The Synoptics represent the passers by and the chief priests, scribes, and elders, as mocking Jesus as he hung on the cross. The fourth Gospel preserves total silence as to all this. It is curious, also, that the mocking is based upon that described in the Psalm xxii., to which we have already several times had to refer. In v. 7 f. we have: "All they that see me laughed me to scorn: they shot out the lip; they shook the head (saying), 8. He trusted on the Lord, let him deliver him, let him save him (seeing) that he delighteth in him."(2) Compare with this Mt. xxvii. 39 ff., Mk. xv. 29 ff., Luke xxiii 35. Is it possible to suppose that the chief priests and elders and scribes could actually have quoted the words of this Psalm, there put into the mouth of the Psalmist's enemies, as the first Synoptist represents (xxvii 43)?(3) It is obvious that the speeches ascribed {418} to the chief priests and elders can be nothing more than the expressions which the writers considered suitable to them, and the fact that they seek their inspiration in a Psalm which they suppose to be Messianic is suggestive. We have already mentioned that the fourth Gospel says nothing of any mocking speeches. The author, however, narrates an episode (xix. 25-27) in which the dying Jesus is represented as confiding his mother to the care of "the disciple whom he loved," of which in their turn the Synoptists seem to be perfectly ignorant. We have already elsewhere remarked that there is no evidence whatever that there was any disciple whom Jesus specially loved, except the repeated statement in this Gospel. No other work of the New Testament contains a hint of such an individual, and much less that he was the Apostle John. Nor is there any evidence that any one of the disciples took the mother of Jesus to his own home. There is, therefore, no external confirmation of this episode; but there is, on the contrary, much which leads to the conclusion that it is not historical.(1) There has been much discussion as to whether four women are mentioned (xix. 25), or whether "his mother's sister" is represented as "Mary, the wife of Clopas," or was a different person. There are, we think, reasons for concluding that there were four, but in the doubt we shall not base any argument on the point. The Synoptics(2) distinctly state that "the women that followed him from Galilee," among which were "Mary Magdalene and Mary {419}