Note 63 — Chapter VIII · EVENTS IN THE PUBLIC LIFE OF JESUS, EXCLUDING THE MIRACLES.

If, then, the four narratives can be reconciled only by the supposition that several of them have undergone important traditional modifications: the question is, which of them is the nearest to the original fact? That modern critics should unanimously decide in favour of John, cannot surprise us after our previous observations; and as little can the nature of the reasoning by which their judgment is supported. The narrative of John, say they (reasoning in a circle), being that of an eye-witness, must be at once supposed the true one,63 and this conclusion is sometimes rested for greater security on the false premiss, that the more circumstantial and dramatic narrator is the more accurate reporter—the eye-witness.64 The breaking of the box of ointment, in Mark, although a dramatic particular, is readily rejected as a mere embellishment; but does not John’s statement of the quantity of spikenard as a pound, border on exaggeration? and ought not the extravagance which Olshausen, in relation to this disproportionate consumption of ointment, attributes to Mary’s love, to be rather referred to the Evangelist’s imagination, which would then also have the entire credit of the circumstance, that the house was filled with the odour of the ointment? It is worthy of notice, that the estimate of the value of the perfume at 300 denarii, is given by John and Mark alone; as also at the miraculous feeding of the multitude, it is these two Evangelists who rate the necessary food at 200 denarii. If Mark only had this close estimate, how quickly would it be pronounced, at least by Schleiermacher, a gratuitous addition of the narrator! What then is it that, in the actual state of the case, prevents the utterance of this opinion, even as a conjecture, but the prejudice in favour of the fourth gospel? Even the anointing of the head, which is attested by two of the synoptists, is, because John mentions the feet instead of the head, rejected as unusual, and incompatible with the position of Jesus at a meal:65 whereas the anointing of the feet with precious oil was far less usual; and this the most recent commentator on the fourth gospel admits.66