Jesus and Peter at the High Pries's House: A Test Case for the Question of the Relation Between Mark's and John's Gospels

Abstract

Some recent redaction-critical work on Mark's passion narrative has questioned the existence of a pre-Markan passion account. This in turn has suggested another look at the relation between the gospels of Mark and John. Norman Perrin has put it plainly:For a long time the general opinion of New Testament scholars was that the passion narrative existed as a connected unit before the gospel of Mark was written, and it was easy and natural to think that John had known and used a version of that pre-Markan narrative rather than the gospel of Mark. But today the tendency is to ascribe more and more of the composition of the passion narrative to the evangelist Mark himself and to doubt the very existence of a pre-Markan and non-Markan passion narrative extensive enough to have been the basis for the gospel of John. A particular consideration is the fact that the trial before the High Priest (John 18: 19–24) is set in the context of the denial by Peter (18: 15–18, 25–7), as it is also in the gospel of Mark. But there is a strong case that Mark himself originally composed this account of the trial at night before the Jewish authorities and then set it in the context of the story of Peter's denial. If this is so, the evangelist John must necessarily have known the gospel of Mark.