Note 52 — Chapter X · THE TRANSFIGURATION OF JESUS, AND HIS LAST JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM.

The most striking part of this account is obviously the statement of Matthew, that Jesus not only required two asses, though he alone intended to ride, but that he also actually sat on them both. It is true that, as is natural, there are not wanting attempts to explain the former particular, and to do away with the latter. Jesus, it is said, caused the mother animal to be brought with the colt, on which alone he intended to ride, in order that the young and still sucking animal might by this means be made to go more easily;52 or else the mother, accustomed to her young one, followed of her own accord:53 but a young animal, yet unweaned, would scarcely be given up by its owner to be ridden. A sufficient motive on the part of Jesus in sending for the two animals, could only be that he intended to ride both, which Matthew appears plainly enough to say; for his words imply, not only that the clothes were spread, but also that Jesus was placed on the two animals (ἐπάνω αὐτων). But how are we to represent this to ourselves? As an alternate mounting of the one and the other, Fritzsche thinks:54 but this, for so short a distance would have been a superfluous inconvenience. Hence commentators have sought to rid themselves of the singular statement. Some, after very weak authorities, and in opposition to all critical principles, read in the words relative to the spreading of the clothes, ἐπ’ αὐτὸν (τὸν πωλον), upon it (the colt), instead of ἐπάνω αὐτων, upon them; and then in the mentioning that Jesus placed himself thereon, refer the ἐπάνω αυτων to the clothes which were spread on one of the animals.55 Others, thinking to escape the difficulty without an alteration of the reading, characterize Matthew’s statement as an enallage numeri,56 by which, according to Winer’s explanation, it is meant that the Evangelist, using an inaccurate mode of expression, certainly speaks of both the animals, but only in the sense in which we say of him who springs from one of two horses harnessed together, that he springs from the horses.57 Admitting this expedient to be sufficient, it again becomes incomprehensible why Jesus, who according to this only meant to use one animal, should have sent for two. The whole statement becomes the more suspicious, when we consider that it is given by the first Evangelist alone; for in order to reconcile the others with him it will not suffice to say, as we ordinarily read, that they name only the foal as being that on which Jesus rode, and that while omitting the ass as an accessory fact, they do not exclude it.