| 129. The Denial of Peter. | ||||
The Two First Evangelists State, That at the moment in which Jesus was led away from the garden, all the disciples forsook him and fled; but in their accounts, as well as in those of Luke and John, Peter is said to have followed him at a distance, and to have obtained admission with the escort into the court of the high priest's palace: while, according to the 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. | ||||