Note 39 — Chapter II · MACHINATIONS OF THE ENEMIES OF JESUS; TREACHERY OF JUDAS; LAST SUPPER WITH HIS DISCIPLES.

In this narrative there have been found a multitude of difficulties, which Gabler has assembled in a special treatise.39 At the very threshold of the narrative it occasions surprise, that Jesus should not have thought of any preparation for the passover until the last day, nay, that he should even then have needed to be reminded of it by the disciples, as the two first Evangelists tell us: for owing to the great influx of people at the time of the passover (2,700,000, according to Josephus),40 the accommodations in the city were soon disposed of, and the majority of the strangers were obliged to encamp in tents before the city. It is the more remarkable, then, that, notwithstanding all this the messengers of Jesus find the desired chamber disengaged, and not only so, but actually kept in reserve by the owner and prepared for a repast, as if he had had a presentiment that it would be bespoken by Jesus. And so confidently is this reckoned on by Jesus that he directs his disciples to ask the owner of the house,—not whether he can obtain from him a room in which to eat the passover, but merely—where the guest-chamber appropriated to this purpose may be? or, if we take Matthew’s account, he directs them to say to him that he will eat the passover at his house; to which it must be added that, according to Mark and Luke, Jesus even knows what kind of chamber will be assigned him, and in what part of the house it is situated. But the way in which, according to these two Evangelists, the two disciples were to find their way to the right house, is especially remarkable. The words ὑπάγετε εἰς τὴν πόλιν πρὸς τὸν δεῖνα in Matthew (v. 18), sound as if Jesus had named the person to whom the disciples were to go, but that the narrator either would not or could not repeat it: whereas in the two other Evangelists, Jesus indicates the house into which they were to enter, by means of a person whom they would meet carrying a vessel of water. Now how could Jesus in Bethany, or wherever else he might be, foreknow this accidental circumstance, unless, indeed, it had been pre-concerted that at this particular time a servant from the house should appear with a vessel of water, and thus await the messengers of Jesus? To the rationalistic expositors everything in our narrative appeared to point to a preconcerted arrangement; and this being presupposed, they believed that all its difficulties would at once be solved. The disciples, dispatched so late, could only find a room disengaged if it had been previously bespoken by Jesus; he could only direct them to address the owner of the house so categorically, if he had already previously made an arrangement with him; this would explain the precise knowledge of Jesus as to the locality, and, lastly, (the point from which this explanation sets out), his certainty that the disciples would meet a man carrying water from that particular house. This circumlocutory manner of indicating the house, which might have been avoided by the simple mention of the owner’s name, is supposed to have been adopted by Jesus, that the place where he intended to keep the passover might not be known before the time to the betrayer, who would otherwise perhaps have surprised him there, and thus have disturbed the repast.41