ἠν δέ. In startling contrast to this scene, and while Annas had completed his bad-hearted but foiled inquisition, possibly even while our Lord was being transferred from the one court to the other—an event which provided an opportunity for the searching, loving, compassionate glance which broke Peter's heart—the second and third denials of Peter were also being enacted. Now Simon Peter, who had been challenged by the doorkeeper, was standing and warming himself (a form of verbal construction of auxiliary verb with participle to which John is addicted, and especially in those portions of his Gospel which represent his personal composition; John 1:6, John 1:9, John 1:24, John 1:27; John 3:24, John 3:27)—"standing," not "sitting," as Luke describes his position at the first denial, having, we might suppose, impetuously changed his position. They said therefore unto him, Art thou also one of his disciples? This sentence of John really gathers up another moment of Peter's terrible fall, variously and even discrepantly put by the synoptic narrative, and is virtually accordant with them all three. According to Matthew "another maid," according to Mark "the maid" who had first challenged him, returned to the assault. Nothing more likely than that what was said by one woman should be eagerly taken up by another, and therefore that both statements are true. Luke, however, describes the event thus: ἑτερος, "another man" (perhaps "a different person") saw him and said, "Thou art one of them." John's statement embraces the substance of all three statements, "They said unto him." The general resemblance of the second charge brought against the apostle, as stated by all four evangelists, is remarkable. The different personages by whose lips the charge was urged can best be explained by the occurrence of simultaneous and widely spreading conviction, instead of an unnecessary multiplication of the denials themselves. Matthew and Mark represent Peter as overhearing the conversation of the maids with those who were there ( ἐκεῖ), showing the obvious occasion for some eager ἕτερος to take up their statement as an accusation. The difficulty of place is not so easily resolved, for Matthew and Mark speak of the "gate," πυλών, or προαύλιον, "porch," outer hall of the court, and John of the fire where Peter first sat in apparent unconcern. We do not know how near the fire was to the πυλών, whether it was not indeed between the θύρα and the πυλών, in the προαύλιον £. According to Matthew he was moving towards the πυλών, probably in the stir of the procession from the house of Annas to the court of Caiaphas. The four evangelists agree in the declaration made by Peter. He denied, and said, I am not; i.e. I am not one of the disciples concerning whom Annas asks. "I do not know the Man."
Between the second and third denials some time elapsed. Thus according to Matthew and Mark "after a little while," according to Luke "about the space of one hour after," an effort was made to identify Peter by. some sign of his association with Jesus. All the synoptists re. present it as turning on his provincial, Galilaean, speech, but John gives a closer point of identification. There were thousands of Galilaeans in Jerusalem, and this was a feeble ground of proof, though it may have corroborated the suspicion of the maidens and others, that Peter was an accomplice of the hated Nazarene; but the charge came home in terrible earnest and verisimilitude as recorded by John. His account is far more lifelike, forcible, and circumstantial. The fourth evangelist says, One of the servants ( δουλῶν) of the high priest, being a kinsman of him whose ear Peter cut off, says, Did I not see thee in the garden with him? The historically attested fact gave the lie to Peter's previous assertions. Clearly he was seen and recognized and in imminent peril, and he is now more vehement than ever. Matthew and Mark tell, "tie began to curse and swear, saying, I do not know the Man." John, with less feeling of reproach, says, Peter therefore denied again. The intercessory prayer, the solemn warning, the agony in the garden, above all, the following of the sublime encouragements by this fearful failure, the ignominious binding and rude indignity offered to the Man who had claimed to be the vicegerent and Image and Glory of the Father, combined to shatter Peter's courage, though it did not annihilate his faith (see Steinmeyer and Weiss). The Lord had prayed that his faith should not fail. He was sifted as wheat, but the apostle knew, even in the depths of his shame, that he was a poltroon and coward, and that the Lord was everything he said he was. But meanwhile he denied again, tie kept up with his violence of language, his hypocritical denial of his own faith—and straightway the cock crew. Mark, who had made the prediction of our Lord cover a twofold cockcrowing, records the twofold fulfillment; John, who in John 13:38 had given the prediction "before the cock crow," here shows how Peter must have been reminded of his Lord's preternatural knowledge and forecast. So that, though John does not mention the repentance, he refers to the well-known occasion of it, and, moreover, shows more forcibly than either of the synoptists the extraordinary tenderness of the risen and reconciled Lord to his erring and cowardly disciple. Some extreme harmonists have spread out the fault of Peter into nine distinct acts of treachery; others have reduced them to seven or eight. M'Clellan, in a powerful note, urges that there were "twice three," or six distinct denials. Matthew and Mark report three denials while the trial before Caiaphas was going on; these are, according to M'Clellan, entirely distinct from John's "first denial," which preceded even the lighting of the fire. Nor does he allow that Luke's first denial, "sitting at the fire," can coincide with John's "second denial," which must also have preceded that which Luke gives as the first, and that John's "third denial" is distinct again from Matthew's third, Mark's third, and Luke's third. Thus he makes John's account entirely supplementary to the synoptists. Peter may have used a variety of expressions on each occasion, and each challenge may have been accompanied by some features not especially noted as to posture or place, but the arrangement adopted in the text represents a threefold assault upon the apostle, which had three crises of intensity and terrible result. Taking Matthew and Mark as virtually identical, Luke's account as a separate tradition with reference to the second denial, and agreeing with Matthew and Mark in the third, and in his first with John's second, we have three denials once more following the prediction. John's account, whether distinct or not from the other two records, bears the same relation to our Lord's previous announcement that the synoptists' do to theirs, and shows that in no quarter was there a general belief in more than three virtual acts of apostasy. Mark alone mentions a twofold warning from the cock, one after the first denial, and on Peter's going out to the προαύλιον, or the enclosure, i.e. between the πυλών and the θύρα, and again after the third denial. M'Clellan and others find a threefold denial before each crowing of the cock.
Certainly John has omitted the entire scene detailed by the synoptists in the hail of Caiaphas, viz. the calling of the witnesses; the lack of harmony in the false witnesses; the adjuration of Caiaphas; the wondrous confession of the persecuted and bound Sufferer; the verdict pronounced against him, on the part of all assembled, that he was guilty of death; the first cruel mockery; and the very early assembly of the entire Sanhedrin—all the chief priests ( πάντες οἱ αρχιερείς) and. elders of the people. The synoptists assure us that the object of this council—which was probably held in the celebrated chamber of the temple appropriated for the purpose—was to adopt the most suitable measures for immediately carrying their unanimous judgment into effect. As we shall see shortly, John is perfectly aware of such a measure having been taken (see not only verse 31, but John 11:47, etc.). Nevertheless, he passes on at once to the legal and civil trial before the Roman proprietor.
This is not the place to discuss the twofold trial of Jesus before the Sanhedrin. Derembourg, Farrar, and Westcott suppose that the first demands of the high priest, as to whether he was the Christ, as given by Matthew and Mark, were different from the scene described by Luke, where he claimed ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν to be seated on the right hand of the power of God, and suppose that this last was the occasion, when the verdict was given by the Sanhedrin in full session, not in the palace of the high priest, but in the "Gazith," or possibly in the "Booths of Hanan," on the Mount of Olives. Luke clearly discriminates between οἶκος τοῦ ἀρχιερέως (Luke 22:54), and the συνέδριον αὐτῶν of verse 66.