Mark 14:58

Made with hands (xeiropoihton). In Mark alone. An old Greek word. The negative form axeiropoihton here occurs elsewhere only in II Corinthians 5:1; Colossians 2:11. In Hebrews 9:11 the negative ou is used with the positive form. It is possible that a real logion of Jesus underlies the perversion of it here. Mark and Matthew do not quote the witnesses precisely alike. Perhaps they quoted Jesus differently and therein is shown part of the disagreement, for Mark adds verse Mark 14:59 (not in Matthew). "And not even so did their witness agree together," repeating the point of verse Mark 14:57. Swete observes that Jesus, as a matter of fact, did do what he is quoted as saying in Mark: "He said what the event has proved to be true; His death destroyed the old order, and His resurrection created the new." But these witnesses did not mean that by what they said. The only saying of Jesus at all like this preserved to us is that in John 2:19, when he referred not to the temple in Jerusalem, but to the temple of his body, though no one understood it at the time.