^{page 371 note 1} Scholars associated with Norman Perrin have been particularly interested in this issue: Donahue, J. R., Are you the Christ? The Trial Narrative in the Gospel of Mark (S.B.L. Dissertation Series, 10; Missoula, Montana, 1973) andGoogle ScholarKelber, W. H., ed., The Passion in Mark: Studies on Mark 14–16 (Philadelphia, 1976)Google Scholar. See also Scroggs, R. et al. , ‘Reflections on the Question: Was There a Pre-Markan Passion Narrative?’ in S.B.L. Seminar Papers (1971), vol. 2, 503–85Google Scholar; and earlier Schreiber, J., Die Markuspassion (Hamburg, 1969)Google Scholar and Linnemann, E., Studien zur Passionsgeschichte (Göttingen, 1970).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

^{page 371 note 2} The New Testament: An Introduction (New York, 1974), pp. 228 fGoogle Scholar.; italics added. It is not inappropriate, I hope, that a paper taking issue with Professor Perrin is offered in tribute to his immense contribution to NT studies. He was one who delighted in the sharpest possible debate at the growing edge of research and would, I trust, have encouraged the kind of Auseinandersetzung I undertake here with him and his associates. I am indebted to Professor D. Moody Smith for calling this passage in Perrin's book and the study it suggests to my attention.

^{page 372 note 1} I realize that a date for John as early as Mark or even earlier is now proposed by some – e.g. Cullmann, O., Die johanneische Kreis (Tübingen, 1975)Google Scholar and Robinson, J. A. T., Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia, 1976)Google Scholar. I shall not take space here to explore the resulting possibility that Mark is somehow dependent on John, but on the face of it there seems to be no evidence of peculiarly Johannine elements in Mark; at most such a redating of John would argue rather for the independence of the two gospels.

^{page 372 note 2} Donahue, , Are You the Christ?, mainly pp. 63–98Google Scholar, to which Perrin alludes in the passage quoted above; Dewey, K. E., ‘Peter's Curse and Cursed Peter (Mark 14: 53–54, 66–72)’, in Kelber, The Passion in Mark, pp. 96–114.Google Scholar

^{page 373 note 1} Mark does display an apparently unrelated spatial differentiation between the questioning of Jesus and of Peter; the latter takes place ‘in the courtyard below’.

^{page 373 note 2} ‘Reflections’, pp. 512 f., 523–8.

^{page 373 note 3} Are you the Christ?, pp. 58–63.Google Scholar

^{page 373 note 4} Dewey, , ‘Peter's Curse’, p. 98Google Scholar, allows that this is true of the pre -Markan version of the stories, though he follows Donahue in attributing the joining of the two stories only to Mark. See further, p. 377, n. 3 below.

^{page 374 note 1} Are you the Christ?, pp. 63–71.Google Scholar

^{page 374 note 2} Donahue finds evidence of Markan retouching even in the first half of the verse, but the stylistic details he advances are not sufficiently compelling. He cites four data: (a) change of place indicating a new stage in the dramatic action, (b) impersonal 3rd person plural to introduce a new section, (c) kai -parataxis, and (d) naming Jesus in introductory sentences. Of these, the first is valueless, as the story demands it; in fact, the attention is on what befalls Jesus rather than where it takes place. The second and third details at first glance seem valid, though able to bear little weight by themselves; but a glance at John at this point is instructive. There (xviii. 13) the same two usages seem at first to appear (kai ēgagen) but just as quickly vanish when we observe that they only continue υ. 12: the band of soldiers (etc.) seize Jesus and bind him/and lead him away. Indeed, it is just possible that in a pre-Markan stage a very similar situation obtained. If Mark, xiv. 47–52Google Scholar is, as seems likely, an insertion, we are left with 53 a as natural sequel to 46: ‘They laid hands on him and seized him/and led [him] away to the High Priest’. Only Donahue's final datum, the introduction of Jesus' name in 53 (not found in John) appears to be Markan.

^{page 375 note 1} Some analogues to these elements appear in John's account of the trial before Pilate, but not in a form that suggests any knowledge of Mark.

^{page 375 note 2} Or rather, his father-in-law; as the text now stands Caiaphas is only mentioned, with a reminder of the role he had already played (xi. 49–52).

^{page 375 note 3} In his account of the plot John includes mention both of chief priests (together with Pharisees) and of the Sanhedrin, but there is little reason to suppose that he is dependent on Mark for this conjunction of Jewish leaders.

^{page 375 note 4} This point, like all arguments from silence, can bear very little weight by itself. Professor R. H. Fuller reminds me that R. E. Brown has noted a Johannine tendency to shift material from the passion source to the dialogues of Jesus found earlier in the gospel. Nevertheless, in the case of egöeimi, see further below, p. 380, n. 4.Google Scholar

^{page 376 note 1} The only apparent exception is a phrase in 53 a, and it proves to be illusory; see p. 374, n. 2, above.

^{page 376 note 2} But for the former, see below in section II on the possibility that John's source showed Jesus silent before the High Priest. The guard's blow to Jesus in John, xviii. 22Google Scholar may be an early version of the mocking in Mark (cf. rhapisma); it is hardly a condensation.

^{page 376 note 3} There are some verbal parallels that are basic to the plot and could be due to no more than a common tradition.

^{page 377 note 1} I have laid out the more important points of comparison; there are other more intricate details, mostly stylistic, exhibiting much the same range of variation between the two gospels.

^{page 377 note 2} ‘Peter's Curse’, p. 104; for Dewey's literary analysis cited below, see the first section of his article, pp. 96–105.

^{page 377 note 3} Is the story at this stage still independent of the hearing, then, as Dewey maintains? Was it ever wholly independent?

^{page 377 note 4} To relate the present episode to Mark's temporal schema for the night of the passion (xiii. 35). See further below.

^{page 377 note 5} Dewey also lists a number of stylistic details, but they are not sufficient to answer the question of dependence.

^{page 378 note 1} Except the not very distinctive phrase ‘this man’, appearing in different context in John.

^{page 378 note 2} The relation between Jesus' prediction of the schema in xiii. 35 and its fulfilment in Mark's account of the passion is uneven. Two of the three other points in the schema–evening and morning–may appear in the narrative as Mark's editorial additions (xiv. 17, xv. 1), but one (midnight) lacks explicit fulfilment.

^{page 378 note 3} Unless in John it is a product of Johannine redaction. At first sight that might seem to be the case: John shows a single denial before the hearing and the second and third only after it. But as we shall see, it is this arrangement, not an expansion of one denial to three, that John contributes. The source seems to have had three uninterrupted denials.

^{page 379 note 1} The Gospel of Signs: A Reconstruction of the Narrative Source Underlying the Fourth Gospel (S.N.T.S. Monograph Series, XI; Cambridge, 1970), pp. 117–22Google Scholar. There I began with a presumption of Johannine independence from the Synoptics (otherwise, why attempt source analysis?), but did not work from it as a presupposition. If occasionally synoptic analogies were cited, it was only to support the reconstruction of the pre-Johannine stage of tradition based chiefly on evidence within the text of John. Whatever its flaws, then, we can regard this separation of source and redaction in John to be about as independent of the question of the relation among the gospels as are Donahue's and Dewey's analyses within Mark.

^{page 379 note 2} Dewey makes a good deal of the fact that we hear of Peter at the fire twice in both Mark and John, but we should note that the notices come at different points in the story as between the two gospels, and in John the second is almost a verbatim repetition of the first, whereas in Mark there is only an allusion (via the single word thermainomenon) to the earlier statement. While Dewey may be right that the duplication in Mark shows redactional activity, it appears to be older and better assimilated into the story–a more natural reminder–than in John.

^{page 379 note 3} prōton in υ. 13Google Scholar is lame in the present arrangement, where it is not followed immediately by the statement in υ. 24.

^{page 380 note 1} Peter's waiting outside is pointless as things now stand in the gospel: the other disciple enters and immediately goes out again to gain admission for Peter.

^{page 380 note 2} There is no further evidence within the denials themselves of Johannine redaction. The three-fold question and answer, indeed, may have more than coincidental parallel with the pre-Johannine account of the Baptist's interrogation in i. 19–21. Perhaps the author of the source intended a contrast between Peter's craven dishonesty and the Baptist's bold and honest testimony. This contrast has been partly obscured by John's separation of the first denial from the other two.

^{page 380 note 3} Where the source showed Annas turning Jesus directly over to Caiaphas, John has transferred the latter's interrogation to Annas and implied (without depicting) another scene with Caiaphas during the resumption of the denials.

^{page 380 note 4} He has done this by intertwining them more intricately than in the source, where, as in Mark, they appear simply side by side. In view of John's intended contrast, it is all the more notable, therefore, that he lacks any attempt to contrast Peter's answers in the face of the questioning with those of Jesus before the High Priest. As we have seen, John has no counterpart to the Markan egō eimi to which Peter's (egō) ouk eimi would be an obvious foil. Evidently John found no tradition like Mark's at this point in the source.

^{page 380 note 5} Martyn, J. L., ‘Source Criticism and Religionsgeschichte in the Fourth Gospel’, in Jesus and Man's Hope, ed. Buttrick, D. G. (Pittsburgh, 1970), 1, 265f.Google Scholar

^{page 380 note 6} Ibid., citing W. A. Meeks.

^{page 380 note 7} The phrase ‘in synagogue’, despite its synoptic parallels in other contexts, is perhaps also redactional here, since nowhere else in the gospels is it coupled with the Temple. It would then be an instance of the Johannine device Martyn has called a two-level drama: juxtaposing to an element deriving from or at least referring to the Sitz im Leben Jesu one more relevant to the Sitz im Leben of John's time and place. See Martyr, J. L., History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (New York, 1968; rev. ed. forthcoming).Google Scholar

^{page 381 note 1} The possibility–speculative only–that the source contained a Christological question to Jesus; even if it did, there is no reason to assume that it depended on Mark, for we cannot know its precise form, and Mark himself used traditional material to supplement his source at that point.

^{page 382 note 1} There is little indication of such activity on John's part, and we found reason to dissent from Dewey's assignment of major elements in the denials to Mark.

^{page 382 note 2} Or one known only to some, if John's nameless disciple is historical.

^{page 382 note 3} The phrases quoted are taken from Donahue, as representative.

^{page 382 note 4} This is especially true of some of Dewey's argumentation.

^{page 383 note 1} Dr Walter Wink, a good friend to me in the conceiving and writing of this paper, has pointed out that the reductionist tendency of some recent redaction criticism undermines the scientific basis of a whole epoch of biblical study.

^{page 383 note 2} I have probably succumbed to this temptation at a number of points in my source analysis of John; an example, noted above, can be found in the trial scene.

^{page 383 note 3} A refreshing antidote to this kind of fragmentation of the text can be found in the holistic treatment of this material in the unpublished dissertation of Boomershine, T. E., Mark the Storyteller: A Rhetorical-Critical Investigation of Mark's Passion and Resurrection Narrative (Union Theological Seminary, New York, 1974).Google Scholar