Annotation CXXXI

”And it was the third hour, and they crucified him.” — Mark 15:25

Whether Christ was crucified at the third hour.

Thomas Cajetan, explaining these [words], is refuted by Ambrose of Compsa [Ambrosius Catharinus] in book 1 of the Annotations with these sayings: “Cajetan thinks the text here is faulty, and that it ought to be read, ‘the sixth hour’; nor does he notice that a little after there follows, ‘and the sixth hour being come,’ etc. How much more prudent, then, was it to acquie-

sce in the sound distinction of others, who said, for the concord of the Evangelists, that at the third hour he was crucified by the sentence and acclamation of the Jews, as Mark says; but at the sixth hour by the deed itself, as the other Evangelists testify. For both the accuser, and the judge, and the executioner are rightly said to have killed the accused — the one [the accuser] by accusing and proving the crime, the judge by condemning, the executioner by carrying out the sentence. This passage could also be expounded otherwise: that what is said, ‘It was the third hour,’ be referred to the [things] above — namely, when he was handed over to be crucified; and what follows, ‘And they crucified him,’ is to be understood [as done] afterward, at the sixth hour.” These [things] Ambrose [says] against Cajetan. For whose excuse it is worth noting here that Jerome long ago held this same [view], in the explanation of Psalm 77, where he uses these words: “It is written in Matthew and John that our Lord was crucified at the sixth hour. Again it is written in Mark that he was crucified at the third hour. This seems to be different, but it is not different. It was an error of the copyists. For many thought that the Greek episēmon [ϛ] was Γ [gamma].” By which words St. Jerome indicates that a copyist put “the third” in place of “the sixth” hour, deceived by the similarity of the numeral characters which he found in the Greek codices. For indeed the episēmon [ϛ], which is the mark of six, is so like the letter Γ, which is the sign of three, that it was easy for a copyist to slip from the one into the other, and, in place of the episēmon [ϛ], which denoted the sixth hour, to substitute Γ gamma, which signifies the third. Nor does Theophylact dissent from Jerome — except that he thinks the fault of the arithmetical figure happened not in Mark, but in John, where the error of the copyists, Γ being changed into [ϛ], made the sixth hour out of the third.