John 19:13-16

a. “ Having therefore heard these words, Pilate brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat, in the place called the Pavement, and in Hebrew, Gabbatha. 14. Now it was the Preparation of the Passover, and about the sixth hour. And he says to the Jews, Behold your King! 15. They cried out, Away with him, away with him, crucify him! Pilate says to him, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no King but Caesar. 16a. Then he delivered him to them to be crucified. ”

The plural τῶν λόγων τούτων, these words, in the Alexandrian documents and others, shows that John 19:12 only summarizes the words of the Jews. Before the threat which it implied, the judge, who was already so long renouncing his own proper part, bows his head and submits. Without saying a word more, he brings Jesus forth from the Praetorium; for the sentence must be pronounced in the presence of the accused; and he ascends his tribunal a second time.

The name λιθόστρωτον signifies: place paved with stones. Before the Praetorium there was one of the pavements of mosaic on which the Roman magistrates had the custom of placing their judgment-seats. The Aramaean name Gabbatha is not the translation of the preceding; it is borrowed from the character of the place. It signifies: eminence, hill.

John inserts here the indication of the day and the hour when the sentence was pronounced. With what purpose? Is it because of the solemnity and importance of this decisive moment for the destiny of mankind? Or does he desire by this means to explain the impatience of the Jews, which manifests itself in John 19:15, to see this long trial come to its close at last and the punishment consummated before the end of this day? It was the Preparation of the Passover, says John. The interpreters who think that the Paschal supper had been celebrated on the preceding evening give to παρασκευή, preparation, the technical signification which it sometimes has in the Patristic language, that of Friday, this day being the one on which the food for the Sabbath was prepared: “ the Preparation of the Sabbath. ” Comp. Matthew 27:62; Luke 23:54, and especially Mark 15:42: “ the Preparation, which is the day before the Sabbath. ” The complement τοῦ πάσχα, of the Passover, must necessarily in this case recall the Passover week, to which this Friday belonged. But from the fact that παρασκευή in itself took this technical meaning of Friday, it does not follow that, when this word is followed by a complement like τοῦ πάσχα, of the Passover, it does not preserve its natural sense of preparation: “the preparation of the Passover. ” This complement has as its precise purpose to distinguish this preparation of the Passover from the simple ordinary preparation for the Sabbath. If the question were only that of indicating the day of the week, why add the complement here: of the Passover, which gives the reader absolutely no information, since after John 13:1; John 18:28, etc., no one would be ignorant that it was the Passover week at this time. Every Greek reader, when hearing this phrase, would necessarily think of the 14th of Nisan, known as the day on which the Passover supper was prepared. This date agrees with those of John 13:1; John 13:29; John 18:28, and leads us, as do all these passages, to the idea that the Passover supper was not yet celebrated, but was to take place on the evening of this day.

According to John, the sentence of Jesus was pronounced about the sixth hour that is, about noon, at least if we do not adopt the method of reckoning according to which John would make the day begin at midnight, in accordance with the custom of the Roman courts. It is certainly difficult to bring this hour of noon into harmony with the account of Matthew, according to which at that hour Jesus had been already for some time suspended on the cross, and still more difficult to reconcile it with Mark 15:25, where it is said that it was at the third hour that is, at nine o'clock, that Christ was crucified. But is the difficulty really any less if, with Rettig, Tholuck, Wieseler, Keil, Westcott, etc., we hold that John reckons from midnight, and that the hour indicated is consequently six o'clock in the morning? Was not this, according to the Synoptics, the hour when, following upon the session of the morning, the Sanhedrim brought Jesus to Pilate? Keil makes the reckoning thus: At five o'clock, the last session of the Sanhedrim until six or half past six; then the negotiations with Pilate, and the pronouncing of the sentence a little later. But is it possible to confine within so brief a space 1. The first appearance before Pilate; 2. The sending to Herod; comp. the words ἐν λόγοις ἱκανοῖς (Luke 23:9); 3. The discussion relative to the release of Barabbas; 4. The scourging, with the scene of the Ecce homo; 5. The renewal of the examination after this scene, and finally the pronouncing of the condemnation? No; the greater part of the morning is not too much for so many things. The reading τρίτη, third (nine o'clock), in some MSS. of John, would therefore be in itself very suspicious, even if it were not so evidently a correction intended to reconcile the two narratives. Eusebius supposed that some ancient copyist made of the gamma (Γ = 3) a stigma (ζ = 6).

This supposition in itself has little probability. Let us rather call to mind, the fact that the day as a whole was divided, like the night, into four portions of three hours each. This fact explains why in the whole New Testament mention is scarcely ever made of any hours except the third, sixth and ninth (comp. Matthew 20:1-5), and also why, as Hengstenberg remarks, the expressions nearly, about, are so frequent in it (Matthew 22:46; Luke 23:44; John 4:6; Acts 10:3; Acts 10:9). This word about is also added by John in our passage. It is certainly allowable, therefore, to take the middle course, either in Mark or in John, especially if we recall the fact that, as Lange says, the apostles did not have watch in hand. As the third hour of Mark, properly nine o'clock, may include all the time from eight to ten, so the sixth hour in John certainly includes from eleven to twelve. The difference, therefore, is no longer so very great. But especially, 2, account must be taken of an important circumstance, noticed by Lange: it is that Matthew and Mark, having given to the scourging of Jesus the meaning which it ordinarily had in such a case, made it the beginning of the punishment. We see this clearly from the manner in which they both speak of it, connecting it closely with the pronouncing of the condemnation, Matthew 27:26: “ He gave Jesus up to them after having scourged Him. ” Comp. Mark 15:15. They have therefore united in one the two judicial acts so clearly distinguished by John, that of the scourging and that of the final condemnation, and they have thus quite naturally dated the second at the same moment as the first. How can Weiss call this solution an affirmation without proof? It clearly follows from the comparison of the narratives. Hofmann has proposed the following solution: a mark of punctuation must be placed after the word παρασκευή, and we must translate: “It was Friday, and the sixth hour of the Passover” (omitting the δέ after ὥρα with the principal Mjj.).

But the hours of the day, not those of the feast, are reckoned.

There is a bitter irony in the words of Pilate: Behold your King! But it is directed towards the Jews, not towards Jesus. Towards the latter, Pilate constantly shows himself full of a respectful interest, which, near the end, amounts even to fear. In this sarcasm there is at the same time a serious side. Pilate understands that, if there is a man through whom the Jewish people are to fulfil a mission in the world, it is this man.

The rage of the rulers increases on hearing this declaration. The three aorist imperatives express the impatience and haste to have the matter ended. Pilate henceforth consents to yield; but first he wishes to give himself the pleasure of yet once more striking the dagger into the wound: Shall I crucify your king? He avenges himself thus for the act of baseness to which they compel him. The Jews are driven thereby to the memorable declaration by which they themselves pronounced the abolition of the theocracy and the absorption of Israel into the world of the Gentiles. They who cherished only one thought the overthrow of the throne of the Caesars by the Messiah suffer themselves to be carried away by hatred of Jesus so far as to cry out before the representative of the emperor: “We have no other king but Caesar.” “Jesum negant,” says Bengel, “usque eo ut omnino Christum negent.”

After this, all is said. By denying the expectation of the Messiah, Israel has just denied itself; at such a price does it secure the end that Jesus should be surrendered to it. ᾿Αυτοῖς, to them, says John, and not to the Roman executioners. For the latter will be only the blind instruments of the judicial murder which is about to be committed.

Modern criticism (Baur, Strauss, Keim) regards this entire representation of Pilate's conduct as fictitious. The thought of the author is to personify in Pilate the sympathy of the pagan world for the Gospel, and to throw upon Israel almost the whole responsibility of the crime. But 1. The fact is not presented otherwise in the Synoptics, in the Acts and in the Epistles. In Matthew, the governor marvelled (John 19:14); he knows that it is for envy that the rulers deliver Jesus to him (John 19:18); he endeavors by means of the people to effect His release, rather than that of Barabbas (John 19:17; John 19:22). He asks indignantly: “ What evil, then, has he done? ” (John 19:23). He sees that he prevails nothing, and ends by yielding, while he declares himself, by a solemn act, innocent of the blood of this righteous man (John 19:24). Such is the description of the condemnation of Jesus by Pilate in the Gospel which is called Jewish- Christian. Does it really differ from John's description? Mark brings out still more clearly than Matthew the eagerness with which Pilate takes advantage of the spontaneous request of the multitude that a prisoner should be released to them, and the support which he counts upon finding in the popular sympathy for the saving of Jesus (John 19:8-10).

Luke adds to the other attempts of Pilate that of the sending of Jesus to Herod, and the twice repeated proposal to release Him at the cost of a simple scourging (John 19:16; John 19:22). “ Having the desire to release Jesus ” is expressly said in John 19:20. Then in John 19:22: “And he said to them the third time, Why, what evil has he done?” In the Acts, the conciliatory tendency of which book towards Judaism is made prominent at the present time, Peter, as well as John, charges the Jews with the whole responsibility for the murder: “ You have crucified him by the hands of wicked men,” John 2:23; comp. John 3:15. Even James, when addressing the rich men of his nation, says to them: “ You have condemned and put to death the Righteous One ” (John 19:6). Finally, the Apocalypse that book which is represented as the most pronounced manifestation of Jewish-Christianity designates Jerusalem as “the Sodom and spiritual Egypt where our Lord was crucified,” John 11:8.

The notion of place (where) in this passage very evidently includes those of causality and responsibility. 2. Moreover, the second century, in which it is claimed that the composition of the Fourth Gospel must be placed, was, from Trajan to Marcus Aurelius, a time of bloody persecution on the part of the pagan world against the Church, and it would be very strange that at that epoch an author should have attributed to the Roman governor an imaginary character with the purpose of personifying in him the sympathy of the pagan world for the Gospel! 3. Finally, the scene described by John is its own defence. It is impossible to portray more to the life, the astuteness, the perseverance and the impudent suppleness of the accuser, determined to succeed, at any cost, on the one side, and, on the other, the obstinate struggle, in the heart of the judge, between the consciousness of his duty and the care for his own interests, between the fear of sacrificing an innocent man, perhaps more formidable than He appeared to be outwardly, and that of driving to extremity a people already exasperated by crying acts of injustice, and of finding himself accused before a suspicious emperor, one stroke of whose pen (Reuss) might precipitate him into destruction; finally, between cold scepticism and the transient impressions of natural religiousness and even pagan superstition. Reuss acknowledges that it is “the Fourth Gospel which gives the true key of the problem” of Pilate's inconceivable conduct: “Jesus was sacrificed by him to an exigency of his position” (p. 675). Excepting the natural vacancies resulting from “the fact that no witness saw the whole from one end to the other,” the Gospel narrative (that of John included) “bears, according to this author, the seal of entire authenticity” (ibid).

These two figures, in fact one of a cold and diabolical perversity (Caiaphas, as the representative of the Sanhedrim), the other of a cowardice and pitiable vacillation both contrasting with the calm dignity and holy majesty of the Christ, form a picture which we do not hesitate to call the masterpiece of the Gospel of John, and which, by itself alone, might, if necessary, serve as a certification of authenticity for this entire work.

Whence did he derive such complete information? Perhaps he saw everything himself. The judicial sessions among the Romans were public, and he was not prevented from entering the court of the Praetorium by the same scruples as the Jews. For he did not have to eat the Passover supper in the evening.