Bible Doubt

Contradictions

How many times did the rooster crow? Mark 14 vs Matthew 26

Matthew 26:34; Mark 14:30; Mark 14:72; John 13:38

Mark says the rooster crows twice before Peter's third denial. Matthew, Luke and John mention a single crow.

The passages

Jesus said unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this night, before the cock crow, thou shalt deny me thrice.

Matthew 26:34

And Jesus saith unto him, Verily I say unto thee, That this day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice.

Mark 14:30

The problem

All four Gospels have Jesus predict that Peter will deny him three times before a rooster crows. Only Mark says "twice", and Mark's account narrates a first crow after the first denial (14:68, in some manuscripts) and a second after the third. The other Gospels have a single crow after the third denial. If the prediction is a specific, timed one, the accounts do not match.

What believers and scholars say

One includes the other. A rooster that crows a second time has also crowed a first. Matthew, Luke and John mention the decisive crow, and Mark adds a detail. On this reading nothing contradicts. A prediction that Peter would deny him before the cock crowed once is fulfilled if the last denial came before the second crow too.

Cock-crow as a time of night. In Roman usage, "cockcrow" named the third watch of the night, between midnight and 3 a.m. Mark 13:35 lists it among the four watches. The disagreement might then be about a time signal, and the "twice" a literary flourish.

Mark's detail may be original. Some scholars note that the clause "and the cock crew" in Mark 14:68 is missing from important manuscripts. Textual critics debate whether it was part of Mark or added by scribes who wanted the first denial matched to a crow. Gundry argues that Mark's detail is the more specific and likely original.

Where this leaves it

The two forms of the prediction are not logically incompatible, and the account in Mark is simply fuller. What a reader gets from it depends on what they expected of the Gospels. If the Gospels are exact transcripts, the difference is a problem. If they are independent tellings of the same night, this is the sort of variation one would expect.

Sources and further reading

  • Raymond E. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, vol. 1 (Doubleday, 1994).
  • Robert H. Gundry, Mark: A Commentary on His Apology for the Cross (Eerdmans, 1993).
  • Bruce M. Metzger, A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 2nd ed. (United Bible Societies, 1994).