Delphi Complete Works of George Eliot (Illustrated) (831 page)

^*
Iken, Diss. philol. theol, vol. 2, p.
436 ff.

^†
Vid. Paulus, exeg. Handb. 3, a, S. 486 ff.

^‡
Michaelis, Anm. zu Joh. 13
.

^§
Sieffert, ut sup.; Has; L. J., § 124; De Wette, exeg. Handb. I, 3, s. 149 ff; Theile, zur Biographie Jesu, § 31.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 Sauhedrim 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 synoptical representation of the meal as a paschal one, is a later error, since in the remaining narrative of the synoptists 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
h
m
e
r
a
m
e
g
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h
of the Feast of Tabernacles (John vii. 44 1.),
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 alter the passover (Acts xii.
2
f.). In proof that the crucifixion of Jesus might take place on the feast of the 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 [
Heb. letters
]
‘rb pskh
, i.e. the evening before the passover.|| It would be another

^*
Theile, in Winer’s Krit. Journal, 2, 5. 157 ff; Sieffert and Lücke, ut sup.

^†
Pesachin f. lxv. 2, ap. Lighifoot, p.
654: Paschate primo tenetur quispiam ad pernoctatione.
Gloss.:
Paschatizans tenetur ad pernoctandum in Hierosolyma nocte prima.
On the other hand, Tosaphoth ad tr. Pesachin 8:
In Paschate Aegyptiaco dicitur: nemo exeat — usque ad mane. Sed sic non fuit in sequentibus generationibus, — quibus comedebalur id uno loco et pernoctabant in alio.
Comp. Schneckenburger, Beiträge, s. 9
.

^‡
Tract. Sanhedr. f. lxxxix. I, ap.
Schöttgen, i. p. 221 ; comp. Paulus, ut sup. s. 492.

^§
Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 763 f.; comp. 755; Lücke, 2, s. 614.

^||
Sanhedr. f. xliii. 1, ap. Schõttgen, ii. p. 700.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 day earlier.† 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 synoptists, and consequently all those writers who have preserved to us the common evangelical tradition, agree in such an error,§ may perhaps be removed by the observation, that just as generally as in the Judæo-Christian communities, in which the evangelical 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 synoptical 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 fulfilment of the words
Not a bone
^*
Ueber die ursprüngliche Bedeutung des Passahfestes u. s. w., Tübinger, Zeitschrift f. Theol. 1832, I, s. 90 ff.

^†
Ut sup. s. 167 ff.

^‡
Sieffert, ut sup. s. 144 ff.; Lücke, s. 628 ff
.;
Theile, zur Biogr. Jesu, § 31 ; Dc Wette, exeg. Handb. I, 3, s. 149 ff
.
; comp. Neander, L. J. Chr., s. 580 ff
.
Anm.

^§
Fritzsche, in Matth., p. 763; Kern, über den Urspr. des Ev. Matth. in der Tüb. Zeitschrift, 1834, 2, s. 98.
of him shall be broken
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(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.†

Thus we can conceive a possible cause of error on both sides, and since the internal difficulty of the synoptical 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 irreconcilable contradiction between the respective accounts, without venturing a decision as to which is the correct one.

§ 122. DIVERGENCIES IN RELATION TO THE OCCURRENCES AT THE LAST MEAL OF JESUS.

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 synoptists 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 coming betrayal by Judas is spoken of; and that, during or after the meal, 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 synoptists: but the principal difference is, that while according to the synoptists Jesus instituted the Lord’s supper at this final meal, in John he instead of this washes the disciples’ feet.

The three synoptists 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 Supper; 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

^*
Comp. Suicer, thesaur. 2, s. 613.

^†
Another view as to the cause of the error in the fourth gospel is given in the Probabilia, s. 100 ff.; comp. Weisse, die evang. Gesch. I, s. 446 f. Anm.Olives. Again, Luke introduces some passages which the two first Evangelists either do not give at all, or not in this connexion: 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 synoptists, 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 evangelical 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 another edition of the history 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 synoptists 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 fourth gospel was acquainted with the synoptical 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