Coincidence I.6: “Shall I Not Drink This Cup?”
The Alleged Coincidence
All the Gospels narrate Jesus being arrested in a garden. During the arrest, one of his disciples cuts the ear off of a slave of the high priest. In John’s account—but not in the Synoptics’—this sword-wielding disciple is Peter. At this point in John’s Gospel, Jesus rebukes Peter: “Put your sword back into its sheath. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?” (John 18:11). 1
McGrew wants to know why Jesus here uses the cup-drinking metaphor. She points out that he doesn’t use the metaphor in the Synoptics’ versions of this event, and he doesn’t use it anywhere else in John. So why here?
McGrew thinks the answer comes from the Synoptics, where Jesus uses the cup metaphor in two places. First, in Mark’s and Matthew’s accounts of the dispute about greatness—the same one Luke moves to the Last Supper—Jesus replies, “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink?” (Mark 10:38; see also Matt. 20:22). Second, while Jesus is praying alone in a garden—a scene absent from John—he says, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me, yet not what I want but what you want” (Matthew 26:39; see also Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42).
Now we know why, according to McGrew, Jesus used the metaphor when rebuking Peter in John. His statements in the Synoptics make “it clear that this was a metaphor Jesus tended to use”. 2 These passages coincide, then, because Jesus’s two uses of the metaphor in the Synoptics show that the historical Jesus used that metaphor, which explains why he used it in John’s account of Jesus’s arrest.
First Failure: No Evidence for Reliability
I agree that these passages coincide in the sense that Jesus uses the cup metaphor in all of them. However, we don’t need to suppose the historical Jesus must have used the metaphor in order to explain its appearance in these stories. The metaphor and the stories it’s found in could all be inventions of storytellers. A storyteller may have come up with the metaphor independently, or he or she may have been inspired by the use of a cup as a metaphor in the Hebrew Bible, where it appears several times. 3 The metaphor then entered the oral and literary traditions about Jesus. Eventually Mark and John used the metaphor in different stories, and Matthew and Luke copied the stories with the metaphor from Mark. 4
Therefore, this coincidence is not evidence for reliability. The metaphor and the stories it appears in can easily be explained as inventions by storytellers.
Second Failure: No Evidence for Eyewitness Testimony
Obviously, since invention can explain the coincidence, the coincidence cannot be used as evidence for eyewitness testimony.
But for sport, let’s supposed the coincidence were evidence that the historical Jesus did use this metaphor on a couple of occasions. We still wouldn’t have evidence that the Gospels are based on direct eyewitness testimony. The fact Jesus used this metaphor could have been incorporated into invented oral and literary traditions about Jesus, traditions that eventually found their way into Gospel stories.
Therefore, the coincidence is not evidence that the Gospels are based on eyewitness testimony. Even if Jesus used this metaphor, the stories it’s found in could have been invented by storytellers.
Third Failure: Eyewitness Testimony Cannot Explain the Prayer in the Garden
McGrew’s use of Jesus’s prayer in the garden in an argument for eyewitness testimony is a strategic blunder, and an extremely ironic one. According to the accounts themselves, there were no eyewitnesses to Jesus’s prayer. Jesus was alone, and the disciples were asleep some distance away. And Jesus wouldn’t have had the time—not to mention a reason—to tell the disciples what he prayed in the garden; he is immediately arrested, put on trial, and crucified. 5
Obviously, then, this scene was the invention of a storyteller. So, instead of evidence for reliable eyewitness testimony, McGrew ironically provides evidence that the Gospels are based on invented stories about Jesus.
Conclusion: A Failure in Plain View
McGrew thinks the fact that Jesus uses the cup metaphor in the Synoptics’ prayer scene and in John’s arrest scene is evidence “for the historicity and eyewitness sources of the Synoptics, on the one hand, and John, on the other”. Especially impressive to McGrew is how “John’s account of Jesus’ specific words to Peter dovetails especially beautifully with the Synoptics’ account of Jesus’ anguished request to the Father on that very night”. According to McGrew, “What we have here are different, interlocking details of the night of Jesus’ betrayal and arrest as told truthfully from different perspectives.”
But in actuality, there’s no reason to think so. The cup metaphor can easily be explained as the product of invented oral and literary traditions. That we have three Gospel stories of Jesus using the cup metaphor can simply be the result of different storytellers telling different stories in which Jesus used the cup metaphor. We can explain the coincidence without supposing the stories come from reliable eyewitness testimony.
Therefore, this coincidence fails to be evidence “for the historicity and eyewitness sources of the Synoptics, on the one hand, and John, on the other”.
- Unless otherwise noted, I use the NRSVue for all biblical translations. ↩
- I’m using the Kindle version of McGrew’s book, Hidden in Plain View: Undesigned Coincidences in the Gospels and Acts (DeWard, 2017), making page numbers useless. Unless otherwise noted, all quotations from McGrew in this post come from Chapter I, section “6. Shall I not drink the cup?” ↩
- See Pss. 11:6; 75:8; Isa. 51:17, 22; Jer. 25:15; Lam. 4:21. ↩
- I’m assuming that John is independent of Mark. But more and more scholars think even John used Mark as a source. If they’re right, then the cup metaphor is independently attested in Mark only, further weakening the case for its historicity. ↩
- Apologists might argue that Jesus told them what he was praying “while he was still speaking”, right before Judas arrives with guards (Mark 14:43 and parr.). But it’s implausible that Jesus, while berating the disciples for falling asleep, would say something like, “And this is what I prayed to God.” Beyond that, however, it’s clear that “while he was still speaking” is referring to Jesus’s words in the previous verse: “Look, my betrayer is at hand” (Mark 14:42 and par.). Apologists might also argue that the resurrected Jesus told them what he prayed in the garden. Obviously that explanation is far less plausible than the explanation that the garden prayer is an invented story. ↩