Reflections on the Trials of Jesus as we have seen, the approach of Passover is fundamental. John reminds us
of this at the moment when Pilate takes his seat on histribunal: ‘‘And it was
the preparation of thepascha, and it was about the sixth hour’’ (:). So
he does again immediately after Jesus’ death, when theIoudaioi, since it was
‘‘preparation,’’ ask that the bodies of Jesus and the two robbers may be taken
down so as not to remain on their crosses ‘‘on the Sabbath,’’ by which he
perhaps means ‘‘on the day of a festival’’ (:). If that seems doubtful, we
should note that some lines later, when Mary Magdalen comes early in the
morning, when it is still dark ‘‘on the first (day) of the Sabbath’’ (:), John
surely means ‘‘on the first of the festival days.’’^17
The structure of the narrative and its religious meaning and context are
derived from its location on the day of preparation and the approach of Pass-
over. It is surely suggestive that one reader who without hesitation ‘‘read’’
:, ‘‘it is not permitted to us,’’ as an allusion to the restrictions imposed
byJewishlaw was Saint Augustine: ‘‘But it should be interpreted as mean-
ing that it was because of the sanctity of the festival, which they had already
started celebrating, that they said that they were not allowed to execute any-
one; because of this they were afraid of becoming polluted by entering the
Praetorium.’’^18
Conclusions
This discussion has not attempted to present firm conclusions, which are un-
attainable, but a series of approaches to the question of how we should at-
tempt to understand our evidence on how Jesus came to be crucified. The
primary suggestion is that in studying both the course of Jesus’ life and the
manner of his death, we must not proceed by amalgamating data from all four
Gospels. That is illegitimate, because not merely the details, but the entire
structure of the story as told by John is different from that in the Synoptics.
Our evidence consists of coherent texts, and even where they contain com-
mon items, derived either from each other or from a hypothetical common
source, or sources, any approach must respect the integrity of these texts as
. The interpretation of all these expressions seems to me extremely problematic, and
I am not convinced that any of them clearly indicate what day of theweek(as opposed to
what day before, or of, Passover) John means to represent. In particular the Anchor Bible
translation of : as ‘‘the first day of the week’’ seems to me quite impossible. For in that
case Shabbat, as thelastday of the week, has disappeared.
. The quotation comes from Augustine,In Joh. Ev. Tract.,(CCLXXXVI, ).
The same point is made very briefly by John Chrysostom,In Joh. Homil.,(PGLIX,
col. ).