In the description of the scene on Calvary, there are nearly as many inaccuracies as there are sentences.
Matthew and Mark say: "The thieves, also, which were crucified with him... reviled him."
John says: "And one of the malefactors... railed on him.... But the other rebuked him (his companion) saying, Dost thou not fear God?" etc.
Matthew says: "They gave him (Jesus) vinegar to drink, mingled with gall."
Mark says: "And they gave him to drink, wine mingled with myrrh."
Nor do the biographers of Jesus agree as to whether Jesus drank the vinegar-wine, or not. Matthew says, he "tasted thereof, but would not drink." Mark says: "And they gave him to drink... but he received it not." John is sure this is a mistake, for he says: "He received the vinegar." Luke does not mention the wine-vinegar drink at all. We wonder what he would have said had he also referred to the matter.
But a better idea of the character of these documents will be had by comparing the different accounts of the last hours, and the last words of Jesus. If Luke may be credited, Jesus delivered quite a little speech on his way to Calvary. Seeing the "great company of people, and of women" which followed him, he said, addressing the women alone:
Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. For, behold, the days are coming, in which they shall say, Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that never bore, and the paps which never gave suck. Then shall they begin to say to the mountains, Fall on us; and to the hills, Cover us. For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry? *
* Luke xxiii, 29-31.
This is quite pessimistic, and contains no suggestion of the great hope and salvation which a dying Saviour is said to have brought to the world. And as none of the other evangelists reports this somber lamentation of Jesus, it is likely that some celibate alarmist, who expected the speedy destruction of the world, penned the lines. Is it conceivable that, if Jesus actually delivered the above speech on his way to the cross, and under the most impressive circumstances—that three of his intimate and inspired biographers would have omitted any mention of it? We are willing to waive the claim that an "infallible" document should be free from such errors as are liable to slip into human writings, but should they not, at least, be as free from them as any uninspired historical document is expected to be? It is reported that Pilate wrote a "superscription" in three languages to be placed on the cross, and which could be read even by the people in Jerusalem. What was this superscription? Each of the four evangelists gives a different reading of it.