| 126. Relation of the Fourth Gospel to the Events in Gethsemane - the Farewell Discourses. | ||||
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. | ||||