340 Verse 2.―For the “robe” Herod’s men put on our Lord, in which He was sent back to Pilate, see Luke 23:11. Evidently Pilate’s soldiers, in the first instance, combined with Herod’s in this indignity, and readjusted the same garment on returning to their own guardroom. It was not merely Herod’s men who engaged in that horseplay, as Frazer represents (cf. cit., iii., p. 190).
341 Verse 5.―Cf. 11:59. He was so portrayed by Correggio in the picture exhibited at the National Gallery, and in the later famous picture in the Dore Gallery.
342 Verse 6.―The Jews disguised from Pilate that the punishment prescribed in Lev. 26:16 was “stoning,” which they had already several times attempted.
343 Verse 7.―As to the alleged blasphemy, cf. 5:18, 8:59, 10:33. Here is their final deliberate judgment of His claims (cf. Matt. 26:65; Mark 14:64; Luke 22:71).
344 Verse 11.―By “he” Caiaphas is meant (11:49 ff.).
345 Verse 13.―Pilate now took his seat, it would seem for the first time. Some would treat ἐκάθιζεν as “seated” ―i.e., “Jesus” ―but the verb is nowhere else used transitively (Westcott, Zahn).
“Gabbatha.” Bishop Lightfoot (p. 143) follows Ewald in taking this, not of a “raised” place, but as connected with a root yielding the idea of mosaic.
346 Verse 14.― “The preparation... the sixth hour.” The expositor, in his note attached to this verse, leaves really very little to add beyond recording that Alford, as Bengel, has followed Eusebius’s idea that the text was altered. The present writer, accordingly, whilst referring the leader to note 142 in the volume on Mark’s Gospel, and that on 18:28 of this Gospel, may confine his remarks here pretty much to the question of the hours, Sir William Ramsay’s treatment of which seems not to have come under Mr. Kelly’s notice.
To begin with, it should be noticed in Luke 22:7-13 that John was one of the two concerned in making the actual Passover “preparation.” Schmiedel writes: “John corrected by insertion what Mark and Luke corrected by omission” (col. 1,773). To this the present remarks shall be directed. The leading passage referred to by Mr. Kelly may be transcribed in an English rendering.
Pliny (ii. 79): “The days have been computed by different peoples in different ways. The Babylonians reckoned from one sunrise to the next; the Athenians from one sunset to the next; the Umbrians from noon to noon; the multitude universally from dawn to darkness; while the Roman priests and those who presided over the Civil Day (as also did the Egyptians and Hipparchus) from midnight to midnight.” Aulus Gelling (“Noctes Atticæ”) refers to a work of Varro, whose statement is to the same effect.
Sir W. Ramsay (Expositor, 1893, fourth series, vol. vii., pp. 216-223, and 1896, fifth series, vol. iii., pp. 457 ff.; cf. art. in Hastings, D.B., extra vol., p. 475 ff.) holds that sixth hour indicated mid-day at all seasons of the year, so that “about the sixth hour” would be “somewhere between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m.”; and that the Roman civil day “was not divided into hours.” Further, that “there is no justification for the theory that the ancients reckoned the hours in two ways―(1) beginning from sunrise; (2) beginning from midnight.” Accordingly, he gives up the usual reconciliation. He believes that “the numbering of hours began invariably from daybreak or sunrise.” Zahn is like-minded.
If the Roman reckoning differed in Italy and the Roman province of Asia Minor, the third hour of Mark living in Italy would be identical with “about the sixth hour” of John living at Ephesus in his old age. Cf. Plummer (ad loc.).
Besides Nonnus, spoken of in the original note, Theophylact conjectured the true reading to be “third,” and so Bengel, Usher, Alford, and McRory; but the textual evidence is strongly against it. Cf. Zahn, p. 718.
Wordsworth and Burgon’s belief, as that of Tholuck, Ewald, Westcott and Milligan, that John followed the Roman computation of time (in some form or other), so that “sixth hour” would be our 6 a.m., whilst Mark’s was the Jewish (for this purpose reckoned from sunrise), and the same as modern 9 a.m., might seem to be sustained by the fourth Gospel itself. As Ryle says, there would remain three hours to account for. These would be taken up with the preliminaries of crucifixion. That excellent writer himself inclines to the view of Calvin, Hammond, Hengstenberg, Ellicott, etc., that, from the Jews’ division of their day into twelve hours of four parts (Maimonides), Mark’s “third hour” would work out at about 9 a.m., and John’s “sixth” at between 9 and 12.
According to old Jewish modes of thought, the day spoken of in 20:19 would have to be a “Monday,” but everyone knows that John is speaking of the first day of a week. On the whole, the present writer cannot but think that resort to a recondite explanation, of which none of the ancients seems ever to have dreamed, is best avoided.
To what has been said on the general question of alleged discrepancy in note on Mark 14:12 may be added that Chwolson, a Hebrew Christian, in his “Last Passover of Christ” (1892), maintains that the Pharisees ate their Passover on the 13th, the Sadducees on the 14th Nisan.
Zahn holds that John says substantially the same as the Synoptists (Introduction, ii., pp. 523-526; Exposition. pp. 637-640). As to the “Paschal Controversy” (A.D. 165-170), see Eusebius, 5:24; Stanton, 173-197; Zahn, ii. 522 f., with his notes 16-18.
The date of the Lord’s death seems to have been April 7 in the year 30 of our era.
347 Verse 15.―Here probably Matt. 27:24 comes in. Some, however, put the incident there between 18:40 and 19:1 of this Gospel.
348 Verse 17.― “Went out.” See Lev. 6:12-21, 16:27; Heb. 13:12.
349 Verse 19.―Of the four forms of inscription, John’s is the fullest, and is most like Matthew’s, so that probably these were both in Hebrew. Pilate would perhaps employ different scribes to write the several inscriptions. Observe that no part of any of them is excluded by or inconsistent with any part of the other three. Its being put in different languages is in keeping with the glory of the “Son of man” (Bellett, p. 148).
350 Verse 23.―A coat of one piece only is still worn by Northern peasants (Schor, p. 48).
351 Verse 25.―Most commentators take Mary, wife of Cleopas, as sister of the Lord’s mother; but Bengel, Meyer, Alford, Norris, Weiss, Mayor and Zahn regard Salome as sister of the Lord’s mother (cf. Matt. 27:56 and Mark 15:40), so making four women. According to their view, the Evangelist and his brother James would be cousins of our Lord.
351a Verse 26.―Bishop Lightfoot, in his second Dissertation appended to edition of the Epistle to the Galatians, regards the Lord’s committal of His mother to the care of John as “fatal” to the “Helvidian” theory that His kinsmen were His uterine brethren. But surely His marking their unbelief in this way may be accepted in explanation.
The statement of Origen, cited by this learned writer, is certainly wrong―that Scripture nowhere speaks of them as Mary’s children: see Ps. 69:8, the Messianic character of which, presumably, neither of these truly great scholars would have denied (cf. note 137).
352 Verse 31.―The day was “great” because on it were offered the first-fruits (Lev. 23:10-14 Cf. Deut. 21:23). Paraskeue, the Christian name of Friday, “could to Greek Christians suggest nothing else” (Milligan).
353 Verse 35 f.― “He knoweth.” This has been taken by Weizsticker of a confirmatory witness, and Schmiedel, a complacent follower, questions how the witness already spoken of could be sufficiently authoritative. Although Luthardt has cited 9:37 as closely parallel, Abbott, Zahn, etc., follow Erasmus’s paraphrase in taking ἐκεῖνος of our Lord. On the other side, reference may be made to Buttmann (against Hilgenfeld). As usually taken, the pronoun illustrates the characteristically redundant style of this Evangelist.
See “Not a bone of Him shall be crushed.” Cf. Ps, 139:16 (Bellett),
354 Verse 37.―The Evangelist here follows neither the present Hebrew text of Zech. 12:10 (which has “on Me”) nor the Septuagint. If we regard the matter from the merely literary point of view, he may have been acquainted with some Aramaic paraphrase.
354a John alone says that this Joseph was “a disciple of Jesus, but secretly, for fear of the Jews.” Cf. notes on Mask 15:43; Luke 23:50; Matt. 27:51. It will be found that each of the Evangelists furnishes some statement peculiar to himself.
354b Cf. Luke 23:53.
355 Verse 42.― “They put Jesus.” This, again, controverts such views of human destiny as Swedenborg’s, which represent the body as forever abandoned at death. The Lord’s body is spoken of as Himself.