(c) Some say, as Augustine does in one place, and Bullinger, " that at tlie third hour the Lord was crucified by the tongues of the Jews, and at the sixth by the hands of the soldiers." This, however, to say the least, is a weak and childish explana tion. Moreover, it is open to the grave objection that it would make out our Lord to have been only three hours on the cross, and all that time in the dark, and not seen consequently by any one ! At this rate, the inscription over His head on the cross would certainly not have been read by many ! " There was darkness over all the land from the sixth to the ninth hour."
(d) Some say that Mark reckoned time on the Jewish plan, by which the hours began to count from the morning, and their seven o'clock answered to our one; while John reckoned time on our English plan, which is the same as the Roman one, and John's sixth hour meant literally about six in the morning. According to this theory Jesus was condemned, in John's ac- count of the passion, at six o'clock in the morning, and cruci- fied, in Mark's account, at nine o'clock.
This explanation is very commonly adopted, and is support- ed by Wordsworth, Lee, and Biirgon, But it is open to very serious objections. I see no proof whatever that John reckons time on the Rom-an and English plan, and not on the Jewish plan. The passage in the story of the Samaritan woman, which is commonly quoted as a proof, is no proof at all, and on reflection will cut directly the other way. If the " sixth hour," when Jesus sat on the well (see John iv. 6), meant really our English six o'clock in the evening, it makes it impossible to understand how the conversation with the woman, her return to her native village, the telling of the men to come and see Jesus, the coming of the men, the return of the disciples with meat, could all be brought into the short space of one evening ! The thing would have been impossible. — Moreover, it is an ad- ditional objection, that if Jesus was condemned at six o'clock in the morning, there are left three long hours between the condemnation and the crucifixion unaccounted for and unex- plained. I am obliged to say tliat in my judgment this way of explaining the difficulty completely fails.
(e) Some think, as Calvin, Bucer, Gaulter, Brentius, Muscu- ius, Gerhard, Lampe, Hammond, Poole, Jansenius, Burkitt, Hengstenberg, and Ellicott, that John's sixth hour means any time after our nine o'clock in the morning ; any time, in fact, within the space begun by the Jewish third hour. They say that the Jews divided the twelve hours of their day into four great portions : from six to nine, from nine to twelve, from twelve to three, and from three to six. They also say that any part of the time after our six in the morning would be called the third hour, and any time after our nine in the morning would be called the sixth hour. And they conclude that both the condemnation and the crucifixion took place soon after nine