Note 51 — Chapter X · THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS, AND HIS LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.

On the first glance, indeed, the supposition of two entrances seems to find support in the fact, that John makes his entrance take place the day after the meal in Bethany, at which Jesus was anointed under memorable circumstances; whereas the two first synoptists (for Luke knows nothing of a meal at Bethany in this period of the life of Jesus) make their entrance precede this meal: and thus, quite in accordance with the above supposition, the synoptical entrance would appear the earlier, that of John the later. This would be very well, if John had not placed his entrance so early, and the synoptists their meal at Bethany so late, that the former cannot possibly have been subsequent to the latter. According to John, Jesus comes six days before the passover to Bethany, and on the following day enters Jerusalem (xiii. 1, 12); on the other hand, the meal at Bethany, mentioned by the synoptists (Matt. xxvi. 6 ff. parall.), can have been at the most but two days before the passover (v. 2); so that if we are to suppose the synoptical entrance prior to the meal and the entrance in John, there must then have been after all this, according to the synoptists, a second meal in Bethany. But between the two meals thus presupposed, as between the two entrances, there would have been the most striking resemblance even to the minutest points; and against the interweaving of two such double incidents, there is so strong a presumption, that it will scarcely be said there were two entrances and two meals, which were originally far more dissimilar, but, from the transference of features out of the one incident into the other by tradition, they have become as similar to each other as we now see them: on the contrary, here if anywhere, it is easier, when once the authenticity of the accounts is given up, to imagine that tradition has varied one incident, than that it has assimilated two.51