But a still more serious difficulty against this view arises from the difficulty of finding time for all the events of the morning of the Crucifixion between day‐dawn and 6 a.m.—the time at which, in this opinion, our Lord was condemned by Pilate. “Those events ... were—(1) the meeting of the Council; (2) the procession to Pilate’s Court; (3) the various incidents recorded by the four Evangelists on the occasion of our Lord’s first appearance before Pilate’s tribunal; (4) the sending of our Lord to Herod; (5) the interview between our Lord and Herod; (6) the mocking of our Lord by Herod’s soldiers; (7) the return to the Court of Pilate; (8) the scourging; (9) the crowning with thorns; (10) the mocking of our Lord by the Roman soldiers; (11) the incident of the ‘Ecce Homo,’ and (12) the final interview, within the Praetorium, between our Lord and Pilate, at the close of which Pilate came forth, and, after a final effort to obtain the liberation of our Lord, took his place on the judgment seat, ‘and it was now about the sixth hour.’ (4) “It would seem, then, that the most satisfactory solution of the difficulty is that given by the great majority of modern commentators—Catholic as well as Protestant—namely, that an error has crept into the text of St. John’s Gospel, and that the true reading of the passage in question there (xix. 14), is to be obtained by substituting ‘third’ for ‘sixth.’ “Manifestly, such a correction of the text removes the difficulty we are considering. On the one hand, it leaves abundance of time before Pilate’s sentence—three or four hours—for the events of the earlier part of the morning. On the other hand, it leaves quite sufficient time—an interval, it may be supposed, of nearly an hour—between the passing of the sentence and the actual crucifixion; for St. John’s statement, that it was ‘about’ the third hour, might surely be understood of any time between half‐past eight and nine o’clock; and St. Mark’s words are quite consistent with the supposition that our Lord was crucified at any time between nine and ten. “And it is not to be supposed that the emendation of the text is suggested merely on _a priori_ grounds. For (1) this reading is actually found in one of the five Greek MSS. of the New Testament that rank highest in antiquity and authority—Codex D. (_Cantabrigiensis_ or _Bezae_): this MS dates probably from the 5th or 6th century. Moreover (2) we have in its favour the very strong testimony of an ancient writer, the author of the _Chronicon Paschale_ (circ. A.D. 630), who adopts this reading on the authority of many ‘accurate copies,’ and mentions the striking fact that the clause was thus read in St. John’s original autograph of his Gospel, then extant, and, of course, deeply venerated by the faithful in the Church at Ephesus.” (See Patrizzi, _De Evangeliis_, lib. ii., n. 195.)