Drinking on the Job

Mather highlights another variation in minutiae between Matthew and Mark; Matthew reports that soldiers gave the dying Jesus vinegar with gall, while Mark calls it wine with myrrh (Matt. 27:34, 27:48, Mark 15:23, 15:36, Luke 23:36, John 19:29). Borrowing Lightfoot’s

theory,179 Mather notes that the “custome of the Nation” then was to present the executed with

wine and myrrh, while “Matthew relates the Thing as it was really Acted” (“BA” 7: Matt. 27:34).

Lightfoot explains that the drink would cause the executed to “lose their senses” (348). Though

179 _{Lightfoot’s commentary on Matthew: “The words of Mark seem to relate to the custom of the Nation;} those of Matthew, to the thing, as it was really acted” (Lightfoot 2:267).

the executors would typically present wine, in Jesus’s case they presented vinegar “for the more of mockage and rancour” (“BA” 7: Matt. 27:34, c.f. Lightfoot 349). Mather claims he sees “no contradiction, between ye Two Evangelists” (“BA” 7: Matt. 27:34). In each Gospel, Jesus

receives an offer of vinegar “to take away the sense of pain,” but, “our Lord, that He might show His Readiness to suffer, would not meddle with it” (“BA” 7: Matt. 27:34). This offer is attested in Luke as well. In John, though, Jesus not only drinks the vinegar but requests it. Mather

remarks that Jesus’s drinking vinegar fulfills Psalm 69:21 (“BA” 8: John 19:29). This fulfillment is especially significant, he reports sagely, because “giving Vinegar unto Dying malefactors was Diametrically contrary unto ye common & courteous custome of ye Jewes” (“BA” 8: John 19:29). Ordinarily, as he had explained before, they would provide wine and myrrh to dull the senses, while vinegar “awakens ye sense of pain, & recovers out of swoons” (“BA” 8: John 19:29). This is a spiritual explanation, and one that connects the Old Testament with the New Testament, but it does not clear up the contradiction. Nor does it explain why in his gloss on Matthew he claims that vinegar was used to dull pain.

In his gloss on the passage in Mark, Mather changes his tune. He suggests that, according to Nehemiah Grew, the Ethiopian version of the text calls the liquid wine, not vinegar (“BA” 7:

Mark 15:23, c.f. Grew 309). Grew adds that “by Gall, Matthew meant, according to the Hebrew

Stile, only something that was bitter; as Myrrh also is” (Grew 309). Therefore, even though Mark differs from Matthew and Luke in the King James Version, Grew proclaims, “they are all true” (“BA” 7: Mark 15:23, c.f. 309). Mather assumes that the soldiers offered Jesus the same

“cordial” that they would typically grant to the faint, except this wine “had lost its scent, and was

grown sowre” (“BA” 7: Mark 15:23, c.f. Grew 309). Johann Heinrich Reitz180 attempts to

180 _{Johann Heinrich Reitz (1655-1720) was an itinerant Pietist minister based in Frankfurt and author of} the influential Historie der Wiedergebohrnen (1710), a history of the Pietist church (Shantz 37).

resolve the contradictions by arguing that Jesus was offered a drink twice, which agrees with the narratives in Matthew and Mark. Although he refused the first offer, wine, he later called out for a drink, and a soldier put hyssop in the wine to make it even more bitter before Jesus drank it (“BA” 7: Mark 15:23). This seems to be Reitz’s means of explaining why in Matthew and Mark, Jesus was given a fresh sponge of vinegar while on the cross, yet in John the vinegar comes from a full bowl that was already available.

Mather must have realized that his attempts to conflate the narratives only made the differences more stark. Borrowing from John Edwards, he discourses at length on what Jesus

drank on the cross. Edwards argues that “They were Two Distinct Cups, at Two Distinct Times

given to our Saviour” (“BA” 7: Mark 15:22).181 _{The wine came from “compassionate Friends”}

before he was put on the cross (“BA” 7: Mark 15:22). Numerous scholars agree that it was an intoxicating wine meant to relieve pain, Edwards and Mather say, and Jesus refused it (“BA” 7: Mark 15:22, c.f. Edwards 182-186). Edwards naively claims: “Indeed, there is no occasion to reconcile the Evangelists, because they don’t fall out with one another, but very firmly agree” (181). According to Edwards’s reading, which conflates the four narratives, shortly afterwards, “Enemies” offered Jesus sour wine or vinegar with gall, “not to Abate, but to Augment, the sense

of pain” (“BA” 7: Mark 15:22).182 _{Mather does not mention whether Jesus refused this cup. At}

any rate, Edwards closes the discussion while Mather continues. After the sour wine, Mather

remarks, “Anon, we find our Lord molested with a Third potion” (“BA” 7: Mark 15:22). The

third drink, a sponge of vinegar and hyssop, was given to Jesus on the cross, not to stimulate or

181 _{Edwards, after discoursing on other exegetes’ theories: “But I rather take it upon me to effect it thus,} namely, by asserting that these passages of the Evangelists must be understood of Two Distinct Cups given to our Saviour at different times” (Exercitations 181).

182 _{Edwards puts it more dramatically than Mather: “Instead of good and generous Wine, they gave Christ} sowr dead Wine, or Vinegar: and moreover, they blended it with Gall, to make it distastful [sic] and loathsom, and (not to alleviate, but) to increase the sense of pain” (187).

relieve his sense of pain, but only to “Quench His Thirst,” as “Vinegar was used in these Hott countreyes, for that purpose” (“BA” 7: Mark 15:22). Since he did not add anything further, this conclusion was probably Mather’s final thought on the vinegar story, unresolved as it might seem.

Mather was not the only exegete to try to harmonize by building a long, repetitive narrative. Modern critic John Barton notes that this style of harmony appeared in the

Reformation and is exemplified by Andreas Osiander’s Harmonia evangelica (1537) which

insists on a literal meaning (Barton 17). One of the early major harmonies, Augustine’s medieval De consensu evangelistarum, emphasizes that the literal truth has less importance than the “sense,” so even though one Gospel has John the Baptist unfit to untie Jesus’s sandals, and another has him unfit to carry them, the sense is that John the Baptist was humble (Barton 16). Reformation Protestants like Osiander,183 however, wanted the literal truth and insisted that every Gospel was correct, so “Jesus heals the servants of two different centurions, cleanses the Temple three times,” and so on (Barton 17). Barton applies an apt simile: “Augustine and Osiander are like lawyers adding up evidence from many sources to make a case” (19). Like lawyers, authors of harmonies argue in order to defend a specific position.

Unfortunately, another step in Mather’s thought process is missing, as, in his glosses on

Luke he includes a note: “It happens, that by an unhappy Accident, a Leaf of our Illustrations in

this place has been torn out; and I cannot now recover ye Treasures, which this Leaf contained” (“BA” 7: Luke 23:34). Mather’s arrogance aside, his obvious heartbreak and sense of defeat over losing a section of his hard work rings through clearly. One of the illustrations was “on ye

Vinegar brought unto our Lord” and although he could not remember the details of his original

183 _{Andreas Osiander (1498-1552), a leader of the German Reformation, taught at the University of} Königsberg (“Andreas Osiander”).

gloss, he vaguely recollected that soldiers commonly drank vinegar and “had it alwayes by them” (“BA” 7: Luke 23:34). The missing section, which caused him such disappointment, may have been lost, stolen,184 or destroyed by his wife.185 The contradictions presented by Mather – vinegar dulls the senses, awakens the senses, and relieves thirst – indicate the damage that could be caused by harmonies. Instead of resolving the conflicting accounts of what Jesus drank on the cross, Mather highlights the conflicts then tries to patch all of the narratives together, implying that each is incomplete on its own.