Note 50 — Chapter IV · DEATH AND RESURRECTION OF JESUS.

Here it has been thought possible to reconcile the difference between Mark and Luke in relation to the time of the purchase of the spices, by drawing over one of the two narrators to the side of the other. It appeared the most easy to accommodate Mark to Luke by the supposition of an enallage temporum; his verb ἠγόρασαν, they bought, used in connexion with the day after the sabbath, being taken as the pluperfect, and understood to imply, in accordance with the statement of Luke, that the women had the spices in readiness from the evening of the burial.50 But against this reconciliation it has already been remarked with triumphant indignation by the Fragmentist, that the aorist, standing between a determination of time and the statement of an object, cannot possibly signify anything else than what happened at that time in relation to that object, and thus the words ἠγόρασαν ἀρώματα, they bought sweet spices, placed between διαγενομένου τοῦ σαββάτου, The sabbath being past, and ἵνα ἐλθοῦσαι ἀλείψωσιν αὐτὸν, that they might come and anoint him, can only signify a purchase made after the sabbath had elapsed.51 Hence Michaelis, who undertook to vindicate the histories of the burial and resurrection from the charge of contradiction urged by the Fragmentist, betook himself to the opposite measure, and sought to conform Luke to Mark. When Luke writes: ὑποστρέψασαι δὲ ἡτοίμασαν ἀρώματα καὶ μύρα, and they returned, and bought sweet spices and ointments, he does not, we are told, mean that they had made this purchase immediately after their return, and consequently on the evening of the burial: on the contrary, by the addition καὶ τὸ μὲν σάββατον ἡσύχασαν κατὰ τὴν ἐντολὴν, and rested the sabbath day, according to the commandment, he himself gives us to understand that it did not happen until the sabbath was past, since between their return from the grave and the commencement of the sabbath at six in the evening, there was no time left for the purchase.52 But when Luke places his ἡτοίμασαν (they prepared) between ὑποστρέψασαι (being returned) and ἡσύχασαν (they rested), this can as little signify something occurring after the rest of the sabbath, as in Mark the similarly placed word ἠγόρασαν can signify something which had happened before the sabbath. Hence more recent theologians have perceived that each of these two Evangelists must be allowed to retain the direct sense of his words; nevertheless they have believed it possible to free both the one and the other from the appearance of error by the supposition that the spices prepared before the sabbath were not sufficient, and that the women, agreeably to Mark’s statement, really bought an additional stock after the sabbath.53 But there must have been an enormous requirement of spices if first the hundred pounds weight contributed by Nicodemus had not sufficed, and on this account the women on the evening before the sabbath had laid ready more spices, and then these too were found insufficient, so that they had to buy yet more on the morning after the sabbath.