Page images
PDF
EPUB

former, Mary served, the other was in the house of Simon the Leper. But Mary, being a neighbour, and perhaps a relation, might serve in the house of Simon.

Mr. Whiston finds a farther difference in the vindication and apologies which our Saviour made for the woman. "At the former," he says, "our Saviour desires Judas not to exclaim against her, as if she had spent abundance of ointment on a ceremony. Against the day of the preparation for my funeral has she kept it; as if he had said, she has spent but little of it now, she has reserved the main part of it for a fitter time, the day before my delivery to the Jews. At the latter anointing, Mark says, She has done what she could. She is come beforehand, to anoint my body for the preparation to my funeral: which words will bear this paraphrase. Because she sees no prospect of an opportunity of embalming my body hereafter, she prevents her intentions. as well as she can, by anointing my body thus beforehand, instead of it."*

But certainly Mary had no more expectation of the death of Jesus than the other disciples. And it appears to me very extraordinary that, if Judas had been reproved by our Lord, with so much severity, four days before, and this very anointing had even been foretold by him, as Mr. Whiston supposes, the other disciples should have been so very inattentive, as to complain of it a second time, and give our Lord occasion to repeat his rebuke.

The agreement between these histories, Mr. Whiston acknowledges to be so great, that there is a great deal of colour for supposing them to be the same; both anointings being, a few days before the passover, performed by the same woman, Mary; in the same place, Bethany; the price of the ointment the very same, three hundred pence; the woman being at both times reproved by others, and being vindicated by our Saviour; most of the company, also, being

the same.

Jerusalem is twenty miles from Jericho, so that Jesus could not sup at Bethany and enter in triumph from Jericho the next day. The supper at Bethany, therefore, must intervene between the journey from Jericho and the entry. It is not improbable but that he might spend a day or two in the family of Lazarus at that time, which might give Simon a proper opportunity of inviting him to his house, and making suitable preparation to receive him.

• Harmony, p. 129. (P.)

If we suppose that this Simon the Leper was a disciple and friend of Christ, which I think is rather probable, (as another would hardly have risked the displeasure of the ruling Jews so much, as to entertain a man who was now become so exceedingly obnoxious to them,) and he had pre. vious intimation of Jesus's visit to Bethany, and received him the very night of his arrival, we shall be better able to account for the mistake of Mark, who places the purging of the temple the day after the triumphant entry; whereas it was the day after his arrival in Bethany, two contiguous dates, one of which he may be supposed to have mistaken for the other.

SECTION XV.*

Observations on the Order of Events from the Triumphant Entry into Jerusalem, to the Examination of Jesus before the High-Priests.

§ 1. Of the Purging of the Temple.

THE reader will perceive that I have adopted the opinion of Mr. Mann, in supposing that Christ purged the temple only once, and that at the last passover. His reasons are the following:

(1.) All the other evangelists mention this event as taking place at the last passover.

(2.) Such an act of authority is not agreeable to the caution with which our Lord began his public ministry; being accompanied with a public declaration that he was the Son of God, or the Messiah; a declaration which, at that time, he avoided making.

(3.) Such an affront to the Jewish priests could not have passed unnoticed or unpunished. And yet some time after it appears, that neither Herod, nor many of the people, had heard of Jesus; and six months after this event, (a year or two according to other Harmonists,) his brethren bade him go and shew himself at Jerusalem.

(4.) If Jesus had made this declaration, accompanied with so high an act of authority, at Jerusalem, would the chief priests have accused him, as in Luke xxiii. 5, of having begun from Galilee, to pervert the people with his doctrine ?

[ocr errors][merged small]

(5.) To these arguments of Mr. Mann, I would add, that none of the evangelists give the least hint of Jesus having purged the temple more than once, and the accounts of them all contain the very same particulars.

(6.) The verses that contain this account in John ii. 1323, seem to have no business in the place where they now stand. For, take them away, and the parts they now disjoin have an easy connexion; there being a kind of contrast between our Lord's disciples only, believing on him, upon seeing one miracle at Cana, ver. 12, and many believing on him, when they saw many miracles performed by him at Jerusalem, mentioned ver. 23.

Besides, the historian would hardly have chosen to mention its being the passover twice, so near together, as at vers. 13 and 23, when there could have been no danger of any person having forgotten or mistaken it.

(7.) The first intimation that our Lord gave the Jews, that he was the Christ, seems to have been at the feast of pentecost, (John v. 17,) and it instigated them to seek to slay him. But had he made the same declaration on his purging the temple before, they would hardly have been so much exasperated now on that account.

(8.) No objection will arise to this hypothesis from the attention of the Jews being excited concerning Jesus, and the motives of Nicodemus's application to him, on account of the want of this exertion of authority; which is by some supposed almost necessary to account for them. For, besides what John the Baptist had done, in bearing witness to Jesus, and pointing him out to the people, and besides the miracle at Cana, (the fame of which doth not, indeed, seem to have spread very far,) our Lord performed many miracles at this very passover in Jerusalem, and on the feast-day; as is expressly said, John ii. 23, and iv. 45.

Matthew describes Christ's purging the temple as performed on the very day of his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, before he cursed the fig-tree. But, according to Mark, (xi. 11,) he only "looked round about upon all things," when he first visited the temple, and, it being even, he went to Bethany; from whence returning, in the morning, he cursed the fig-tree, and then, on the second day of his visiting the temple, (ver. 15,) he purged it.

It has been said that, though Mark only says that " Jesus -looked round about upon all things" on his first visit to

*See Appendix, No. VII.

the temple, after his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, the word which he makes use of (TEρinεVaμer) implies the ejection of the buyers and sellers, expressing a look of indignation, reproof, and correction.* It has, therefore, been

supposed that our Lord purged the temple both on that day and the following. But I own that this appears to me to be a harsh construction of the word. Besides, if Mark really knew of the first, as well as of the second purging of the temple, and alludes to both, it would have been more natural for him to have written at large the account of the first purging, rather than that of the second.

§ 2. Of the Prophecy concerning the Destruction of

Jerusalem.

What Luke (xvii. 20-37) represents our Lord as saying to the Pharisees before he arrived at Jerusalem, concerning the destruction of that city, was not said, according to Matthew and Mark, till after he had taken his final leave of the temple, just before the last passover, and was then communicated to his disciples only, together with what is contained in the 21st chapter of his Gospel. I hardly think that Luke's account of the circumstances of this remarkable prophecy, or of his prophetical declarations on his public entry into Jerusalem, are agreeable to the usual caution and reserve of our Saviour in those respects. However, the sentiments in Matthew and Luke are so much the same, that in compiling a harmony, I should choose to place them together, that they might be more easily compared.

§ 3. Of Jesus's saying to the Jews, "Ye shall not see me till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord."

Our Lord's saying to the Jews, "Ye shall not see me until ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord," Luke (xiii. 35) supposes to have been pronounced by him in Galilee, before he arrived at Jerusalem; but Matthew (xxiii. 39) supposes that these words were pronounced in the temple, after his triumphant entry.

Grotius would translate the words ews av site of Matthew to signify till ye could wish to say, referring to his coming to judgment with power and great glory. I can only say with

• See Pilkington, p. 18. (P.)

sense.

Dr. Doddridge, [in loc.,] I wish the words would bear that He paraphrases them thus: "Till your calamities have taught you eagerly to wish for the Messiah, and—as a nation gladly to receive me under that character." For my own part, I am not quite satisfied with any sense that I have seen put upon these words.

§ 4. Of the Introduction of the Greeks to Jesus, &c.

The discourses recorded in John xii. 20-50, &c. seem not to have been delivered on the day that he first entered the temple, and purged it. The Greeks had probably heard of that extraordinary action, and were thereby the more induced to make inquiry concerning him. And the discourses that follow concerning his mission seem very properly to precede those awful parables that relate to the rejection of Christianity by the Jews, and that are recorded in Matthew and the other evangelists.

§ 5. Whether Judas Iscariot partook of the Lord's Supper,

considered.*

It appears from John, (xiii. 30,) that Judas left the company of the rest of the disciples immediately after receiving the sop which Jesus gave him. So that if (as seems to be the opinion of most critics) the eating of the sop, which was dipped in the dish, belonged to the paschal supper, Judas did not partake of the Lord's supper which followed it. But it should seem from Luke, (xxii. 21,) that Judas was with them, both at and after the institution; for immediately after the account of this ordinance, and of Christ's saying, "This cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed for you;" he adds, "but behold the hand of him that betrays me is with me on the table," &c. So that if we had no other account of this transaction but that of Luke, we could not have entertained the least doubt, but that Judas received the Lord's supper along with the other apostles.†

In Mark, (xiv. 18,) words similar to these last in Luke, "Verily I say unto you, one of you which eateth with me shall betray me,' are interposed between the account of eating the passover, and that of the institution of the Lord's

[ocr errors]

The whole of this § 5, is here copied verbatim from the Author's paper in the Theol. Repos. (I. pp. 143–146), entitled "Observations and Queries concerning Judas Iscariot's being present, or not present, at the Institution of the Lord's Supper." The Introduction to these Observations now forms the paragraphs supra + Chrysostom "thinks that Judas was present" at that time. Lardner, V. P. 149.

p. 9.

[blocks in formation]
« EelmineJätka »