§ 108.
DIVERGING ACCOUNTS CONCERNING THE LAST JOURNEY OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM.
Shortly after the transfiguration on the mountain, the Evangelists make Jesus enter on the fatal journey which conducted him to his death. With respect to the place from whence he set out on this journey, and the route which he took, the evangelical accounts differ. The synoptists agree as to the point of departure, for they all represent Jesus as setting out from Galilee ([Matt. xix. 1]; [Mark x. 1]; [Luke ix. 51]; in this last passage, Galilee is not indeed expressly named, but we necessarily infer it to be the supposed locality from what precedes, in which only Galilee and districts in Galilee are spoken of, as well as from the journey through Samaria, mentioned in the succeeding passage):[34] but concerning the route which Jesus chose from thence to Judæa, they appear to be at variance. It is true that the statements of two of them [[547]]on this point are so obscure, that they might appear to lend some aid to the harmonizing exegesis. Mark says in the clearest and most definite manner that Jesus took his course through Peræa; but his statement, He came into the coasts of Judæa on the further side of Jordan, ἔρχεται εἰς τὰ ὅρια τῦς Ἰουδαίας διὰ τοῦ πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου, is scarcely anything more than the mode in which he judged it right to explain the hardly intelligible expression of Matthew, whom he follows in this chapter. What it precisely is which the latter intends by the words, He departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judæa beyond Jordan, μετῆρεν ἀπὸ τῆς Γαλιλαίας καὶ ἦλθεν εἰς τὰ ὅρια τῆς Ἰουδαίας πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου, is in fact not at all evident. For if the explanation: he came into that part of Judæa which lies on the opposite side of the Jordan,[35] clashes alike with geography and grammar, so the interpretation to which the comparison of Mark inclines the majority of commentators, namely, that Jesus came into Judæa through the country on the farther side of the Jordan,[36] is, even as modified by Fritzsche, not free from grammatical difficulty. In any case, however, thus much remains: that Matthew, as well as Mark, makes Jesus take the most circuitous course through Peræa, while Luke, on the other hand, appears to lead him the more direct way through Samaria. It is true that his expression, [xvii. 11], where he says that Jesus, on his journey to Jerusalem, passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee, διήρχετο διὰ μέσου Σαμαρείας καὶ Γαλιλαίας is scarcely clearer than the one just cited from Matthew. According to the customary meaning of words, he seems to state that Jesus first crossed Samaria, and then Galilee, in order to arrive at Jerusalem. But this is an inversion of the true order; for if he set out from a place in Galilee, he must first traverse the rest of Galilee, and not until then could he enter Samaria. Hence the words διέρχεσθαι διὰ μέσου κ.τ.λ. have been interpreted to mean a progress along the boundary between Galilee and Samaria,[37] and Luke has been reconciled with the two first Evangelists by the supposition, that Jesus journeyed along the Galilean-Samarian frontier, until he reached the Jordan, that he then crossed this river, and so proceeded through Peræa towards Judæa and Jerusalem. But this latter supposition does not agree with [Luke ix. 51 ff.]; for we learn from this passage that Jesus, after his departure from Galilee, went directly to a Samaritan village, and here made an unfavourable impression, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem, ὅτι τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ ἦν πορευόμενον εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ. Now this seems clearly to indicate that Jesus took his way directly from Galilee, through Samaria, to Judæa. We shall therefore be on the side of probability, if we judge this statement to be an artificial arrangement of words, to which the writer was led by his desire to introduce the narrative of the ten lepers, one of whom was a Samaritan;[38] and consequently admit that there is here a divergency between the synoptical gospels.[39] Towards the end of the journey of Jesus, they are once more in unison, for according to their unanimous statement, Jesus arrived at Jerusalem from Jericho ([Matt. xx. 29], parall.); a place which, we may observe, lay more in the direct road for a Galilean coming through Peræa, than for one coming through Samaria.
Thus there is indeed a difference between the synoptists with regard to the way taken by Jesus; but still they agree as to the first point of departure, and [[548]]the last stage of the road; the account of John, however, diverges from them in both respects. According to him, it is not Galilee from whence Jesus sets out to attend the last passover, for so early as before the feast of tabernacles of the previous year, he had left that province, apparently for the last time ([vii. 1], [10]); that between this feast and that of the dedication ([x. 22]) he had returned thither, is at least not stated; after the latter feast, however, he betook himself to Peræa, and remained there ([x. 40]) until the illness and death of Lazarus recalled him into Judæa, and into the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, namely, to Bethany ([xi. 8 ff.]). On account of the machinations of his enemies, he quickly withdrew from thence again, but, because he intended to be present at the coming Passover, he retired no further than to the little city of Ephraim, near to the wilderness ([xi. 54]); and from this place, no mention being made of a residence in Jericho (which, besides, did not lie in the way from Ephraim, according to the situation usually assigned to the latter city), he proceeded to Jerusalem to the feast.
So total a divergency necessarily gave unwonted occupation to the harmonists. According to them, the departure from Galilee mentioned by the synoptists, is not the departure to the last Passover, but to the feast of dedication;[40] though Luke, when he says, when the time came that he should be received up, ἐν τῷ συμπληροῦσθαι τὰς ἡμέρας τῆς ἀναλήψεως αὐτοῦ ([ix. 51]), incontrovertibly marks it as the departure to that feast on which the sufferings and death of Jesus awaited him, and though all the synoptists make the journey then begun end in that triumphal entry into Jerusalem which, according to the fourth gospel also, took place immediately before the last passover.[41] If, according to this, the departure from Galilee narrated by the synoptists is regarded as that to the feast of dedication, and the entrance into Jerusalem which they mention as that to the subsequent passover; they must have entirely passed over all which, on this supposition, lay between these two points, namely, the arrival and residence of Jesus in Jerusalem during the feast of dedication, his journey from thence into Peræa, from Peræa to Bethany, and from Bethany to Ephraim. If from this it should appear to follow that the synoptists were ignorant of all these particulars: our harmonists urge, on the contrary, that Luke makes Jesus soon after his journey out of Galilee, encounter scribes, who try to put him to the proof ([x. 25 ff.]); then shows him in Bethany in the vicinity of Jerusalem ([x. 38 ff.]); hereupon, removes him to the frontiers of Samaria and Galilee ([xvii. 11]); and not until then, makes him proceed to the passover in Jerusalem ([xix. 29 ff.]): all which plainly enough indicates, that between that departure out of Galilee, and the final entrance into Jerusalem, Jesus made another journey to Judæa and Jerusalem, and from thence back again.[42] But, in the first place, the presence of the scribes proves absolutely nothing; and in the second, Luke makes no mention of Bethany, but only of a visit to Mary and Martha, whom the fourth Evangelist places in that village: from which, however, it does not follow that the third also supposed them to dwell there, and consequently imagined Jesus when at their home, to be in the vicinity of Jerusalem. Again, from the fact that so very long after his departure ([ix. 51–xvii. 11]), Jesus first appears on the frontier between Galilee and Samaria, it only follows that we have before us no orderly progressive narrative. But, according to this harmonizing view, even Matthew was aware of those intermediate events, and has indicated them for the more attentive reader: the one member of his sentence, he departed from Galilee, μετηρεν ἀπὸ τῆς Γαλιλαίας, intimates the journey of Jesus to the [[549]]feast of dedication, and thus forms a separate whole; the other, and came into the coasts of Judæa beyond Jordan, καὶ ἦλθεν εἰς τὰ ὅρια τῆς Ἰουδαίας πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου, refers to the departure of Jesus from Jerusalem into Peræa ([John x. 40]), and opens a new period. In adopting this expedient, however, it is honourably confessed that without the data gathered from John, no one would have thought of such a dismemberment of the passage in Matthew.[43] In opposition to such artifices, no way is open to those who presuppose the accuracy of John’s narrative, but that adopted by the most recent criticism; namely, to renounce the supposition that Matthew, who treats of the journey very briefly, was an eye-witness; and to suppose of Luke, whose account of it is very full, that either he or one of the collectors of whose labours he availed himself, mingled together two separate narratives, of which one referred to the earlier journey of Jesus to the feast of dedication, the other to his last journey to the passover, without suspecting that between the departure of Jesus out of Galilee, and his entrance into Jerusalem, there fell yet an earlier residence in Jerusalem, together with other journeys and adventures.[44]
We may now observe how in the course of the narrative concerning the last journey or journeys to Jerusalem, the relation between the synoptical gospels and that of John is in a singular manner reversed. As in the first instance, we discovered a great blank on the side of the former, in their omission of a mass of intermediate events which John notices; so now, towards the end of the account of the journey, there appears on the side of the latter, a similar, though smaller blank, for he gives no intimation of Jesus having come through Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. It may indeed be said, that John might overlook this passage through Jericho, although, according to the synoptists, it was distinguished by a cure of the blind, and the visit to Zacchæus; but, it is to be asked, is there in his narrative room for a passage through Jericho? This city does not lie on the way from Ephraim to Jerusalem, but considerably to the eastward; hence help is sought in the supposition that Jesus made all kinds of minor excursions, in one of which he came to Jericho, and from hence went forward to Jerusalem.[45]
In any case a remarkable want of unity prevails in the evangelical accounts of the last journey of Jesus; for according to the common, synoptical tradition, he journeyed out of Galilee by Jericho (and, as Matthew and Mark say, through Peræa, as Luke says, through Samaria); while according to the fourth gospel, he must have come hither from Ephraim: statements which it is impossible to reconcile.