Mark 8:39

On the other hand, he whose “heart” was habitually found “lifted up” rather than fattened up, who in forty days and as many nights maintained a fast above the power of human nature, while spiritual faith subministered strength (to his body), both saw with his eyes God’s glory, and heard with his ears God’s voice, and understood with his heart God’s law: while He taught him even then (by experience) that man liveth not upon bread alone, but upon every word of God; in that the People, though fatter than he, could not constantly contemplate even Moses himself, fed as he had been upon God, nor his leanness, sated as it had been with His glory! Deservedly, therefore, even while in the flesh, did the Lord show Himself to him, the colleague of His own fasts, no less than to Elijah. …

“ Verily I say unto you there be some of them that stand here that shall not taste of death. ” Some refer these things to the going up, six days after, or, as Luke says, eight days, of the three disciples into the high mountain with Jesus apart; and those who adopt this interpretation say that Peter and the remaining two did not taste of death before they saw the Son of man coming in His own kingdom and in His own glory. For when they saw Jesus transfigured before them so that “His face shone,” etc., “they saw the kingdom of God coming with power.” For even as some spear-bearers stand around a king, so Moses and Elijah appeared to those who had gone up into the mountains, talking with Jesus. …

But since here it is written in the three Evangelists, “They shall not taste of death,” but in other writers different things are written concerning death, it may not be out of place to bring forward and examine these passages along with the “taste.” In the Psalms, then, it is said, “What man is he that shall live and not see death?” And again, in another place, “Let death come upon them and let them go down into Hades alive;” but in one of the prophets, “Death becoming mighty has swallowed them up;” and in the Apocalypse, “Death and Hades follow some.” Now in these passages it appears to me that it is one thing to taste of death, but another thing to see death, and another thing for it to come upon some, and that a fourth thing, different from the aforesaid, is signified by the words, “Death becoming mighty has swallowed them up,” and a fifth thing, different from these, by the words, D …

41. First, then, let us consider what the hour really is at which He can have been crucified; and then we shall see how it happens that Mark has reported Him to have been crucified at the third hour. Now it was about the sixth hour when Pilate, who was sitting, as has been stated, at the time upon the judgment-seat, delivered Him up to be crucified. The expression is not that it was the sixth hour fully, but only that it was about the sixth hour; that is to say, the fifth hour was entirely gone, and so much of the sixth hour had also been entered upon. These writers, however, could not naturally use such phraseologies as the fifth hour and a quarter, or the fifth hour and a third, or the fifth hour and a half or anything of that kind. For the Scriptures have the well-known habit of dealing simply with the round numbers, without mention of fractions, especially in matters of time. …