CONTRADICTION: DID JESUS PRAY TO PREVENT THE CRUCIFIXION?

Here is an apparent contradiction within the Gospel accounts that is an interesting one to discuss:

     Did Jesus pray to the Father to prevent the crucifixion? (a) Yes (Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke         22:42); (b) No (John 12:27)

Regarding the first answer, here is how Mark explains the setting in the Garden:

    “He...began to be greatly distressed and troubled. And he said to them, 'My soul is very sorrowful, even to death...he fell on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. And he said, 'Abba, Father, all things are possible to thee; remove this cup from me; yet not what I will, but what thou wilt.” (Mark 14:33-36, RSV)

We need to compare this with John 12:27, placed much earlier in Jesus career:

    “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? 'Father, save me from this hour?' No, for this purpose I have come to his hour.”

There are several ways to answer this conundrum, beginning with three outlined by Raymond Brown, all attempting to explain that the exact nature of the prayer in Gethsemane is not what it is popularly believed to be:

1. He was afraid that his suffering in Gethsemane would lead to his premature death before reaching the cross.

2. His prayer was that the hour would pass quickly and not be prolonged.

There have been various proposals concerning the reason for Jesus' distress in the Garden, including his knowledge that the apostles would soon deny, betray, or abandon him; dread of physical pain; sense of enduring a cursed death (see Galatians 3:13) and actually bearing sin (II Corinthians 5:21); or being abandoned by God. And, of course, all of these came into play at the cross.

3. The cup is not one of death itself but represents something else instead.

One such possibility is mentioned by Leon Morris: “Westcott accepts the meaning 'bring me safely out of the conflict' (citing Heb. 5:7) rather than 'keep me from entering it.'”

But another approach is to concentrate on Jesus' words in John 12:27 instead. And here we encounter another possibility arising from the fact that the original Greek manuscripts, for the most part, did not have punctuation marks.

4. Jesus is not asking a hypothetical question in John 12:27. Instead, He is actually praying for deliverance.

Thus, Borchert explains that “Beasley-Murray is right when he criticizes the UBS Greek text and most of the translations for making the petition 'Father, save me from this hour' into a question. Jesus was in the midst of a serious wrestling match as he was in the Synoptics when he prayed in Gethsemane for the removal of the cup of his death. When Jesus was faced with the horrible nature of his forthcoming death, it was a traumatic experience, and he took his plea for escape ('save me') to the only one who was worthy of considering it – God, his Father. But just as in the Gethsemane stories, he answered his own petition.”

Joel Green echoes this understanding: “the prayer itself, 'Father, save me from this hour' (Jn 12:27), has been variously punctuated, as a hypothetical question (NET, CEB) or as a petition (KJV, NEB). Given the note of anguish in John 12:27a (cf. Ps 6:3-4; 42:6; Mk 14:34)), Jesus' experience of turmoil is evident either way.”

So by simply changing a question mark into a period, we now have an almost perfect parallel between John's account and that of the Synoptics, as seen in other ways:

“The words [in John] reveal the natural human shrinking from death. John does not record the agony in Gethsemane, and this is his equivalent of the Synoptic prayer in the Garden, 'not what I will, but what thou wilt' (Mark 14:36).” (Morris)

“In this scene so parallel to the agony in the garden, we see the true humanity of the Johannine Jesus...he triumphs in each scene by submitting himself to the Father's will or plan.” (Brown)

5. There is not so much a contradiction as a deepening distress as the hour approaches.

Finally, even if Jesus is asking a question and rejecting it in John 12:27, the situation is different once the hour becomes rapidly approaching in the Garden, and Jesus' human nature asserts itself strongly. To this possibility, Brown says that while some scholars object to this idea, “To others, it exemplifies a human process of learning obedience through suffering from which even God's Son was not exempt.”