Note 60 — Chapter III · RETIREMENT TO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES, ARREST, TRIAL, CONDEMNATION AND CRUCIFIXION OF JESUS.

Thus the very simplest view of the case seems at once to point to the attempt to discover in the account of the fourth gospel indications that it also is to be understood of the trial before Caiaphas. What affords the strongest presumption of the identity of the two trials is the identity of an incident concomitant with both, John as well as the synoptists making Peter deny Jesus during the trial detailed. It is further remarkable that after Annas has been spoken of, at v. 13, as the father-in-law of Caiaphas, there follows at v. 14, a more precise designation of Caiaphas as the author of the fatal counsel, recorded in John xi. 50, although apparently the Evangelist proceeds to narrate a trial held, not before Caiaphas, but before Annas. Moreover in the description of the trial itself, there is mention throughout of the palace and of questions from the high priest, a title which John nowhere else applies to Annas, but only to Caiaphas. But that in accordance with the above supposition, the Evangelist from v. 15, should be describing something which passed before Caiaphas, appears impossible from v. 24, for it is there first said that Annas sent Jesus to Caiaphas, so that he must until then have been before Annas. With ready thought this difficulty was first met by removing the 24th verse to the place where it was wanted, namely, after v. 13, and laying the blame of its present too late position on the negligence of transcribers.60 As, however, this transposition, being destitute of any critical authority, must appear an arbitrary and violent expedient for getting rid of the difficulty, it was next tried whether the statement in v. 24, without being actually moved from its place, might not receive such an interpretation as to come in point of sense after v. 13; i.e., the word ἀπέστειλεν was taken as a pluperfect, and it was supposed that John intended here to supply retrospectively what he had forgotten to observe at v. 13, namely, that Annas immediately sent Jesus to Caiaphas, so that the trial just described was conducted by the latter.61 As the general possibility of such an enallage temporum is admissible, the only question is whether it be accordant with the style of the present writer, and whether it be intimated in the context. In the latter respect it is certainly true that if nothing important had occurred in the presence of Annas, the Evangelist, in annexing to his notice of the relationship of Annas to Caiaphas the more precise designation of the latter, might be drawn on to speak without further preface of the trial before Caiaphas, and might afterwards, by way of appendix, at some resting place, as here at the close of the transactions of the high priest with Jesus, intimate the transition which he had made. An accurate Greek writer certainly in this case, if he did not use the pluperfect, would at least have made evident the explanatory reference to what had preceded, by the addition of a γὰρ to the aorist. Our Evangelist, however, in whom the characteristic of the Hellenistic writers to connect their propositions but loosely, in accordance with the genius of the Hebrew language, is very strongly marked, might perhaps have introduced that supplementary observation even without a particle, or, according to the ordinary reading, by οὖν, which is not merely indicative that a subject is continued, but also that it is resumed.62 If these considerations be held to establish that he also intended to narrate the trial before Caiaphas: it is clear from the aspect of his account taken by itself, as well as from the previous comparison with the synoptical one, that his narrative cannot be complete.