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(continued) In his Palm Sunday sermon ‘That was no Donkey!’ (pp. 2-6 of the April issue), B.D. writes: ‘The New International Version of the Bible from which I read uses the word ‘colt’, which is simply a young horse, but the actual Greek word is “polos” and Arnt and Gingrich’s Manual Lexicon of the New Testament tells us that from the time of Homer.....this word has always meant “horse”, and that “horse” is the preferred translation of the word as it is used in this passage of Mark’. Now I agree with Bill that the animal was almost certainly not a donkey; equally Arnt and Gingrich are simply wrong to come down unilaterally in favour of ‘horse’. I hasten to add that this makes little difference to Bill’s subsequent point about Jesus’s equestrian skills in controlling an untamed animal; equally, it is important, in so far as possible, to identify the animal correctly; and I hope the following helps. The Greek ‘polos’ (Mark 11:2, 4, and 7) is indeed primarily used of the young of the horse family. An analogy in English might be our word ‘calf’. While most commonly used of the young of the bull/cow family, we can, as circumstances and context require, speak of the calf of elephant, hippopotamus or whale. The same sort of range exists in the case of polos, which in Greek can cover the young of dogs, antelopes and elephants, as well as other animals; and, metaphorically, the word can be used of rebellious young men and even women. The first question, therefore, is whether the usage in Mark is general – which would tend to validate the view of Arnt and Gingrich – or particular. What in fact is the evidence for a ‘particular interpretation’, involving some animal other than simply the horse? Broadly, the textual evidence falls into three strands, of which Mark’s account is only part of one strand. The three strands are: (a) the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), (b) John, and (c) the Gospel of Barnabas, the only other version of the events of Palm Sunday, as far as I know, outside the N.T. Matthew is clear (21:2 and 7) that the polos is the young of an onos, or ass. Luke (19:30, 32, 33, 35), as does Mark, confines himself just to polos – although, tantalisingly, polon of Luke 19:30 in the Greek text is rendered pullum asinae (‘foal of an ass’) in the Latin Vulgate. Therefore the evidence of the first strand, as a whole, is that the polos might be a horse (acc. to Mark, and Luke in Greek), but is definitely (acc. to Matthew and Latin Luke) a young ass (not in fact ruled out by Mark and Greek Luke). John – the second strand – does not use polos at all, and mentions the animal only once (12:14), where it is an onarion, a small ass. John is thus in harmony with Matthew and Latin Luke. The text of Barnabas – the third strand – was very effectively suppressed by the early institutional church, and survives now only in a late Italian version. But in ch. 200 of Barnabas we have, as in Matthew, two animals, ‘una assina’ (an ass) and ‘uno polledro’ (a colt). But, interestingly, Barnabas is here more specific that Matt. 21:7 (‘And they brought the ass and the colt, and laid their garments upon them, and made him sit thereon’). Barnabas’s version surely explains why Mark and Luke mention only the one animal, the colt: ‘The disciples went, and found all that Jesus had told them, and accordingly they brought the ass and the colt. The disciples accordingly placed their mantles upon the colt, and Jesus rode thereon’ (Barn. 200). I do not wish here to get on to the complex question of why Jesus chose to enter Jerusalem on an ass – the main beast of burden in the ancient world. It is enough, for the present, to be certain, from the textual evidence, that the animal was an ass, not a horse. Dr. Martin Pulbrook 30th March 2005
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