en cloth, the holy women prepare spices, all of which works would
have been forbidden on Nisan 15. Finally, the day is itself called the
"preparation," a name which would not be given to Nisan 15. The
conclusion is irresistible. It is that our Lord died on Nisan 14, that
St. John is correct, and that the Synoptists in most of the passages
concerned corroborate St. John. The only real difficulty is raised by
Mark xiv. 12 (cf. Matt. xxvi. 17; Luke xxii. 7), which seems to imply
that the Paschal lamb was sacrificed on the day before Christ died. If
so, this verse implies that Christ died on Nisan 15. But we must
observe that not one of the Synoptists says that the disciples ate a
lamb at the Last Supper, and also that, for all ceremonial purposes,
the day for killing the lamb began on the evening of Nisan 13. It is
therefore doubtful whether there is even as much as one verbal
contradiction on this point between the Synoptists and St. John.

The omission of events which are of importance in the Synoptic Gospels
is a striking feature in St. John's Gospel. But these instances of
omission can be more reasonably explained by the hypothesis that the
author was content to omit facts with which the Christians around him
were well acquainted, than by the hypothesis that he was a
spiritualistic writer of the 2nd century who wished to make his Gospel
fit some fanciful theory of his own. In fact, the latter hypothesis
has proved a signal failure. The critics who say that the writer
omitted the story of our Lord's painful temptation as incompatible with
the majesty of the Divine Word, may be asked {31} why the writer gives
no fuller account of the glorious transfiguration than the hint in i.
14. Those who say that sentimental superstition induced the writer to
omit the agony the garden, may be asked why the writer records the
weariness of Christ at Samaria and His tears at the grave, of Lazarus.
There are gaps in the evangelist's narrative, but we cannot argue that
the Gospel is therefore a forgery. The evangelist is acquainted with
the Ascension (vi. 62), though he does not record it; and he knows that
Nazareth was the early home of Christ (i. 46), though he does not
narrate the story of the sacred infancy. The Gospel of St. John is
none the less genuine for being of the nature of a treatise, intended
to bring certain aspects of the life of our Lord to bear upon the
intellectual life of Ephesus. Much has been made of the