Note 29 — Chapter III · RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

As a counterpoise to this peculiarity of Luke, his two predecessors have, as we have said, the twofold occurrence of the number three,—the three disciples taken apart, and the three retirements and prayers of Jesus. It has indeed been contended that so restless a movement hither and thither, so rapid an alternation of retirement and return, is entirely suited to the state of mind in which Jesus then was,29 and also, that in the repetition of the prayer there is correctly shown an appropriate gradation; a more and more complete resignation to the will of the Father.30 But that the two narrators count the retirements of Jesus, marking them by the expressions ἐκ δευτέρου and ἐκ τρίτου, at once shows that the number three was a point of importance to them; and when Matthew, though he certainly gives in the second prayer an expression somewhat different from that of the first, in the third makes Jesus only repeat the same words, τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον, and when Mark does this even the second time,—this is a significant proof that they were embarrassed how to fill up the favourite number three with appropriate matter. According to Olshausen, Matthew, with his three acts of this conflict, must be right in opposition to Luke, because these three attacks made on Jesus through the medium of fear, correspond to the three attacks through the medium of desire, in the history of the temptation. This parallel is well founded; it only leads to an opposite result to that deduced by Olshausen. For which is more probable; that in both cases the threefold repetition of the attack had an objective ground, in a latent law of the kingdom of spirits, and hence is to be regarded as really historical; or that it had merely a subjective ground in the manner of the legend, so that the occurrence of this number here, as certainly as above in the history of the temptation, points to something mythical?31