John 18:25-27

“ And Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said therefore to him, Art not thou also one of his disciples? He denied and said, I am not. 26. One of the servants of the high-priest, a kinsman of him whose ear Peter cut off, says to him, Did I not see thee in the garden with him? 27. Peter denied again; and immediately the cock crew. ”

As far as John 18:18, according to John, all has happened in the house of Annas; and as John 18:25 expressly places us again in the situation of John 18:18, it is evident that the following facts also occur at his house; it is the same court, the same fire, the same persons; so that those who, like Weiss, are unwilling to admit that Caiaphas and Annas lived in two different apartments of the same priestly palace, are obliged to hold that Matthew and Mark have made a mistake in placing the denial of Peter in the house of Caiaphas. As for ourselves, we have already stated the reasons which seem to us to support the contrary opinion.

The sending of Jesus to Caiaphas, mentioned already in John 18:24, in reality followed the last denial (John 18:27). For the facts of John 18:25-27 took place simultaneously with John 18:19-23. This circumstance explains the incident, related by Luke, of the look which Jesus cast upon Peter (Luke 22:61). Jesus crossed the court to go from the apartments of Annas to those of Caiaphas (John 18:24). He heard at this moment the cock-crowing (John 18:27); and then it was that His eye met that of Peter. The epithet δεδεμένον, bound, makes us understand more fully the impression produced on the unfaithful disciple by the sight of his Master in this condition.

The subject of εἶπον, they said (John 18:25), is indefinite. According to Matthew, it is a maid-servant who sees Peter approaching the gate to go forth from the court to the front of the house. According to Mark, it is the same maid-servant who had already troubled him in the first instance and who denounces him to the servants who were gathered about the fire. In Luke, it is indefinitely έτερος, another person. It is probable that the portress spoke of Peter to one of her companions, who denounced him to the assembled servants. From this group came forth instantly the question addressed to Peter.

After the second denial, Peter seems to have played the bold part, and to have set himself to speak more freely with the persons present. But his Galilean accent was soon noticed, and attracted the more particular attention of a kinsman of Malchus, a fact which occasioned the third denial.

John does not mention the imprecations which Matthew puts into Peter's mouth. If, then, any one was animated by hostile feelings towards this disciple, it was the first evangelist, and not the author of our narrative. Though he does not speak of Peter's repentance, the narrative of the scene in John 21:15 ff. evidently implies it.

The story of the denial of Peter is, besides those of the multiplication of the loaves and of the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem, the only one which is related at once by John and the Synoptics. There is no discourse here to be accounted for, as in ch. 6, and no series of events to be explained, as in ch. 12 John's purpose, therefore, could only have been to reproduce in all their grievous reality the two simultaneous scenes of the appearance of the Master before the authorities and the disciple's denial, which had formed the prelude of the Passion. In any case, we may discover here how the oral tradition related the facts with less of life and flexibility than is done by the pen of an eye-witness. The latter alone has reproduced the minutest articulations of the history; and it is not without reason that Renan speaks of “its varied and sharply defined points.”