CHAPTER III.

RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

§ 125.

AGONY OF JESUS IN THE GARDEN.

According to the synoptical 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 (Matt. xxi. 17; Luke xxii. 39), went to the Mount of Olives, into a garden χωρίον (in John, κῆπος) called Gethsemane (Matt. xxvi. 30, 36 parall.). John, who gives the additional particular that the garden lay over the brook Kedron, does not represent him as departing thither 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 synoptists 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 unto 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 number three, which thus doubly figures in the narrative of the two first 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 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 ἀγωνία which ensued, the sweat of Jesus was as it were great drops of blood falling to the ground.

From the earliest times this scene in Gethsemane 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; [1823] Vanini boldly extolled his own demeanour in the face of execution as superior to that of Jesus; [1824] and in the Evangelium Nicodemi, Satan concludes from this scene that Christ is a mere man. [1825] 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, [1826] 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 the 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 the will of the Father, to the divine. [1827] As however, in the first place, this appeared to introduce an inadmissible division in the nature of Jesus; and in the second place, even a fear experienced by his human nature in the prospect of approaching bodily sufferings appeared unworthy 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. [1828] The effort to free the sorrow of Jesus from all reference to physical suffering, or to his own person, attained its highest pitch in the ecclesiastical tenet, that Jesus by substitution was burthened with the guilt of all mankind, and vicariously endured the wrath of God against that guilt. [1829] Some have even supposed that the devil himself wrestled with Jesus. [1830]

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 ποτήριον 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 synoptists, 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. Thus, 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 the idea of the Evangelists, in Gethsemane 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; [1831] 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 Heumann’s hypothesis, that in addition to his inward sorrow, Jesus had contracted a cold in the clayey ground traversed by the Kedron. [1832] 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: [1833] or a confused blending of all the different kinds of sorrow, selfish and sympathetic, sensual and spiritual, has been presupposed. [1834] Paulus explains εἰ δυνατόν ἐστι, παρελθέτω τὸ ποτήριον (if it be possible, let this cup 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. [1835] 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; [1836] that, moreover, the shrinking of physical nature at the prospect of annihilation belongs to the essential conditions of life; [1837] nay, that the purer the human nature in an individual, the more susceptible is it in relation to suffering and annihilation; [1838] that the conquest over suffering intensely appreciated is greater than a stoical or even a Socratic insensibility. [1839]

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 with fear and trembling by all the celestial powers, did not need the strengthening of the angel, ὅτι τῆς ἰσχύος τοῦ ἀγγέλου οὐκ ἐπεδέετο ὁ ὑπὸ πάσης ἐπουρανίου δυνάμεως φόβω καὶ τρόμῳ προσκυνούμενος καὶ δοξαζόμενος, interprets the ἐνισχύειν ascribed to the angel as a declaring strong, i.e. as the offering of a doxology; [1840] while others, rather than admit that Jesus could need to be strengthened by an angel, transform the ἄγγελος ἐνισχύων into an evil angel, who attempted to use force against Jesus. [1841] The orthodox also, by founding a distinction between the state of humiliation and privation in Christ and that of his glorification, or in some similar way, have long blunted the edge of the dogmatical difficulty: but in place of this a critical objection has been only so much the more decidedly developed. In consideration of the suspicion which, according to our earlier observations, attaches to every alleged angelic appearance, it has been sought to reduce the angel in this narrative first into a man, [1842] and then into an image of the composure which Jesus regained. [1843] But the right 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. [1844] 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, whence are we to suppose that Luke received this information? [1845] 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 it 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 history 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 angelic appearances, and that this embellishment, originally intended in a merely poetical sense, was received by the narrator of the third gospel as historical. [1846]

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 Epiphanius [1847] 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, [1848] this was the only particular which could give offence. Thus in an earlier age, 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 [1849] down to the more recent investigators of nature; [1850] but such a phenomenon is only mentioned as extremely rare, and as a symptom of decided disease. Hence Paulus points to the ὡσεὶ (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 καταβαίνοντες, falling, refers not to ἱδρὼς, sweat, but to the θρόμβοι αἵματος, 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 blood, so that of the words, as it were drops of blood falling on the ground, ὡσεὶ θρόμβοι αἵματος καταβαίνοντες εἰς τὴν γῆν, only ὡσεὶ θρόμβοι, 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 fore-shadowed 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 a movement hither and thither, so rapid an alternation of retirement and return, is entirely suited to the state of mind in which Jesus then was, [1851] 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. [1852] But that the two narrators count the retirements of Jesus, marking them by the expressions ἐκ δευτέρου and ἐκ τρίτου, 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, τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον, 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 the medium of fear, correspond to the three attacks through the medium of desire, in the history 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 history of the temptation, points to something mythical? [1853]

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

§ 126.

RELATION OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL TO THE EVENTS IN GETHSEMANE. THE FAREWELL DISCOURSES IN JOHN, AND THE SCENE FOLLOWING THE ANNOUNCEMENT OF THE GREEKS.

The relation of John to the synoptical narratives just considered has, when regarded more closely, two aspects: first, he has not what the synoptists present; and secondly, instead of this he has something which it is difficult to reconcile with their statements.

As regards the first and negative side, it has to be explained how, on the ordinary supposition concerning the author of the fourth gospel and the correctness of the synoptical account, it happens 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 synoptists. [1854] But between the two first synoptists 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 evangelical tradition. [1855] But as this tradition was the source of the divergent representations of the synoptists, 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 strengthening angel, he should give any furtherance to the Ebionitish 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. [1856] 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 close relation between Jesus and angels, he must also have excluded other passages from his gospel: above all, as Lücke remarks, [1857] 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 spake to him, ἄγγελος αὐτῷ λελάληκεν, 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 synoptists 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 synoptical 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 immovability: how is it possible that immediately after, this peace should give place to the most violent mental emotion, this tranquillity, to a trouble even unto 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, he 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 παράκλητος 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 Jerusalem 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; [1858] 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 admirable. [1859] 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 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 ψυχὴ:—but is not this the rankest Pelagianism, 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 violent 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: καὶ γενόμενος ἐν ἀγωνίᾳ ἐκτενέστερον προσηύχετο, and 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 burthened 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 didst thou not, instead of indulging in vain anticipations of glory, rather occupy thyself betimes with earnest thoughts of the coming trial, that by such a preparation, thou mightest spare thyself perilous surprise on its approach? why didst thou utter the words of triumph before thou hadst fought, so as to be obliged with shame 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 synoptists, 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 synoptists is unhistorical, [1860] is only to be accounted for by that author’s then zealous adherence to the paragraphs of Schleiermacher’s Dogmatik, 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, Bretschneider might rather appear to be right, when he claims the superiority in naturalness and intrinsic evidence of truth for the synoptists: [1861] were it not that our confidence in the decisions of this writer is undermined, by his dislike for the dogmatical 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. 27 ff. 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 synoptists place in the last evening of the life of Jesus, and in the seclusion of the garden. As Jesus here declares to his disciples, my soul is troubled even unto death, περίλυπός ἐστιν ἡ ψυχή μου ἕως θανάτου (Matt. xxvi. 38): so there he says: Now is my soul troubled, νῦν ἡ ψυχή μου τετάρακται (John