Note 34 — Chapter X · THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS, AND HIS LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.

Shortly after the transfiguration on the mountain, the Evangelists make Jesus enter on the fatal journey which conducted him to his death. With respect to the place from whence he set out on this journey, and the route which he took, the evangelical accounts differ. The synoptists agree as to the point of departure, for they all represent Jesus as setting out from Galilee (Matt. xix. 1; Mark x. 1; Luke ix. 51; in this last passage, Galilee is not indeed expressly named, but we necessarily infer it to be the supposed locality from what precedes, in which only Galilee and districts in Galilee are spoken of, as well as from the journey through Samaria, mentioned in the succeeding passage):34 but concerning the route which Jesus chose from thence to Judæa, they appear to be at variance. It is true that the statements of two of them on this point are so obscure, that they might appear to lend some aid to the harmonizing exegesis. Mark says in the clearest and most definite manner that Jesus took his course through Peræa; but his statement, He came into the coasts of Judæa on the further side of Jordan, ἔρχεται εἰς τὰ ὅρια τῦς Ἰουδαίας διὰ τοῦ πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου, is scarcely anything more than the mode in which he judged it right to explain the hardly intelligible expression of Matthew, whom he follows in this chapter. What it precisely is which the latter intends by the words, He departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judæa beyond Jordan, μετῆρεν ἀπὸ τῆς Γαλιλαίας καὶ ἦλθεν εἰς τὰ ὅρια τῆς Ἰουδαίας πέραν τοῦ Ἰορδάνου, is in fact not at all evident. For if the explanation: he came into that part of Judæa which lies on the opposite side of the Jordan,35 clashes alike with geography and grammar, so the interpretation to which the comparison of Mark inclines the majority of commentators, namely, that Jesus came into Judæa through the country on the farther side of the Jordan,36 is, even as modified by Fritzsche, not free from grammatical difficulty. In any case, however, thus much remains: that Matthew, as well as Mark, makes Jesus take the most circuitous course through Peræa, while Luke, on the other hand, appears to lead him the more direct way through Samaria. It is true that his expression, xvii. 11, where he says that Jesus, on his journey to Jerusalem, passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee, διήρχετο διὰ μέσου Σαμαρείας καὶ Γαλιλαίας is scarcely clearer than the one just cited from Matthew. According to the customary meaning of words, he seems to state that Jesus first crossed Samaria, and then Galilee, in order to arrive at Jerusalem. But this is an inversion of the true order; for if he set out from a place in Galilee, he must first traverse the rest of Galilee, and not until then could he enter Samaria. Hence the words διέρχεσθαι διὰ μέσου κ.τ.λ. have been interpreted to mean a progress along the boundary between Galilee and Samaria,37 and Luke has been reconciled with the two first Evangelists by the supposition, that Jesus journeyed along the Galilean-Samarian frontier, until he reached the Jordan, that he then crossed this river, and so proceeded through Peræa towards Judæa and Jerusalem. But this latter supposition does not agree with Luke ix. 51 ff.; for we learn from this passage that Jesus, after his departure from Galilee, went directly to a Samaritan village, and here made an unfavourable impression, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem, ὅτι τὸ πρόσωπον αὐτοῦ ἦν πορευόμενον εἰς Ἱερουσαλήμ. Now this seems clearly to indicate that Jesus took his way directly from Galilee, through Samaria, to Judæa. We shall therefore be on the side of probability, if we judge this statement to be an artificial arrangement of words, to which the writer was led by his desire to introduce the narrative of the ten lepers, one of whom was a Samaritan;38 and consequently admit that there is here a divergency between the synoptical gospels.39 Towards the end of the journey of Jesus, they are once more in unison, for according to their unanimous statement, Jesus arrived at Jerusalem from Jericho (Matt. xx. 29, parall.); a place which, we may observe, lay more in the direct road for a Galilean coming through Peræa, than for one coming through Samaria.