Cock

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Cock-Crow Comic

Mark 14:29-30: “Peter said to them, Though all else should lose courage over you,

I will never lose mine. And Jesus said to him, Believe me, this night, before

the second cock-crow, you will thrice disown me.”

Many paragraphs down, Mark writes a bit by bit account of how Peter denied

Jesus three times to compatriots. “Meanwhile, Peter was in the court without, and one of

the maid-servants of the high priest came by; she saw Peter warming himself, and said,

looking closely at him, thou too wast with Jesus the Nazarene. Thereupon he denied it; I

know nothing of it, I do not understand what thou meanest. Then he went out into the

porch; and the cock crew. Again the maid looked at him and said to the bystanders, This

is one of them. And again he denied it. Then, a little while afterwards, the bystanders said

to Peter, It is certain that thou art one of them; why, thou art a Galilean. And he fell to

calling down curses on himself and swearing, I do not know the man you speak of. Then

came the second cock-crow; and Peter remembered the word Jesus had said to him,

Before the second cock-crow, thou wilt thrice deny me”(14:66-72).

But here is how Jesus says the same thing in Luke: “A cock will not crow today

until you have three times denied knowing me” (22:34).

In Mark, Jesus tells Peter that before the cock crows twice that night, he, Peter,

will have denied Jesus thrice. But in quoting the same words of Jesus, Luke plainly

contradicts with what Mark quotes. Luke says the cock will crow for the first time only

after Peter has denied him thrice. The cock in Luke’s book does crow at the specified

juncture!

Mark’s assertion is suppressed by Luke. The latter writes instead that the cock

will not crow at all before Peter had denied Jesus thrice. Similarly, Mark avoids Luke’s

assertion that the cock will begin crowing that night only after Peter had thrice denied

Jesus.

In short, each one knew what the other had written. Even then, their accounts are

mutually contradictory.

John unwittingly writes at 8:44: “When he utters falsehood, he is only uttering

what is natural to him; he is all false, and it was he who gave falsehood its birth.” The

words of John regarding the devil become meaningful only in Jesus, the common author

of these books.