Note 38 — Chapter II · BAPTISM AND TEMPTATION OF JESUS.

But there is, besides, a chronological difficulty: namely, that while, according to the synoptical writers, Jesus, in the plenitude of the Spirit, just communicated to him at the Jordan, betakes himself, in consequence of that communication, for forty days to the wilderness, where the temptation occurs, and then returns into Galilee; John, on the contrary, is silent concerning the temptation, and appears to suppose an interval of a few days only, between the baptism of Jesus and his journey into Galilee; thus allowing no space for a six weeks’ residence in the wilderness. The fourth Evangelist commences his narrative with the testimony which the Baptist delivers to the emissaries of the Sanhedrim (i. 19); the next day (τῇ ἐπαύριον) he makes the Baptist recite the incident which in the synoptical gospels is followed by the baptism (v. 29): again, the next day (τῇ ἐπαύριον) he causes two of his disciples to follow Jesus (v. 35); farther, the next day (τῇ ἐπαύριον, v. 44), as Jesus is on the point of journeying into Galilee, Philip and Nathanael join him; and lastly, on the third day, τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῃ (ii. 1), Jesus is at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. The most natural inference is, that the baptism took place immediately before John’s narrative of its attendant occurrences, and as according to the synoptical gospels the temptation followed close on the baptism, both these events must be inserted between v. 28 and 29, as Euthymius supposed. But between that which is narrated down to v. 28, and the sequel from v. 29 inclusive, there is only the interval of a morrow, ἐπαύριον, while the temptation requires a period of forty days; hence, expositors have thought it necessary to give ἐπαύριον the wider sense of ὕστερον afterwards; this however is inadmissible, because the expression τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῇ τρίτῃ, the third day, follows in connexion with ἐπαύριον, and restricts its meaning to the morrow. We might therefore be inclined, with Kuinöl, to separate the baptism and the temptation, to place the baptism after v. 28, and to regard the next day’s interview between Jesus and John (v. 29) as a parting visit from the former to the latter: inserting after this the journey into the wilderness and the temptation. But without insisting that the first three Evangelists seem not to allow even of a day’s interval between the baptism and the departure of Jesus into the wilderness, yet even later we have the same difficulty in finding space for the forty days. For it is no more possible to place the residence in the wilderness between the supposed parting visit and the direction of the two disciples to Jesus, that is between v. 34 and 35, as Kuinöl attempts, than between v. 28 and 29, since the former as well as the latter passages are connected by τῇ ἐπαύριον, on the morrow. Hence we must descend to v. 43 and 44; but here also there is only the interval of a morrow, and even chap. ii. 1, we are shut out by an ἡμέρα τρίτη, third day, so that, proceeding in this way, the temptation would at last be carried to the residence of Jesus in Galilee, in direct opposition to the statement of the synoptical writers; while, in further contradiction to them, the temptation is placed at a farther and farther distance from the baptism. Thus neither at v. 29, nor below it, can the forty days’ residence of Jesus in the wilderness with the temptation be intercalated: and it must therefore be referred, according to the plan of Lücke and others,38 to the period before v. 19, which seems to allow of as large an interpolation as can be desired, inasmuch as the fourth Evangelist there commences his history. Now it is true that what follows from v. 19 to 28 is not of a kind absolutely to exclude the baptism and temptation of Jesus as earlier occurrences; but from v. 29 to 34, the Evangelist is far from making the Baptist speak as if there had been an interval of six weeks between the baptism and his narrative of its circumstances.39 That the fourth Evangelist should have omitted, by chance merely, the history of the temptation, important as it was in the view of the other Evangelists, seems improbable: it is rather to be concluded, either that it was dogmatically offensive to him, so that he omitted it designedly, or that it was not current in the circle of tradition from which he drew his materials.