That Turkey aims to fill in the power vacuum left over by Iran is not controversial. What fewer can agree on is exactly what Turkey’s rising influence will mean for the U.S. Specifically, it raises questions about two pillars of U.S. foreign policy: alliance with Israel and NATO membership. These two pillars are, of course, already under strain for reasons unrelated to Turkey. Israel’s outsized influence on U.S. policy has bred resentment on the Right and the Left, and President Trump threatened to remove American troops from NATO countries that he deemed unhelpful in the Iran expedition.

Add to this the growing rift between Ankara and Jerusalem. In February this year, former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said that “a new Turkish threat is emerging” comprised of a regional coalition “similar to the Iranian one”—in effect, transforming Turkey into Israel’s new existential threat. Turkey’s Foreign Ministry recently called Netanyahu “the Hitler of our time.” And the mutual recriminations go on.

At the outset, we should get one bold interpretation out of the way before we entertain more sober judgments. I am referring to the interpretation, currently making its rounds on social media, which holds that the U.S. is isolating itself from NATO so we can support Israel in a future military confrontation with Turkey. Former Director of Counterterrorism Joe Kent wrote on X: “Unfortunately leaving NATO won’t be to avoid foreign entanglements, we’ll be leaving NATO so we can side with Israel when Turkey & Israel eventually clash in Syria.” And Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks wrote: “Why is Trump threatening to leave NATO? Because the Israelis have already announced they want to attack Turkey next - and Turkey is in NATO. Israel can’t attack our own alliance, so they have to first destroy that alliance.”

Erdoğan and Netanyahu, 2023. Source: Daily Sabah.

Aside from the fact that Israel never “announced they want to attack Turkey next,” what this idea ignores is that there is every indication that U.S. relations with Turkey are improving, not deteriorating. In fact, despite our undoubted solidarity with Israel, the U.S. in recent years has been regularly siding with Turkey against Israel on precisely the issues that are most liable to explode into conflict.

One such issue is Gaza. As recently as January, Trump included Turkey’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan on his Board of Peace’s Gaza Executive Board. The plan did not even include an Israeli official, though it did include an Israeli businessman. Israel, unsurprisingly, was adamantly opposed to any measures that might allow Erdoğan a foothold in Gaza.

Even on the issue of Syria—where alarmists envision the next military showdown between Israel and Turkey—Washington and Ankara are generally aligned, and increasingly so. It was only in 2019 that Erdoğan openly defied Trump’s warning not to launch a military offensive against the American-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria. (Erdoğan reportedly threw Trump’s letter in the trash.) The fall of the Assad regime and its replacement by the rule of Ahmed al-Sharaa has relieved some of these tensions. The U.S. and Turkey are both backers of the transitional government, and officially coordinate to bring stability to the region through the U.S.-Türkiye Syria Working Group.

The U.S. is posturing itself toward Turkey in other ways. Recent reports show that Trump dismissed a multibillion-dollar lawsuit against a Turkish bank in exchange for Turkey’s assistance in reaching a hostage deal between Israel and Hamas; the bank had been charged with fraudulently helping Iran skirt sanctions. More recently, Marco Rubio assured Hakan Fidan that the U.S. would not be arming Kurdish militias to start an uprising in Iran after all. And there is ongoing discussion about selling American F-35 jets to Ankara again (more on this below), even while we are already selling them our F-16s.

Trump’s latest assault on NATO, when he threatened to pull American troops out of countries he deemed unhelpful in the Iran war, is all the more remarkable for its failure to include Turkey. Spain closed its airspace and denied the U.S. access to its bases. Italy refused the U.S. landing rights at Sigonella. France denied U.S. aircraft the ability to transport military supplies to Israel. And yet Turkey as done similarly. It opposed the U.S. strikes and refused to follow the U.S. in imposing a 25% tariff on countries doing business with Tehran. It denied the U.S. access to Incirlik Air Base, which hosts Americans, to carry out strikes. It has exceptional mine-clearing and ISR (intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) capabilities that could aid the war effort which it is not using. It retains a firm stance of neutrality, even despite Iran’s provocations: Iran has launched missiles into Turkey’s airspace on four separate occasions, as well as attacked Azerbaijan, Turkey’s strategic ally. The most effort Turkey has made to defend its interests is to send six F-16 fighter jets to the occupied territory of northern Cyprus after Hezbollah struck on a British base on the island—a move that did more to provoke the U.S. allies of Cyprus and Greece than it did deter Iran. And yet Turkey got off the hook.

The U.S.-Turkey alliance is not set to expire any time soon, then. But it remains an open question whether Trump has properly evaluated the risks attendant upon aligning with Turkey.

Amid the heated rhetorical spat between Bibi and Erdoğan, it is tempting to dismiss Israeli officials’ warnings of a new Turkish axis “similar to the Iranian one” as propagandistic. And propagandistic it is: Turkey, unlike Iran, does not have as its raison d’être the advance of a repressive interpretation of Islam and the elimination of the Jewish state. At the same time, Israeli officials are not making this threat up out of thin air (as some reports from Al-Jazeera would make you think.) Erdoğan himself remarked in 2024 that “the alliance of Islamic countries” is needed to counter “the growing threat of [Israeli] expansionism.”

On the one hand, it is true that Turkey brings much to the strategic table. It is well-placed to curb the influence of China and Russia by projecting power in the Middle East, the Caucasus, Africa, and Central Asia. It contributes to NATO an army second only to the U.S. in its size, and has an impressive capacity for domestic defense production. It has particularly shown its value by supporting the war effort in Ukraine. Early in the war, Turkish Bayraktar TB2 drones proved valuable against Russian defenses. Turkey heeded Ukraine’s request to invoke the Montreux Convention to block Russian warships from the Black Sea. It also negotiated a reopening of the grain corridor from Ukraine to Ethiopia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Somalia, Kenya and Djibouti.

On the other hand, it is also a highly problematic ally. Under its “Blue Homeland” doctrine, it challenges the maritime rights of another NATO member, Greece, in the Aegean, as well as that of Cyprus and Israel in the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey continues to occupy about 40% of Cyprus, where it is slowly committing “cultural genocide.” Turkey openly supports Hamas, including by making itself a financial hub and safe haven for the terrorist organization. And its putative support for Ukraine is complicated by the fact that it temporarily blocked Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO following Russia’s invasion. Moreover, its controversial purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system in 2019 would have allowed it to track American planes and relay that intelligence to Russia, had not Washington wisely decided to suspend Turkey from its F-35 program. At home, Turkey cracks down on political dissidents like Ekrem İmamoğlu as well as non-Muslims.

It is not true, as one commentator wrote years ago, that Turkey is “an ally no more.” It is true, however, that our alliance with Turkey—as bullish as it looks—is an uneasy one. It is imperative that as our relationship with Ankara progresses we pressure it to sever its ties with Hamas, give up its Russian S-400s, end its illegal occupation of Cyprus, and open avenues for democracy and religious freedom.

And, while we’re at it, we should avoid the fantastic prognostications of alarmists.

Piker belongs to the lowest rung of human decency. He has callously dismissed the rape of Jewish women, stating that “[i]t doesn’t matter if rape happened on October 7th.” He has described Orthodox Jews as “inbred.” At the same time, he has valorized the actions of terrorists, contending that “America deserved 9/11,” and praising the “brave mujahideen” who wounded Congressman and former Navy SEAL Dan Crenshaw. (Clips to all these videos are helpfully compiled here.)

Hasan Piker (left) with Abdul El-Sayed (right). Source.

The existence of fringe internet provocateurs is nothing new. This class includes, of course, Nick Fuentes, Piker’s right-wing mirror image, whose resume I assume you are all familiar with by now. (If you are not: he is a male chauvinist and Nazi apologist, just as evil and just as crude, if not more.) What is not usual, and so what demands explanation, is why both figures have been allowed safe passageway by more respectable guardians of popular culture. My concern is not with evil ideas per se but with the health of a society in which such ideas are allowed to spread.

If we listen to defenders of Piker and Fuentes, we find a common appeal to liberal values that all of us, to one degree or another, hold dear. This is what is so disturbing. We are forced to confront the possibility that, as disgusting as these rogues are, the reason for their popularity might very well have something to do with us, with the culture that we have created—or eroded.

Consider Rep. Khanna’s defense of using Piker as part of a Democratic campaign strategy: “The lesson of the last election is we’ve got to be out there. We’ve got to engage. It’s a complex, messy, multiracial democracy. I will defend my views, but the people who are saying, ‘Don’t engage,’ will cost us future elections.” What is “I will defend my views, but” supposed to mean? It is a concession that utility is more important than integrity. That is, I might personally take issue with Piker’s rape denial, slurs and glorification of terrorist violence, but what really matters is appeasing the disgruntled young men who will be casting ballots soon.

He elsewhere told Politico: “Of course, I disagree strongly with some of his statements and point that out. But cancelling people or shaming people like Hasan Piker… is not the answer.” There we have it: “cancelling” and “shaming.” These sins are beyond atonement. Another article from Zeteo drew on the same vocabulary. “I Watched Right-Wing Journalists Try to Shame Abdul El-Sayed and Hasan Piker,” reads the headline.

These progressives are employing a tactic that originates from the conservative handbook. “Cancel culture,” if you remember, used to describe environments that ostracized those on the Right who spoke well within the Overton Window. That is why Tucker Carlson has been able to practically split the conservative movement by making the same defense for his association with Fuentes, who he hosted on his podcast without any serious cross-examination. Carlson defended his own actions at the Turning Point USA conference in December. In a moment of fleeting insight, he observed that the attempt to “deplatform” and “denounce” him by some on the Right bore resemblance to the language of cancel culture on the Left.

These defenses of absolute locutionary freedom—with both the Right and the Left retorting to any criticism of its excesses with the same vacuous buzzwords such as “cancel,” “shame,” “deplatform,” and so on—only resound in a culture like ours, where free speech is something of a sacred cow. The legal principle of free speech is obviously crucial, and I do not wish to depart from Brandenburg v. Ohio’s ruling that only speech which incites violence or lawlessness should face legal punity. But allow me to desecrate this sacred cow in a different way: some ideas are simply too evil to be tolerated by a civilized society. They deserve to be suppressed, not through legal measures but through cultural institutions designed to cultivate and guard virtue. This means that shame, ostracism and “deplatforming” are sometimes legitimate.

Why is this idea hard to swallow? Because it is freedom of speech, not the content of speech, that we have baptized. Questioning one’s right to say something is sacrilege; questioning what he says is not. Hence it does not matter whether people speak for justice, or spew anti-semitic conspiracies, or simply babble into the ether: the inalienable principle of free speech is no respecter of persons, and the proliferation of words is a sure sign of freedom.

If this seems to you an acceptable consequence of freedom of speech, consider that few (save the most rigid libertarian) would make the same argument for, say, our “freedom” to disseminate pornography. A populace that can acquire it with ease, and that incurs no social shame for doing so, is “free” in one sense. But in more a basic sense it is enslaved—to insatiable sexual craving within the soul, and to the ubiquity of temptation ever around it. Piker’s and Fuentes’s rhetoric is very much like pornography. It is fundamentally irrational, destructive, and yet appealing to the basest human desires.

Some are sure to reply: isn’t the advantage of allowing even evil speech a place in the open marketplace of ideas that it is exposed to open refutation? Of course this holds true generally. It held true for William F. Buckley’s public debates with controversial figures like George Wallace on The Firing Line. (One fact lost to popular memory is that Wallace eventually saw Christian conversion and repented of his racist beliefs.) It also held true for the Nazi-sympathetic historian David Irving, whose self-published books were subjected to the intense scrutiny from historians of like caliber, and now he is a disgraced figure. But—and this is a key point—Wallace and Irving were cogent enough to be refutable. But part of the appeal of Piker and Fuentes, I think, is their shock value, which draws its strength from the repudiation of all established norms of discourse and unapologetic irrationality. They are purveyors of a naked hatred that does not hide behind the veil of reason. In this sense, they are irrefutable. Exposing their folly in open debate would do nothing to puncture their “alternative” mystique.

This sort of speech is stress-testing the foundations of our liberal society. There is a lesson here for us: liberalism is no guarantee of a healthy society. One of liberalism’s main defects is that it is far too optimistic about what will result when human beings are left to pursue their own self-interests, with the state stepping in only to play referee. This is as true for free speech as it is for the unfettered market and sexual liberation. John Stuart Mill, for instance, made the argument that in On Liberty (1859) that, in a free marketplace of ideas, falsehood will eventually yield to truth:

The real advantage which truth has, consists in this, that when an opinion is true, it may be extinguished once, twice, or many times, but in the course of ages there will generally be found persons to rediscover it, until some one of its reappearances falls on a time when from favourable circumstances it escapes persecution until it has made such head as to withstand all subsequent attempts to suppress it.

But evil opinions can reassert themselves generation after generation as well. Anti-semitism, race essentialism, revolutionary terrorism—these are tropes, not one-time novelties. Moreover, contra Mill, there is no reason to expect that human beings will be able to resist such ideas, whose power of attraction is largely emotional. We do not have an innate preference for “higher” pleasures over “lower” ones, as he claims in Utilitarianism (1861). Many of us indeed would prefer to be a “pig satisfied” than a “human being dissatisfied.” (Especially those who prefer Kenny G. over Kenny Garrett.)

John Stuart Mill. Source: Britannica.

Which leads me to return to this point: the proliferation of profane and stupid ideas, from their original dissemination across the internet to their ascendancy to tolerance by political and cultural elites, is not a failure of law but of culture. Specifically, it is a failure to rely on our cultural institutions—our families, schools and churches—to instill in us the values which make our society cohere. Our embrace of liberalism, as Patrick Deneen has argued brilliantly in The Failure of Liberalism (2018), has led to the gradual erosion of these cultural institutions because we have replaced virtue with freedom. Whereas virtue is about self-governance for the purpose of freedom from base desires, “freedom” in modern parlance is about freedom from all external constraints, social as well as legal.

It is not sustainable. We cannot let our elites use free speech as a smoke screen for appeasing those whose entire platform is built on the rejection of basic decency. When the barbarians are at the gates, the last thing we should do is welcome them in.

Source: PBS News

The 5th-century BCE Greek historian Thucydides, who documented the three-decade carnage between Athens and Sparta known as the Peloponnesian War, maintained a distinction between prophasis and aitiai, or between underlying motive and public grievances. A nation’s true interest in going to war, in other words, is not always stated openly. It is a distinction we do well to observe.

But it is also a distinction which invites speculation and conspiracy: for one to be able to unmask official rhetoric and expose the “true” motivation, he must be willing to make connections which go beyond the readily available evidence. And this is exactly what we are seeing in those Americans who, unpersuaded by the official justifications for our involvement in Iran, instead contend that Israel—Netanyahu and his army of lobbyist shills and Christian Zionist suckers—is the real architect of this war. But far from clarifying the reason for our involvement in Iran, it obscures it by deflecting responsibility away from our own leaders.

The public grievances invoked to justify this war are well known. We have heard that we have really been at war with Iran since 1979, since the onset of the Islamic Revolution and the taking of American hostages. We have heard that the emblematic slogan of Iran is “Death to America.” We have heard that Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile capacity, despite its virtual obliteration last summer during the 12-Day War, has been rebuilt, and can soon enough pose a threat not just to Israel and our Gulf allies but to the mainland United States as well. We have heard that Iran retains its regional power through terrorist proxies, from Hamas in Gaza to the Houthis in Yemen to Hezbollah in Lebanon. And we have heard of the theocratic regime that will go to any length to stay in power—including piling up the bodies of 40,000 innocent protestors who would dare to question its legitimacy.

All this is true, but most Americans are not buying it as sufficient justification for Operation Epic Fury’s cost in blood and treasure, potential and real. The Israel conspiracy crowd is not alone in seeking out alternative explanations.

At this point, they could seek an alternative explanation in China. China, after all, has turned Iran into a kind of “forward base” by embedding itself into the regime. It has kept afloat Iran’s ballistic missile program through the regular supply sodium perchlorate, needing for producing ballistic missile fuel. It has pledged a $400 billion investment in Iranian infrastructure over the course of 25 years. And, most importantly, it buys 90% of Iran’s oil. Perhaps, then, the U.S. undertook strikes in Iran with the long-term goal of weakening and deterring China in mind, as we likely did in Venezuela. I do not buy this as an exhaustive explanation myself. But its failure to stimulate interest among self-styled analysts, combined with its baseline plausibility, is lamentable and revealing.

Since criticism for Israel has grown from fashionable to mandatory in recent years, it is no surprise their theory has gained wide currency. The public reaction to the resignation of Joe Kent, the former Director of Counterterrorism Center, on the grounds that “it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby” is exemplary. Many lauded him; fewer saw from the outset that his reasoning reeked of anti-Jewish conspiracy, including as it did the charge that Israel also forced the U.S. into war against ISIS in 2019, and coming as it did from a man who is known to have had ties to the “Groyper” Nick Fuentes. Tucker Carlson and Megan Kelley have said much of the same: “The United States didn’t make the decision here. Benjamin Netanyahu did,” “This is clearly Israel’s war,” “No one should have to die for a foreign country,” and so on.

The notion that Israel forced the U.S. into war has some prima facie basis in Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s own statement to the press on March 2:

We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action, we knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces, and we knew that if we didn’t preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties and perhaps even higher those killed, and then we would all be here answering questions about why we knew that and didn’t act.

On its own, this is a shoddy justification. It raises the question: if our interests would not be served by engaging in military action against Iran, why did we not just tell Israel “no”?

But, crucially, Rubio did not intend for this statement to stand on its own. One journalist asked, “Are you saying the U.S. was forced to strike because of an impending Israeli action?” Rubio’s response:

No, first – well, two things I would say. Number one is: no matter what, ultimately this operation needed to happen. That’s the question of why now. But this operation needed to happen because Iran in about a year or a year and a half would cross the line of immunity, meaning they would have so many short-range missiles, so many drones, that no one could do anything about it because they could hold the whole world hostage.

Look at the damage they’re doing now. And this is a weakened Iran. Imagine a year from now. So that had to happen. Obviously, we were aware of Israeli intentions and understood what that would mean for us, and we had to be prepared to act as a result of it. But this had to happen no matter what.

While Kent, Carlson, Kelly, and similar types insist that we lacked the wherewithal to say no to Israel, that Bibi’s grip on our strategic decision-making was simply too strong, Rubio’s statement does not require—or even imply—that conclusion. If anything is clear, is it that we perceived strikes against Iran to be in our interest, regardless of what Israel was going to do. What is less clear, but still implied, is that, far from being compelled to strike Iran pre-emptively, we welcomed Israeli action as an opportunity, perceiving our own interests to be aligned with theirs. It “needed to happen,” and partnership with Israel was the best way to make it happen.

There’s an irony here. Those who (mis)construe Rubio to mean that Israel successfully manipulated Trump to launch the first strike must adhere to an inconsistent policy of skepticism. On the one hand, they must look past the recitation of America’s grievances with Iran, treating them as poor excuses for why this war “needed to happen.” On the other, they must take Rubio’s elusive remarks on Israel at face value. We are seeing at work a theory that conforms the facts to itself, not itself to the facts.

Though Rubio’s statements to the press give us no reason to think that the U.S. could not say no to Israel, it is worth indulging the hypothetical question of whether we could have said no, had we deemed it best. History answers in the affirmative. Recall that in 1981 Reagan suspended the delivery of F-16 jets to Israel due to escalating violence in Lebanon. Recall that in 1991 George H.W. Bush directed Israel to not retaliate against Iraqi strikes in order to keep intact his coalition of forces against Saddam Hussein. Recall that in 2015 the Obama administration secured a nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, with Iran despite the protest of Netanyahu. And even Trump, who ended that nuclear deal, has brought Turkey into his Gaza Peace Deal, in contradiction to Israel’s expressed interest. Defense coordination between the U.S. and Turkey makes Israel nervous, and there is even chance that we will begin selling F-35 jets to Ankara again. The U.S.-Israel alliance is strong, but not unbreakable.

Admittedly, much is murky about the hours leading up to Operation Epic Fury. Its conception is as hazy as its exit point. But this is reason all the more to refrain from an explanation that emerges from the less respectable corners of the internet, and is redolent of beliefs that held sway during a much darker time in European history.

If the U.S. motivation for going to war with Iran was not “pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby,” as Joe Kent avers, what was it? I have already suggested that our government perceived its own interests and those of Israel to be aligned, insofar as Iran poses a threat to both. I have also suggested that China could be factor, though not a primary one. Following the example of Thucydides, though, I would like to go further. If the “truest motivation” (albeit the quietest one) for Sparta’s preemptive invasion of Attica was fear, for America’s preemptive attack on Iran it was hubris. Iran has been a threat since 1979, but on February 28 we saw an opportunity—or what we thought was one—to finally bring the regime to its knees. With the success of Venezuela behind us, we anticipated another quick victory. It turns out the hardliners are more obstinate than we supposed. They also have more cards to play than we were prepared for: first the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, now the potential for the Houthis to close the Bab El Mandeb Strait. If this conflict turns into a protracted affair, and takes more than air power to bring to a resolution, we have only ourselves to blame.

Happy Easter, everyone.

Another Semitism is unique to Matthew’s version (28:1):

ὀψὲ δὲ σαββάτων, τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ εἰς μίαν σαββάτων, ἦλθεν Μαριὰμ ἡ Μαγδαληνὴ καὶ ἡ ἄλλη Μαρία θεωρῆσαι τὸν τάφον

Most English versions render this passage as does the NRSV: “After the sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning.” This puts Mary’s visit to the tomb on Sunday morning. The verb ἐπιφώσκω is rare, and not attested before the New Testament. It shows up later only in Christian literature. Because of its connotation of shining, interpreters presume that by τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ the shining of the sun is meant. This accords with Mark’s mention that the sun had risen (ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλίου) (Mk. 16:2). One hurdle this traditional interpretation must jump over is the meaning of ὀψέ. In this context, ὀψέ followed by a genitive rather means “late.” Compare ἤδη γὰρ τῆς ἡμέρας ὀψὲ ἦν, “for it was already late in the day” (Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 4.93).1 Matthew’s ὀψὲ δὲ σαββάτων should be read, “And it was late on the Sabbath.” This would suggest that Saturday evening, not Sunday morning, is in view.

But in this case τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ must be reinterpreted. The one other NT usage of this verb in Lk. 23:54 is a major help: καὶ ἡμέρα ἦν παρασκευῆς, καὶ σάββατον ἐπέφωσκεν, “and it was the Day of Preparation, and Sabbath was drawing near.” Ἐπιφώσκω here must denote temporal proximity, not luminescence. The setting is Friday evening, when Sabbath was about to begin. (Remember that in Jewish reckonings the day began at sundown.) This usage should tip us off to the fact that Mt. 28:1 is not simply a rephrasing of Mark.

A Semitic interpretation of Mt. 28:1 can help. As George Foot Moore pointed out over a century ago, Matthew’s Greek resembles rabbinic expressions in which the Hebrew אור and the Aramaic נגהי refer to the beginning of a day in the evening.2 A clear example is m. Pesaḥim 1:

אוֹרלְאַרְבָּעָּהעָּשָּרבוֹדְקִּיןאֶתהֶחָּמֵץלְאוֹרהַנֵר
At the beginning (lit. “light) of the 14th (of Nisan), one searches for leavened bread by the light of the lamp.

בוֹדְקִּיןאוֹראַרְבָּעָּהעָּשָּרוּבְאַרְבָּעָּהעָּשָּרשַׁחֲרִּיתוּבִּשְׁעַתהַבִּעוּר
He searches at the beginning (lit. “light) of the 14th, and the morning of the 14th, and the hour of the fire.

Importing the idiomatic sense of אוֹר into Matthew’s τῇ ἐπιφωσκούσῃ allows for the translation, “Late on the Sabbath, as the first of the week was drawing on.” This places the empty tomb story on Saturday night, not Sunday morning. Granted, the Greek structure does not reflect the Semitic idiom exactly. But it does explain the use of ὀψέ, as well the rare verb ἐπιφώσκω and its usage in Lk. 23:54. This reading is confirmed by the Syriac Gospels, which interpret Mt. 28:1 as “evening” (ܪܡܫܐ).

The Gospel of Peter uses ἐπιφώσκω three times (5:3, 34:1, 35:1). The unusual frequency
of this rare verb must be due to its dependence on Matthew. Yet the author understood the word in a Greek sense, as is clear from the phrase πρωΐας δὲ ἐπιφώσκοντος τοῦ σαββάτου (“and early, as the Sabbath was dawning”) in 34:1. This shows “the general ignorance of ‘Peter’ about Jewish affairs,” thereby confirming my argument that ἐπιφώσκω is Semitic in origin. It also furnishes a good example of how signature phrases can become fixed within the Gospel tradition and, for that reason, remain unaltered even when the linguistic and cultural milieu does change.

Matthew’s dependance on Mark here is out of the question, since Mark places his story early Sunday morning. It does not appear elsewhere in Matthew, so it cannot be attributed to his style. It is not found in the Septuagint, so it is not a Biblisizing enhancement.3 I conclude that this Semitism is in all likelihood pre-Matthean and pre-Markan. The Semitic tradition was available to both Matthew and Mark. Matthew chose to leave it intact, while Mark, for whatever reason, chose to change it by adding ἀνατείλαντος τοῦ ἡλίου.4 Matthew’s early tradition would be the same one relayed by John, who adds that Mary came to the tomb σκοτίας ἔτι οὔσης, “while it was still dark” (Jn. 20:1).5