Note 106 — Chapter VI · THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS.1

Another passage in this discourse has been the subject of much discussion. It is that (v. 35) in which Jesus threatens his cotemporaries, that all the innocent blood shed from that of Abel to that of Zacharias, the son of Barachias, slain in the temple, will be required of their generation. The Zacharias of whom such an end is narrated 2 Chron. xxiv. 20 ff. was a son, not of Barachias, but of Jehoiada. On the other hand, there was a Zacharias, the son of Baruch, who came to a similar end in the Jewish war.106 Moreover, it appears unlikely that Jesus would refer to a murder which took place 850 B.C. as the last. Hence it was at first supposed that we have in v. 35 a prophecy, and afterwards, a confusion of the earlier with the later event; and the latter notion has been used as an accessory proof that the first gospel is a posterior compilation.107 It is, however, equally probable, that the Zacharias, son of Jehoiada, whose death is narrated in the Chronicles, has been confounded with the prophet Zechariah, who was a son of Barachias (Zech. i. 1; LXX.; Baruch, in Josephus, is not the same name);108 especially as a Targum, evidently in consequence of a like confusion with the prophet who was a grandson of Iddo, calls the murdered Zechariah a son of Iddo.109 The murder of a prophet, mentioned by Jeremiah (xxvi. 23), was doubtless subsequent to that of Zechariah, but in the Jewish order of the canonical books, Jeremiah precedes the Chronicles; and to oppose a murder revealed in the first canonical book, to one recorded in the last, was entirely in the style of Jewish parlance.110