Chapter LXXX.—Of the Harmony Characterizing the Accounts Which are Given by 174 Matthew, Mark, and Luke, of the Occasion on Which He Sent His Disciples to Make Pre- parations for His Eating the Passover. 157. Matthew proceeds thus: “Then one of the twelve, who is called Judas [of] Scarioth, went unto the chief priests, and said unto them, What will ye give me, and I will deliver Him unto you? And they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver;” and so on down to the words, “And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them, and they made ready the passov- er.”1216 Nothing in this section can be supposed to stand in any contradiction with the versions of Mark and Luke, who record this same passage in a similar manner.1217 For as regards the statement given by Matthew in these terms, “Go into the city to such a man, and say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand: I will keep the passover at thy house with my disciples,”1218 it just indicates the person whom Mark and Luke name the “goodman of the house,”1219 or the “master of the house,”1220 in which the dining-room was shown them where they were to make ready the passover. And Matthew has expressed this by simply bringing in the phrase, “to such a man,” as a brief explanation introduced by himself with the view of succinctly giving us to understand who the person referred to was. For if he had said that the Lord addressed them in words like these: “Go into the city, and say unto him [or “it”],1221 The Master saith, My time is at hand, I will keep the passover at thy house,” it might have been supposed that the terms were intended to be directed to the city itself. For this reason, therefore, Matthew has inserted the statement, that the Lord bade them go “to such a man,” not, however, as a statement made by the Lord, whose instructions he was recording, but simply as one volunteered by himself, with the view of avoiding the necessity of narrating the whole at length, when it seemed to him that this was all that re- quired to be mentioned in order to bring out with sufficient accuracy what was really meant by the person who gave the order. For who can fail to see that no one naturally speaks to others in such an indefinite fashion as this, “Go ye to such a man”? If, again, the words had been, “Go ye to any one whatsoever,” or “to any one you please,”1222 the mode of expression might have been correct enough, but the person to whom the disciples were sent would have been left uncertain: whereas Mark and Luke present him as a certain definitely indicated 1216 Matt. xxvi. 14–19. 1217 Mark xiv. 10–16; Luke xxii. 3–13. 1218 Matt. xxvi. 18. 1219 Patrem familias. 1220 Dominum domus. 1221 Ite in civitatem et dicite ei. Turning on the identity of form retained by the Latin pronoun in all the genders of the dative case, this, of course, cannot be precisely represented in English. 1222 Ad quemcunque aut ad quemlibet. Of the Harmony Characterizing the Accounts Which are Given by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, of the Occasion on Which He Sent His Disciples to Make Preparations for His Eating the Passover. 396 Of the Harmony Characterizing the Accounts Which are Given by Matthew, Mark,…