Note 15 — Chapter III · LOCALITY AND CHRONOLOGY OF THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS.

There is, however, one point unfavourable to the synoptical writers. That Jesus in his last visit to Jerusalem should, within the short space of the feast day, have brought himself into such decided hostility to the ruling party in the capital, that they contrived his arrest and death, is inexplicable, if we reject the statement of John, that this hostility originated and was gradually aggravated during his frequent previous visits.15 If it be rejoined, that even in Galilean synagogues there were stationary scribes and Pharisees (Matt ix. 3, xii. 14), that such as were resident in the capital often visited the provinces (Matt. xv. 1), and that thus there existed a hierarchical nexus by means of which a deadly enmity against Jesus might be propagated in Jerusalem before he had ever publicly appeared there; we then have precisely that ecclesiastical bond between Galilee and Jerusalem which renders improbable on the part of Jesus the non-observance of a series of feasts. Moreover the synoptical writers have recorded an expression of Jesus which tells strongly against their own view. The words: Jerusalem, Jerusalem—how often would I have gathered thy children together—and ye would not, have no meaning whatever in Luke, who puts them into the mouth of Jesus before he had even seen Jerusalem during his public ministry (xiii. 34); and even from the better arrangement of Matthew (xxiii. 37) it is not to be understood how Jesus, after a single residence of a few days in Jerusalem, could found his reproaches on multiplied efforts to win over its inhabitants to his cause. This whole apostrophe of Jesus has so original a character, that it is difficult to believe it incorrectly assigned to him; hence to explain its existence, we must suppose a series of earlier residences in Jerusalem, such as those recorded by the fourth Evangelist. There is only one resource,—to pronounce the statement of the synoptical writers unhistorical in the particular of limiting the decisive visit of Jesus to Jerusalem to the few days of the feast, and to suppose that he made a more protracted stay in the capital.16