Precisely. The story of the events in Jerusalem is no proper part either of a primary document or of the first or second Gospel. In its detail it has no congruity with the scanty and incoherent narrative of Mark. It is of another provenance, although, as Wellhausen notes, quite as unhistorical as the rest. The non-historicity of the entire action is as plain as in the case of any episode in the Gospels. Judas is paid to betray a man who could easily have been arrested without any process of betrayal; and the conducting of the trial immediately upon the arrest, throughout the night, the very witnesses being “sought for” in the darkness, is plain fiction, explicable only by the dramatic obligation to continuous action.
[1] See the useful work of Mr. A. J. Jolley, The Synoptic Problem for English Readers, 1893. [↑]
[2] Yet B. Weiss had contended (Manual, Eng. tr. ii, 224) that [Mark ii, 24] ff., [28], “must be taken from a larger collection of sayings in which the utterances of Jesus respecting the keeping of the Sabbath were put together ([Matt. xii, 2–8]).” [↑]
[3] Cp. Dr. R. H. Charles, The Book of Jubilees, 1902, p. xiv. [↑]
[5] Manual of Introd. to the N. T., Eng. tr. 1888, ii, 261. [↑]