93
When did the temptation take place?
Mark: During the forty days’ fast. “And he was there in the wilderness forty days tempted of Satan” ([i, 13]).
Matthew: After the fast. “And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights ... the tempter came to him” ([iv, 2, 3]).
94
During the temptation the devil is said to have set him on the temple. On what part of the temple did he set him?
Matthew and Luke: “On a pinnacle” ([Matt. iv, 5]; [Luke iv, 9]).
The indefinite article “a” clearly implies that the temple had several pinnacles, whereas it had but one. After eighteen hundred years the Holy Ghost discovered his mistake and moved the Oxford revisers to substitute “the” for “a.”