Note 40 — Chapter III · RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

Agreeably to the tendency of the latest criticism of the gospels, the burthen of error in this matter has been more immediately cast on the synoptists. The true occasion of the mental conflict of Jesus is said to be found only in John, namely, in the approach of those Greeks who intimated to him through Philip and Andrew their wish for an interview with him. These persons doubtless wished to make the proposal that he should leave Palestine and carry forward his work among the foreign Jews; such a proposal held out to him the enticement of escape from the threatening danger, and this for some moments placed him in a state of doubt and inward conflict, which however ended by his refusing to admit the Greeks to his presence.40 Here we have the effects of a vision rendered so acute by a double prejudice, both critical and dogmatical, as to read statements between the lines of the text; for of such an intended proposal on the part of the Greeks, there is no trace in John; and yet, even allowing that the Evangelist knew nothing of the plan of the Greeks from these individuals themselves, there must have been some intimation in the discourse of Jesus that his emotion had reference to such a proposal. Judging from the context, the request of the Greeks had no other motive than that the solemn entrance of Jesus, and the popular rumour concerning him, had rendered them curious to see and know the celebrated man; and this desire of theirs was not connected with the emotion which Jesus experienced on the occasion, otherwise than that it led Jesus to think of the speedy propagation of his kingdom in the Gentile world, and of its indispensable condition, namely, his death. Here, however, the idea of his death is only mediately and remotely presented to the soul of Jesus; hence it is the more difficult to conceive how it could affect him so strongly, as that he should feel himself urged to beseech the Father for delivery from this hour; and if he were ever profoundly moved by the presentiment of death, the synoptists appear to place this fear in a more suitable position, in immediate proximity to the commencement of his sufferings. The representation of John is also deficient in certain circumstances, presented by the synoptists, which appear to vindicate the trouble of Jesus. In the solitude of the garden and the gloom of night, such an ebullition of feeling is more conceivable; and its unrepressed utterance to his most intimate and worthy friends is natural and justifiable. But according to John that agitation seized Jesus in the broad daylight, in a concourse of people; a situation in which it is ordinarily more easy to maintain composure, or in which at least it is usual, from the possibility of misconstruction, to suppress the more profound emotions.