And again, only in the fourth Gospel do we learn how the chief priests managed to force Pilate to decide on the death sentence. It is clear from all the other Gospels that Pilate does not want this, he emphasizes in every possible way that he finds no fault in this man. He preferred to simply let Jesus go, but for some reason it does not work. For some reason, he is forced to wash his hands (this is mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew) and say: "I am innocent of the blood of this Righteous One," but nevertheless confirm the sentence. We see that Pilate finds this decision very difficult, he sympathizes with Jesus, but his situation is hopeless. It is not clear from the Synoptic Gospels why he finds himself in a dead end, why he is forced to yield to the crowd, and so on. The reasons for this become clear only from the Gospel of John.

The Jews in the high priest's entourage emphasize that Jesus calls Himself the King of the Jews, and anyone who calls himself so opposes Caesar. And when Pilate exclaims: "Shall I crucify your king?" they declare: "We have no king but Caesar." The Jews present the situation to the procurator as a political problem, and Pilate is forced to sentence Jesus to death as a rebel against the Roman emperor Tiberius, as a man claiming royal power.

It is well known from history that in the Roman Empire, local officials were almost not afraid of anything. They took bribes, made unfair, sometimes cruel decisions, etc. They were afraid of only one thing – accusations of actions against the emperor, since in this state only that which caused moral damage to the emperor was punished. In this regard, the story that took place in Egypt shortly before the events of the Gospel is indicative. After Antony and Cleopatra committed suicide (30 B.C.) and Egypt finally became part of the Roman Empire, Augustus appointed the famous poet Cornelius Gallus, a school friend, to govern Egypt as prefect.

Having become an important personage, Gallus, as the historian Dio Cassius would later write, began to install his statues everywhere and even make inscriptions on the pyramids about his exploits. For a long time, it was believed that these inscriptions were the invention of some Roman historians, whose reports Dio Cassius uncritically used. But at the end of the nineteenth century, an inscription in three languages was discovered in Egypt, the text of which contained approximately the following statement: "I, Cornelius Gallus, pacified the kings who fell away from me in the upper reaches of the Nile, and did what neither the Egyptian pharaohs nor the Greek generals could do, establishing my single rule over all Egypt." Most likely, this inscription that has accidentally come down to us was not the only one. And according to the ideological precepts of the Augustan era, only one person could perform feats – Augustus himself. All the others could only be simple executors of his plans.

Therefore, as soon as Augustus received a denunciation (Dio Cassius tells about this fact), where it was reported that the prefect of Egypt was engaged in self-aggrandizement, Cornelius Gallus, despite the fact that he had been friends with the princeps since childhood, was forced to simply commit suicide. Pilate, defending the Man Who calls Himself a king and Whom everyone around also calls a king, finds himself in just such a situation. At the same time, the loyal subjects of the princeps from among the high priests and elders instantly, as befits real subjects of Rome, shout: "We have no king but Caesar," which drives Pilate into a blind alley. He has no way out, because if he pardons Jesus, then in the next six months, as soon as the information about what is happening reaches Rome and becomes known to Augustus, he will have to take poison. This stunning historical detail, which becomes clear in the light of knowledge of Roman history at the time, is preserved only in the Gospel of John. Not very significant at first glance from the point of view of evangelical preaching, it is extremely important, because it immediately fits Pilate's interrogation into the context of the political situation of that time.

In the story of the Evangelist John, there are other details that are absent from the synoptics. Jesus, seeing His Mother standing at the cross and the disciple "whom He loved," said to His Mother: "Woman! Behold, thy son," and then to the disciple: "Behold, thy mother." From that day on, John adds, "this disciple took her to himself" (19:25-27). Obviously, the Beloved Disciple of Jesus is not only John, but every disciple who stands at His Cross. It is this text that plays a fundamentally important role when it comes to the perception of the Most Pure Virgin as our common Mother.

And one more text that is present only in the Gospel of John. When one of the soldiers pierced the Deceased's ribs with a spear, blood and water flowed from the wound. "And he who saw testified, and his testimony is true." Modern pathologists say that such a picture is observed when a person dies from heart failure. Then it becomes clear why Pilate, according to the Evangelist Mark, was surprised to learn that Jesus was already dead. John says that the soldiers broke the legs of the rest of the executed, but they did not break Jesus, because He was already dead. Comparing John's testimony with Mark's, we can understand that Jesus did indeed die much faster than the crucified usually die—His heart could not stand it.

Such details in the Gospel of John are extremely significant, because they very accurately reconstruct the setting in which the events of Holy Week took place. On the other hand, some facts known from the other Gospels are omitted in John. Thus, all the synoptics speak of Simon of Cyrene, who carried the Cross of Jesus. The Evangelist Mark even gives the names of Simon's sons – Alexander and Rufus, probably these names spoke something to his readers. Perhaps the absence of Simon's name in John's narrative is the result of one of the last editions of the text of this Gospel, when everything about Simon was omitted for a very simple reason.

At the turn of the 1st and 2nd centuries, the Docetists appeared (from the Greek word "to seem"), who understood the death of Jesus on the Cross as a kind of ancient drama, as a story of the suffering of a hero reminiscent of one of the ancient gods. God cannot suffer, he is impassible, therefore, according to their version, at the last moment Jesus on the cross was replaced by a double, the role of which was played by Simon of Cyrene. From the point of view of the Docetists, the crucifixion of Jesus is a kind of mystery, a sacred act arranged by God especially for people, in the spirit of the religions of late antiquity. That is why the Gospel of John omits the theme of Simon of Cyrene altogether in order to emphasize the human, and not the mysterious, character of the Golgotha drama.

The Gospel of John shows (not just tells, but shows the reader) that Jesus Himself dies on the Cross. We see His dead body with a wound on its side, from which blood and water flow out. There is no mystery, no ritual or religious drama here – it is primarily just human suffering and just death. This is also a very important moment, reflecting not just some kind of "mechanism" of God's action among people, but a truly terrible event. In his Gospel, John polemicizes against heresies, which at the time of the creation of the Gospel had already begun to spread. With the Docetists, who, while affirming the divinity of Jesus, nullified His human nature. This is frightening, because when Jesus ceases to be a man, Christianity as a whole loses its human character and becomes not something unique, but just one of countless religions. The teaching of the Docetists is destructive because it deprives our faith of its uniqueness.

In John's narrative there are also some other details known to us from the Synoptic Gospels. For example, John does not mention the darkness that was "from the sixth hour to the ninth hour" or the earthquake that occurred at the time of Jesus' death. Obviously, the details that give the Golgotha drama an unusual character on a purely external plane, and the features borrowed from the Old Testament apocrypha, do not interest the Evangelist. He writes real history and therefore does not turn to the language of biblical images and biblical poetry; it does not depict the superhuman character of what is happening, but emphasizes the human character of the events of Good Friday.

Let us compare some more moments in different Gospel narratives. Thus, Mark has two details that are absent from the other evangelists (they have already been mentioned above): the names of the sons of Simon of Cyrene, and Pilate's surprise when he learned that Jesus had already died. Only Luke says that Pilate, having learned that Jesus is from Galilee, sends Him to Herod the tetrarch; only Luke describes everything that happens in Herod. This detail doesn't seem to have much significance in terms of what Jesus teaches and calls us to, but it's quite colorful, and Luke, as a historian, emphasizes it. Only he reports on the dying prayer of Jesus: "Father! into Thy hands I commend My spirit." In the Gospel of John, Jesus says: "It is finished!" In Mark and Matthew, He pronounces the words from the 22nd Psalm, which are preserved here in the Aramaic version: "Eli, Eli! Lama Savahthani?", that is: "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"

Modern biblical scholars, commenting on the prayer that Jesus says in the Gospel of Luke, say that when He dies, He turns to God with the first prayer that small children were taught to pray before going to bed. Finally, only Luke conveys two more purely psychological details. The women of Jerusalem, seeing Jesus going to Golgotha, weep. He addresses them: "Daughters of Jerusalem! weep not for me, but weep for yourselves and for your children." Only in Luke does the wise thief appear, although all the Evangelists mention the two thieves crucified together with Jesus.

In the Gospel of Matthew, which conveys the facts more concisely than the other Gospels, the logia or ipsissima verba, Jesus' own words, play a large role: the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the story of the Last Judgment, etc. In other words, this Gospel is dominated by the direct speech of Jesus, and the narrative part is shortened. At the same time, only Matthew says that Pilate washes his hands, but we can understand why he does this only thanks to the Gospel of John. From Matthew we learn that Pilate's wife sent a message to him not to do anything to "That Righteous One." From the Gospel of John – that Pilate doubts what to do, also because he does not know Who is in front of him – maybe it is some kind of pagan god? But his residual religiosity (as the residual religiosity of the Romans of his time was in general) is defeated by political motives, fear for his career.