Peter denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed.
But he denied before them all.... And again he denied with an oath. Then began he to curse and to swear, saying, I know not the man. And immediately the cock crew. Matthew 26:70, 72, 74 And he denied him, saying, Woman, I know him not. And after a little while another saw him, and said, Thou art also of them. And Peter said, Man, I am not. And about the space of one hour after ... Peter said, Man, I know not what thou sayest. And immediately, while he yet spake, the cock crew. Luke 22:57-60 Then saith the damsel that kept the door unto Peter, Art not thou also one of this man's disciples? He saith, I am not. ... And Simon Peter stood and warmed himself. They said therefore unto him, Art not thou also one of his disciples? He denied it, and said, I am not. One of the servants of the high priest, being his kinsman whose ear Peter cut off, saith, Did not I see thee in the garden with him? Peter then denied again: and immediately the cock crew. John 18:17, 25-27
Cited passages
But he denied it before them all, saying, “I don’t know what you are talking about.” Again he denied it with an oath, “I don’t know the man.” Then he began to curse and to swear, “I don’t know the man!” Immediately the rooster crowed.
He denied Jesus, saying, “Woman, I don’t know him.” After a little while someone else saw him, and said, “You also are one of them!” But Peter answered, “Man, I am not!” After about one hour passed, another confidently affirmed, saying, “Truly this man also was with him, for he is a Galilean!” But Peter said, “Man, I don’t know what you are talking about!” Immediately, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed.
Then the maid who kept the door said to Peter, “Are you also one of this man’s disciples?” He said, “I am not.” Now Simon Peter was standing and warming himself. They said therefore to him, “You aren’t also one of his disciples, are you?” He denied it and said, “I am not.” One of the servants of the high priest, being a relative of him whose ear Peter had cut off, said, “Didn’t I see you in the garden with him?” Peter therefore denied it again, and immediately the rooster crowed.
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Leans toward a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
The contradiction operates on two levels: the prediction Jesus makes and the fulfillment that follows. At the prediction level, Mark 14:30 has Jesus say "before the cock crow twice, you will deny me three times" (prin ē dis alektora phōnēsai), while Matthew 26:34 and Luke 22:34 have him predict a single crow: "before the cock crows" (prin alektora phōnēsai). John 13:38 likewise has a single crow. These are not two descriptions of one event but two different prophecies placed on Jesus' lips. He cannot have said both "before the cock crows twice" and "before the cock crows"; one form is original and the others have been altered. The Markan "twice" is the harder, more specific reading and is unlikely to have been invented; the Synoptic parallels look like simplifications of it.
At the fulfillment level the picture is the same. Matthew 26:74, Luke 22:60, and John 18:27 record a single cock-crow after the third denial. Mark 14:68 (in the Majority Text and the Textus Receptus) reports a first crow after the initial denial, and Mark 14:72 a second crow after the third, matching the doubled prediction. Mark's account is internally consistent; the other three are internally consistent with their own single-crow predictions. The problem is cross-Gospel: the traditions diverge on how Jesus' words ran and how they were fulfilled.
The textual evidence complicates Mark itself. The clause kai alektōr ephōnēsen ("and the cock crew") at the end of Mark 14:68 is absent from Sinaiticus (a), B (Vaticanus), L, W, and other significant witnesses, and the word dis ("twice") in 14:72 and 14:30 is likewise unstable across the tradition. Bruce Metzger's textual commentary (1994, pp. 95-97) judges that the first-crow notice in 14:68 and the "twice" wording are likely secondary scribal harmonizations designed to make the narration line up with the prediction — meaning even Mark may originally have had only a single crow, with the doubled version a later intrusion. Joel Marcus (2009, pp. 998-1015) and the editors of NA28 weigh the same data; the matter is genuinely disputed at the textual level, but on every reconstruction the predictions across the four Gospels do not agree.
The standard harmonization, advanced by Gleason Archer (1982, pp. 343-345) and John Wenham (1992, pp. 73-78), is that Mark simply preserves a fuller account: the others mention only the second, decisive crow without denying the first, so no formal contradiction obtains in the narration. As far as the fulfillment goes, this is a coherent more-detail/less-detail argument and would carry weight if the only difference were the number of crows narrated. But it cannot reach the prediction. "Before the cock crow twice" and "before the cock crow" are mutually exclusive accounts of what Jesus actually said, and the harmonization offers no mechanism to make both true. Davies and Allison (1997, pp. 540-551) and Raymond Brown (1994, pp. 605-626) treat the divergence as a clear instance of Matthew and Luke editing their Markan source — flattening the distinctive double-crow into the single crow that fit the proverbial "cockcrow" as a marker of dawn.
Where the critical reading lands: genuine contradiction at the level of Jesus' prediction, compounded by an unstable Markan text; the more-detail harmonization addresses only the narration, not the differing prophecies.
Sources for this reading