Note 32 — Chapter III · RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

As regards the first and negative side, it has to be explained how, on the ordinary supposition concerning the author of the fourth gospel and the correctness of the synoptical account, it happens that John, who according to the two first gospels was one of the three whom Jesus took with him, to be the more immediate witnesses of his conflict, passes in silence over the whole event? It will not suffice to appeal to his sleepiness during the scene; for, if this was a hindrance to its narration, all the Evangelists must have been silent on the subject, and not John alone. Hence the usual expedient is tried here also, and he is said to have omitted the scene because he found it already presented with sufficient care in the writings of the synoptists.32 But between the two first synoptists and the third there is here so important a divergency, as to demand most urgently that John, if he took their accounts into consideration, should speak a mediating word in this difference. If however, John had not the works of his predecessors lying before him, he might still, it is said, suppose that history to be sufficiently familiar to his readers as a part of evangelical tradition.33 But as this tradition was the source of the divergent representations of the synoptists, it must itself have early begun to exhibit variations, and to narrate the fact first in one way, then in another: consequently on this view also there was a call on the author of the fourth gospel to rectify these wavering accounts. Hence of late an entirely new supposition has been adopted, namely, that John omits the events in Gethsemane lest, by the mention of the strengthening angel, he should give any furtherance to the Ebionitish opinion that the higher nature in Christ was an angel, which united itself with him at baptism; and now as it might be inferred, again departed from him before the hour of suffering.34 But—not to urge that we have already found any hypothesis of this nature inadequate to explain the omissions in the Gospel of John—if this Evangelist wished to avoid any indication of a close relation between Jesus and angels, he must also have excluded other passages from his gospel: above all, as Lücke remarks,35 the declaration concerning the ascending and descending of angels upon him, i. 52; and also the idea, given indeed only as the conjecture of some bystanders, that an angel spake to him, ἄγγελος αὐτῷ λελάληκεν, xii. 29. If, however, he on any ground whatever, found special matter of hesitation in the appearance of the angel in the garden: this would only be a reason for omitting the intervention of the angel, with Matthew and Mark, and not for excluding the whole scene, which was easily separable from this single particular.