THE sequence of events in Passion Week cannot be determined with any assurance. Enormous pains have been taken by scholars, employing astronomical and other data, to ascertain the year and date of the Crucifixion and to decide whether the Last Supper was the paschal meal eaten on the 14th of the Jewish month Nisan (synoptic tradition) or another meal on the 13th (Fourth Gospel). Gallant and ingenious efforts have been made to reconcile the conflicting statements, one of the more recent suggestions being that while Jesus was crucified on the Friday, Passover eve according to the official lunar calendar, he and his disciples kept the Passover on Tuesday evening in conformity with the Qumran solar calendar. While it would be gratifying if conclusive results were obtainable, we have to accept that there is little prospect of this. We are not prevented thereby from catching on to important things which the documents communicate when read with historical insight, and venturing on a judgement which is consistent with evidences which it is essential to respect.
Looking at the Gospels as we have them, it is apparent that in setting out what took place in Passion Week the Gospel of Mark is more orderly than the others. It furnishes a number of indications of time. Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem late in the day and in the evening retires to Bethany. The next day he enters the city again and casts out those who sold and bought in the Temple. He leaves in the evening, and comes once more to the Temple on the third day, where he answers questions and teaches. At the end of the day he leaves the Temple for the last time, and we are then told that ‘after two days was the Passover and the feast of Unleavened Bread’. It seems that Jesus spends the fourth day at Bethany, in the evening in the house of Simon the leper. The fifth day the feast of Unleavened Bread commences when the paschal lamb is slaughtered, and Jesus sends two disciples to the city to prepare. The same evening he comes to Jerusalem with the twelve for the Last Supper, which is the Passover meal. That night they go out to the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is arrested and brought before the Council. Early on the sixth day Jesus is brought before Pilate, and at nine o'clock that morning he is crucified. He dies about 3 p.m., and in the evening, which is the eve of the Sabbath, he is buried.1
This is a very convincing time-table if it stood by itself, and we should be careful how we quarrel with it. But it is open to certain objections, and in part is challenged by the Fourth Gospel.
Like other matters in Mark his version of the Passion conveys a sense of compression, as if some things have been condensed in order to fit in with the rather narrow limits of time allowed. It is difficult to imagine that Jesus was brought before Pilate much earlier than six o'clock in the morning when the Jewish day began. Yet within three hours everything is decided and Jesus is at the place of execution. In the interval Pilate has heard the charges against Jesus, has interrogated him, has listened and responded to a plea to release a prisoner according to custom and the people have chosen Barabbas: he has yielded to the demand that Jesus should be crucified, and ordered him to be flogged; the soldiers have taken him away and had their sport with him, and then have led him at a slow pace some distance outside the city to Golgotha. Pilate must surely have condemned Jesus with extraordinary haste, which is not what the other sources convey. According to Matthew, the wife of Pilate sends to tell him of a dream she has had and begs him not to proceed against Jesus, and so reluctant is the governor to act that he sends for water and publicly washes his hands to signify his guiltlessness. Luke introduces another element of delay. Pilate, learning that Jesus is a Galilean, has him sent to Herod Antipas, in residence at his palace in Jerusalem. Antipas questions Jesus at length, and finally mocks him and returns him to Pilate. The Fourth Gospel makes Pilate by various devices postpone judgement as long as he possibly can, and it is about the sixth hour when at length he gives way, midday by Jewish reckoning. Jesus would then have been crucified more than three hours later than asserted by Mark, and if he died at about the ninth hour he would not have been more than three hours on the cross. It has been proposed that the Fourth Gospel is employing Roman reckoning, and that the trial was therefore virtually over by six o'clock in the morning. But it is hard to credit that Pilate was called out of bed in the middle of the night to deal with the case.
The tendency of the Christians as the Church developed was increasingly to stress the guilt of the Jews and to whitewash Pilate, and we have to allow for this in the later Gospels. Their emphasis of Pilate's reluctance and delaying tactics may therefore partly be discounted; yet even so Mark's account does seem to be rushing things a little.
But we must return to earlier events in Passion Week. The traditions are confused, particularly in relation to certain significant meals. The Fourth Gospel brings Jesus to Bethany six days before the Passover, immediately prior to his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. There he is the guest of Martha and Mary, and Mary anoints his feet with a costly unguent. Judas protests that the ointment should have been sold and the proceeds given to the poor. Mark, however, places this supper several days later and locates it in the house of Simon the leper at Bethany. He does not name Mary or Judas as playing any part. An unknown woman comes and anoints the head of Jesus, not his feet as in John, and several disciples complain of the waste of money. After this Judas goes to the chief priests and makes a compact with them to betray Jesus. Luke does not connect the story of this supper with Passion Week at all. He brings it in much earlier in the ministry. The scene is the house of Simon a Pharisee, and the woman is a sinner of the town, who bathes his feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, and anoints them with precious ointment. The argument is not about the waste of money, but about the failure of Jesus to discern the character of the woman in allowing her to touch him.2
The problem of the meals is further complicated by the curious construction of the Fourth Gospel. As regards the Last Supper, we cannot tell what memories of John the priest have been altered or omitted to make room for the long discourses created for Jesus by the author and which occupy chapters xiv–xvii. There is no reference in this Gospel to the Passover ceremonial of the bread and wine, which Jesus used to speak of his sacrifice. The author does not appear to want to recognise the Last Supper as the Passover meal, since he makes the point that it was the eve of the Passover the following day when Jesus was crucified.3 For him the Last Supper took place before the Passover.4 To support this view he seems to have telescoped the synoptic tradition, so as to combine elements of the supper in Bethany on Wednesday evening with the Passover supper on Thursday evening in Jerusalem. The scene of the Wednesday supper is shifted from Bethany to Jerusalem, so that it becomes the Last Supper, while the main features of the Wednesday event are pushed back by introducing an account of an earlier supper at Bethany six days before the Passover. At this supper Mary anoints the feet of Jesus with ointment and Judas protests at the waste. When the author fuses the Wednesday meal with the Last Supper he obviously cannot use this incident again, and so he substitutes for it an action of Jesus himself in washing the feet of his disciples.
After the incident of the anointing in the Markan tradition Judas leaves to bargain with the chief priests. Luke, as we have seen, backdates the incident; but he confirms that before the festival Judas went to the chief priests, telling us, ‘Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot.’5 These key words relating to Wednesday evening are echoed by the Fourth Gospel in relation to Thursday evening, ‘And supper being ended, the devil having now put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him.’6 So the decision of Judas to betray Jesus was taken at Jerusalem instead of Bethany. This Gospel, however, retains from the Passover meal tradition the inquiry by the disciples as to which of them would betray Jesus. We may note one other point. In Mark, followed by Matthew, the saying of Jesus, ‘Rise up, let us go,’ is spoken at Gethsemane after the agony in the garden and immediately before he is arrested; but in the Fourth Gospel the words are uttered before Jesus leaves the place of the Last Supper, and he only goes to the garden after further discourse.
We have an eloquent illustration here both of the uncertainties of the tradition as they reached the hands of the Evangelists and of the freedom they used in employing them to serve their aims and designs. It is quite exciting really that we do not possess a wholly reliable and unvarnished story of the life of Jesus. It means that the quest for the truth is a continuing pursuit, with every now and then opportunity arising for important fresh discoveries. The disagreements themselves bear witness that inherent in them are recollections of genuine events and experiences which we have to endeavour to reconstruct. Our business is not to seek to iron out or explain away the differences, an impossible undertaking, in order to demonstrate the validity of the curious doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures: it is rather to sift and probe to get at the facts which have not been completely or exactly represented, but to which the documents, sometimes insensibly and unwittingly, contribute their quota of valuable evidence.
When we have grasped what considerations governed the activities of Jesus and compelled him to scheme to bring about a particular sequence of events it becomes easier to assess the relative worth of the traditions. Our line of inquiry in this work had been directed to demonstrating the effect, as regards understanding of the personality of Jesus, of the conviction which was never doubted in the early Church and has been reinforced by modern researches, that of set purpose he embarked on a programme calculated to fulfil what he believed the prophecies demanded of the Messiah. He was obsessed with this necessity. Its requirements shaped his every move and engaged his constant vigilance. As he understood it, the greatest issues for humanity depended on his success. It was a singular, fantastic and heroic enterprise, though in the strange apocalypticism of the time perfectly comprehensible. It called for intense messianic faith, acute perceptiveness, an iron will, and a very high order of intelligence.
The programme was now approaching its climax, and its stipulations were becoming more varied, more complex, more difficult to achieve, because they involved producing certain essential reactions on the part of others. Everything had to be foreseen, timed and dovetailed. The sense of the crisis is present in the Gospels in the amount of space which they devote to it. They had here their richest inheritance from the impressions left upon the minds of the immediate followers of the Messiah.
The destined road for Jesus led to torture at Jerusalem on a Roman cross, to be followed by resurrection. But these things had to come about in the manner predicted by the Scriptures and after preliminaries entailing the most careful scheming and plotting to produce them. Moves and situations had to be anticipated, rulers and associates had to perform their functions without realising that they were being used. A conspiracy had to be organised of which the victim was himself the deliberate secret instigator. It was a nightmarish conception and undertaking, the outcome of the frightening logic of a sick mind, or of a genius. And it worked out.
In the middle of Passion Week, following the Markan outline, Jesus left the Temple at Jerusalem for the last time, and appropriately at this point the Gospel introduces, in response to the questions of the two pairs of brothers, Simon and Andrew, James and John, an apocalyptic discourse in which Jesus foretells the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the tribulations of the Last Times which will precede his return to earth in glory.
Jesus had finished with his public ministry and teaching. The verbal duel with the authorities was over. Both he and they retired to prepare for the final contest. The Council had to find a way to capture Jesus and have him executed which would not have dangerous popular repercussions. Jesus had to assure that he would not be taken until he was ready and further vital things had been accomplished. The full messianic significance of his end had to be registered to comply with the prophecies, otherwise his sufferings would not be seen by his disciples in their true light and communicated to Israel.
While our eyes are on the central figure of the unique drama, we should spare a thought for all those who must have been speculating at this time on what was going to happen, what Jesus was going to do. He had come forward in the clearest manner possible as leader of the Jewish people, whether as a prophet or as the Messiah in person was disputed; but it was known throughout Jerusalem to multitudes that he had assumed a position of authority and had openly joined issue with the rulers. No one would do this without a purpose, without further intentions of a more startling nature. What would be the next move of the Galilean? Would he attempt a coup? There was nothing yet to indicate what his plans were. From the highest to the lowest, and according to the different opinions of Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots and the uncommitted masses, he had everyone guessing. Jerusalem waited breathlessly on the eve of this portentous Passover, in hope, in doubt, in fear.
The Council was in a state of tension. As yet they had no answer to their problem. It was agreed that Jesus must not be apprehended on the feast day, which argues that they were coming very close to a decision to risk the consequences later.
The disciples of Jesus were no less on edge. We may infer this from Mark's account of the woman at Bethany who anointed Jesus. They upbraided her for her prodigal wastefulness, when the oil might have been sold for the benefit of the poor. The Fourth Gospel may well be right that Judas Iscariot was the most vehement of the critics, and that it was he who named the figure of three hundred denarii which the perfume would nave fetched on the market. This Gospel offers the explanation, perhaps editorial, that Judas was a thief and angry at losing a chance of personal gain. What the incident in any case suggests is that the disciples were keyed up. They were not really thinking of the poor, and took it out on the woman to relieve their nervous tension. In their minds was a nagging uneasiness because of what Jesus had said was in store for him; and he had taken them no further into his confidence. They were deeply anxious and in an explosive mood, not daring to ask him to be more explicit. It would seem that Judas, who perhaps was the most sensitive and highly strung of the twelve, was very near breaking point. The woman's gesture triggered things off. It did not help at all when Jesus calmly told the disciples that his body had been anointed for burial.
Through the confused but still eloquent remembrances of what transpired we may be afforded here, without those who handed them on realising it, an insight into another ingredient of the Passover Plot. We have previously seen how Jesus had privately arranged, no doubt with Lazarus, to have a young ass tethered at the eastern end of the village of Bethany, ready to be released to his messengers on speaking the prearranged signal words. Lazarus was the only man in Bethany with whom we are told that Jesus was on intimate terms. Jesus could trust him completely to honour his request, so that at the psychological moment the beast would be there to enable him to fulfil the prophecy of Zechariah and stage his triumphal entry into Jerusalem as king. It is noteworthy that outside the ranks of the twelve apostles it is particularly said that Jesus loved Martha and Mary and their brother Lazarus of Bethany, and the unnamed disciple, whom we have called John the priest, of Jerusalem. These Judean confidants were essential to his plans, and we can trace the parts played by Lazarus, Mary and John.
Here we are able to detect the private arrangement made by Jesus with Mary, who, according to the Fourth Gospel, was the one who brought in the flask of costly oil of nard to anoint Jesus. Jesus had asked her to perform this office, again without declaring his purpose, in order to bring to the boil his betrayal by one of his disciples, thus fulfilling the prophecy, ‘Mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.’7
Let us look at the matter more closely. Ever since the revelation of the messiahship of Jesus at Caesarea-Philippi he had informed his disciples that his end would result from his rejection by the chief priests, elders and scribes. At intervals he had dinned this into them with increasing emphasis, adding that he would be betrayed to these rulers. He did not say specifically that one of the twelve would be the traitor, but it must have been in his mind both in view of the prophecy and because he had told no one else of his predestined fate. Only the Fourth Gospel credits Jesus with knowing from the beginning who would betray him.8 This is improbable, though he may quickly have formed a strong suspicion that it might be Judas. We are informed that Judas became treasurer of the band, and he is accused of embezzling the small funds. If this is true, it was apparently unknown to the rest of the twelve, or they would have done something about it. Perhaps only Jesus was aware of the cupidity of Judas and his instability of character, and in the end revealed it to the Beloved Disciple alone. By harping on his betrayal and the circumstances of his death he was not only insisting upon what it was vital for his disciples to apprehend, he was cleverly prompting reactions which would confirm what he must know. His stratagem now was designed to pile on the pressure at the crucial moment and induce the traitor to act. To obtain a positive result he had enlightened his disciples no further about his plans at this stage, so that they were in a highly charged emotional condition, and he had arranged with Mary the incident of the precious ointment in order deliberately to let fall the words about his body being anointed for burial. He would have used these words whether or not the question of the poor had come up; but it seems likely that the value of the perfume was intended to play on the weakness of Judas. The episode had the desired effect, as Jesus could observe. The conjunction of the idea of wealth and anointing for burial registered. In Luke's words: ‘Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve. And he went his way, and communed with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray him unto them. And they were glad, and covenanted to give him money.’ Mark's testimony is that this decision by Judas followed immediately after the incident of the precious perfume.
Judas knew that Jesus expected to be betrayed. He had been saying so again and again, and once more now he had spoken about his death. We may believe, however, that not until this moment had Judas thought of himself as the betrayer. It was the worth of the ointment and Jesus talking about his burial which put it into his head. Suddenly like an inspiration it came to him that money was to be made by doing what Jesus plainly wanted. It seemed as if in a subtle way Jesus was telling him this, inviting him to profit by doing his will. The tempter came in the guise of his Master.
What else may have been in the mind of Judas it is impossible to judge. It has been suggested that he was bitterly disillusioned about Jesus, having imagined that he would speedily establish his kingdom and that there would be great material rewards for his followers. But Jesus had said he would be killed, and the rewards would come in an uncertain future in circumstances of the performance of strange prodigies incomprehensible in practical terms. Judas therefore betrayed Jesus, on this estimation, because he felt that Jesus had betrayed him.
To the chief priests it must have seemed an act of Providence when Judas came to them with his offer. They had been at their wits’ end to devise a means of removing the menace Jesus represented without inflaming popular feeling and thus stimulating the revolutionary outbreak which at all costs they had to prevent. With the leader removed, they were confident that excitement would abate and that the threatened insurrection would fizzle out. Now to their enormous relief one of his intimate associates was ready to deliver him into their hands.
In fairness to the Council it must be said that their motives were not inherently evil. They believed there was a real risk of an abortive Jewish rising prompted by the new pretended Messiah, a Galilean like the notorious Judas of Galilee. They knew how the Romans were hated, and the Sadducean hierarchy not much less. A very small spark could set the country ablaze. There would be bloodshed followed by heavier oppression.
We have evidence that the chief priests at the time were arrogant and high-handed, loving wealth and power and position. This has been true of hierarchies of different lands at many periods. But in Palestine just now they were also responsible in the difficult conditions of alien domination for the maintenance of public order, for assuring the continuity of national existence and the survival of the Temple as the world-centre of Jewish faith. Their present fears were by no means ill-founded, as Jewish history of the following decades abundantly confirmed. Better that one man should die than multitudes, including innocent women and children. The liquidation of individuals was commonplace in those days, and notorious during the closing years of the reign of Tiberius.9 It is still tolerated two thousand years later with all our vaunted concern for human rights. We must beware of judging what happened in the light of what Christians believe about Jesus. We have to see him as he appeared to the Council in their grave predicament. From their point of view the decision they arrived at was fully justified, and Jesus, well knowing what he was doing, had quite deliberately forced them to take it by his skilfully planned and calculated activities. If he had not presented himself as a claimant of the throne of Israel and a menace to national security he would have been completely ignored by the Sanhedrin. He had himself made doubly sure that they would proceed to extremes against him by goading them with his words and behaviour, so that any possible mitigation of their severity would be offset by the personal animus he had intentionally created.
The Council might imagine they were exercising their own free will in determining to destroy Jesus, and Judas Iscariot might believe the same in betraying him; but in fact the comprehensive engineer of the Passover Plot was Jesus himself. Their responses were governed by his ability to assess their reactions when he applied appropriate stimuli. Thus it was assured that the Scriptures would be fulfilled.
The hour was now coming very close towards which all the astuteness and careful strategy of Jesus had been directed. The betrayer had been revealed and brought to the point of playing his part. We may believe that this had been the most painful task Jesus had to perform, and it must have grieved him deeply that the traitor had to be one of his chosen twelve. But so it was written. There was little time left and much still to he accomplished.
It was vital to the messianic thinking of Jesus that he should keep the Passover with his disciples in Jerusalem. This meant going there in the evening, something he had never done before, and making sure that the Council would not know where he was until the Last Supper was over and he had again left the city. The prophecies required that he alone should be the victim, and no others must be involved in his fate. He was in agreement with the Council here that there must be no violence in the Holy City. Accordingly, he had had to make secret arrangements of a dramatic kind with his trusted young disciple John the priest to celebrate the Passover at his home, and had stipulated the precautions to be taken. Not even the most intimate of the Twelve, Peter, James and John, had been informed of these arrangements.
On the Thursday morning at Bethany the disciples came to Jesus to inquire where he wished them to prepare for him to eat the passover. As in the case of the ass at Bethany he again instructed two of his disciples. Luke alone says they were Peter and John the son of Zebedee. They were to go into the city where, by the gate near the pool, they would be met by a man carrying a water-pot. Normally it was women who went to draw water, so they would easily pick him out. They were to follow this man to the house which he would enter, go in themselves and say to the owner, ‘The Master says, which guest-room am I to have to eat the passover with my disciples?’ They would then he shown a large upstairs room ready laid out, where they were to prepare the passover.
Again what Jesus had required of his Judean friends had been carried out to the letter. There was no hitch. The man with the water-pot was at the rendezvous. All was made ready, and in the evening Jesus came with the twelve to their destination. The circumstances had made it impossible for Judas to notify the Council in advance where Jesus was. Such incidents as this are extremely revealing, because they illustrate the generalship of Jesus and furnish concrete examples of the devices to which he was prepared to resort to accomplish his ends. When given the value they merit, they compel us to look at him with new eyes and a different kind of respect.
There were fourteen, not thirteen persons, who reclined at the table for the paschal meal. There was Jesus and the Twelve, and additionally in a place of honour was the Beloved Disciple as the master of the house.10 Jesus leaned on the breast of Peter, and this other disciple on the breast of Jesus. With the familiar faces around him, including that of the betrayer, Jesus was deeply moved. ‘I have greatly longed to eat this passover with you before I suffer,’ he said to them, ‘for I tell you I shall not partake of another until its fulfilment in the Kingdom of God.’
The age-old service (seder) began. Jesus recited the blessing over the first of the four obligatory cups of wine of the evening, and handed it on for them to share it, saying, ‘I tell you, from this time forth I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the Kingdom of God is inaugurated.’ It seems probable that it was during the paschal meal which preceded the second part of the service that Jesus announced that one of those eating with him would betray him. Deeply distressed, one after another demanded to know if he was the one. Jesus refused to be drawn. He would not put Judas to open shame, and he could not take a chance that he might be stopped or deterred. He would only say: ‘It is one of the twelve dipping in the dish with me. Though the Son of Man goes the way that is written of him, woe, nevertheless, to the one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. Better for him had he never been born.’
Peter was not satisfied, according to the Fourth Gospel. He leaned across Jesus to John the priest, who was not one of the Twelve, and whispered, ‘Ask him who he means.’ The Beloved Disciple complied, and Jesus told him, ‘It is the one for whom I dip a morsel and offer it to him.’ Thereupon he plunged a piece of bread in the bowl of food, lifted a portion, and presented it to Judas, saying, ‘What you have to do, do quickly.’ Judas accepted and hastily rose from the table. He knew that Jesus knew, and that he wanted him to proceed. He made his exit into the night. The company in general thought nothing of this. They concluded that Jesus was requiring Judas as purser to buy something for the festival which had been overlooked or to give alms to the poor.
When the betrayer had left, Jesus broke the last bread of the evening at the close of the meal and distributed pieces to his disciples, telling them that it signified his body. After grace he took the third cup of wine, known as ‘the cup of blessing’, recited the benediction, and passed round the cup, saying, ‘This signifies the New Covenant in my blood, which is poured out for many.’ The service concluded with the drinking of the fourth cup of wine and the chanting of Psalms cxv–cxviii.
Jesus embraced and parted with his Beloved Disciple, and then led the remaining eleven out into the street, out of the city, across the Kedron to the Garden of Gethsemane on the lower slopes of the Mount of Olives. As they went, he said to them, ‘All of you will waver in your loyalty, for it is written, “I will strike at the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.” ’11 Nostalgically he added, ‘But after I have been raised up I will go ahead of you to Galilee.’
Peter responded stoutly, ‘Even if everyone else wavers, I shall not.’ Jesus looked at him. ‘Simon, Simon,’ he said, ‘Satan has begged to have you that he may prise you loose like husks from the grain. But I have prayed that your loyalty may not fail, and on your restoration you must confirm your brothers.’
‘In your cause, Master,’ he replied, ‘I am ready to go to prison and to death too.’
Jesus shook his head. ‘I tell you for a fact, Peter, the cock will not crow today before you have denied three times that you know me.’12 He turned to the rest, ‘When I sent you out without purse, or wallet, or sandals, did you go short of anything?’
‘Yet now,’ he said, ‘whoever has a purse let him take it, and a wallet as well, and whoever has no dagger let him sell his cloak and buy one. For I tell you that this scripture will have its accomplishment in me, “He was classed with outlaws.”13 Yes, indeed, whatever has reference to me will have its fulfilment.’
‘Here are two daggers, Master,’ they said.
‘That will do,’ he told them.
1. See Mk. xi. 11, 12, 15, 19, 20, 27, xiii. I, xiv. 1, 3, 12, 17, 26, 32, 46, 53, xv. 1, 25, 34, 42.
2. Lk. vii. 36–50.
3. Jn. xviii. 28, xix. 14.
4. Jn. xiii. 1.
5. Lk. xxii. 1–6; Mk. xiv. 10–11.
6. Jn. xiii. 2.
7. Ps. xli. 9; Jn. xiii. 18.
8. Jn. vi. 64, 70–1.
9. The Roman historian Tacitus says: ‘Among the calamities of that black period the most trying grievance was the degenerate spirit, with which the first men in the senate submitted to the drudgery of becoming common informers; some without a blush, in the face of day; and others by clandestine artifices. The contagion was epidemic. Near relations, aliens in blood, friends and strangers, known and unknown, were, without distinction, all involved in one common danger. The fact recently committed, and the tale revived, were equally destructive. Words alone were sufficient. . . Informers struggled, as it were in a race, who should be first to ruin his man; some to secure themselves; the greater part infected by the general corruption of the times’ (Annals, Book VI, vii).
10. That the Beloved Disciple had a house in Jerusalem is confirmed by the Fourth Gospel, which states that on the cross Jesus entrusted his mother to him ‘and from that hour that disciple took her into his own home’ (Jn. xix. 27). The disciples were in this house after the crucifixion, where Mary Magdalene came to Peter and the Beloved Disciple (Jn. xx. 2.; Lk. xxiv. 33). At the beginning of the Acts we find the disciples assembled in an upper room of a house at Jerusalem, presumably the upper room of the house of the Last Supper, and it is identified with the home of John the Beloved Disciple since the mother of Jesus is there with his brothers (Acts. i. 13–14).
11. Zech. xiii. 7.
12. Mark says: ‘Before the cock crow twice, thou thalt deny me thrice’ (xiv. 30). We must not stress the figures, which are only a Hebrew form of emphasis found frequently in the Bible. What Jesus said to Peter simply means, ‘You, the loyal one, will disown me just as much as the others.’ In the Gospels the saying is literalised, not appreciating the Hebrew idiom, so that the cock has to crow, twice in Mark, and Peter has to deny Jesus on three occasions.
13. Isa. liii. 12. Again the saying of Jesus is not to be taken literally. He was not instructing his disciples to arm themselves, but telling them they would now be left to their own resources and treated as rebels.