This view is now generally abandoned, and not without reason. For, in the first place, there are no solid grounds for believing that the fourfold division of the Jewish day here supposed, ever existed. In the second place, even if it had existed, we should require a great deal of proof, indeed, before we could believe that the “hours” were numbered in so strange and confusing a fashion.
(2) More probable than the preceding is the view of Cornely (Introd., vol. iii., § 73, 3). He, too, like Mald., holds the above fourfold division of the day, but says that the divisions were called respectively, the first, third, sixth, and ninth hour. Now, the Synoptic Evangelists, he says, follow this fourfold division of the day; and, hence, St. Mark's third hour is the time from 9 a.m. to noon. St. John, on the other hand, reckons according to the more accurate Jewish method of dividing the day into twelve equal parts; and, therefore, his phrase, “about the sixth hour,” means about noon. Cornely thinks that the vagueness of the phrase: “About the sixth hour” justifies us in supposing [pg 339] that the time when Pilate passed sentence upon our Lord, according to St. John, may have been as early as half-past ten. Thus, condemned about half-past ten, Jesus could be led out to Calvary and put upon the cross before noon; in other words, while, as St. Mark says, it was still the third hour.
Though this view is more probable than the preceding, we cannot accept it. For it supposes, like the preceding, a division of the day into four “hours,” for which Cornely offers no evidence any more than Maldonatus. Moreover, we cannot bring ourselves to believe that St. John would refer to a time so early as half-past ten as “about the sixth hour.”
(3) Others think that while St. Mark follows the Jewish division of the day, and, therefore counts the hours from sunrise, St. John, on the other hand, follows the Greek method, and counts them from midnight. Thus, about the time of the equinox, St. Mark's “third hour” would mean about 9 a.m., while St. John's “about the sixth hour” would mean about 6 a.m. According to this view, our Lord was condemned about 6 a.m., and nailed to the cross about 9 a.m.
Against this view, it is held by many writers that St. John, like the other Evangelists, counts the hours of the day from sunrise, that is to say, according to the Jewish method.[125]
But a still more serious difficulty against this view arises from the difficulty of finding time for all the events of the morning of the Crucifixion between day-dawn and 6 a.m.—the time at which, in this opinion, our Lord was condemned by Pilate. “Those events ... were—(1) the meeting of the Council; (2) the procession to Pilate's Court; (3) the various incidents recorded by the four Evangelists on the occasion of our Lord's first appearance before Pilate's tribunal; (4) the sending of our Lord to Herod; (5) the interview between our Lord and Herod; (6) the mocking of our Lord by Herod's soldiers; (7) the [pg 340] return to the Court of Pilate; (8) the scourging; (9) the crowning with thorns; (10) the mocking of our Lord by the Roman soldiers; (11) the incident of the ‘Ecce Homo,’ and (12) the final interview, within the Praetorium, between our Lord and Pilate, at the close of which Pilate came forth, and, after a final effort to obtain the liberation of our Lord, took his place on the judgment seat, ‘and it was now about the sixth hour.’
(4) “It would seem, then, that the most satisfactory solution of the difficulty is that given by the great majority of modern commentators—Catholic as well as Protestant—namely, that an error has crept into the text of St. John's Gospel, and that the true reading of the passage in question there (xix. 14), is to be obtained by substituting ‘third’ for ‘sixth.’
“Manifestly, such a correction of the text removes the difficulty we are considering. On the one hand, it leaves abundance of time before Pilate's sentence—three or four hours—for the events of the earlier part of the morning. On the other hand, it leaves quite sufficient time—an interval, it may be supposed, of nearly an hour—between the passing of the sentence and the actual crucifixion; for St. John's statement, that it was ‘about’ the third hour, might surely be understood of any time between half-past eight and nine o'clock; and St. Mark's words are quite consistent with the supposition that our Lord was crucified at any time between nine and ten.
“And it is not to be supposed that the emendation of the text is suggested merely on a priori grounds. For (1) this reading is actually found in one of the five Greek MSS. of the New Testament that rank highest in antiquity and authority—Codex D. (Cantabrigiensis or Bezae): this MS dates probably from the 5th or 6th century. Moreover (2) we have in its favour the very strong testimony of an ancient writer, the author of the Chronicon Paschale (circ. a.d. 630), who adopts this reading on the authority of many ‘accurate copies,’ and mentions the striking fact that the clause was thus read in St. John's original autograph of his Gospel, then extant, and, of course, deeply venerated by the faithful in the Church at Ephesus.” (See Patrizzi, De Evangeliis, lib. ii., n. 195.)
“But, it may be objected, is it not a somewhat forced hypothesis to suppose that an interchange of two words so dissimilar as τρίτη and ἕκτη,—the Greek words for ‘third’ and ‘sixth’ respectively—could have occurred by an error of transcription? By no [pg 341] means. For, in the first place, it must be remembered that the usage was almost universal of using the numeral characters—which, in Greek consist of letters of the alphabet—instead of writing the words in full. Thus the change would consist merely in the substitution of one letter for another. But, furthermore, it is essential to explain that when the ancient MSS. of the Greek Testament were written, it was the usage to employ only capital, or, as they are called, uncial letters—thus those MSS. themselves are commonly known as uncial. Now, since the character by which the numeral 3 was represented was gamma, the third letter of the Greek alphabet, its uncial form was Γ. The character by which the numeral 6 was represented was the now obsolete digamma, at one time the sixth letter of the Greek alphabet: its uncial form was Ϝ.