manner, i.e. that the spices had not yet been applied to the body in the right way because the process had been interrupted by the arrival of the sabbath. But, if we listen to John, the interment of Jesus on the evening of his death was performed according to the buirial customs of the Jews, i.e. in due form, the corpse being wound in the linen clothes with the spices (v. 40), which constituted the whole of Jewish embalming, so that according to John nothing was wanting in relation to the manner; not to mention that if the women, as Mark and Luke state, bought fresh spices and placed them in readiness, the embalming of Nicodemus must have been defective as to quantity also. Thus in the burial of Jesus as narrated by John nothing objective was wanting: nevertheless, it has been maintained that subjectively, as regarded the women, it had not been performed, i.e. they were ignorant that Jesus had already been embalmed by Nicodemus and Joseph. One is astonished that such a position can be advanced, since the Synoptics expressly state that the women were present at the interment of Jesus, and beheld, not merely the place (Mark), but also the manner in which he was interred (Luke).

There is a third divergency relative to this point between Matthew and the rest of the evangelists, in so far as the former mentions no embalming either before or after the sabbath. This divergency, as it consists merely in the silence of one narrator, has been hitherto little regarded, and -even the Fragmentist admits that the wrapping of the body in a clean linen cloth, mentioned by Matthew, involves also the Jewish method of embalming. But in this instance there might easily be drawn an argument ex silentio. When we read in the narrative of the anointing at Bethany the declaration of Jesus, that the woman by this deed had anointed his body for burial (Matt. xxvi. 12 parall.); this has indeed its significance in all the narratives, but a peculiarly striking one in Matthew, according to whose subsequent narrative no annointing took place at the burial of Jesus, and this fact appears to be the only sufficient explanation of the special importance which the Gospel tradition attached to the action of thewoman. If he who was revered as the Messiah did not, under the pressure of unfavourable circumstances, receive at ^{P.803} his burial the due honour of embalmment: then must the thoughts of his adherents revert with peculiar complacency to an event in the latter part of his life, in which a humble-minded female votary, as if foreboding that this honour would be denied to him when dead, rendered it to him while yet living. Viewed in this light the different representation of the anointing in the other evangelists would have the appearance of a gradual development of the legend. In Mark and Luke it still remains, as in Matthew, that the corpse of Jesus is not really embalmed: but, said t"he legend, already outstepping the narrative of the first gospel, the embalming was designed for him, this intention was the motive for the resort of the women to his grave on the morning after the sabbath, and its execution was only prevented by the resurrection. In the fourth gospel, on the other hand, this anointing, from being first performed on him by anticipation while he was yet living, and then intended for him when dead, resolved itself ino an actual embalming of his body after death: in conjunction with which, however, after the manner of legendary formations, the reference of the earlier anointing to the burial of Jesus was left standing.

The body of Jesus, according to all the narrators, was forthwith deposited in a tomb hewn out of a rock, and closed with a great stone. Matthew describes this tomb as kainon (new); an epithet which Luke and John more closely determine by stating that "no man had yet been laid there." We may observe in passing, that there is as much reason for suspicion with respect to this newness of the grave, as with respect to the unridden ass in the story of the entrance of Jesus, since here in the same way as there, the temptation lay irresistibly near, even without historical grounds, to represent the sacred receptacle of the body of Jesus as never having been polluted by any corpse. But even in relation to this tomb the evangelists exhibit a divergency. According to Matthew it was the property of Joseph, who had himself caused it to be hewn in the rock; and the two other Synoptics also, since they make Joseph unhesitatingly dispose of the grave, appear to proceed on the same presupposition. According to John, on the contrary, Joseph's right of property in the grave was not the reason that Jesus was laid there; but because time pressed, he was deposited in the new sepulchre, which happened to be in a neighbouring garden. Here again the harmonists have tried their art on both sides. Matthew was to be brought into agreement with John by the observation, that a manuscript of his gospel omits the au(tou (his own) after mnhmeiw; while an ancient translation read, instead of o( elatomhsen (which he had hewn), o( lelatwmenon (which was hewn); as if these alterations were not obviously owing already to harmonizing efforts. Hence the opposite side has been taken, and it has been remarked that the words of John by no means exclude the possibility that Joseph may have been the owner of the tomb, since both reasons the vicinity, and the fact that the grave belonged to Joseph may have co-operated. But the contrary is rather the truth: namely, that the vicinity of the grave when alleged as a motive, excludes the fact of possession: a house in which I should take shelter from a shower, because it is near, would not be my own; unless indeed I were the owner of two houses, one near and one more distant, of which the latter was my proper dwelling: and in like manner a grave, in which a person lays a relative or friend who doea not himself possess one, because it is near, cannot be his own, unless he possess more than one, and intend at greater leisure to convey the deceased into the other; which however in our case, since the near grave was from its newness adapted above all others for the interment of Jesus, is not easily conceivable. If according to this the contradiction subsists, there does not appear in the narratives themselves any ground for decision in favour of the one or of the other.

ON The Following Day, the Sabbath,; the chief priests and Pharisees, according to Matthew (xxvii.62ff.) came to Pilate, and with reference to the prediction of Jesus, that he should rise again after three days, requested him to place a watch by his grave, lest his disciples should take occasion from the expectation which that prediction had awakened, to steal his body and then spread a report that he was risen again. Pilate granted their request, and accordingly they went away, sealed the stone, and placed the watch before the grave. The subsequent resurrection of Jesus, (we must here anticipate so far,) and the angelic appearances which accompanied it, so terrified the guards, that they "became as dead men," but however, hastened to the city and gave an account of the event to the chief priests. The latter, after having deliberated on the subject in an assembly with the elders, bribed the soldiers to pretend that the disciples had stolen the body by night; so, the narrator adds, this report was disseminated, and was persisted in up to his time (xxviii. 4,11ff.).

In this narrative, peculiar to the first gospel, critics have found all kinds of difficulties, which have been exposed with the most acumen by the author of the Wolfenb ttel Fragments, and after him ^{P.805} by Paulus. The difficulties he first of all in this: that neither the requisite conditions of the event, nor its necessary consequences, are presented in the rest of the New Testament history. As regards the former, it is not to be conceived how the Sanhedrists could obtain the information, that Jesus was to return to life three days after his death: since there is no trace of such an idea having existed even among his disciples. They say: We remember that that deceiver said, ivhile he was yet alive, etc. If we are to understand from this that they remembered to have heard him speak to that effect: Jesus, according to the Gospel accounts, never spoke plainly of his resurrection in the presence of his enemies; and the figurative discourses which remained unintelligible to his confidential disciples, could still less be understood by the Jewish hierarchs, who were less accustomed to his mode of thought and expression. If, however, the Sanhedrists merely intend to say, that they had heard from others of hs having given such a promise: this intelligence could only have proceeded from the disciples; but as these had not, either before or after the , the slightest anticipation of his resurrection, they could not have excited such an anticipation in others not to mention that we have been obliged to reject as unhistorical the whole of the predictions of the resurrection lent to Jesus in the Gospels. Equally incomprehensible with this knowledge on the part of the enemies of Jesus, is the silence of his friends, the apostles and the other evangelists besides Matthew, concerning a circumstance so favourable to their cause. It is certainly applying too modern a standard to the conduct of the disciples to say with the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist, that they must have entreated from Pilate a letter under his seal in attestation of the fact that a watch had been set over the grave: but it must be held surprising that in none of the apostolic speeches is there anywhere an appeal to so striking a fact, and that even in the Gospels, with the exception of the first, it has left no discoverable trace. An attempt has been made to explain this silence from the consideration, that the bribing of the guards by the Sanhedrin had rendered an appeal to them fruitless: but truth is not so readily surrendered to such obvious falsehoods, and at all events, when the adherents of Jesus had to defend themselves before the Sanhedrin, the mention of such a fact must have been a powerful weapon. The cause is already half given up when its advocates retreat to the position, that the disciples probably did not become acquainted with the true cause of the event immediately, but only later, when the adiers began to betray the secret. For even if the guards in the first instance merely set afloat the tale of the theft, and thus admitted that they had been placed by the grave, the adherents of Jesus could already construe for themselves the real state of the case, and might boldly ^{P.806} appeal to the guards, who must have been witnesses of something quite different from the theft of a corpse. But lest we be told of the invalidity of an argument drawn from the merely negative fact of silence, there is something positive narrated concerning a part of the adherents of Jesus, namely, the women, which is not reconcile-able with the fact of a watch being placed at the grave. Not only do the women who resort to the grave on the morning after the Sabbath, intend to complete the embalming, which they could not hope to be permitted to do, if they knew that a watch was placed before the grave, and that this was besides sealed: but according to Mark their whole perplexity on their way to the grave turns upon the question, who will roll away the stone for them from the grave; a clear proof that they knew nothing of the guards, since these either would not have allowed them to remove the stone, however light, or if they would have allowed this, would also have helped them to roll away a heavier one; so hat in any case the difficulty as to the weight of the stone would have been superfluous. But that the placing of the watch should have remained unknown to the women is, from the attention which everything relative to the end of Jesus excited in Jerusalem (Luke xxiv. 18), highly improbable.

But within the narrative also, every feature is full of difficulties, for, according to the expression of Paulus, no one of the persons who appear in it, acts in accordance with his character. That Pilate should have granted the request of the Jewish magistrates for a watch, I will not say without hesitation, but so entirely without ridicule, must be held surprising after his previous conduct; such minor particulars might however be merely passed over by Matthew in his summary mode of recounting the incidents. It is more astonishing that the guards should have been so easily induced to tell a falsehood which the severity of Roman discipline made so dangerous, as that they had failed in their duty by sleeping on their post; especially as, from the bad understanding which existed between the Sanhedrin and the procurator, they could not know how far the mediation promised by the former would avail. But the most inconceivable feature is the alleged conduct, of the Sanhedrin. The difficulty which lies in their ging to the heathen procurator on the sabbath, defiling themselves by approaching the grave, and placing a watch, has certainly been overstrained by the i'ragmentist; but their conduct, when the guards, returning from the grave, apprised them of the resurrection of Jesus, is truly impossible. They believe the assertion of the soldiers that Jesus had arisen out of his grave in a miraculous manner. How could the council, many of whose members were Sadducecs, receive this as credible? Even the Pharisees in the Sanhedrin, though they held in theory the possibility ^{P.807} of a resurrection, would not, with the mean opinion which they entertained of Jesus, be inclined to believe in his resurrection; especially as the assertion in the mouth of the guards sounded just like a falsehood invented to screen a failure in duty. The real Sanhe-drists, on hearing such an assertion from the soldiers, would have replied with exasperation: You lie! you have slept and allowed him to be stolen; but you will have to pay dearly for this, when it comes to be investigated by the procurator. But instead of this, the San-hedrists in our gospel speak them fair, and entreat them thus: Tell a lie, say that you have slept and allowed him to be stolen: moreover, they pay them richly for the falsehood, and promise to exculpate them to the procurator. This is evidently spoken entirely on the Christian presupposition of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus; a presupposition however which is quite incorrectly attributed to the members of the Sanhedrin. It is also a difficulty, not merely searched out y the Fragmentist, but even acknowledged by orthodox expositors, that the Sanhedrin, in a regular assembly, and after a formal consultation, should have resolved to corrupt the soldiers and put a he into their mouths. That in this manner a college of seventy men should have officially decided on suggesting and rewarding the utterance of a falsehood, is, as Olshausen justly observes, too widely at variance with the decorum, the sense of propriety, inseparable from such an assembly. The expedient of supposing that it was merely a private meeting, since only the chief priests and elders, not the scribes, 'are said to have embraced the resolution of bribing the soldiers, would involve the singularity, that in this assembly the scribes were absent, while in the shortly previous interview with the procurator, where the scribes are represented by the Pharisees who formed their majority, the elders were wanting: whence it is evident rather that, it being inconvenient invariably to designate the Sanhedrin by a full enumeration of its constituent parts, it was not seldom indicated by the mention of only some or one of these. If it therefore remains that according to Matthew the high council must in a formal session have resolved on bribing the guards: such an act of baseness could only be attributed to the council as such, by the rancour of the primitive Christians, among whom our story arose.

These difficulties in the present narrative of the first gospel have been felt to be so pressing, that it has been attempted to remove them by the supposition of interpolation; which has lately been moderated into the opinion, that while the story did not indeed proceed from the apostle Matthew himself, it was not however added by a hand otherwise alien to our gospel, but was inserted by the Greek translator of the Hebrew Matthew. Against the former ^{P.808} supposition the absence of all critical authority is decisive; the appeal of those who advance the other opinion to the unapostolic character of the story, would not warrant its separation from the context of the main narrative, unless that narrative itself were already proved to be of apostolic origin; while the story is so far from presenting any want of connection with the rest, that, on the contrary, Paulus is right in his remark that an interpolator (or inserting translator) would scarcely have given himself the trouble to distribute his interpolation in three different places (xxvii. 62-66; xxviii. 4; 11-15), but would have compressed it into one passage, or at most two. Neither can the question be settled so cheaply as Olshausen imagines, when he concludes that the entire narrative is apostolic and correct, save that the evangelist erred in representing the corruption of the guards as being resolved on in full council, whereas the affair was probably managed in secret by Caiaphas alone: as if ths assembly of the council were the sole difficulty of the narrative, and as if, when errors had insinuated themselves in relation to this particular, they might not extend to others also.

Paulus correctly points out how Matthew himself, by the statement: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews to this day, indicates a calumnious Jewish report as the source of his narrative. But when this theologian expresses the opinion that the Jews themselves propagated the story, that they had placed a watch at the grave of Jesus, but that the guards had permitted his body to be stolen: this is as perverted a view as that of Hase, when he conjectures that the report in question proceeded first of all from the friends of Jesus, and was afterwards modified by his enemies. For as regards the former supposition, Kuin l has already correctly remarked, that Matthew merely designates the assertion respecting the theft of the corpse as a Jewish report, not the entire narrative of the placing of a watch; neither is there any reason to be conceived why the Jews should have fabricated such a report as that a watch was set at the grave of Jesus: Paulus says, it was hoped thereby to render the assertion hat the body of Jesus was stolen by his disciples more easy of acceptation with the credulous: but those must indeed have been very credulous who did not observe, that the placing of the watch was the very thing to render a furtive removal of the body of Jesus improbable. Paulus appears to represent the matter to himself thus: the Jews wished to obtain witnesses, as it were to the accusation of a theft, and for this purpose fabricated the story of the guard being placed by the grave. But that the guards with open eyes quietly beheld the disciples of Jesus carry away his body, no one could credit: while, if they saw nothing of this, because they slept, they gave no testimony, since they-could then only by inference arrive at the conclusion, that the body might have been stolen: a conclusion which could be drawn just as well without them. Thus in no way can the watch have belonged to the ^{P.809} Jewish basis of the present narrative; but the report disseminated among the Jews consisted, as the text also says, merely in the assertion that the disciples had stolen the body. As the Christians wished to oppose this calumny, there was formed among them the legend of a watch placed at the grave of Jesus, and now they could boldly confront their slanderers with the question: how can the body have been carried away, since you placed a watch at the grave and sealed the stone? And because, as we have ourselves proved in the course of our inquiry, a legend is not fully convicted of groundlessness until it has been shown how it could arise even without historical grounds: it was attempted on the side of the Christians, in showing what was supposed to be the true state of the case, to expose also the origin of the false legend, by deriving the falsehood propagated among the Jews from the contrivance of the Sanhedrin, and their corruption of the guards. Thus the truth is precisely the reverse of what Hase says, nmely, that the legend probably arose among the friends of Jesus and was modified by his enemies: -the friends first had an inducement to the fiction of the watch, when the enemies had already spoken of a theft.

THAT The First News of the grave of Jesus being opened and empty on the second morning after his burial, came to the disciples by the mouth of women, is unanimously stated by the four evangelists: but in all the more particular circumstances they diverge from each other, in a way which has presented the richest material for the polemic of the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist, and on the other hand has given abundant work to the harmonists and apologists, without there having been hitherto any successful attempt at a satisfactory mediation between the two parties.

Leaving behind the difference which is connected with the divergencies in the story of the burial, as to the object of the women in resorting to the grave, -namely, that according to the two intermediate evangelists they intended to enbalm the body of Jesus, according to the two others merely to pay a visit to the grave, we find, first, a very complicated divergency relative to the number of the women who made this visit. Luke merely speaks indefinitely of many women; not alone those whom he describes xxiii. 55. as having come with Jesus from Galilee, and of whom he mentions by name, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James, but also certain others with them, -nvlq avv avrais (xxiv. 1.). Mark has merely three women; two of those whom Luke also names, but as the third, Salome instead of Joanna (xvi. 1.). Matthew has not this third woman, respecting whom the two intermediate evangelists ^{P.810} differ, but merely the two Maries concerning whom they agree (xxviii. 1.).

Lastly, John has only one of these, Mary Magdalene (xx. 1.). The time at which the women go to the grave is likewise not determined with uniformity; for even if the words of Matthew, In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, make no difference, still the addition of Mark: at the rising of the sun, are in contradiction with the expressions when it was yet dark, in John, and very early in the morning, in Luke. In relation to the circumstances in which the women first saw the grave there may appear to be a difference, at least between Matthew and the three other evangelists. According to the latter, as they approach and look towards the grave, they see that the stone has already been rolled away by an unknown hand: whereas the narrative of the first evangelist has appeared to many to imly that the women themselves beheld the stone rolled away by an angel. Manifold are the divergencies as to what the women further saw and learned at the grave. According to Luke they enter into the grave, find that the body of Jesus is not there, and are hence in perplexity, until they see standing by them two men in shining garments, who announce to them his resurrection. In Mark, who also makes them enter into the grave, they see only one young man in a long white garment, not standing but sitting on the right side, who gives them the same intelligence. In Matthew they receive this information before they enter into the grave, from the angel, who after rolling away the stone had sat upon it. Lastly, according to John, Mary Magdalene, as soon as she sees the stone taken away, and without witnessing any angelic appearance, runs back into the city. Moreover the relation in which the disciples of Jesus are placed with respect to the first news of his resurrection is a different one in the different Gospels. Accrding to Mark, the women, out of fear, tell no one of the angelic appearance which they have beheld; according to John, Mary Magdalene has nothing more to say to John and Peter, to whom she hastens from the grave, than that Jesus is taken away; according to Luke, the women report the appearance to the disciples in general, and not merely to two of them; while according to Matthew, as they were in the act of hastening to the disciples, Jesus himself met them, and they were able to communicate this also to the disciples. In the two first Gospels nothing is said of one of the disciples himself going to the grave on hearing the report of the women; according to Luke, Peter went there, found it empty and returned wondering, and from Luke xxiv. 24. it appears that other disciples besides him went there in a similar manner; according to the fourth gospel Peter was accompanied by John, who on this occasion was convinced of the resurrection of Jesus. Luke says that Peter made his visit to the sepulchre after he ad already been ^{P.811} informed by the women of the angelic appearance; but in the fourth gospel the two disciples go to the grave before Mary Magdalene can have told them of such an appearance; it was only when she had proceeded a second time to the grave with the two disciples, and when they had returned home again, that, stooping into the sepulchre, she saw, according to this gospel, two angels in white, sitting, the one at the head and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain, by whom she was asked, why she wept? and on turning round she beheld Jesus himself; a particular of which there is a fragmentary notice in Mark v. 9, with the additional remark, that she communicated this news to his former companions.

It has been thought possible to reconcile the greater part of these divergencies by supposing, instead of one scene variously described, a multiplicity of different scenes; for which purpose the ordinary grammatical and other artifices of the harmonists were pressed into the service. That Mark might not contradict the "while it was yet dark" of John, the apologists did not scruple to translate the words "the sun having risen" by "the sun being about to rise." the contradiction between Matthew and the rest, when the former appears to say that the women saw the stone rolled away by the angel, seemed to be more easy of solution, not indeed by supposing, with Michaelis, that kai idou (and behold!) denotes a recurrence to a previous event, and that e)rxontej here has the signification of a pluperfect (an expedient which has been justly combated by modern criticism in opposition to Lessing, who was inclined to admit it; but by understanding the e)rxontej to express a yet unfinished progress of the women towards the grave, in which case the kai idou and what follows may, in accordance with its proper meaning, relate something that happened after the departure of the women from their home, but before their arrival at the grave. In relation to the number and the visit of the women, it was in the first place urged that even according to John, although he mentions only Mary Magdalene by name, several women must have accompanied her to the grave, since he makes her say after her return to the two disciples: we know not where they have laid him; a plural, which certainly intimates the presence of other but unspecified persons, with whom Mary Magdalene, whether at the grave itself or on her return, had conversed on the subject before she came to the apostles. Thus, it is said, Mary Magdalene went to the grave with the other women, more or fewer, of whom are mentioned by the other evangelists. As however she returned without having, like the other women, seen an angel, it is supposed that she ran back alone as soon as se saw the.stone rolled away: which is accounted for by her impetuous temperament, she having been formerly a demoniac. While she ^{P.812} hastened back to the city, the other women saw the appearances of which the Synoptics speak. To all, it is maintained, the angels appeared within the grave; for the statement in Matthew that one sat outside on the stone, is only a pluperfect: when the women came he had already withdrawn into the sepulchre, and accordingly, after their conversation with him, the women are described as departing from the sepulchre (v. 8); in which observation it is only overlooked that between the first address of the angel and the above expression, there stands his invitation to the women to come with him into the grave and see the place where Jesus had lain. In relation to the difference that according to the two first evangelists the women see only one angel, according to the third, two, even Calvin resorts to the miserable expedient of supposing a synecdoche, namely that all the evangelists certainly knew of two angels, but Matthew and Mark mention only the one who acted as speaker. Others mke different women see different appearances: some, of whom Matthew and Mark speak, seeing only one angel; the others, to whom Luke refers, and who came earlier or perhaps later than the above, seeing two; but Luke makes the same two Maries who, according to his predecessors, had seen only one angel, narrate to the apostles an appearance of two angels. It is also said that the women returned in separate groups, so that Jesus might meet those of whom Matthew speaks without being seen by those of Luke; and though those of Mark at first tell no one from fear, the rest, and they themselves afterwards, might communicate what they had seen to the disciples. On hearing the report brought by several women, Peter, according to Luke, straightway goes to the grave, finds it empty and turns away wondering. But according to the hypothesis which we are now detailing, Mary Magdalene had run back a considerable time before the other women, and had brought with her to the grave Peter and John. Thus Peter, first on hearingthe imperfect intelligence of Mary Magdalene that the grave was empty, must have gone there with John; and subsequently, on the account of the angelic appearance brought by the other women, he must have gone a second time alone: in which case it would be particularly surprising that while his companion arrived at a belief in the resurrection of Jesus on the very first visit, he himself had not attained further than wonder even on the second. Besides, as the Fragmentist has already ably shown, the narrative in the third Gospel of the visit of Peter alone, and that in the fourth of the visit of Peter and John, are so strikingly similar even in words,that the majority of commentators regard them as referring ^{P.813} to a single visit, Luke having only omitted to notice the companion of Peter: in support of which opinion they can appeal to Luke xxiv. 24. But if the visit of the two apostles, occasioned by the return of Mary Magdalene, be one and the same with that occasioned by the return of the other women, then the return of the women is also not a double one; if however they returned in company with each other, we have a contradiction. After the two apostles are returned without having seen an angel, Mary, who remains behind, as she looks into the grave, all at once sees two. What a strange playing at hide and seek rrmst there have been on the part of the angels, according to the harmonistic combination of these narratives ! First only one shows himself to one group of women, to another group two show themselves: both forthwith conceal themselves from the disciples; but after their departure both again become visible. To remove these intermissions Paulus has placed the appearance presented to Mary Magdalene before the rrival of the two disciples: but by this violent transposition of the order chosen by the narrator, he has only confessed the impossibility of thus incorporating the various evangelists with each other. Hereupon, as Mary Magdalene raises herself from looking into the grave and turns round, she sees Jesus standing behind her. According to Matthew, Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, when they had already set out on their way to the city, consequently when they were at some distance from the grave. Thus Jesus would have first appeared to Mary Magdalene alone, close to the grave, and a second time when she was on her way from thence, in the company of another woman. In order to avoid the want of purpose attaching to the repetition of an appearance of Jesus after so short an interval, commentators have here called in the above supposition, that Mary Magdalene had previously separated herself from the women of whom Matthew speaks: but in that case, since Matthew has besides Mary Magdalene only te other Mary, it would have been only one woman to whom Jesus appeared on the way from the grave: whereas Matthew throughout speaks of several. To escape from this restless running to and fro of the disciples and the women, this phantasmagoric appearance, disappearance, and reappearance of the angels, and the useless repetition of the appearances of Jesus before the same person, which result from this harmonistic method, we must consider each evangelist by himself: we then obtain from each a quiet picture with simple dignified features; One visit of the women to the grave, or according to John, two; one ^{P.814} angelic appearance; one appearance of Jesus, according to John and Matthew; and one visit to the grave by one or two of the disciples, according to Luke and John.

But with the above difficulties of the harmonistic method of incorporation as to the substance, there is associated a difficulty as to form, in the question, how comes it, under the presuppositions of this mode of viewing the Gospels, that from the entire series of occurrences, each narrator has selected a separate portion for himself, that of the many visits and appearances not one evangelist relates all, and scarcely one the same as his neighbour, but for the most part each has chosen only one for representation, and each again a different one? The most plausible answer to this question has been given by Griesbach in a special treatise on this subject. He supposes that each evangelist recounts the resurrection of Jesus in the manner in which it rirst became known to him; John received the first information from Mary Magdalene, and hence he narrates only what he learned from her; to Matthew (for without doubt the disciples, as strangers visiting the feast, resided in diffeient quarters of the city,) the irst news -was communicated by those women to whom Jesus himself appeared on their way from the grave, and hence he relates only what these had experienced. But here this explanation already founders on the facts, that in Matthew, of the women who see Jesus on their way homeward, Mary Magdalene is one; and that in John, Mary Magdalene, after her second visit to the grave, in which Jesus appeared to her, no longer went to John and Peter alone, but to the disciples in general, and communicated to them the appearance she had seen and the commission she had received: so that Matthew in any case must also have known of the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene. Further, when, according to this hypothesis, Mark narrates the story of the resurrection as he had learned it in the house of his mother who lived in Jerusalem (Acts xii. 12.); Luke, as he had received it from Joanna, whom he alone mentions: we cannot but wonder at the tenacity with which, according to this, each must have clung to the narrative which e had happened first to receive, since the resurrection of Jesus must have been the subject of all others on which there was the most lively interchange of narratives among his adherents, so that the ideas concerning the first tidings of the event must have found their level. To remove these difficulties, Griesbach has further supposed, that the disciples had it in their intention to compare the discordant accounts of the women and reduce them to order; when, however, the resuscitated Jesus himself appeared in the midst of them, they neglected this, because they now no longer founded their faith on the assertions of the women, but on the appearances which they had themselves witnessed: but the more the information of the women ^{P.815} fell into the background, the less conceivable is it, how in the sequel each could so obstinately cling to what this or that woman had chanced first to communicate to him.

If then the plan of incorporation will not lead to the desired end, we must try that of selection, and inquire whether we must not adhere to one of the four accounts, as pre-eminently apostolic, and by this rectify the others; in which inquiry here as elsewhere, from the essential equality of the external evidence, only the internal character of the separate narratives can decide.

From the number of those accounts concerning the first intelligence of the resurrection of Jesus which have any claim to the rank of autoptical testimonies, modern criticism has excluded that of the first gospel; and we cannot, as in other instances, complain of this disfavour as an injustice. For in many respects the narrative of the first gospel here betrays itself to have been carried a step further in traditional development than that of the other Gospels. First, that the miraculous opening of the grave is seen by the women-if indeed Matthew intends to say this-could scarcely, had it really been the case, have been so entirely lost from remembrance as it is in the other evangelists, but might very well be formed gradually in tradition; further, that the rolling away of the stone was effected by the angel, evidently rests only on the combination of one who did not know auy better means of answering the question, how the great stone was removed from the grave, and the guards taken out of the way, than touse for both purposes the angel presented to him in the current narratives of the appearance witnessed by the women; to which he added the earthquake as a further embellishment of the scene. But besides this, there is in the narrative of Matthew yet another trait, which has any thing but an historical aspect. After the angel has already announced the resurrection of Jesus to the women, and charged them to deliver to the disciples the message that they should go into Galilee, where they would see the risen one: Jesus himself meets them and repeats the message which they are to deliver to the disciples. This is a singular superfluity. Jesus had nothing to add to the purport of the message which the angel had given to the women: hence he could only wish to confirm it and render it more authentic. But to the women it needed no further confirmation, for they were already filled with great joy by the tidings of the angel, and thus were believing; while for the disciples even that confirmation did not suffice, forthey remained incredulous even to the account of those who assured them that they had seen Jesus, until they had seen him themselves. Thus it appears that two different narrations, as to the first news of the resurrection, have here become entangled with each other; the one representing angels, the other, Jesus himself, as the medium by which ^{P.816} the women were informed of the event and sent with a message to the disciples: the latter evidently the later tradition.

The pre-eminence in originality denied to the narrative of Matthew, is here as elsewhere awarded to that of John. Traits so characteristic, says L cke, as that on the visit to the grave the other disciple went faster than Peter and came to the spot before him, attest the authenticity of the gospel even to the most sceptical. But the matter has yet another aspect. It has been already remarked, at an earlier point of our inquiry, that this particular belongs to the effort, which the fourth gospel exhibits in a peculiar manner, to place John above Peter. We may now discuss the point with more particularity, by comparing the account in Luke already mentioned of the visit of Peter to the grave, with the account in the fourth Gospel of the visit of the two disciples. According to Luke (xxiv. 12), Peter runs to the grave: according to John (xx.3ff.), Peter and the favourite disciple go together, but so that the latter runs faster, and comes first to the grave. In the third gospel, Peter stoops don, looks into the sepulchre, and sees the linen clothes: in the fourth, John does this, and sees the same. In the third gospel, nothing is said of an entering into the grave: but the fourth makes Peter enter first, and look more closely at the linen clothes, then John also, and the latter with the result that he begins to believe in the resurrection of Jesus. That in these two narratives we have one and the same incident, has been above shown probable from their similarity even in the expressions. Thus the only question is: which is the original narrative, the one nearest to the fact? If that of John: then must his name have been gradually lost out of the narrative in the course of tradition, and the visit to the grave ascribed to Peter only; which, since the importance of Peter threw all others into the shade, is easily conceivable. We might rest contented with this conclusion, regarding these two parallel narratives by themselves: but in connection with the whole suspicious position which the furth gospel assigns to John in relation to Peter, the contrary relation of the two narratives must here again be held the more probable. As in the entrance into the high priest's palace, so in the visit to the grave of Jesus, only in the fourth gospel is John given as a companion to Peter; as in the former case it is he who gains an entrance for Peter, so in the latter he runs before him and casts the first glance into the grave, a circumstance which is repeatedly mentioned. That afterwards Peter is the first to enter into the grave, is only an apparent advantage, which is allowed him out of deference to the common idea of his position: for after him John also enters, and with a result of which Peter could not boast, namely, that he believed in the resurrection of Jesus, and thus was the first who attained to that degree of faith. From this effort to make John ^{P.817} the first-born among the believers in the resurrection of Jesus, may also be explained the divergency, that according to the narrative of the fourth gospel alone, Mary Magdalene hastens back to the two disciples before she has yet seen an angel. For had she beforehand witnessed an angelic appearance, which she would not any more than the women in Matthew have mistrusted, she would have been the first believer, and would have won the precedence of John in this respect: but this is avoided by representing her as coming to the two disciples immediately after perceiving the emptiness of the grave, and under the disquietude excited in her by this circumstance. This presupposition serves also to explain why the fourth gospel makes the women returning from the grave go, not to the disciples in general, but only to Peter and John. As, namely, the intelligence which, according to the original narrative, was brought to all the disciples, occasioned, according to Luke, only Peter to go to the grave, and as moreover, accrding to Mark (v. 7), the message of the women was destined more especially for Peter: the idea might easily be formed, that the news came to this disciple alone, with whom the object of the fourth evangelist would then require that he should associate John. Only after the two disciples had come to the grave, and his John had attained faith, could the author of the fourth gospel introduce the appearances of the angel and of Jesus himself, which were said to have been granted to the women. That instead of these collectively he names only Mary Magdalene-although, as has been earlier remarked, he xx. 2. presupposes at least a subsequent meeting between her and other women-this might certainly, under other circumstances, be regarded as the original representation, so the synoptic one arose by a process of generalization: but it might just as well be the case that the other women, being less known, were eclipsed by Mary Magdalene. The description of the scene between her and Jesus, with the non-recognition of him at the first moment etc, certainly does honour to the ingenuity and pathos of the author; but here also there is an unhistorical superfluity similar to that in Matthew. For here the angels have not, as in the other evangelists, to announce the resurrection to Mary Magdalene, and to make a disclosure to her; but they merely ask her, Why weepest you? whereupon she complains to them of the disappearance of the body of Jesus, but, without waiting for any further explanation, turns round and sees Jesus standing. Thus as in Matthew the appearance of Jesus, since it is not represented as the principal and effective one, is a superfluous addition to that of the angel: so here, the angelic appearance is an idle, ostentatious introduction to the appearance of Jesus.

If we turn to the third account, that of Mark, to ascertain whether he may not perhaps be the nearest to the fact: we find it so incoherent, and composed of materials so little capable of being fitted together, that such a relation is not to be thought of. After it has ^{P.818} been already narrated that early in the morning of the day succeeding the Sabbath the women came to the grave of Jesus, and were informed by an angel of his resurrection, but out of fear said nothing to any one of the appearance which they had seen (xvi. 1-8): at v. 9, as if nothing had previously been said either of the resurrection or of the time at which it happened, the narrator proceeds: Now when Jesus was risen early the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene out of whom he had cast seven devils. This statement also does not suit the foregoing narrative, because this is not formed on the supposition of an appearance specially intended for Mary Magdalene: on the contrary, as she is said to be informed by an angel of the resurrection of Jesus, together with two other women, Jesus could not have appeared to her beforehand; while afterwards, on her way to the city, she was in company with the other women, wen according to Matthew they were all actually met by Jesus. Whether on this account we are to regard the end of the Gospel of Mark, from v. 9, as a later addition, is indeed doubtful, from the want of decisive critical grounds, and still more from the abruptness of the conclusion "for they were afraid", which the gospel would then present; but in any case we have here a narrative which the author, without any clear idea of the state of the fact and the succession of the events, hastily compiled out of the heterogeneous elements of the current legend, which he knew not how to manage.

In the narrative of Luke there would be no special difficulty: but it has a suspicious element in common with the others, namely, the angelic appearance, and moreover, in a twofold form. What had the angels to do in this scene? Matthew tells us: to roll away the stone from the grave; on which it has already been remarked by Celsus, that according to the orthodox presupposition, the Son of God could find no such aid necessary for this purpose: he might indeed find it suitable and becoming. In Mark and Luke the angels appear more as having to impart information and commissions to the women: but as, according to Matthew and John, Jesus himself appeared immediately after, and repeated those commissions, the delivery of them by angels was superfluous. Hence, nothing remains but to say: the angels belonged to the embellishment of the great scene, as celestial attendants who had to open to the Messiah the door by which he meant to issue forth; as a guard of honour on the spot from which the once dead had ust departed with recovered life. But here occurs the question: does this species of pomp exist in the real court of God, or only in the childish conception formed of it by antiquity?

^{P.819} Hence commentators have laboured in various ways to transform the angels in the story of the resurrection into natural appearances. Setting out from the account qf the first gospel in which the angel is said to have a form or countenance like lightning, and to effect the rolling away of the stone and the prostration of the guards, while an earthquake is connected with his appearance: it no longer lay far out of the way to think of a flash of lightning, which struck the stone with force sufficient to shatter it, and cast the guards to the earth; or of an earthquake which, accompanied by flames bursting out of the ground, produced the same effect; in which case the flames and the overwhelming force of the phenomenon were taken by the watching soldiers for an angel. But partly the circumstance that the angel seated himself on the stone after it had been rolled away, partly, and still more decidedly, the statement that he spoke to the women, renders this hypothesis insufficient. Hence an effort has been made to complete it by the supposition that the sublime thought, "Jesus is risen" which on the discovery that the grave was empty began to arise in the women and gradually to subdue their first doubts, was ascribed by them, after the oriental mode of thought and language, to an angel.

But how comes it that in all the Gospels the angels are represented as clothed in white, shining garments? Is that too an oriental figure of speech? The oriental may indeed describe a good thought which occurs to him as being whispered to him by an angel: but to depict the clothing and aspect of this angel, passes the bounds of the merely figurative even among orientals. In the description of the first gospel the supposed lightning might be called to aid, in the conjecture that the effect thereby produced on the senses of the women was ascribed by them to an angel, which, with reference to that lightning, they depicted as one clothed in shining garments. But according to the other evangelists, the rolling away of he stone, ex hypothesi by the lightning, was not seen by the women; on the contrary, when they went or looked into the grave, the white forms appeared to them in a perfectly tranquil position. According to this, it must have been something within the grave which suggested to them the idea of white-robed angels. Now in the grave, according to Luke and John, there lay the white linen clothes in which the body of Jesus had been wrapt: these, which were recognised simply as such by the more composed and courageous men, might, it is said, by timid and excited women, in the dark grave and by the deceptive morning twilight, be easily mistaken for angels. But how should the women, who must have expected to find in the grave a corpse enveloped in white, be prompted by the sight of these clothes to a thought so strange, ^{P.820} and which then lay so remote from their anticipations, as that they might be an angel who would announce to them the resurrection of their deceased master? It has been thought in another quarter quite superfluous here to advance so many ingenious conjectures as to what the angels may have been, since, among the four narratives, two expressly tell us what they were: namely, natural men, Mark calling his angel a young man, veavimov, Luke his two angels, two men, dvSpa 6vo. Whom then are we to suppose these men to have been? Here again a door is opened for the supposition of secret colleagues of Jesus, who must have been unknown even to the two disciples: these men seen at the grave may have been the same who met him in the so-called Transfiguration, perhaps Essenes, white being worn by this sect, or whatever else of the like conjectures the antiquated pragmatism of a Bahrdt or Ven-turini has to offer. Or will it rather be chosen to suppose a purely accidental meeting? or, lastly, with Paulus, to leave the mater in an obscurity, from the midst of which, so soon as it is endeavoured to clear it up by definite thoughts, the two forms of the secret colleagues invariably present themselves? A correct discernment will here also rather recognise the forms of the Jewish popular conception, by which the primitive Christian tradition held it necessary to glorify the resurrection of its Messiah; a recognition, which at once solves in the most simple manner the differences in the number and modes of appearance of those celestial beings, Herewith, however, it is at the same time acknowledged that we can succeed no better with the plan of selection than with that of incorporation; but must rather confess, that in all the Gospel accounts of these first tidings of the resurrection, we have before us nothing more than traditional reports.

The most important of all the differences in the story of the resurrection turns upon the question, what locality did Jesus design to be the chief theatre of his appearances after the resurrection? The two first Gospels make Jesus, before his death, when retiring to the Mount of Olives, utter this promise to his disciples: After I am risen again I will go before you into Galilee (Matt. xxvi. 32; Mark xiv. 28.); the same assurance is given to the women ^{P.821} by the angels on the morning of the resurrection, with the addition: there shall you see him (Matt, xxviii. 7; Mark xvi. 7.); and in Matthew, besides all this, Jesus in his own person commissions the women to say to the disciples: that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me (xxviii. 10.). In Matthew the journey of the disciples into Galilee, with the appearance of Jesus which they there witnessed (the only one to the disciples recorded by this evangelist), is actually narrated in the sequel. Mark, after describing the amazement into which the women were thrown by the angelic appearance,. breaks off in the enigmatical manner already mentioned, and appends some appearances of Jesus, which, as the first happens immediately after the resurrection, and therefore necessarily in Jerusalem, and no change of place is mentioned before the succeeding ones, while the earlier direction to go into Galilee is lost sigkt of, must all be regarded as appearances in and around Jerusalem. John knows nthing of a direction to the disciples to go into Galilee, and makes Jesus show himself to the disciples on the evening of the day of resurrection, and again eight days after, in Jerusalem; the concluding chapter, however, which forms an appendix to his gospel, describes an appearance by the Sea of Galilee. In Luke, on the other hand, not only is there no trace of an appearance in Galilee, Jerusalem with its environs being made the sole theatre of the appearances of Christ which this gospel relates; but there is also put into the mouth of Jesus when, on the evening after the resurrection, he appears to the assembled disciples in Jerusalem, the injunction: tarry you in the city of Jerusalem (in the Acts i. 4, more definitely expressed by the negative, that they should not depart from Jerusalem), until you be endued with power from on high (xxiv. 49.). Here two questions inevitably arise: 1st, how can Jesus have directed the disciples to journey into Galilee, and yet at the same time have commanded them to remain in Jerusalem until Pentecost? and 2ndly, how could he refer them to a promised appearance in Galilee, when he had the intention of showing himself to them that very day in and near Jerusalem?

The first contradiction which presents itself more immediately between Matthew and Luke, has by no one been more pointedly exhibited than by the Wolfenb ttel Fragmentist. If, he writes, it be true, as Luke says, that Jesus appeared to his disciples in Jerusalem on the day of his resurrection, and commanded them to remain there, and not to depart thence until Pentecost: then is it false that he commanded them within the same period to journey into Galilee, that he might appear to them there, and vice versa. The harmonists indeed affected to regard this objection as unimportant, and only remarked briefly, that the injunction to remain in a city was not equivalent to an arrest, and did not exclude walks and excursions in the neighbourhood; and that Jesus merely forbade ^{P.822} the removal of residence from Jerusalem, and the going out into all the world to preach the gospel, before the given term should arrive. But the journey from Jerusalem to Galilee is not a mere walk, but the longest expedition which the Jew could make within the limits of his own country; as little was it an excursion for the apostles, but rather a return to their home: while what Jesus intended to prohibit to the disciples in that injunction cannot have been the going out into all the world to preach the gospel, since they would have no impulse to do this before the outpouring of the Spirit; nor can it have been the removal of residence from Jerusalem, since they were there only as strangers, visiting at the feast: rather Jesus must have meant to deter them from that very journey which it was the most natural for them to take, i.e. from the return to their native province Galilee, after the expiration of the feast days. Besides this - and even Michaclis confesses himself obliged to wonder here - if Luke des not mean by that prohibition of Jesus to exclude the journey into Galilee, why is it that he alludes to this by no single word? and in like manner, if Matthew knew that his direction to go into Galilee was consistent with the command to remain in the metropolis, why has he omitted the latter, together with the appearances in Jerusalem? This is certainly a plain proof that the accounts of the two evangelists are based on a different idea as to the theatre on which the risen Jesus appeared.

In this exigency of having to reconcile two contradictory commands given on the same day, the comparison with the Acts presented a welcome help by indicating a distinction of the times. Here, namely, the command of Jesus that the disciples should not leave Jerusalem is placed in his last appearance, forty days after the resurrection, and immediately before the ascension: at the close of the Gospel of Luke it is likewise in the last interview, terminating in the ascension, that the above command is given. Now though from the summary representation of the gospel taken by itself, it must be believed that all occurred on the very day of the resurrection: we nevertheless see, it is said, from the story of the Acts by the same author, that between v. 43 and 44 in the last chapter of his gospel we must interpose the forty days from the resurrection to the ascension. Herewith, then, the apparent contradiction between these two commands vanishes: for one who in the first instance indeed enjoins a journey into Gallee, may very well forty days later, after this journey has been made, and the parties are once more in the metropolis, now forbid any further removal from thence. But as the dread of admitting a contradiction between different New Testament authors is no ground for departing from the natural interpretation of their expressions: so neither can this be justified by the apprehension that the same author may in different writings contradict himself; since if the one were written somewhat later than the other, ^{P.823} the author may in the interim have been on many points otherwise informed, than when he composed his first work. That this was actually the case with Luke in relation to that part of the life of Jesus which followed his resurrection, we shall have reason to be convinced when we come to the history of the ascension: and this conclusion removes all ground for interposing nearly five weeks between the e)fagen, v. 43, and ei)pen autoij, v. 44, in defiance of their obviously immediate connection; at the same time, however, it does away with the possibility of reconciling the opposite commands of Jesus in Matthew and Luke by a distinction of times.

Meanwhile, even admitting that this contradiction might be in some way or other removed, still, even without that express command which Luke mentions, the mere facts as narrated by him and his predecessor and successor, remain irreconcileable with the injunction which Jesus gives to the disciples in Matthew. For, asks the Fragmentist, if the disciples collectively twice saw him, spoke with him, touched him, and ate with him, in Jerusalem; how can it be that they must have had to take the long journey into Galilee in order to see him? The harmonists, it is true, boldly reply: when Jesus causes his disciples to be told that they will see him in Galilee, it is by no means said that they will see him nowhere else, still less that they will not see him in Jerusalem. But, the Fragmentist might rejoin, after his manner: as little as one who says to me, go to Rome, there you shall see the Pope, can mean that the Pope will indeed first come through my present place of residence, so as to be seen by me here but afterwards I must yet go to Rome, in order to see him again there: so little would the angel in Matthew and Mark, if he had had any anticipation of the appearance in Jerusalem on the very same day, have said to the disciples: go into Galilee, there will Jesus show himself to you; but rather: be comforted, you shall yet see him here in Jerusalem before evening. Wherefore the reference to the more remote event, when there was one of the same kind close at hand? wherefore an appointment by means of the women, for the disciples to meet Jesus in Galilee, if the latter foresaw that he should on the same day personally speak with the disciples 1 with reason does the latest criticism insist on what Lessing had previously urged; namely, that no rational person would make an appointment with his friends through a third party for a joyful reunion at a distant place, if he were certain of seeing them repeatedly on the same day in their present locality. If thus the angel and Jesus himself, when they in the moning by means of the women directed the disciples to go into Galilee, cannot yet have known that he would show himself to them on the evening of the same day in and near Jerusalem: he must in the morning have still held the intention of going immediately into Galilee, but in the ^{P.824} course of the day have embraced another purpose. According to Paulus, an indication of such an original intention is found in Luke, in the travelling of Jesus towards Emrnaus, which lay in the direction of Galilee; while the reason for the alteration of plan is supposed by the same expositor, with whom in this instance Olshausen agrees, to have been the unbelief of the disciples, as more particularly manifested to Jesus on occasion of the journey to Emmaus. How so erroneous a calculation on the part of Jesus can consist with the orthodox view of his person, is Olshausen's care; but even regarding him in a purely human character, there appears no sufficient reason for such a change of mind. Especially after Jesus had been recognised by the two disciples going to Emmaus, he might be certain that the testimony of the men would so accredit the assertion of the women, as to lead the disciples with at least a glimmering ray of faith and hope into Galilee. But in general, if a change of mind and a diversity of lan in Jesus before and after that change, really existed: why does no one evangelist take any notice of such a retractation? Why does Luke speak as if he knew nothing of the original plan; Matthew, as if he knew nothing of a subsequent alteration; John, as if the principal theatre of the appearances of the risen Jesus had been Jerusalem, and he had only by way of supplement at length showed himself in Galilee? Lastly, why does Mark speak so as to make it evident that, having gathered the original direction to go into Galilee from Matthew, and the succeeding appearances in Jerusalem and its environs from Luke or elsewhere, he was unable, nor did he even make the attempt, in any way to reconcile them; but placed them together as he found them, rough hewn and contradictory.

According to this we must agree with the latest criticism of the Gospel of Matthew, in acknowledging the contradiction between it and the rest in relation to the locality of the appearances of Jesus after the resurrection: but, it must be asked, can we also approve the verdict of this criticism when it at once renounces the representation of the first gospel in favour of that of the other evangelists. If, setting aside all presuppositions as to the apostolic origin of this or that gospel, we put the question: which of the two divergent accounts is the best adapted to be regarded as a traditional modilication and development of the other? we can here refer, not merely to the general nature of the accounts, but also to a single point at which the two touch each other in a characteristic manner. This is the address of the angel to the women, in which according to all the Synoptics Galilee is mentioned, but in a different way. In Matthew the angel, as has been already noticed, says of Jesus: "he goes before you into Galilee, see, I have told you," (xxviii. 7.) In Mark he says the same, ^{P.825} except that instead of the latter addition, by which in Matthew the angel seeks to impress his own words on the women, he has the expression: as he said to you, tt-aBus eimv vjilv, with which he refers to the earlier prediction of Jesus concerning this circumstance. If we first compare these two representations: the confirmatory I have told you, el-rrov vpiv, might easily appear superfluous and nugatory; while on the other hand the reference to the earlier prediction of Jesus by he said, elnev, might seem more appropriate, and on this the conjecture might be founded that perhaps Mark has here the correct and original phrase, Matthew a variation not unaccompanied by a misunderstanding. But if we include the account of Luke in the comparison, we find here, as in Mark, the words: "remember how he said to you when he was still in Galilee" a reference to an earlier prediction of Jesus, not however referring to Galilee, but delivered in Galilee. Here he question occurs: is it more probable that Galilee, from being the designation of the locality in which the prophecy of the resurrection was uttered, should at a later period be erroneously converted into a designation of the locality where the risen one would appear; or the contrary? In order to decide this, we must ascertain in which of the two positions the mention of Galilee is the more intrinsically suited to the context. Now that on the announcement of the resurrection it was an important point whether and where the risen Jesus was to be seen, is self evident; it was of less moment, in referring to an earlier prediction, to specify where this prediction was uttered. Hence from this comparison of the passages it might already be held more probable that it was originally said, the angels directed the disciples to go into Galilee, there to see the risen one (Matth.); but afterwards, when the narratives of the appearances of Jesus in Judea had gradually supplanted those in Galilee, a different turn was given to the mention of Galilee in the address of the angel, so as to make it imply that already in Galilee Jesus had predicted his resurrection (Luke); whereupon Mark appears to have taken a middle course, since he with Luke refers the drtov (changed into elnev) to Jesus, but with Matthew retains Galilee as the theatre, not of the earlier prediction of Jesus, but of the coming appearance. If we next take into consideration the general character of the two narratives and the nature of the case, there exist the same objections to the supposition that Jesus after his resurrection appeared several times to his disciples in and near Jerusalem, but that the remembrance of this fact was lost, and the same arguments in favour of the opposite supposition, as we have respectively applied to the analogous alternatives in relation to the various journeys to the feasts and Judean residences of Jesus.

That the appearances of the risen Jesus in Jerusalem should undesignedly, that is, by a total ^{P.826} obliteration of them from the minds of individuals, have sunk into oblivion in Galilee, where according to this presupposition the tradition of Matthew was formed, is difficult to conceive, both from the pre-eminent importance of these appearances, which, as for example those before the assembled eleven and before Thomas, involved the surest attestations of the reality of his resurrection, and also from the organizing influence of the community in Jerusalem; while that the Judean appearances of Jesus were indeed known in Galilee, but intentionally suppressed by the author of the first gospel, in order to preserve the honour for his province alone, would presuppose an exclusivism, an opposition of the Galilean Christians to the Church at Jerusalem, of which we have not the slightest historical trace. The other contrary possibility, that perhaps originally only Galilean appearances of the risen Jesus were known, but that tradition gradu-, ally added appearances in Judea and Jerusalem, and that at length thesecompletely supplanted the former, may on many grounds be heightened into a probability. First, as respects the time, the tidings of the resurrection of Jesus were the more striking, the more immediately his appearances followed on his burial and resurrection: if however he first appeared in Galilee, such an immediate sequence of the events could not exist; further, it was a natural idea that the resurrection of Jesus must have been attested by appearances in the place where he died; lastly, the objection that Jesus after his pretended resurrection only appeared to his own friends, and in a corner of Galilee, was in some degree repelled when it could be alleged that on the contrary, he walked as one arisen froin the dead in the metropolis, in the midst of his furious enemies, though indeed he was neither to be taken nor seen by them. But when once several appearances of Jesus were laid in Judea and Jerusalem, the appearances in Galilee lost their importance, and might thenceforth either be appended in a suborinate position, as in the fourth gospel, or even be entirely overlooked, as in the third. This result, drawn from the possible mode of legendary formation, not being opposed, as in the inquiry concerning the theatre of the ministry of the living Jesus, by a contrary one drawn from the circumstances and designs of Jesus: we may, in contradiction to the criticism of the day, decide in favour of the first gospel, whose account of the appearance of the risen Jesus recommends itself as the more simple and free from difficulty.

As regards the appearances of the risen Jesus taken singly, the first gospel has two: one on the morning of the resurrection to the women (xxviii. 9 f.), and one, the time of which is undetermined, before the disciples in Galilee (xxviii. 16 f.). Mark, in what is indeed a merely summary statement, enumerates three: the first, to ^{P.827} Mary Magdalene on the morning of the resurrection (xvi. 9 f.); a second, to two disciples going into the country (xvi. 12); and a third, to the eleven as they sat at meat, doubtless in Jerusalem (xvi. 14.). Luke narrates only two appearances: that before the disciples going to Emmaus on the day of the resurrection (xxiv. 13 fF), and the last, before the eleven and other disciples in Jerusalem, according to xxiv.36ff., on the evening of the same day, according to the Acts i. 4 if. forty days later; but when the travellers to Emmaus, on rejoining the apostles, are greeted by them, before Jesus has appeared in the midst of them, with the information: the Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon (xxiv. 34.); here a third appearance is presupposed, which was granted to Peter alone. John has four such appearances: the first to Mary Magdalene at the grave (xx. 14 fF.); the second to the disciples when the doors were shut (xx. 19 fF.); the third, likewise in Jerusalem, eight days later, when Thomas was covinced (xx. 26 fF.); the fourth, of which the time is unspecified, at the Galilean sea (xxi.). But here we have also to take into consideration a statement of the apostle Paul, who 1 Cor. xv.5ff., if we deduct the appearance of Christ granted to himself, enumerates five appearances after the resurrection, without however giving any precise description of them: one to Cephas; one to the twelve; one before more than five hundred brethren at once; one to James; and lastly, one before all the apostles.

Now how shall we make an orderly arrangement of these various appearances? The right of priority is, in John, and still more expressly in Mark, claimed for that to Mary Magdalene. The second must have been the meeting of Jesus with the women returning from the grave, in Matthew; but as Mary Magdalene was likewise among these, and there is no indication that she had previously seen Jesus, these two appearances cannot be regarded as distinct, but rather as one under two different garbs. Paul, who in the above named passage speaks as if he meant to enumerate all the appearances of the resuscitated Christ, of which he knew, omits the one in question; but it may perhaps bo said in explanation of this, that he did not choose to adduce the testimony of women. As the order in which he enumerates his Christophanies, to judge from the succession of el-a and tTreira and the conclusion with eaarov, appears to be the order of time;. according to him tne appearance before Cephas was the first that happened beore a man. This would agree well with the representation of Luke, in which the journeyers to Emmaus, on rejoining the disciples in Jerusalem, are met by them with the information that Jesus is really arisen and has appeared to Simon, which might possibly be the case before his interview with those two disciples. As the next appearance, however, according to Luke, we must number that last named, which Paul would not mention, perhaps because he chose to adduce only those which were seen by apostles, and from among the rest only those which hap- ^{P.828} pened before great masses of witnesses, or more probably, because it was unknown to him. Mark xvi. 12 f. evidently refers to the same appearance; the contradiction, that while in Luke the assembled disciples meet those coming from Emmaus with the believing exclamation: the Lord is risen etc, in Mark the disciples are said to have remained incredulous even to the account of those two witnesses, probably proceeds from nothing more than an exaggeration of Mark, who will not lose his hold of the contrast between the most convincing appearances of Jesus and the obstinate unbelief of the disciples. The appearance on the way to Emmaus is in Luke immediately followed by that in the assembly of the eleven and others. This is generally held to be identical with the appearance before the twelve mentioned by Paul, and with that which John narrates when Jesus on the evening after the resurrection entered while the doors were closed among the disciples, out of whose number, however, Thomas was wanting. It is not fair to urge in opposition to this identification the eleven of Luke, as at variance with the statement of John that only ten apostles were present, any more than the twelve of Paul, from which number Judas at least must be deducted; moreover the similar manner in which the two evangelists describe the entrance of Jesus by "He stood among them" (e(sth e)n mesh au)twn) and "He stood in the midst" (e(sth ei)j to meson) and the greeting cited in both instances: "Peace be with you" ei)rhnh umin, appear to indicate the identity of the two appearances; nevertheless, if we consider that the handling of the body of Jesus, which in John first happens eight days later, and the eating of the broiled fish, which John assigns to the still later appearance in Galilee, are connected by Luke with that scene in Jerusalem on the day of the resurrection: it is evident that either the third evangelist has here compressed several incidents into one, or the fourth has divided one into several whichever alternative may be chosen.

This appearance before the apostles in Jerusalem however, as hs been above remarked, according to Matthew could not have happened, since this evangelist makes the eleven journey to Galilee in order to see Jesus. Mark, and Luke in his gospel, annex the ascension to this appearance, and thus exclude all subsequent ones. As the next appearance, the apostle Paul has that before five hundred brethren, which is generally regarded as the same with the one which Matthew places on a mountain in Galilee; but at this only the eleven are stated to have been present, and moreover the discourse of Jesus on the occasion, consisting principally of official instructions, appears more suited to this narrow circle. Paul next adduces an appearance to James, of which there is also an apocryphal account, in the Hebrew Gospel of Jerome, according to which however it must have been the first of all. Here there would be ^{P.829} space for that appearance in which, according to the fourth gospel eight days after the resurrection of Jesus, Thomas was convinced; wherewith Paul would closely agree, if his expression, to all the apostles, toij apostoloij pasin (v. 7), which he uses in relation to this appearance, were really to be understood of a full assembly of the eleven in distinction from the earlier one, when Thomas was not present: which however, as Paul, according to the above presupposition, had described this also as an appearance before the twelve, is impossible; on the contrary, the apostle intends as well by the twelve, as by "all the apostles," the collective body of apostles, (whose proper number was then indeed incomplete by one man,) in opposition to the individuals (Cephas and James) of whom in each case he had just before spoken, as having witnessed a Christophany. If however we were nevertheless to regard the fifth appearance of Jesus according to Paul as identical with the third in John: it would only be the more clearly evident that the fourth of Paul, before the five hundred brethren, cannot have been the one in Galilee recorded by Matthew. For as, in John, the third took place in Jerusalem, the fourth in Galilee: Jesus and the apostles must in that case have gone into Galilee after the first appearances in Jerusalem, and have met on the mountain; then have returned to Jerusalem where Jesus showed himself to Thomas; then again have proceeded into Galilee where the appearance by the sea occurred: and lastly, have once more returned to Jerusalem for the ascension.

In order to avoid this useless journeying backwards and forwards, and yet to be able to combine those two appearances, Olshausen lays the appearance before Thomas in Galilee: an inadmissible violence, since not only is there no mention of a change of place between this and the foregoing, which is by implication represented as happening in Jerusalem, but the place of assembly is in both instances described in the same manner; indeed, the addition, the doors being shut, will not allow the supposition of any other locality than Jerusalem, because in Galilee, where there was less excitement against Jesus from the enmity of the priesthood, there cannot be supposed to have been the same reason for that precaution, in the fear of the Jews. Thus, first where the Judean appearances close with that happening eight days after the resurrection, we should obtain room to insert the Galilean appearances of Matthew and John. But these have the peculiar position, that each claims to be the first, and that of Matthew at the same time the last. By the tenor of his whole narrative, and ^{P.830} expressly by adding, after the statement that the disciples went to a mountain in Galilee, the words: ou( e)tacato au)toij o( Ihsouj "where Jesus had appointed them" Matthew marks this appearance as the one to which Jesus had referred on the morning of the resurrection, first by the angel, and then in his own person: but no one concerts a second meeting in a particular place, leaving the first undetermined: consequently, as an unforeseen earlier meeting is incompatible with the Gospel idea of Jesus, that meeting, since it was the concerted one, was also the first in Galilee. If thus the appearance at the sea of Tiberias in John, cannot possibly be placed before that on the mountain in Matthew: so the latter will just as little suffer the other to follow it, since it is a formal leave-taking of Jesus from his disciples. Moreover, it would be more than ever difficult to understand how the appearance in John could be made out, in accordance with the evangelist's own statement, to be the "third" of the risen Christ before his disciples (xxi. 14), if that of the first gospel must also be supposed to precede it. Meanwhile, even allowing the priority to the former, this numerical notice of John remains sufficiently perplexing. We might, it is true, deduct the appearances before the women, because, though John himself narrates that to Mary Magdalene, he does not take it into his account; but if we number that to Cephas as the first, and that on the way to Emmaus as the second: then this Galilean appearance, as the third, would fall between the above and that before the eleven on the evening of the resurrection, which would presuppose a rapidity of locomotion totally impossible; indeed, if that appearance before the assembled eleven is the same with the one at which, according to John, Thomas was absent, the third appearance of John would fall before his first. Perhaps, however, when we consider the expression: "showed himself to his Disciples" we ought to understand that John only numbers such appearances as happened before several disciples at once, so that those before Peter and James should be deducted. In that case, we must number as the first, the appearance to the two disciples going to Emmaus; as the second, that before the assembled eleven on the evening of the resurrection: and thus in the eight days between this and the one before Thomas, the journey into Galilee would fall somewhat more conveniently, but also the third appearance of John would fall before his second. Perhaps, then, the author of the fourth gospel held the two disciples whom Jesus met on the way to Emmaus too small a number, to entitle this Christophany to rank as "He appeared to the disciples" (fanerousqai toij maqhtaij). On this supposition the entrance of Jesus among the assembled disciples in the evening would be the first appearance; hereupon the five hundred brethren to whom Jesus showed himself at once would surely be numerous enough to be taken into the reckoning: so that the Galilean apperance of John, that is, his third, must be inserted after ^{P.831} this, but then it would still fall before that to Thomas and all the apostles, which John enumerates as the second. Perhaps, however, the appearance of Jesus before the five hundred is to be placed later, so that after that entrance of Jesus among the assembled disciples would first follow the scene with Thomas, after this the appearance at the sea of Galilee, and only then the sight of Jesus granted to the five hundred. But if the appearance before Thomas is to be reckoned the same with the fifth in Paul's enumeration, this apostle must have reversed the order of his two last appearances, a transposition for which there was no reason: on the contrary, it would have been more natural to place last the appearance before the five hundred brethren, as the most important.

Thus nothing remains but to say: John understood under the word maqhtaij merely a greater or a smaller assembly of the apostles; but among the five hundred there was no apostle; hence he omitted these also, and thus correctly numbered the appearance at the sea of Tiberias as the third: if indeed this could have happened before the one on the mountain in Galilee, which, we have seen, to be inconceivable. The above expedients resorted to by way of accommodation are in part ridiculous enough: but Kern has lately surpassed them all by a suggestion which he advances with great confidence, namely, that John here intends to number, not the appearances, but the days on which appearances took place, so that "this is now the third time that Jesus showed himself to the disciples" means: now had Jesus already appeared to his disciples on three separate days: namely, four times on the day of the resurrection; then once eight days after; and now again some days laer. Renouncing such expedients, nothing remains but to acknowledge that the fourth evangelist numbers only those appearances of Jesus to his disciples, which he had himself narrated; and the reason of this can scarcely have been that the rest, from some cause or other, appeared to him less important, but rather that he knew nothing of them. And again, Matthew with his last Galilean appearance, can have known nothing of the two in Jerusalem recorded by John; for if in the first of these ten apostles had been convinced of the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, and in the second Thomas also: it could not have been that at that later appearance on the mountain in Galilee some of the eleven (for only these are represented by Matthew as going there) still doubted. Lastly, if Jesus here delivered to his disciples the final command to go into all the world teaching and baptizing, and gave them the promise to be with them until the end of the existing age, which is manifestly the ton of one who is taking leave: he cannot subsequently, as is narrated in the introduction to the Acts, have communicated to them his last commands and taken leave of them at Jerusalem. According to the conclusion of the Gospel of ^{P.832} Luke, this farewell departure on the contrary occurs much earlier than can be supposed in accordance with Matthew; and in the close of the Gospel of Mark, where Jesus is represented as parting from his disciples in Jerusalem on the very day of his resurrection, partly the same words are put into his mouth as, according to Matthew, are spoken in Galilee, and in any case later than on the day of the resurrection. The fact, that the two books of the same author, Luke, diverge so widely from each other in relation to the time during which Jesus appeared to his disciples after his resurrection, that one determines this time to have been a single day, the other, forty days, cannot be taken into more particular consideration until we have reached a further point of our inquiry.

Thus the various Gospel writers only agree as to a few of the appearances of Jesus after his resurrection; the designation of the locality in one excludes the appearances narrated by the rest: the determination of time in another leaves no space for the narratives of his fellow-evangelists; the enumeration of a third is given without any regard to the events reported by his predecessors; lastly, among several appearances recounted by various narrators, each claims to be the last, and yet has nothing in common with the others. Hence nothing but wilful blindness can prevent the perception that no one of the narrators knew and presupposed what another records; that each again had heard a different account of the matter; and that consequently at an early period, there were current only uncertain and very varied reports concerning the appearances of the risen Jesus.

This conclusion, however, does not shake the passage in the first Epistle to the Corinthians which, (it being undoubtedly genuine,) was written about the year 59 after Christ, consequently not 30 years after his resurrection. On this authority we must believe that many members of the primitive Church who were yet living at the time when this epistle was written, especially the apostles, were convinced that they had witnessed appearances of the risen Christ. Whether this involves the admission that some objective reality lay at the foundation of these appearances, will hereafter become the subject of inquiry; concerning the present point, the divergencies of the evangelists, especially in relation to the locality, the passage of Paul offers nothing decisive, since he has given no particular description of any of those appearances.

But how are we to represent to ourselves this continuation of the life of Jesus after the resurrection, and especially the nature of ^{P.833} his body in this period? In order to answer this question we must once more cast a glance over the separate narratives of his appearances when risen.

According to Matthew, Jesus on the morning of the resurrection meets (aphnthsen) the women as they are hastening back from the grave; they recognize him, embrace his feet in sign of veneration, and he speaks to them. At the second interview on the Galilean mountain the disciples see him, but some still doubt, and here also Jesus speaks to them. of the manner in which he came and went, we have here no precise information.

In Luke, Jesus joins the two disciples who are on their way from Jerusalem to the neighbouring village of Emmaus (eggisaj suneporeueto autoij) they do not recognize him on the way, a circumstance which Luke attributes to a subjective hindrance produced in them by a higher influence, and only Mark, who compresses this event into few words, to an objective alteration of his form (e)n e(tera morfh). On the way Jesus converses with the two disciples, after their arrival in the village complies with their invitation to accompany them to their lodging, sits down to table with them, and proceeds according to his wont to break and distribute bread. In this moment the miraculous spell is withdrawn from the eyes of the disciples, and they know him: but in the same moment he becomes invisible to them. Just as suddenly as he here vanished, he appears to have shown himself immediately after in the assembly of the disciples, whenit is said that he all at once stood in the midst of them, and they, terrified at the sight, supposed that they saw a spirit. To dispel this alarming idea, Jesus showed them his hands and feet, and invited them to touch him, that by feeling his flesh and bones they might convince themselves that he was no spectre; he also caused a piece of broiled fish and of honeycomb to be brought to him, and ate it in their presence. The appearance to Simon is in Luke described by the expression w)fqh. Paul in the first epistle to the Corinthians uses the same verb for all the Christophanies there enumerated, and Luke in the Acts comprises all the appearances of the risen Jesus during the forty days under the expressions "was seen" optanomenoj (i. 3.) and "appeared to" emfanh genesqai (x. 40.). In the same manner Mark describes the appearance to Mary Magdalene by e)fanh, and those to the disciples on the way to Emmaus and to the eleven by e)fanerwqh. John describes the appearance at the sea of Tiberias by e)fanerwsen e(auton, and to all the Christophanies narrated by him he applies the word e)fanerwqh. Mark and Luke add, as the close of the earthly life of the risen Jesus, that he was taken away from before the eyes of the disciples, and (by a cloud, according to Acts i. 9.) carried up to heaven.