John, Gospel of
John, Gospel of
This subject will be considered under the following heads: I. Contents and Scheme of the Gospel; II. Distinctive Peculiarities; III. Authorship; IV. Circumstances of the Composition; V. Critical Questions Concerning the Text; VI. Historical Genuineness; VII. Object and Importance.
I. CONTENTS AND SCHEME OF THE GOSPEL
According to the traditional order, the Gospel of St. John occupies the last place among the four canonical Gospels. Although in many of the ancient copies this Gospel was, on account of the Apostolic dignity of the author inserted immediately after or even before the Gospel of St. Matthew, the position it occupies today was from the beginning the most usual and the most approved. As regards its contents, the Gospel of St. John is a narrative of the life of Jesus from His baptism to His Resurrection and His manifestation of Himself in the midst of His disciples. The chronicle falls naturally into four sections: the prologue (i, 1-18), containing what is in a sense a brief epitome of the whole Gospel in the doctrine of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word; the first part (i, 19-xii, 50), which recounts the public life of Jesus from His baptism to the eve of His Passion, the second part (xiii-xxi, 23), which relates the history of the Passion and Resurrection of the Saviour; a short epilogue (xxi, 23-25), referring to the great mass of the Saviour’s words and works which are not recorded in the Gospel. When we come to consider the arrangement of matter by the Evangelist, we find that it follows the historical order of events, as is evident from the above analysis. But the author displays in addition a special concern to determine exactly the time of the occurrence and the connection of the various events fitted into this chronological framework. This is apparent at the very beginning of his narrative when, as though in a diary he chronicles the circumstances attendant on the beginning of the Saviour’s public ministry, with four successive definite indications of the time (i, 29, 35, 43, ii, 1). He lays special emphasis on the first miracles: “This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee” (ii, 11), and “This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judea into Galilee” (iv, 54). Finally, he refers repeatedly throughout to the great religious and national festivals of the Jews for the purpose of indicating the exact historical sequence of the facts related (ii, 13; v, 1; vi, 4; vii, 2; x, 22; xii, 1, xiii, 1).
All the early and the majority of modern exegetes are quite justified, therefore, in taking this strictly chronological arrangement of the events as the basis of their commentaries. The divergent views of a few modern scholars are without objective support either in the text of the Gospel or in the history of its exegesis.
II. DISTINCTIVE PECULIARITIES
The Fourth Gospel is written in Greek, and even a superficial study of it is sufficient to reveal many peculiarities, which give the narrative a distinctive character. Especially characteristic is the vocabulary and diction. His vocabulary is, it is true, less rich in peculiar expressions than that of Paul or of Luke: he uses in all about ninety words not found in any other hagiographer. More numerous are the expressions which are used more frequently by John than by the other sacred writers. Moreover, in comparison with the other books of the New Testament, the narrative of St. John contains a very considerable portion of those words and expressions which might be called the common vocabulary of the Four Evangelists.
What is even more distinctive than the vocabulary is the grammatical use of particles, pronouns, prepositions, verbs, etc., in the Gospel of St. John. It is also distinguished by many peculiarities of style, — asyndeta, reduplications, repetitions, etc. On the whole, the Evangelist reveals a close intimacy with the Hellenistic speech of the first century of our era. which receives at his hands in certain expressions a Hebrew turn. His literary style is deservedly lauded for its noble, natural, and not inartistic simplicity. He combines in harmonious fashion the rustic speech of the Synoptics with the urban phraseology of St. Paul.
What first attracts our attention in the subject matter of the Gospel is the confinement of the narrative to the chronicling of events which took place in Judea and Jerusalem. Of the Saviour’s labours in Galilee John relates but a few events, without dwelling on details, and of these events only two — the multiplication of the loaves and fishes (vi, 1-16), and the sea-voyage (vi, 17-21) — are already related in the Synoptic Gospels.
A second limitation of material is seen in the selection of his subject-matter, for compared with the other Evangelists, John chronicles but few miracles and devotes his attention less to the works than to the discourses of Jesus. In most cases the events form, as it were, but a frame for the words, conversation, and teaching of the Saviour and His disputations with His adversaries. In fact it is the controversies with the Sanhedrists at Jerusalem which seem especially to claim the attention of the Evangelist. On such occasions John’s interest, both in the narration of the circumstances and in the recording of the discourses and conversation of the Saviour, is a highly theological one. With justice, therefore, was John conceded even in the earliest ages of Christianity, the honorary title of the “theologian” of the Evangelists. There are, in particular, certain great truths, to which he constantly reverts in his Gospel and which may be regarded as his governing ideas, special mention should be made of such expressions as the Light of the World, the Truth, the Life, the Resurrection, etc. Not infrequently these or other phrases are found in pithy, gnomic form at the beginning of a colloquy or discourse of the Saviour, and frequently recur, as a leitmotif, at intervals during the discourse (e. g. vi, 35, 48, 51, 58; x, 7, 9; xv, 1, 5; xvii, 1, 5; etc.).
In a far higher degree than in the Synoptics, the whole narrative of the Fourth Gospel centres round the Person of the Redeemer. From his very opening sentences John turns his gaze to the inmost recesses of eternity, to the Divine Word in the bosom of the Father. He never tires of portraying the dignity and glory of the Eternal Word Who vouchsafed to take up His abode among men that, while receiving the revelation of His Divine Majesty, we might also participate in the fullness of His grace and truth. As evidence of the Divinity of the Saviour the author chronicles some of the great wonders by which Christ revealed His glory, but he is far more intent on leading us to a deeper understanding of Christ’s Divinity and majesty by a consideration of His words, discourses, and teaching, and to impress upon our minds the far more glorious marvels of His Divine Love.
III. AUTHORSHIP
If we except the heretics mentioned by Irenaeus (Adv. haer., III, xi, 9) and Epiphanius (Haer., li, 3), the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel was scarcely ever seriously questioned until the end of the eighteenth century. Evanson (1792) and Bretschneider (1820) were the first to run counter to tradition in the question of the authorship, and, since David Friedrich Strauss (1834-40) adopted Bretschneider’s views and the members of the Tübingen School, in the wake of Ferdinand Christian Baur, denied the authenticity of this Gospel, the majority of the critics outside the Catholic Church have denied that the Fourth Gospel was authentic. On the admission of many critics, their chief reason lies in the fact that John has too clearly and emphatically made the true Divinity of the Redeemer, in the strict metaphysical sense, the centre of his narrative. However, even Harnack has had to admit that, though denying the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel, he has sought in vain for any satisfactory solution of the Johannine problem: “Again and again have I attempted to solve the problem with various possible theories, but they led me into still greater difficulties, and even developed into contradictions.” (“Gesch. der altchristl. Lit.”, I, pt. ii, Leipzig, 1897, p. 678.)
A short examination of the arguments bearing on the solution of the problem of the authorship of the Fourth Gospel will enable the reader to form an independent judgment.
Direct Historical Proof
If, as is demanded by the character of the historical question, we first consult the historical testimony of the past, we discover the universally admitted fact that, from the eighteenth century back to at least the third, the Apostle John was accepted without question as the author of the Fourth Gospel. In the examination of evidence therefore, we may begin with the third century, and thence proceed back to the time of the Apostles.
The ancient manuscripts and translations of the Gospel constitute the first group of evidence. In the titles, tables of contents, signatures, which are usually added to the text of the separate Gospels, John is in every case and without the faintest indication of doubt named as the author of this Gospel. The earliest of the extant manuscripts, it is true, do not date back beyond the middle of the fourth century, but the perfect unanimity of all the codices proves to every critic that the prototypes of these manuscripts, at a much earlier date, must have contained the same indications of authorship. Similar is the testimony of the Gospel translations, of which the Syrian, Coptic, and Old Latin extend back in their earliest forms to the second century.
The evidence given by the early ecclesiastical authors, whose reference to questions of authorship is but incidental, agrees with that of the above mentioned sources. St. Dionysius of Alexandria (264-5), it is true, sought for a different author for the Apocalypse, owing to the special difficulties which were being then urged by the Millennarianists in Egypt; but he always took for granted as an undoubted fact that the Apostle John was the author of the Fourth Gospel. Equally clear is the testimony of Origen (d. 254). He knew from the tradition of the Church that John was the last of the Evangelists to compose his Gospel (Eusebius, “Hist. eccl.”, VI, xxv, 6), and at least a great portion of his commentary on the Gospel of St. John, in which he everywhere makes clear his conviction of the Apostolic origin of the work has come down to us. Origen’s teacher, Clement of Alexandria (d. before 215-6), relates as ” the tradition of the old presbyters”, that the Apostle John, the last of the Evangelists, “filled with the Holy Ghost, had written a spiritual Gospel” (Eusebius, op. cit., VI, xiv, 7).
Of still greater importance is the testimony of St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (d. about 202), linked immediately with the Apostolic Age as he is, through his teacher Polycarp, the disciple of the Apostle John. The native country of Irenaeus (Asia Minor) and the scene of his subsequent ministry (Gaul) render him a witness of the Faith in both the Eastern and the Western Church. He cites in his writings at least one hundred verses from the Fourth Gospel, often with the remark, “as John, the disciple of the Lord, says”. In speaking of the composition of the Four Gospels, he says of the last: ” Later John, the disciple of the Lord who rested on His breast, also wrote a Gospel, while he was residing at Ephesus in Asia” (Adv. Haer., III, i, n. 2). As here, so also in the other texts it is clear that by “John, the disciple of the Lord,” he means none other than the Apostle John.
We find that the same conviction concerning the authorship of the Fourth Gospel is expressed at greater length in the Roman Church, about 170, by the writer of the Muratorian Fragment (lines 9-34). Bishop Theophilus of Antioch in Syria (before 181) also cites the beginning of the Fourth Gospel as the words of John (Ad Autolycum, II, xxii). Finally, according to the testimony of a Vatican manuscript (Codex Regin Sueci seu Alexandrinus, 14), Bishop Papias of Hierapolis in Phrygia, an immediate disciple of the Apostle John, included in his great exegetical work an account of the composition of the Gospel by St. John during which he had been employed as scribe by the Apostle.
It is scarcely necessary to repeat that, in the passages referred to, Papias and the other ancient writers have in mind but one John, namely the Apostle and Evangelist, and not some other Presbyter John, to be distinguished from the Apostle. (See JOHN THE EVANGELIST, SAINT.)
Indirect External Evidence
In addition to the direct and express testimony, the first Christian centuries testify indirectly in various ways to the Johannine origin of the Fourth Gospel. Among this indirect evidence the most prominent place must be assigned to the numerous citations of texts from the Gospel which demonstrate its existence and the recognition of its claim to form a portion of the canonical writings of the New Testament, as early as the beginning of the second century. St. Ignatius of Antioch, who died under Trajan (98-117), reveals in the quotations, allusions, and theological views found in his Epistles, an intimate acquaintance with the Fourth Gospel. In the writings of the majority of the other Apostolic Fathers, also, a like acquaintance with this Gospel can scarcely be disputed, especially in the case of Polycarp, the “Martyrium of Polycarp”, the “Epistle to Diognetus”, and the “Pastor” of Hermas (cf. the list of quotations and allusions in F. X. Funk’s edition of the Apostolic Fathers).
In speaking of St. Papias, Eusebius says (Hist. eccl., III, xxxix, 17) that he used in his work passages from the First Epistle of St. John. But this Epistle necessarily presupposes the existence of the Gospel, of which it is in a way the introduction or companion work. Furthermore, St. Irenaeus (Adv. Haer., V, xxxii, 2) cites a sentence of the “presbyters” which contains a quotation from John, xiv, 2, and, according to the opinion of those entitled to speak as critics, St. Papias must be placed in the front rank of the presbyters.
Of the second-century apologists, St. Justin (d. about 166), in an especial manner, indicates by his doctrine of the Logos, and in many passages of his apologies the existence of the Fourth Gospel. His disciple Tatian, in the chronological scheme of his ” Diatessaron”, follows the order of the Fourth Gospel, the prologue of which he employs as the introduction to his work. In his “Apology” also he cites a text from the Gospel.
Like Tatian, who apostatized about 172 and joined the Gnostic sect of the Encratites, several other heretics of the second century also supply indirect testimony concerning the Fourth Gospel. Basilides appeals to John, i, 8, and ii, 4. Valentine seeks support for his theories of the ons in expressions taken from John; his pupil Heracleon composed, about 160, a commentary on the Fourth Gospel, while Ptolemy, another of his followers, gives an explanation of the prologue of the Evangelist. Marcion preserves a portion of the canonical text of the Gospel of St. John (xiii, 4-15; xxxiv, 15, 19) in his own apocryphal gospel. The Montanists deduce their doctrine of the Paraclete mainly from John, xv and xvi. Similarly in his “True Discourse” (about 178) the pagan philosopher Celsus bases some of his statements on passages of the Fourth Gospel.
On the other hand, indirect testimony concerning this Gospel is also supplied by the oldest ecclesiastical liturgies and the monuments of early Christian art. As to the former, we find from the very beginning texts from the Fourth Gospel used in all parts of the Church, and not infrequently with special predilection. Again, to take one example, the raising of Lazarus depicted in the Catacombs forms, as it were, a monumental commentary on the eleventh chapter of the Gospel of St. John.
The Testimony of the Gospel Itself
The Gospel itself also furnishes an entirely intelligible solution of the question of authorship.
(1) The general character of the work
In the first place from the general character of the work we are enabled to draw some inferences regarding its author. To judge from the language, the author was a Palestinian Jew, who was well acquainted with the Hellenic Greek of the upper classes. He also displays an accurate knowledge of the geographical and social conditions of Palestine even in his slightest incidental references. He must have enjoyed personal intercourse with the Saviour and must even have belonged to the circle of his intimate friends. The very style of his chronicle shows the writer to have been an eyewitness of most of the events. Concerning the Apostles John and James the author shows a thoroughly characteristic reserve. He never mentions their names, although he gives those of most of the Apostles, and once only, and then quite incidentally, speaks of “the sons of Zebedee” (xxi, 2). On several occasions, when treating of incidents in which the Apostle John was concerned, he seems intentionally to avoid mentioning his name (John 1:37-40; 18:15, 16; cf. 20:3-10). He speaks of John the precursor nine times without giving him the title of “the Baptist”, as the other Evangelists invariably do to distinguish him from the Apostle. All these indications point clearly to the conclusion that the Apostle John must have been the author of the Fourth Gospel.
(2) The express testimony of the author
Still clearer grounds for this view are to be found in the express testimony of the author. Having mentioned in his account of the Crucifixion that the disciple whom Jesus loved stood beneath the Cross beside the mother of Jesus (John 19:26 sqq.), he adds, after telling of the Death of Christ and the opening of His side, the solemn assurance: “And he that saw it hath given testimony; and his testimony is true. And he knoweth that he saith true: that you also may believe” (xix, 35). According to the admission of all John himself is the “disciple whom the Lord loved”. His testimony is contained in the Gospel which for many consecutive years he has announced by word of mouth and which he now sets down in writing for the instruction of the faithful. He assures us, not merely that this testimony is true, but that he was a personal witness of its truth. In this manner he identifies himself with the disciple beloved of the Lord who alone could give such testimony from intimate knowledge. Similarly the author repeats this testimony at the end of his Gospel. After again referring to the disciple whom Jesus loved, he immediately adds the words: “This is that disciple who giveth testimony of these things, and hath written these things; and we know that his testimony is true” (John 21:24). As the next verse shows, his testimony refers not merely to the events just recorded but to the whole Gospel. It is more in accordance with the text and the general style of the Evangelist to regard these final words as the author’s own composition, should we prefer, however, to regard this verse as the addition of the first reader and disciple of the Apostle, the text constitutes the earliest and most venerable evidence of the Johannine origin of the Fourth Gospel.
(3) Comparison of the Gospel to the Johannine epistles
Finally we can obtain evidence Concerning the author from the Gospel itself, by comparing his work with the three Epistles, which have retained their place among the Catholic Epistles as the writings of the Apostle John. We may here take for granted as a fact admitted by the majority of the critics, that these Epistles are the work of the same writer, and that the author was identical with the author of the Gospel. In fact the arguments based on the unity of style and language, on the uniform Johannine teaching, on the testimony of Christian antiquity, render any reasonable doubt of the common authorship impossible. At the beginning of the Second and Third Epistles the author styles himself simply “the presbyter” — evidently the title of honour by which he was commonly known among the Christian community. On the other hand, in his First Epistle, he emphasizes repeatedly and with great earnestness the feet that he was an eyewitness of the facts concerning the life of Christ to which he (in his Gospel) had borne testimony among the Christians: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, of the word of life: for the life was manifested; and we have seen and do bear witness, and declare unto you the life eternal, which was with the Father, and hath appeared to us: that which we have seen and have heard, we declare unto you” (1 John 1:1-3; cf. 4:14). This “presbyter” who finds it sufficient to use such an honorary title without qualification as his proper name, and was likewise an eye- and earwitness of the incidents of the Saviour’s life, can be none other than the Presbyter John mentioned by Papias, who can in turn be none other than John the Apostle (cf. JOHN THE EVANGELIST, SAINT).
We can therefore, maintain with the utmost certainty that John the Apostle, the favourite disciple of Jesus, was really the author of the Fourth Gospel.
IV. CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE COMPOSITION
Passing over the intimate circumstances with which early legend has clothed the composition of the Fourth Gospel, we shall discuss briefly the time and place of composition, and the first readers of the Gospel.
As to the date of its composition we possess no certain historical information. According to the general opinion, the Gospel is to be referred to the last decade of the first century, or to be still more precise, to 96 or one of the succeeding years. The grounds for this opinion are briefly as follows: the Fourth Gospel was composed after the three Synoptics; it was written after the death of Peter, since the last chapter – especially xxi, 18-19 presupposes the death of the Prince of the Apostles; it was also written after the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, for the Evangelist’s references to the Jews (cf. particularly xi, 18; xviii, 1; xix, 41) seem to indicate that the end of the city and of the people as a nation is already come; the text of xxi, 23, appears to imply that John was already far advanced in years when he wrote the Gospel; those who denied the Divinity of Christ, the very point to which St. John devotes special attention throughout his Gospel, began to disseminate their heresy about the end of the first century; finally, we have direct evidence concerning the date of composition. The so-called “Monarchian Prologue” to the Fourth Gospel, which was probably written about the year 200 or a little later, says concerning the date of the appearance of the Gospel: “He [sc. the Apostle John] wrote this Gospel in the Province of Asia, after he had composed the Apocalypse on the Island of Patmos”. The banishment of John to Patmos occurred in the last year of Domitian’s reign (i.e. about 95). A few months before his death (18 September, 96), the emperor had discontinued the persecution of the Christians and recalled the exiles (Eusebius, “Hist. eccl.”, III, xx, nn. 5-7). This evidence would therefore refer the composition of the Gospel to A.D. 96 or one of the years immediately following.
The place of composition was, according to the above-mentioned prologue, the province of Asia. Still more precise is the statement of St. Irenaeus, who tells us that John wrote his Gospel “at Ephesus in Asia” (Adv. haer., III, i, 2). All the other early references are in agreement with these statements.
The first readers of the Gospel were the Christians of the second and third generations in Asia Minor. There was no need of initiating them into the elements of the Faith; consequently John must have aimed rather at confirming against the attacks of its opponents the Faith handed down by their parents.
V. CRITICAL QUESTIONS CONCERNING THE TEXT
As regards the text of the Gospel, the critics take special exception to three passages, 5:3-4; 7:53-8:11; and 21.
John 5:3-4
The fifth chapter tells of the cure of the paralytic at the pool of Bethsaida in Jerusalem. According to the Vulgate the text of the second part of verse three and verse four runs as follows: ” . . . waiting for the moving of the water. And an angel of the Lord descended at certain times into the pond, and the water was moved. And he that went down first into the pond after the motion of the water, was made whole, of whatsoever infirmity he lay under.” But these words are wanting in the three oldest manuscripts, the Codex Vaticanus (B), Codex Sinaiticus (aleph), and Codex Bez (D), in the original text of the palimpsest of St. Ephraem (C), in the Syrian translation of Cureton, as well as in the Coptic and Sahidic translations, in some minuscules, in three manuscripts of the Itala, in four of the Vulgate, and in some Armenian manuscripts. Other copies append to the words a critical sign which indicates a doubt as to their authenticity. The passage is therefore regarded by the majority of modern critics, including the Catholic exegetes, Schegg, Schanz, Belser, etc., as a later addition by Papias or some other disciple of the Apostle.
Other exegetes, e.g. Corluy, Comely, Knabenbauer, and Murillo, defend the authenticity of the passage urging in its favour important internal and external evidence. In the first place the words are found in the Codex Alexandrinus (A), the emended Codex Ephraemi (C), in almost all minuscule manuscripts, in six manuscripts of the Itala, in most of the Bodices of the Vulgate, including the best, in the Syrian Peshito, in the Syrian translation of Philoxenus (with a critical mark), in the Persian, Arabic, and Slavonic translations, and in some manuscripts of the Armenian text. More important is the fact that, even before the date of our present bodices, the words were found by many of the Greek and Latin Fathers in the text of the Gospel. This is clear from Tertullian [De bapt., i (before 202)], Didymus of Alexandria [De Trin., II, xiv (about 381)], St. John Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine [Sermo xv (al. xii), De verbis Evangelii S. Joannis), although the last-mentioned, in his tractate on the Gospel of St. John, omits the passage.
The context of the narrative seems necessarily to presuppose the presence of the words. The subsequent answer of the sick man (v. 7), “Sir, I have no man, when the water is troubled, to put me into the pond. For whilst I am coming, another goeth down before me”, could scarcely be intelligible without verse 4, and the Evangelist is not accustomed to omit such necessary information from his text. Thus both sides have good grounds for their opinions, and no final decision on the question, from the standpoint of the textual critic, seems possible.
John 7:53-8:11
This passage contains the story of the adulteress. The external critical evidence seems in this ease to give still clearer decision against the authenticity of this passage. It is wanting in the four earliest manuscripts (B, A, C, and aleph) and many others, while in many copies it is admitted only with the critical mark, indicative of doubtful authenticity. Nor is it found in the Syrian translation of Cureton, in the Sinaiticus, the Gothic translation, in most codices of the Peshito, or of the Coptic and Armenian translations, or finally in the oldest manuscripts of the Itala. None of the Greek Fathers have treated the incident in their commentaries, and, among Latin writers, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Hilary appear to have no knowledge of this pericope.
Notwithstanding the weight of the external evidence of these important authorities, it is possible to adduce still more important testimony in favour of the authenticity of the passage. As for the manuscripts, we know on the authority of St. Jerome that the incident “was contained in many Greek and Latin codices” (Contra Pelagium, II, xvii), a testimony supported today by the Codex Bez of Canterbury (D) and many others. The authenticity of the passage is also favoured by the Vulgate, by the Ethiopians Arabic, and Slavonic translations, and by many manuscripts of the Itala and of the Armenian and Syrian text. Of the commentaries of the Greek Fathers, the books of Origen dealing with this portion of the Gospel are no longer extant; only a portion of the commentary of St. Cyril of Alexandria has reached us, while the homilies of St. John Chrysostom on the Fourth Gospel must be considered a treatment of selected passages rather than of the whole text. Among the Latin Fathers, Sts. Ambrose and Augustine included the pericope in their text, and seek an explanation of its omission from other manuscripts in the fact that the incident might easily give rise to offense (cf. especially Augustine, ” De coniugiis adulteris”, II, vii). It is thus much easier to explain the omission of the incident from many copies than the addition of such a passage in so many ancient versions in all parts of the Church. It is furthermore admitted by the critics that the style and mode of presentation have not the slightest trace of apocryphal origin, but reveal throughout the hand of a true master. Too much importance should not be attached to variations of vocabulary, which may be found on comparing this passage with the rest of the Gospel, since the correct reading of the text is in many places doubtful, and any such differences of language may be easily harmonized with the strongly individual style of the Evangelist.
It is thus possible, even from the purely critical standpoint, to adduce strong evidence in favour of the canonicity and inspired character of this pericope, which by decision of the Council of Trent, forms a part of the Holy Bible.
John 21
Concerning the last chapter of the Gospel a few remarks will suffice. The last two verses of the twentieth chapter indicate clearly indeed that the Evangelist intended to terminate his work here: “Many other signs also did Jesus in the sight of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God: and that believing, you may have life in his name ” (xx, 30 sq.). But the sole conclusion that can be deduced from this is that the twenty-first chapter was afterwards added and is therefore to be regarded as an appendix to the Gospel. Evidence has yet to be produced to show that it was not the Evangelist, but another, who wrote this appendix. The opinion is at present fairly general, even among critics, that the vocabulary, style, and the mode of presentation as a whole, together with the subject-matter of the passage reveal the common authorship of this chapter and the preceding portions of the Fourth Gospel.
VI. HISTORICAL GENUINENESS
Objections Raised against the Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel
The historical genuineness of the Fourth Gospel is at the present time almost universally denied outside the Catholic Church. Since David Friedrich Strauss and Ferdinand Christian Baur this denial has been postulated in advance in most of the critical inquiries into the Gospels and the life of Jesus. Influenced by this prevailing tendency, Alfred Loisy also reached the point where he openly denied the historicity of the Fourth Gospel; in his opinion the author desired, not to write a history, but to clothe in symbolical garb his religious ideas and theological speculations.
The writings of Loisy and their rationalistic prototypes, especially those of the German critics, have influenced many later exegetes, who while wishing to maintain the Catholic standpoint in general, concede only a very limited measure of historical genuineness to the Fourth Gospel. Among this class are included those who acknowledge as historical the main outlines of the Evangelist’s narrative, but see in many individual portions only symbolical embellishments. Others hold with H. J. Holtzmann that we must recognize in the Gospel a mixture of the subjective, theological speculations of the author and the objective, personal recollections of his intercourse with Christ, without any possibility of our distinguishing by sure criteria these different elements. That such a hypothesis precludes any further question as to the historical genuineness of the Johannine narrative, is evident, and is indeed candidly admitted by the representatives of these views.
On examining the grounds for this denial or limitation of the historical genuineness of John we find that they are drawn by the critics almost exclusively from the relation of the Fourth Gospel to the Synoptic narrative. On comparison three points of contrast are discovered: (1) with respect to the events which are related; (2) in regard to the mode of presentation; and (3) in the doctrine which is contained in the narrative.
(1) The events related
As regards the events related, the great contrast between John and the Synoptists in the choice and arrangement of materials is especially accentuated. The latter show us the Saviour almost exclusively in Galilee, labouring among the common people: John, on the other hand, devotes himself chiefly to chronicling Christ’s work in Judea, and His conflicts with the Sanhedrists at Jerusalem. An easy solution of this first difficulty is found in the special circumstances attending the composition of the Fourth Gospel. John may – in fact must – have assumed that the Synoptic narrative was known to his readers at the end of the first century. The interest and spiritual needs of these readers demanded primarily that he supplement the evangelical story in such a manner as to lead to a deeper knowledge of the Person and Divinity of the Saviour, against which the first heresies of Cerinthus, the Ebionites, and the Nicolaites were being already disseminated in Christian communities. But it was chiefly in His discussions with the Scribes and Pharisees at Jerusalem that Christ had spoken of His Person and Divinity. In his Gospel, therefore John made it his primary purpose to set down the sublime teachings of Our Saviour, to safeguard the Faith of the Christians against the attacks of the heretics. When we come to consider the individual events in the narrative, three points in particular are brought forward: the duration of Christ’s public ministry extends in the Fourth Gospel over at least two years, probably indeed over three years, and some months. However, the Synoptic account of the public life of Jesus can by no means be confined within the narrow space of one year, as some modern critics contend. The three earliest Evangelists also suppose the space of at least two years and some months. The purification of the Temple is referred by John to the beginning of the Saviour’s ministry, while the Synoptists narrate it at the close. But it is by no means proven that this purification occurred but once. The critics bring forward not a single objective reason why we should not hold that the incident, under the circumstances related in the Synoptics, as well as those of the Fourth Gospel, had its historical place at the beginning and at the end of the public life of Jesus. Notwithstanding all the objections brought forward, John is in agreement with the Synoptists as to the date of the Last Supper. It occurred on Thursday, the thirteenth day of Nisan, and the Crucifixion took place on Friday, the fourteenth. The fact that according to John, Christ held the Supper with His Apostles on Thursday, while, according to the Synoptists, the Jews ate the paschal lamb on Friday, is not irreconcilable with the above statement. The most probable solution of the question lies in the legitimate and widespread custom, according to which, when the fifteenth of Nisan fell on the Sabbath, as it did in the year of the Crucifixion, the paschal lamb was killed in the evening hours of the thirteenth of Nisan and the paschal feast celebrated on this or the following evening, to avoid all infringement of the strict sabbatic rest.
(2) The mode of presentation
As regards the mode of presentation, it is especially insisted that the great sublimity of the Fourth Gospel is difficult to reconcile with the homely simplicity of the Synoptics. This objection, however, entirely disregards the great differences in the circumstances under which the Gospels were written. For the Christians of the third generation in Asia living in the midst of flourishing schools, the Fourth Evangelist was forced to adopt an entirely different style from that employed by his predecessors in writing for the newly-converted Jews and pagans of the earlier period.
Another difficulty raised is the fact that the peculiar Johannine style is found not only in the narrative portions of the Gospel, but also in the discourses of Jesus and in the words of the Baptist and other personages. But we must remember that all the discourses and colloquies had to be translated from Aramaic into Greek, and in this process received from the author their distinctive unity of style. Besides in the Gospel, the intention is by no means to give a verbatim report of every sentence and expression of a discourse, a sermon, or a disputation. The leading ideas alone are set forth in exact accordance with the sense, and, in this manner, also, they come to reflect the style of the Evangelist. Finally, the disciple surely received from his Master many of the distinctive metaphors and expressions which imprint on the Gospel its peculiar character.
(3) The doctrinal content
The difference in doctrinal content lies only in the external forms and does not extend to the truths themselves. A satisfactory explanation of the dogmatic character of John’s narrative, as compared with the stress laid on the moral side of the discourses of Jesus by the Synoptists, is to be found in the character of his first readers, to which reference has already been repeatedly made. To the same cause, also, must be ascribed the further difference between the Gospels namely, why John makes his teaching centre around the Person of Jesus, while the Synoptics bring into relief rather the Kingdom of God. At the end of the first century there was no need for the Evangelist to repeat the lessons concerning the Kingdom of Heaven, already amply treated by his predecessors. His was the especial task to emphasize, in opposition to the heretics, the fundamental truth of the Divinity of the Founder of this Kingdom, and by chronicling those words and works of the Redeemer in which He Himself had revealed the majesty of His glory, to lead the faithful to a more profound knowledge of this truth.
It is superfluous to say that in the teaching itself, especially regarding the Person of the Redeemer, there is not the slightest contradiction between John and the Synoptists. The critics themselves have to admit that even in the Synoptic Gospels Christ, when He speaks of His relations with the Father, assumes the solemn “Johannine” mode of speech. It will be sufficient to recall the impressive words: “And no one knoweth the Son, but the Father: neither doth any one know the Father, but the Son, and he to whom it shall please the Son to reveal him” (Matthew 11:27; Luke 10:22).
(4) Positive Evidence for the Historical Genuineness of the Gospel
The reasons urged against the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel are devoid of all conclusive force. On the other hand, its genuineness is vouched for by the whole character of the narrative. From the very beginning the events are portrayed with the precision of an eyewitness; the most minute subsidiary circumstances are mentioned; not the least suggestion can be found that the author had any other object in mind than the chronicling of the strict historical truth. A perusal of the passages describing the call of the first disciples (i, 35-51), the Marriage at Cana (ii, 1-11), the conversation with the Samaritan woman (iv, 3-42), the healing of the man born blind (ix, 1-41), the raising of Lazarus (xi, 1-47), is sufficient to convince one that such a chronicle must necessarily lead the readers into error, if the events which are described be otherwise than true in the historical sense.
To this must be added the express assertion made repeatedly by the Evangelist that he speaks the truth and claims for his words unqualified belief (19:35; 20:30 sq.; 21:24; 1 John 1:1-4). To reject these assurances is to label the Evangelist a worthless impostor, and to make of his Gospel an unsolvable historical and psychological enigma.
And finally, the verdict of the entire Christian past has certainly a distinct claim to consideration in this question, since the Fourth Gospel has always been unhesitatingly accepted as one of the chief and historically credible sources of our knowledge of the life of Jesus Christ. With entire justice, therefore, have the contrary views been condemned in clauses 16-18 of the Decree “Lamentabili” (3 July, 1907) and in the Decree of the Biblical Commission of 29 May, 1907.
VII. OBJECT AND IMPORTANCE
The intention of the Evangelist in composing the Gospel is expressed in the words which we have already quoted: “But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God” (xx, 31). He wished also by his work to confirm the faith of the disciples in the Messianic character and the Divinity of Christ. To attain his object, he selected principally those discourses and colloquies of Jesus in which the self-revelation of the Redeemer laid clearest emphasis on the Divine Majesty of His Being. In this manner John wished to secure the faithful against the temptations of the false learning by means of which the heretics might prejudice the purity of their faith. Towards the narrative of the earlier Evangelists John’s attitude was that of one who sought to fill out the story of the words and works of the Saviour, while endeavouring to secure certain incidents from misinterpretation. His Gospel thus forms a glorious conclusion of the joyous message of the Eternal Word. For all time it remains for the Church the most sublime testimony of her faith in the Son of God, the radiant lamp of truth for her doctrine, the never-ceasing source of loving zeal in her devotion to her Master, Who loves her even to the end.
Commentaries on the Gospel of St. John. In early Christian times: the Homilies of ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM and the Tractates of ST. AUGUSTINE; the extant portions of the commentaries of ORIGEN and ST. CYRIL OF ALEXANDRIA; the expositions of THEOPHYLACTUS and EUTHYMIUS, who generally follow Chrysostom, and the exegetical works of ST. BEDE, who follows Augustine. In the Middle Ages: the interpretations of ST. THOMAS AQUINAS and ST. BONAVENTURE, of Blessed ALBERTUS MAGNUS, RUPERT of DEUTZ, and ST. BRUNO OF SEGNI.
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LEOPOLD FONCK Transcribed by Michael Little
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Volume VIIICopyright © 1910 by Robert Appleton CompanyOnline Edition Copyright © 2003 by K. KnightNihil Obstat, October 1, 1910. Remy Lafort, S.T.D., CensorImprimatur. +John Cardinal Farley, Archbishop of New York
Fuente: Catholic Encyclopedia
John, Gospel Of
The fourth in order of the evangelical narratives in nearly all editions, though a few MSS. place it immediately after Matthew. SEE GOSPELS.
I. Genuineness. There is no reason to doubt that the fourth Gospel was from the beginning received in the Church as the production of the apostle whose name it bears. We may decline to accept as a testimony for this the statement at the close of the Gospel itself (Joh 21:24), for this can have the force of an independent testimony only on the supposition that the passage was added by another hand; and though there is an evident allusion in 2Pe 1:14 to what is recorded in Joh 21:18-19, yet, as that saying of the Lord was one which tradition would be sure to send forth among the brethren (compare Joh 21:23), it cannot be inferred from Peter’s allusion to it that it was then put on record as we have it in the Gospel. We may also admit that the passages in the writings of the apostolic fathers which have been adduced as evincing, on their part, acquaintance with this Gospel are not decisive. The passages usually cited for this purpose are Barnab. Ep. 5, 6, 12 (comp. Joh 3:14); Herm. Past. Sim. 9, 12 (compare Joh 10:7; Joh 10:9; Joh 14:6); Ignat, Ad Magnes. 7 (comp. Joh 12:49; Joh 10:30; Joh 14:11). See Lardner, Works, vol. 2. All of them may owe their accordance with John’s statements to the influence of true tradition, or to the necessary resemblance of the just utterance of Christian thought and feeling by different men; though in three other passages cited from Ignatius (Ad Romans 7; Ad Trall. 8; and Ad Philad. 7) the coincidence of the first two with Joh 6:32 sq., and of the last with Joh 3:8, is almost too close to be accounted for in this way (Ebrard, Evang. Joh. p, 102; Rothe, Anfnge der Christl. Kirche, p. 715). But Eusebius attests that this Gospel was among the books universally received in the Church (Hist. Eccles. 3, 25); and it cannot be doubted that it formed part of the canon of the churches, both of the East and West, before the end of the 2d century. SEE CANON.
It is in the Peshito, and in the Muratori Fragment. It is quoted or referred to by Justin Martyr (Apol. 1, 52, 61; 2, 6; c. Tryph. 105, etc.; compare Olshausen, Echtheit der Kan. Evv. p. 304 sq.), by Tatian (Orat. ad Groecos, 4, 13, 19), who, indeed, composed a Diatessaron (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 4, 29; Theod. Hoeret. Fab. 1, 20), in preparing which he must have had this gospel before him; in the Epistle of the Church at Vienne and Lyons (Euseb. 5, 1); by Melito of Sardes (see Pitra; Spicileg. Solmense, 1, Prolegom. p. 5, Paris, 1852); by Athenagoras (Leg. pro Christ. 10); by Apollinaris (Frag. Chronicles Pasch. p. 14, ed. Dindorf); by Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 5, 24); and in the Clementine Homilies (19, 22, ed. Dressel, 1853), in such a way that not only is its existence proved, but evidence is afforded of the esteem in which it was held as canonical from the middle of the 2d century. Still more precise is the testimony of Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, who not only composed a Harmony of the four evangelists (Jerome, De viris Illust. 25; Ep. 151, ad Algasiam), but in an extant work (ad Autol. 2, 22) expressly quotes Joh 1:1 as part of holy Scripture, and as the production of the apostle, whom he ranks among the .
More important still is the testimony of Irenaeus (Hoer. 3, 11, 3, p. 218, ed. Grabe), both because of his acquaintance in early youth with Polycarp, and because of the distinctness and confidence with which he asserts the Johannean origin of this Gospel. SEE IRENAEUS.
To these testimonies may be added that of Celsus, the enemy of the Christians, who, in preparing his attack upon them, evidently had the four canonical Gospels before him, and of whose citations from them some are undoubtedly from that of John (compare Olshausen, ut sup. p. 349, 355; Lcke, Comment. 1, 68 sq., 3d edit.); which shows that, at the time when he wrote, this Gospel must have been in general acceptance by the Christians as canonical. The heretic Marcion, also, in rejecting this Gospel on dogmatical grounds, is a witness to the fact that its canonical authority was generally held by the Christians (Tertull. c. Marcion, 4, 5; De Carne Christi). That the Gospel was recognized as canonical by the Valentinians, one of the most important sects of the 2d century, is placed beyond doubt by the statement of Irenaeus (Hoer. 3, 11), and by the fact that it is quoted by Ptolemaeus, a disciple of Valentinus (Epiphan. Hoer. 33, 3), and was commented on by Heracleon, another of his disciples, both of whom lived about the middle of the 2d century. That Valentinus himself knew and used the book is rendered probable by this, and by the statement of Tertullian (De Proescr. Hoeret. 38), that Valentinus accepted the Biblical canon entire, though he perverted its meaning; and this probability is raised to certainty by the fact that, in the recently discovered work of Hippolytus, Valentinus is found twice (Philosoph. 6, 33, 34, ed. Miller) citing the phrase , as applied to the devil, which occurs only in John’s Gospel, and repeatedly there (12, 31; 14:30; 16:11); and also quoting the saying, Joh 10:8, as the word of Christ. From the same source also (7, 22, 27, p. 232, 242) we learn that Basilides was acquainted with John’s Gospel, and cited it; and this brings us up to the beginning of the 2d century, within a short time of the apostle’s death.
This concurrence of external testimony is the more noticeable as there are certain peculiarities in the fourth Gospel which would have thrown suspicion on its genuineness had not that been placed beyond doubt by the knowledge which the Christians had of its having proceeded from the pen of John. Such pre the prominence given to the extra-Galilean ministry of our Lord the record of remarkable miracles, such as the healing of the impotent man (ch. 5), of the blind man (ch. 9), the raising from the dead of Lazarus, and others, omitted by the other evangelists; the insertion of so many discourses of Jesus, of which no hint is found in the other Gospels, as well as the omission of remarkable facts in the evangelic history, especially the institution of the supper and the agony in the garden; and certain important apparent discrepancies between this and the synoptical Gospels. In perfect keeping with this assumption, also, is the entire tone, spirit, and character of the Gospel; it is emphatically, as Clement of Alexandria calls it, the , and breathes throughout the spirit which was characteristic of the disciple whom Jesus loved. The work is evidently the production of one who was, as the writer professes to be (Joh 1:14 [comp. 1Jn 1:1; 1Jn 4:14]; Joh 19:35; Joh 21:24), an eyewitness of what he narrates; and there is a simplicity, a naturalness, and a vividness in the whole narrative, which no forger of a later age could have attained which the very consciousness of composing what was intended to be an imposition would have precluded.
The remarkable manner also in which the writer avoids introducing John by name (Joh 13:23; Joh 19:16; Joh 20:2-4; Joh 21:7; Joh 21:24) affords additional evidence that John himself was the writer. It has been urged also by some (Bleek, Ebrard, Credner) that the use of the simple , without in any case the addition of the usual , to designate the Baptist, in this Gospel, is an evidence of its being the production of John the apostle, on the ground that, supposing the apostle not to be the writer, one would expect that he should, like the Synoptists, discriminate the Baptist from the apostle by this epithet, whereas, supposing the apostle himself to be the writer, he would feel less prompted to do so (Bleek, Einleit. in das N.T. p. 148); but to this much weight cannot be attached; for, though it is probable that a writer, taking his materials from the other evangelists, would have designated John as they do, and though, as Meyer suggests (Krit. Exeget. Comm., Einleitung in das Ev. des Johannes, p. 23), it is probable that John, who had been a disciple of the Baptist, might prefer speaking of him by the name by which he had been accustomed to designate him during their personal intercourse rather than by his historical name, yet, as we cannot tell what considerations might have occurred to a forger writing in the apostle’s name to induce him to drop the distinctive epithet, it is hardly competent for us to accept this omission as a proof that the work is not the production of a forger. It is needless to press every minute particular into the service of the argument for the genuineness of this Gospel; it is impossible to read it without feeling that it is Johannean in all its parts, and that, had it been the production of any other than the apostle, that other must in mind, spirit, affection, circumstances, and character, have been a second John. Attempts to impugn the genuineness of this Gospel have been comparatively recent (Guerike, Einleitung, p. 303).
The work of Bretschneider, entitled Probabilia de Evangelii et Epp. Johannis apost. indole et origine (Lips. 1820), is the earliest formal attack of any importance made upon it; and this, the author has himself assured us, was made by him with a view to exciting anew and extending inquiry into the genuineness of the Johannean writings, an end which, he adds, has been gained, so that the doubts he suggested may be regarded as discharged (Dogmatik, 1, 268, 3d ed.). Since that work appeared, the claims of the Gospel have been opposed by Strauss in his Leben Jesu; by Weisse in his Evangelische Geschichte; by Ltzelberger (Die Kirchliche Tradition ub. d. Apost. Joh. Lpz. 1848, and in many other forms since); by Baur (Krit. Untersuch. ber die Kanonischen Evang.); by Hilgenfeld (Des Evang. und die Briefe Joh. nach ihrem Lehrbegr. dargestellt, Halle, 1849), and by others. But the reasons advanced by these writers have so little force, and have been so thoroughly replied to, that even in Germany the general opinion has reverted to the ancient and catholic belief in respect of the authorship of the fourth Gospel. See Tholuck, Glaubwrdigkeit der Evangel. Gesch.; Ebrard. Kritik d. Evangel. Geschichte (Zr. 1850, 2d ed.); Ewald, Jahrbuch, 3, 146; 5, 178; Meyer, Kritik. Exeg. Comm. 2, Th. 2 Abt. (Gtt. 1856, 3d edit.); Bleek, Einl. in das N.T. (Berlin, 1862); Davidson, Introduction to the New Test. 1, 233 sq.; Schaff, Church History (Apostolic Age), 105. The importance of the fourth Gospel as a proof of the divine character of Jesus Christ led to this special assault on its genuineness by the Rationalists of the Tbingen school and their imitators elsewhere, but without shaking the convictions of the Church at large. SEE JESUS CHRIST.
For further details of the controversy, see Fisher, Supernat. Origin of Christianity (new edit. N.Y. 1870); Pressense, Apostol. Age (N.Y. 1871), p. 509 sq. SEE RATIONALISM. The most important other express treatises in opposition to the authenticity of John’s Gospel are those of Bruno Bauer (Brem. 1840, Berl. 1850), Zeller (Jahrb. 1845 sq.), Kstlin (ib. 1853), Volkmar (in several works and arts. in Germ. journals). Scholten (Leid. 1864, etc.), Matthes (ib. 1867), Tayler (Lond. 1867); in favor, Stein (Brandenb. 1822), Crome (Lpzg. 1824), Hauff (Nrnb. 1831, and in the Stud. und Krit. 1846, 1849), Weitzel (ib. 1849), Mayer (Schaffh. 1854), Schneider (Berl. 1854), Tischendorf (Lpzg. 1865 and since), Riggenbach (Basel, 1866), Witticher (Elberf. 1869), Pfeiffer (St. Gall. 1870), Row (in the Journal of Sacred Lit. 1865, 1866, etc.), Clarke (in the Christian Examiner, 1868); see also the Brit. and For. Ev. Rev. July, 1861, p. 553; Westminster Rev. Ap. 1865, p. 192.
III. Integrity. Certain portions of this Gospel have been regarded as interpolations or later additions, even by those who accept the Gospel as a whole as the work of John. One of these is the closing part of Joh 1:2, from , and the whole of Joh 1:4, in regard to which the critical authorities fluctuate, and which contain statements that give a legendary aspect to the narrative, such as belongs to no other of the miracles related in the Gospels. Both are rejected by Tischendorf, but retained by Lachmann; and the same diversity of judgment appears among interpreters, some rejecting both passages (Lcke, Tholuck, Olshausen), others retaining both (Buckner), others rejecting Joh 1:4, but retaining Joh 1:2 (Ewald), while some leave the whole in doubt (De Wette).
Another doubtful portion is the section relating to the woman taken in adultery (Joh 7:53 to Joh 8:11). This is regarded as an interpolation because of the deficiency of critical evidence in its favor (see Tischendorf or Alford, ad loc.), and because of reasons founded on the passage itself, viz. the apparently forced way in which it is connected with what precedes by means of Joh 7:53; the interruption caused by it to the course of the narrative, the words in Joh 8:12 being evidently in continuation of what precedes this section; the alleged going of Jesus to the Mount of Olives and return to Jerusalem, which would place this occurrence in the last residence of our Lord in Jerusalem (Luk 21:37); the absence of the characteristic usage of the , which John so constantly introduces into his narratives, and for which we have in this section , used as John generally uses ; and the presence of the expressions , , , , , and , which are foreign to John’s style. On the other side, it is urged that the section contains, as Calvin says, Nihil apostolico spiritu indignum, that it has no appearance of a later legend, but bears every trace of an original account-of a very probable fact, and that it has a considerable amount of diplomatic evidence in its favor. The question is one which hardly admits of a decided answer. The preponderance of evidence is, undoubtedly against the Johannean origin of the section, and it has consequently been regarded as an interpolation by the great majority of critics and interpreters, including among the latter Calvin, Beza, Tittmann, Tholuck, Olshausen, Lcke, and Luthardt, as well as Grotius, De Wette, Paulus, and Ewald. At the same time, if it did not form part of the original Gospel, it is difficult to account for its being at so early a period inserted in it. From a passage in Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. 3, 39) some have concluded that Papias inserted it from the Gospel according to the Hebrews; but it is not certain that it is to this section that the words of Eusebius refer, nor is it certain that he meant to say that Papias inserted the story he refers to in the Gospel. SEE ADULTERY, vol. 1, p. 87.
More important than either of these portions is chap. 21, which is by many regarded as the addition of a later hand after the apostle’s death. This opinion rests wholly on internal grounds, for there is no evidence that the Gospel was ever known in the Church without this chapter. At first sight it certainly appears as if the original work ended with ch. 20 and that ch. 21 was a later addition, but whether by the apostle himself or by some other is open to question. The absence of any trace of the Gospel having ever existed without it must be allowed to afford strong prima facie evidence of its having been added by the author himself; still this is not conclusive, for the addition may have been made by one of his friends or disciples before the work was in circulation. Grotius, who thinks it was made by the elders at Ephesus, argues against its genuineness, especially from Joh 21:24; but, though the language there has certainly the appearance of being rather that of others than that of the party himself to whom it refers, still it is not impossible that John may have referred to himself in the third person, as he does, for instance, in Joh 19:35; and as for the use of the pl. , that may be accounted for by his tacitly joining his readers with himself, just as he assumes their presence in Joh 19:35. There is more difficulty in accepting Joh 19:25 as genuine, for such a hyperbolical mode of expression does not seem to comport with the simplicity and sincerity of John; but there seems to be no valid reason for calling into doubt any other part of the chapter.
IV. Design. At the close of the Gospel the apostle has himself stated his design in writing it thus: These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, ye might have life through his name (20:31). Taken in the general, this may be said to be the design of all the evangelical narratives, for all of them are intended to produce the conviction that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah promised to the fathers, and so to exhibit him in his saving power that men believing on him might enjoy that life which he had come to bestow. We must seek, therefore, John’s specific design either in some special occasion which he sought to meet, or in some peculiarity in his mode of presenting the claims of Jesus, by which not merely his Messiahship should be evinced, but the higher aspect of his person, and the spiritual effects of his working, should be prominently exhibited. Probably both of these concurred in the apostle’s design; and we shall best conceive his purpose by neither, on the one hand, ascribing to him a merely historical, nor, on the other, a purely dogmatical design. It is an old and still prevalent opinion that John wrote his Gospel to supply the omissions of the other three; but no such impression is conveyed by the Gospel itself, which is as far as possible from having the appearance of a mere series of supplemental notes to previously existing writings; indeed, if this had been the apostle’s purpose, it cannot be said that he has in any adequate way fulfilled it. Nor is there any ground for believing that it was a polemical object which chiefly prompted him to write this Gospel, though such a suggestion has often been made. Thus Irenaeus (Hoer. 3, 11, 1) says that the Gospel was written against the errors of Cerinthus. Jerome (De vir. Illust. 9) adds the Ebionites, and later writers have maintained that the Gnostics or the Docetae are the parties against whom the polemic of the apostle is here directed. All this, however, is mere supposition. Doubtless in what John has written there is that which furnishes a full refutation of all Ebionitish, Gnostic, and Docetic heresy; but that to confute these was the design of the apostle, as these writers affirm, cannot be proved. SEE GNOSTICS.
At the same time, though he may have had no intention of formally confuting any existing heresy, it is more than probable that he was stimulated to seek by means of this record to counteract certain tendencies which he saw rising in the Church, and by which the followers of Christ might be seduced from that simple faith in him by which alone the true life could be enjoyed. Still this must be regarded, at the utmost, as furnishing only the occasion, not the design, of his writing. The latter is to be sought in the effect which this Gospel is fitted to produce on the mind of the reader in regard to the claims of Jesus as the divine Redeemer, the source of light and life to darkened and perishing humanity. With this view John presents him to us as he tabernacled among men, and especially as he taught when occasion called forth the deeper revelations which he, as the Word who had come forth from the invisible God to reveal unto men the Father, had to communicate. John’s main design is a theological one; a conviction of which doubtless led to his receiving in the primitive Church the title of . But the historical character of his writing must also be acknowledged. As one who had been privileged to company with Jesus, he seeks to present him to us as he really appeared among men, in very deed a partaker of their nature, yet, under that nature, veiling a higher, which ever and anon broke forth in manifestation, so that those around him beheld his glory as the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father (Joh 1:14). There is here no history of Jesus and his teaching after the manner of the other evangelists; but there is, in historical form, a representation of the Christian faith, in relation to the person of Christ, as its central point, and in this representation there is a picture, on the one hand, of the antagonism of the world to the truth revealed in him, and on the other of the spiritual blessedness of the few who yield themselves to him as the Light of Life (Reuss, Gesch. der Heil. Sch. d. N.T. p. 204). As John doubtless had the other Gospels before him, without formally designing to supplement them, he would naturally enlarge more particularly upon those portions which they had left untouched, or passed over more briefly.
IV. Contents. The Gospel begins with a prologue, in which the author presents the great theme of which his subsequent narrative is to furnish the detailed illustration the theological program of his history, as one has called it, and which another has compared to the overture of a musical composition in which the leading idea of the piece is expressed (Joh 1:1-5). The historical exposition begins with Joh 1:6, and the rest of the book may be divided into two parts. Of these the former (Joh 1:6-7) contains the account of our Lord’s public ministry from his introduction to it by John the Baptist and his solemn consecration to it by God, to its close in the Passion Week. In this portion we have the Savior presented to us chiefly in his manifestation to the world as a teacher sent from God, whose mission is authenticated by signs and wonders, and whose doctrines, truly divine, transcend in their spiritual import the narrow limits of human speculation, and can be comprehended only by a spiritual discernment. The second portion (ch. 13-21) may be divided into two parts, the one of which is introductory to the other. The former (ch. 13-17) presents to us our Lord in the retirement of private life, in his intercourse with his immediate followers, to whom he pours out his soul in loving counsel, warning, and promise, in the prospect of his departure from them; and in communion with his heavenly Father, with whom, as one who had finished the work he had received to do, he intercedes for those whose redemption from sin and evil is the coveted recompense of his obedience. To this succeeds the account of the Passion, and the appearances of Christ to his disciples after his resurrection (ch. 18-21), which forms the other part of the second portion of the book. See the minute analysis of Lampe in his Comment., and a briefer one in Westcott, Introd. to Study of the Gospels, p. 281 sq.
The greater part of the book is occupied with the discourses of our Lord, the plan of the evangelist being obviously to bring the reader as much as possible into personal contact with Jesus, and to make the latter his own expositor. Regarding the discourses thus reported, the question has arisen, How far are they to be accepted as an exact report of what Jesus uttered? and in reply to this, three opinions have been advanced:
1. That both in substance and in form we have them as they came from the lips of Christ;
2. That in substance they present what Christ uttered, but that the form in which they appear is due to the evangelist; and,
3. That they are not the discourses of Christ in any proper sense, but only speeches put in his mouth by the evangelist to express what the latter conceived to be a just representation of his doctrine. Of these views the last has found adherents only among a few of the skeptical school; it is without the slightest authority from the book itself, is irreconcilable with the simplicity and earnestness of the writer, is foreign to the habits and notions of the class to which the evangelist belongs, and is contradicted by the frequent explanations which he introduces of the sense in which he understood what he reports (comp. Joh 2:19; Joh 2:21; Joh 7:38-39; Joh 12:32-33, etc.), by the brief notices, which evince an actual reminiscence of the scenes and circumstances amid which the discourse was delivered (e.g. Joh 14:31), and by the prophetic announcements of his impending sufferings and death ascribed to the Savior, which are couched in language such as he might naturally use, such as accounts for those to whom he spoke, even his disciples, not understanding his meaning, but such as it is utterly incredible that one not desirous of reporting his very words should, writing after the fulfilment of these predictions, impute to him (comp. Joh 7:33-36; Joh 8:21-22; Joh 10:17-20; Joh 12:23-36; Joh 14:1-4; Joh 14:18; Joh 14:28; Joh 16:16; Joh 16:19, etc.). Some of these considerations are of weight also as against the second of the opinions above stated; for, if John sought merely to give the substance of the Savior’s teaching in his own words, why clothe predictions, the meaning of which at the time of his writing he perfectly understood, in obscure and difficult phraseology? Why especially impute to the speaker language of which he feels it necessary to give an explanation, instead of at once putting the intelligible statement in his discourse? Undoubtedly the impression which one gets from the narrative is that John means the discourses he ascribes to Jesus to be received as faithful reports of what he actually uttered; and this is confirmed when one compares his report of John the Baptist’s sayings with those of our Lord, the character of the one being totally different from that of the other.
To this view it has been objected that there is such an identity of style in the discourses which John ascribes to Christ with his own style, both in this Gospel and in his Epistles, as betrays in the former the hand, not of a faithful reporter, but of one who gives in the manner natural to himself the substance of what his Master taught. In this there is some force, which is but partially met by the suggestion that John was so imbued with the very mind and soul of Christ, so informed by his doctrine, and so filled by his spirit, that his own manner of thought and utterance became the same as that of Christ, and he insensibly wrote and spoke in the style of his Lord. Reuss objects to this that on this supposition the style of Jesus must have been a very uniform and sharply defined one, and such as excludes the very different style ascribed to him by the synoptists (Gesch. der H.S. des N.T. p. 203). But the facts here are overstated; the style of our Lord’s discourses in John is by no means perfectly uniform, nor is it much further removed from that ascribed to him by the synoptists than the difference of subject and circumstance will suffice to account for. As for the objection that it is inconceivable that the evangelist could have retained for so many years a faithful recollection of discourses heard by him only once, we need not, in order to meet it, resort to the foolish suggestion of Bertholdt that he had taken notes of them at the time for his own behoof; nor need we to lay stress on the assurance of Christ which John records that the Holy Ghost whom the Father should send to them would teach them all things, and bring all things to their remembrance whatsoever he had said unto them (Joh 14:26), though to the believer this is a fact of the utmost importance. It will suffice to meet the objection if we suggest that, as the apostle went forth to the world as a witness for Christ, he did not wait till he sat down to write his Gospel to give forth his recollections of his Master’s words and deeds. What he narrates here in writing is only what he must have been repeating constantly during his whole apostolic career. Still, after due allowance has been made for all these considerations, it must yet be admitted that the decided Johannean cast of all these discourses, as compared with our Lord’s sayings reported in the synoptical Gospels, shows that while the evangelist gives the substance and essential form of Christ’s public utterances, he nevertheless, to a large degree, molds them into his own style of phraseology and coherence. This is especially true of Joh 12:44-50, which is evidently a summary of statements made on perhaps more than one occasion not definitely given. Indeed, it is doubtful if any of the evangelists give us the exact words of our Lord, as they certainly do not tally in this particular any more than they do in the order and connection in which these are narrated. (See Tholuck, Glaubwrdigkeit der evangelischen Geschichte [2d edit.], p. 314 sq.). SEE HARMONIES.
V. Characteristics.
1. As to matter, the peculiarities of John’s Gospel more especially consist in the four following doctrines:
(1.) The mystical relation of the Son to the Father.
(2.) That of the Redeemer to believers.
(3.) The announcement of the Holy Ghost as the Comforter.
(4.) The peculiar importance ascribed to love.
Yet these peculiarities are not confined to this Gospel. Although there can be shown in the writings of the other evangelists some isolated dicta of the Lord which seem to bear the impress of John, it can also be shown that they contain thoughts not originating with that disciple, but with the Lord himself. Matthew (Mat 11:27) speaks of the relation of the Son to the Father so entirely in the style of John that persons not sufficiently versed in Holy Writ are apt to search for this passage in the Gospel of John. The mystical union of the Son with believers is expressed in Mat 28:20. The promise of the effusion of the Holy Ghost in order to perfect the disciples is found in Luk 24:49. The doctrine of Paul with respect to love, in 1 Corinthians 13 entirely resembles what, according to John, Christ taught on the same subject. Paul here deserves our particular attention. In the writings of Paul. are found Christian truths which have their points of coalescence only in John, viz., that Christ is the image of the invisible God, by whom all things are created (Col 1:15-16). Paul considers the Spirit of God in the Church the spiritual Christ, as Jesus himself does (Joh 14:16), frequently using the words .
2. As to form, there is something peculiar in the evangelist’s manner of writing. His language betrays traces of that Hebraistic character which belongs generally to the N.T. writers, and the author shows his Jewish descent by various incidental indications; but he writes purer Greek than most of the others, and his freedom from Judaic narrowness is so marked that some have founded on this an argument against the genuineness of the book, forgetting that the experiences of the apostle in his more advanced years would materially tend to correct the prejudices and party leanings of his earlier career. The apostle’s style is marked by ease, simplicity, and vividness; his sentences are linked together rather by inner affinity in the thoughts than by outward forms of composition or dialectic concatenation they move on one after the other, generally with the help of an , sometimes of a , and occasionally of a , and favorite terms or phrases are repeated without regard to rhetorical art. The author wrote evidently for Hellenistic readers, but he makes no attempt at Greek elegance, or that wisdom of words which with many in his day constituted the perfection of Greek art. One of the peculiarities of John is that, in speaking of the adversaries of Jesus, he always calls them . The simplicity of John’s character is also evinced by the repetition of certain leading thoughts, reproduced in the same words both in the Gospel and in the Epistles, such as , testimony; , glory; , truth; , light; , darkness; , eternal life; , to abide. Kitto. See Kaiser, De speciali Joan. Grammatica, etc. (Erlang. 1842); Westcott, Introd. to Study of the Gospels, ch. 5.
VI. Place of Writing. Ephesus and Patmos are the two places mentioned by early writers, and the weight of evidence seems to preponderate in favor of Ephesus. Irenaeus (3:1; also apud Euseb. H.E. 5, 8) states that John published his Gospel whilst he dwelt in Ephesus of Asia. Jerome (Prol. in Matthew) states that John was in Asia when he complied with the request of the bishops of Asia and others to write more profoundly concerning the divinity of Christ. Theodore of Mopsuestia (Prol. in Joannem) relates that John was living at Ephesus when he was moved by his disciples to write his Gospel.
The evidence in favor of Patmos comes from two anonymous writers. The author of the Synopsis of Scripture, printed in the works of Athanasius, states that the Gospel was dictated by John in Patmos, and published afterwards in Ephesus. The author of the work De XII Apostolis, printed in the Appendix to Fabricius’ Hippolytus (p. 952 [ed. Migne]), states that John was banished by Domitian to Patmos, where he wrote his Gospel. The later date of these unknown writers, and the seeming inconsistency of their testimony with John’s declaration (Rev 1:2) in Patmos, that he had previously borne record of the Word of God, render their testimony of little weight.
After the destruction of Jerusalem, A.D. 70, Ephesus probably became the center of the active life of Eastern Christendom. Even Antioch, the original source of missions to the Gentiles, and the future metropolis of the Christian patriarch, appears, for a time, less conspicuous in the obscurity of early Church history than Ephesus, to which Paul inscribed his Epistle, and in which John found a dwelling place and a tomb. This half Greek, half Oriental city, visited by ships from all parts of the Mediterranean, and united by great roads with the markets of the interior, was the common meeting place of various characters and classes of men (Conybeare and Howson, St. Paul, ch. 14). It contained a large church of faithful Christians, a multitude of zealous Jews, an indigenous population devoted to the worship of a strange idol, whose image (Jerome, Proef. in Ephes.) was borrowed from the East, its name from the West in the Xystus of Ephesus free thinking philosophers of all nations disputed over their favorite tenets (Justin, Trypho, 1, 7). It was the place to which Cerinthus chose to bring the doctrines which he devised or learned at Alexandria (Neander, Church History, 1, 396 [Torrey’s trans.]). In this city, and among the lawless heathens in its neighborhood (Clem. Alexan. Quis dives salv. 42), John was engaged in extending the Christian Church when, for the greater edification of that Church, his Gospel was written. It was obviously addressed primarily to Christians, not to heathens. SEE EPHESUS.
VII. Date of Writing. Attempts have been made to elicit from the language of the Gospel itself some argument which should decide the question whether it was written before or after the destruction of Jerusalem; but, considering that the present tense is is used in Joh 5:2, and the past tense was in Joh 11:18; Joh 18:1; Joh 19:41, it would seem reasonable to conclude that these passages throw no light upon the question.
Clement of Alexandria (apud Eusebius, H.E. 6, 14) speaks of John as the latest of the evangelists. The apostle’s sojourn at Ephesus probably began after Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians was written, i.e. after A.D. 56. Eusebius (H.E. 3, 20) specifies the fourteenth year of Domitian, i.e. A.D. 95, as the year of his banishment to Patmos. Probably the date of the Gospel may lie between these two, about A.D. 90. The references to it in the 1st Epistle and the Revelation lead to the supposition that it was written somewhat before those two books, and the tradition of its supplementary character would lead us to place it some considerable time after the apostle had fixed his abode at Ephesus.
VIII. Commentaries. The following are the separate exegetical helps on the whole of John’s Gospel exclusively (including the principal monographs on its special features), to the most important of which we prefix an asterisk [*]: Origen, Commentaria (in Opp. 4, 1; also Berlin, 1831, 3 vols. 12mo); Jerome, Expositio (in Opp. Suppos. 11, 77, 773); Augustine, Tractatus (in Opp. 4, 385; translated, Homilies [includ. 1st Ep.], Oxford, 1848-9, 2 vols. 8vo); Chrysostom, Homilioe (in Opp. 5-3, 1; transl. Homilies, Oxf. 1848-52, 2 vols. 8vo); also Interpretatio (in Canisius, 1, 217); Nonnus, Metaphrases (Gr. and Lat. in Bibl. Max. Patr. 9, 437; also ed. Heinsius, L.B. 1627, 8vo, 1639, fol.; also ed. Passovius, Lips. 1833, 8vo); Cyril of Alexandria, Commentarii (in Opp. 4, 1-1123); Bede, in Joann. (in Opp. 5, 451); Alcuin, Commentarii (in Opp. 1, 2, 457; also August. 1527, 8vo); Hugo a St. Victor, Annotationes (in Opp. 1, 233); Aquinas, Commentarii (in Opp. 5); also Catena (in Opp. 3; transl. as vol. 4 of Catena Aurea, Oxford, 1845, 8vo); Bonaventura, Expositio (in Opp. 2, 313); also Collationes (ib. 2, 467); Albertus Magnus, Commentarii (in Opp. 11); Zwingle, Annotationes (in Opp. 4, 283); Melancthon, Enarrationes (Vitemb. 1523, fol.; also in Opp.); Bucer, Enarrationes (Argent. 1528, 8vo); OEcolampadius, Adnotationes (Basil. 1533, 8vo); Ferus [Rom. Catholic], Enarrationes (Mogunt. 1536, 1550, fol., Par. 1552, 1569, Lugd. 1553, 1558, 1563, Lovan. 1559, 8vo; ed. Medina, Complut. 1569, 1578, Mogunt. 1572, Rome, 1578, folio); Sarcer, Scholia (Basil. 1540, 8vo); Cruciger, Enarratio (Vitemb. 1540, Argent. 1546. 8vo); Bullinger, Commentarii (Tigur. 1543, fol.); Musculus, Commentarii (Basil. 1545, 1553, 1554, 1564, 1580, 1618, fol.); Guilliaud, Enarrationes (Par. 1550, fol.; Lugd. 1555, 8vo); Alesius, Commentarius (Basil. 1553, 8vo); Calvin, Commentarii (Genev. 1553, 1555, fol.; also in Opp.; with a harmony, Genev. 1563; in French, ib. 1563; in English, by Feterston, London, 1584, 4to; by Pringle, Edinb. 1847, 2 vols. 8vo); Traheron, Exposition [on part] (London, 1558, 8vo); De Reyna, Annotationes (Francof. 1573, 4to); Marloratus, Exposition (from the Latin, by Timme, Lond. 1575, fol.); Aretius, Commentarius (Lausanne, 1578, 8vo); Danaeus, Commentarius (Geneva, 1585, 8vo); Hunnius, Commentarius (Francof. 1585, 1591, 1595, 8vo); Delphinus, Commentarii [includ. Hebrews] (ed. Sernanus, Rome, 1587, 8vo); Chytraeus, Scholia (ed. Schincke, F. ad M. 1588, 8vo); *Toletus [Rom. Cath.]; Commentarii (Rom, 1588, fol. 1590, 2 vols. 4to; Lugd. 1589, 1614, fol.; Ven. 1589, Brix. 1603, 4to); Hemmingius, Commentarius (Basil. 1591, fol.); Zepper, Analysis (Herb. 1595, 8vo); Rollock, Commentarius (Genev. 1599, 1618, 8vo) ; Agricola, Commentarius (Colon. 1599, 8vo); Capponus, Commentarius (Ven. 1604, 4to); Pererius, Disputationes (Lugd. 160810), 2 vols. 4to); Pelargus, Quoesita (Francof. 1615, 4to); De Ribera, Commentarius (Lugdun. 1623, 4to); Mylius, Commentarius (Francof. 1624, 4to); Tarnovius, Commentarius (Rost. 1629, 4to); Jansonius, Commentarius (Lovan. 1630, 8vo); Corderius, Catena (Antw. 1630, folio); Lenaeus, Commentarius (Holm. 1640, 4to); Gomarus, Illustratio (Amst. 1644, fol.; also in Opp.); Lyser, Disputationes (Vitemb. 1646, 4to); Virginius, Notoe (Dorp, 1647, 4to); Amyraut, Paraphrase (Fr., Salm. 1651, 8vo); Petrus, Arend, etc. (Dutch. Amsterd. 1653, 3 vols. 4to); Schlichting, Commentaria [including other books of the N.T.] (Irenop. 1656, fol.); Hutcheson, Exposition (Lond. 1657, fol., 1840, 8vo); Nifanius, Commentarius (F. ad M. 1684, 4to); S. Schmidt, Paraphrasis (Argent. 1685, 1689, 4to; also in Germ., Hal. 1716, 8vo); Vassor, Paraphrase (Fr., Paris, 1689, 12mo); Comazzi, Dimonstrazione, etc. (Naples, 1706, 8vo); Sibersma, Explication (in French, Amst. 1717, 4to; in Germ., Basel, 1718, 4to); Guillaers, Adnotationes [includ. begin. of Matthew and Luke] (Gandav. 1724, 4to); *Lampe, Commentarius (Amst. 1724-6, Basil, 1725- 7, 3 vols. 4to; in German, Lpz. 1729, 4to); also Syntagma (Amst. 1737, 2 vols. 4to); Merrick, Annotations [on 1-3] (Lond. 1764-7, 2 vols. 8vo); Lightfoot, Exercitations (in Works, 12); also Chorographia (in Ugolino, Thesaurus, 5, 1117); Semler, Paraphrasis (Halle, 1771-2, 2 vols. 8vo); Mosheim, Erklrung (ed. Jacobi, Weim. 1777, 4to); Hezel, Anleitung (pt. 1, Frkft. 1792, 8vo); Oertel, Erlut. [includ. Epistles] (Frkft. and Gorl. 1795, 2 vols. 8vo); Morus, Recitationes (edit. Dindorf, Prag. 1795, Lips. 1796, 1808, 1821, 8vo); S. Lange, Erklrung [including Epistles] (Weimar, 1795-7, 3 vols. 8vo); Shepherd, Notes [including Epistles] (Lond. 1796, 4to); Schmid, Theologia, etc. (Jen. 1800, 8vo) ; Schulze, Charakter, etc. (Lpz. 1803 8vo); Paulus, Commentar (pt. 1, Tbing. 1806, 8vo); Breitenstein, Anmerkungen (Frkft, 1813, 1823, 8vo); *Tittmann, Commentarius (Lips. 1816, 8vo; tr. in English, Edinb. 1844, 2 vols. 12mo); Mayer, Beitrge (Lps. 1820, 8vo); *Lcke, Commentar [includ. Epistles] (Bonn, 1820-32, 1833-5, 1840-43, 3 vols. 8vo; vol. 3 [epistle] transl. into Eng., Edinb. 1837, 12mo); Moysey, Lectures (Oxf. 1821-23, 2 vols. 8vo); Pitman, Lectures [on 1-10] (Lond. 1822, 8vo) ; Seyffarth, Specialcharakteristik, etc. (Lpzg. 1823, 8vo);. *Tholuck, Commentar (Hamb. 1826, 1828, 1831, 1833; Lips. 1837, 1844; Gotha, 1857; in Engl. by Kaufman, Boston, 1836, 12mo; by Krauth, Phila. 1859, 8vo); Klee, Commentar (Mainz, 1829, 8vo); Fickenscher, Auslegung (Nrnb. 1831-33, 3 vols. 8vo); Grimm, Christologia, etc. (Lips. 1833, 8vo); Sumner, Exposition (Lond. 1835, 8vo); Matthai, Auslegung (vol. 1, Gott. 1837, 8vo); Slade, Readings (London, 1837, 1843, 12mo); Simson, Theologica etc. (Reg. 1839, 8vo); Fromann, Lehrbegrif; etc. (Leipzig, 1839, 8vo); Wirth, Erklrung (Ulm, 1839, 8vo); Patterson, Lectures [14-16] (London, 1840, 12mo); Anderson, Exposition (London, 1841, 2 vols. 12mo); Drummond, Exposition (Lond. 1841, 12mo); Herberden, Reflections (Lond, 1842, 12mo); Kstlin, Lehrbegriff, etc. (Berlin, 1843, 8vo); Baumgarten-Crusius, Auslegung [includ. Epistles] (Jen. 1843-5, 2 vols. 8vo); Jones, Sermons [13-17 (Oxf. 1844, 8vo); Aislabee, Translation (Lond. 1845, 12mo); Ford, Illustration (Lond. 1852, 8vo); Luthardt, Eigenthmlichkeit, etc. (Lpz. 1852-3, 2 vols. 8vo); Bouchier, Exposition (London, 1854, 12mo); Cumming, Readings (London, 1856, 8vo); Maurice, Discourses (Camb. 1857, 12mo); 5 Clergymen, Revision (Lond. 1857, 8vo); Reuss, Introd. (in his Hist. de la theol. Chretienne Strasb. 1860, 2, 272 sq.); Fawcett, Exposition (London, 1860, 8vo); *Ewald, Erklrung [includ. Epistles] (Gott. 1861 sq., 3 vols. 8vo); *Hengstenberg, Erluterung (Berl. 1861-64, 3 vols., 1869, 2 vols. 8vo; tr. in English, Edinb. 1865, 2 vols. 8vo); Malan, Notes (Lond. 1862, 4to); Asti, Explication (Genve, 1862-4, 3 vols. 8vo); Klofutar, Commentarius (Vienna, 1863, 8vo); Brown, Lectures (Oxf. 1863, 2 vols. 8vo); Baumlein, Commentar (Stuttg. 1863, 8vo); Scholten, Onderzock. (Leyd. 1864 sq., 2 vols. 8vo); Godet. Commentaire (vol. 1, 1864, 8vo); Ryle, Thoughts (Lond. 1865-6, 2 vols. 8vo); Anon. Erluterung (Berlin, 1866, 8vo); Von Burger, Erklrung (Nrdl. 1867, 8vo); Roffhack, Auslegung (Leipzig, 1871, 2 vols. 8vo). SEE GOSPELS.
Fuente: Cyclopedia of Biblical, Theological and Ecclesiastical Literature
John, Gospel of
The genuineness of this Gospel, i.e., the fact that the apostle John was its author, is beyond all reasonable doubt. In recent times, from about 1820, many attempts have been made to impugn its genuineness, but without success.
The design of John in writing this Gospel is stated by himself (John 20:31). It was at one time supposed that he wrote for the purpose of supplying the omissions of the synoptical, i.e., of the first three, Gospels, but there is no evidence for this. “There is here no history of Jesus and his teaching after the manner of the other evangelists. But there is in historical form a representation of the Christian faith in relation to the person of Christ as its central point; and in this representation there is a picture on the one hand of the antagonism of the world to the truth revealed in him, and on the other of the spiritual blessedness of the few who yield themselves to him as the Light of life” (Reuss).
After the prologue (1:1-5), the historical part of the book begins with verse 6, and consists of two parts. The first part (1:6-ch. 12) contains the history of our Lord’s public ministry from the time of his introduction to it by John the Baptist to its close. The second part (ch. 13-21) presents our Lord in the retirement of private life and in his intercourse with his immediate followers (13-17), and gives an account of his sufferings and of his appearances to the disciples after his resurrection (18-21).
The peculiarities of this Gospel are the place it gives (1) to the mystical relation of the Son to the Father, and (2) of the Redeemer to believers; (3) the announcement of the Holy Ghost as the Comforter; (4) the prominence given to love as an element in the Christian character. It was obviously addressed primarily to Christians.
It was probably written at Ephesus, which, after the destruction of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), became the centre of Christian life and activity in the East, about A.D. 90.
Fuente: Easton’s Bible Dictionary
JOHN, GOSPEL OF
Both early tradition and evidence from the Bible itself indicate that the disciple whom Jesus loved was John the son of Zebedee, and that this John was the author of Johns Gospel (Joh 21:20; Joh 21:24).
The other Gospels mention John by name frequently, as he was one of the three apostles who featured prominently in much of the activity of Jesus. But his name never appears in Johns Gospel. The writer, following a common practice of not mentioning his own name, used instead the descriptive name by which he was well known (Joh 13:23; Joh 19:26; Joh 21:7; see JOHN THE APOSTLE). Perhaps Johns use of this title showed his unending gratitude for all that Jesus had done for him.
The apostle at Ephesus
John was very old at the time he wrote his Gospel, and was probably the last survivor of the original apostolic group. Some even thought he would never die (Joh 21:23). Records from the period immediately after the New Testament era indicate that he lived his later years in Ephesus in Asia Minor, where he fought against false teachers. He probably wrote his Gospel within the last decade or so of the first century.
Wrong teaching about Jesus had appeared over the years (Col 2:4; Col 2:8; Col 2:18-19; 1Ti 6:3-5), and was to become very destructive with the Gnostic heresies of the second century. John was already dealing with early stages of these errors at Ephesus.
Certain teachers had come into the church and denied that the divine and the human were perfectly united in Jesus. Some denied that Jesus was fully divine, others that he was fully human. John opposed both errors. His book, however, was not intended merely as an attack on false teaching. He had a positive purpose, and that was to lead people to faith in Christ, so that they might experience the full and eternal life that Christ had made possible (Joh 20:31; cf. Joh 1:4; Joh 3:15; Joh 4:14; Joh 5:24; Joh 6:27; Joh 8:12; Joh 10:10; Joh 11:25; Joh 14:6; Joh 17:3).
From the opening words of the book, John asserted that Jesus was truly God (Joh 1:1) and truly a human being (Joh 1:14). As to his divinity, he was the eternal one who created all things (Joh 1:2-3) and who came from the heavenly world to reveal God (Joh 1:18; Joh 3:13; Joh 5:18-19; Joh 6:62; Joh 14:9; Joh 14:11) As to his humanity, he had a material body that possessed the normal physical characteristics (Joh 4:6-7; Joh 9:6; Joh 19:28; Joh 19:34) and that experienced the normal human emotions (Joh 11:35; Joh 12:27).
Characteristics of Johns Gospel
By the time John wrote his Gospel, the other three Gospels were widely known. Since John and his readers were no doubt familiar with them, there was no point in Johns producing a similar narrative-type account of Jesus life. John was concerned more with showing the meaning of incidents in Jesus life. The stories he knew were beyond number (Joh 20:30; Joh 21:25), but from them he made a selection, around which he built his book. He used this material to teach spiritual truth by showing what the chosen incidents signified. For this reason he called the incidents signs (e.g. Joh 2:1-11; Joh 4:46-54; Joh 6:1-14; Joh 11:1-44; see SIGNS).
Because the signs were designed to show that Jesus was the messianic Son of God (Joh 20:30-31), they were often followed by long debates with the Jews (e.g. Joh 5:1-15 followed by 5:16-47; Joh 9:1-12 followed by 9:13-10:39). These and other debates that Jesus had with the Jews provided John with his teaching material. He used the words of Jesus to teach the Christian truths he wanted to express (e.g. Joh 7:1-52; Joh 8:12-59).
The contrast between John and the other Gospel writers is seen when one of Johns signs is recorded also in the other Gospels. The other writers did little more than tell the story, whereas John followed the story with lengthy teaching that arose out of it (e.g. cf. Mat 14:13-21 with Joh 6:1-14 and the teaching that follows in v. 26-65).
Johns concern with the interpretation of events showed itself also in the way he recorded some of Jesus lengthy conversations with people (e.g. with Nicodemus in Joh 3:1-15 and with the Samaritan woman in Joh 4:1-26). Likewise he used his account of the Last Supper, reported briefly in the other Gospels, to provide five chapters of teaching on important Christian doctrines (John 13; John 14; John 15; John 16; John 17).
In Johns Gospel, more than in the others, there is an emphasis on the reason for the Jews hatred of Jesus. They considered that his claim to be God in human form was blasphemy, and they were determined to get rid of him (Joh 6:42; Joh 7:28-30; Joh 8:57-59; Joh 10:33; Joh 10:39; Joh 11:25; Joh 11:53). The strongest opposition to him was in Jerusalem, and Johns Gospel shows that Jesus spent more time in Jerusalem than is recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke (Joh 2:13; Joh 5:1; Joh 7:14; Joh 7:25; Joh 8:20; Joh 10:22-23; Joh 11:1).
Summary of contents
In the introduction Jesus is presented as the eternal Word who became flesh (1:1-18). John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus (1:19-28) and then baptized him (1:29-34), after which Jesus called his first disciples (1:35-51), presented his first sign to them (2:1-11), then went to Jerusalem and cleansed the temple (2:12-25). Jesus spoke to Nicodemus about new birth (3:1-21), and John the Baptist spoke to the Jews about Jesus (3:22-36).
Upon leaving Judea, Jesus met and taught various people in Samaria (4:1-42) and performed a healing miracle in Galilee (4:43-54). Back in Jerusalem a further healing miracle resulted in a dispute with the Jews about Jesus divine sonship (5:1-47). After a miracle in Galilee that provided food for a multitude, people wanted to make Jesus king (6:1-21). Jesus taught them that the only food that could truly sustain them was himself (6:22-71). Jesus unbelieving brothers urged him to go to Jerusalem and perform his wonders at a festival that was about to take place (7:1-13), but when Jesus went he taught the people and aroused much opposition (7:14-8:11). He met more opposition when he taught that he was the light of the world (8:12-30) and the one who could set people free (8:31-59).
Jesus healing of a blind man in Jerusalem brought him into further conflict with the Jewish leaders (9:1-41). This resulted in Jesus contrasting himself as the good shepherd with them as worthless shepherds (10:1-30). After being further attacked, he went to the regions around the Jordan River, where many believed (10:31-42). At Bethany, just outside Jerusalem, he raised Lazarus from death, declaring himself to be the resurrection and the life (11:1-44). This was the event that finally stirred the Jews to plot his death (11:45-57).
After an anointing at Bethany (12:1-8), Jesus entered Jerusalem triumphantly (12:9-19) and gave his final public teaching (12:20-50). At the Passover meal with his disciples he demonstrated the nature of true service by washing their feet (13:1-20) and warned of the betrayer among them (13:21-38).
In the teaching that followed, Jesus told the disciples that as he had come from the Father, so he would return to the Father, after which he would send his Spirit to indwell them (14:1-31). They had to abide in him (15:1-17) and bear persecution for his sake (15:18-27). Jesus spoke further of the Holy Spirits work (16:1-15), but in their confusion of mind the disciples scarcely understood him (16:16-33). He then prayed at length to his Father, not only for himself and his disciples, but also for those who would yet believe (17:1-26).
Upon going to Gethsemane to pray again, Jesus was arrested and taken to the high priest (18:1-27). From there he was taken to the Roman governor (18:28-40), humiliated before the people (19:1-16), crucified (19:17-30) and buried (19:31-42). On the third day he rose from the dead, appearing first to Mary and then to his disciples (20:1-25). The next week he appeared to the disciples again (20:26-31). Some time later he appeared to seven of the disciples at the Sea of Galilee (21:1-14), where he delivered a final challenging message to Peter (21:15-25).
Fuente: Bridgeway Bible Dictionary
John, Gospel Of
JOHN, GOSPEL OF.Introductory.The Fourth Gospel is unique among the books of the NT. In its combination of minute historical detail with lofty spiritual teaching, in its testimony to the Person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the preparation it makes for the foundations of Christian doctrine, it stands alone. Its influence upon the thought and life of the Christian Church has been proportionately deep and far-reaching. It is no disparagement of other inspired Scriptures to say that no other book of the Bible has left such a mark at the same time upon the profoundest Christian thinkers, and upon simple-minded believers at large. A decision as to its character, authenticity, and trustworthiness is cardinal to the Christian religion. In many cases authorship is a matter of comparatively secondary importance in the interpretation of a document, and in the determination of its significance; in this instance it is vital. That statement is quite consistent with two other important considerations. (1) We are not dependent on the Fourth Gospel for the facts on which Christianity is based, or for the fundamental doctrines of the Person and work of Christ. The Synoptic Gospels and St. Pauls Epistles are more than sufficient to establish the basis of the Christian faith, which on any hypothesis must have spread over a large part of the Roman Empire before this book was written. (2) On any theory of authorship, the document in question is of great significance and value in the history of the Church. Those who do not accept it as a Gospel have still to reckon with the fact of its composition, and to take account of its presence in and influence upon the Church of the 2nd century.
But when these allowances have been made, it is clearly a matter of the very first importance whether the Fourth Gospel is, on the one hand, the work of an eye-witness, belonging to the innermost circle of Jesus disciples, who after a long interval wrote a trustworthy record of what he had heard and seen, interpreted through the mellowing medium of half a century of Christian experience and service; or, on the other, a treatise of speculative theology cast into the form of an imaginative biography of Jesus, dating from the second or third decade of the 2nd cent., and testifying only to the form which the new religion was taking under the widely altered circumstances of a rapidly developing Church. Such a question as this is not of secondary but of primary importance at any time, and the critical controversies of recent years make a decision upon it to be crucial.
It is impossible here to survey the history of criticism, but it is desirable to say a few words upon it. According to a universally accepted tradition, extending from the third quarter of the 2nd cent. to the beginning of the 19th, John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, was held to be the author of the Gospel, the three Epistles that went by his name, and the Apocalypse. This tradition, so far as the Gospel was concerned, was unbroken and almost unchallenged, the one exception being formed by an obscure and doubtful sect, or class of unbelievers, called Alogi by Epiphanius, who attributed the Gospel and the Apocalypse to Cerinthus! From the beginning of the 19th cent., however, and especially after the publication of Bretschneiders Probabilia in 1820, an almost incessant conflict has been waged between the traditional belief and hypotheses which in more or less modified form attribute the Gospel to an Ephesian elder or an Alexandrian Christian philosopher belonging to the first half of the 2nd century. Baur of Tbingen, in whose theories of doctrinal development this document held an important place, fixed its date about a.d. 170, but this view has long been given up as untenable. Keim, who argued strongly against the Johannine authorship, at first adopted the date a.d. 100115, but afterwards regarded a.d. 130 as more probable. During the last fifty years the conflict has been waged with great ability on both sides, with the effect of modifying extreme views, and more than once it has seemed as if an agreement between the more moderate critics on either side had become possible. Among the conservatives, Zahn and Weiss in Germany, and Westcott, Sanday, Reynolds, and Drummond in this country, have been conspicuous; whilst, on the other hand, Holtzmann, Jlicher, and Schmiedel have been uncompromising opponents of the historicity of the Gospel on any terms. Schrer, Harnack, and others have taken up a middle position, ascribing the book to a disciple of John the Apostle, who embodied in it his masters teaching; whilst Wendt and some others have advocated partition theories, implying the existence of a genuine Johannine document as the basis of the Gospel, blended with later and less trustworthy matter.
The position taken in this article is that the traditional view which ascribes the authorship of the Gospel to John the Apostle is still by far the most probable account of its origin, the undeniable difficulties attaching to this view being explicable by a reasonable consideration of the circumstances of its composition. Fuller light, however, has been cast upon the whole subject by the discussions of recent years, and much is to be learned from the investigations of eminent scholars and their arguments against the Johannine authorship, especially when these do not rest upon a denial of the supernatural element in Scripture. In the present treatment of the subject, controversy will be avoided as far as possible, and stress will be laid upon the positive and constructive elements in the examination. The method adopted will be to inquire into (1) the External Evidence in favour of St. Johns authorship; (2) the Internal Evidence; (3) the scope of the Gospel and its relation to the Synoptics; (4) Objections and suggested alternative Theories; (5) Summary of the Conclusions reached.
1. External Evidence.It is not questioned that considerably before the close of the 2nd cent. the four Gospels, substantially as we have them, were accepted as authoritative in the Christian Church. This is proved by the testimony of Irenus, bishop of Lyons, in Gaul, writing about a.d. 180; Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, about a.d. 170; Clement, head of the catechetical school in Alexandria, about 190; and Tertullian, the eloquent African Father, who wrote at the end of the century, and who quotes freely from all the Gospels by name. The full and explicit evidence of the Muratorian Canon may also be dated about a.d. 180. Irenus assumes the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel as generally accepted and unquestioned. He expressly states that after the publication of the other three Gospels, John the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon His breast, himself also published the Gospel, while he was dwelling at Ephesus in Asia. He tells us that he himself when a boy had heard from the lips of Polycarp his reminiscences of his familiar intercourse with John and the rest of those that had seen the Lord. He dwells in mystical fashion upon the significance of the number four, and characterizes the Fourth Gospel as corresponding to the flying eagle among the living creatures of Eze 1:10; Eze 10:14. Theophilus of Antioch quotes it as follows: John says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God (Aut. 22). The Muratorian Fragment, which gives a list of the canonical books recognized in the Western Church of the period, ascribes the Fourth Gospel to John, one of the disciples, and whilst recognizing that in the single books of the Gospels different principles are taught, the writer adds that they all alike confirm the faith of believers by their agreement in their teaching about Christs birth, passion, death, resurrection, and twofold advent. Clement of Alexandria, in handing down the tradition of the elders from the first, says that John, last of all, having observed that the bodily things had been exhibited in the Gospels, exhorted by his friends and inspired by the Spirit, produced a spiritual gospel (Eus. HE vi. 14). Tertullian, among other testimonies, shows his opinion of the authorship and his discrimination of the character of the Gospels by saying, Among the Apostles, John and Matthew form the faith within us; among the companions of the Apostles, Luke and Mark renovate it (adv. Marc. iv. 2).
Was this clearly expressed and wide-spread belief of the Church well based? First of all it must be said that the personal link supplied by Irenus is of itself so important as to be almost conclusive, unless very strong counter-reasons can be alleged. It was impossible that he should be mistaken as to the general drift of Polycarps teaching, and Polycarp had learned directly from John himself. On the broad issue of Johns ministry in Asia and his composition of a Gospel, this testimony is of the first importance. The suggestion that confusion had arisen in his mind between the Apostle and a certain Presbyter John of Asia will be considered later, but it is exceedingly unlikely that on such a matter either Polycarp or his youthful auditor could have made a mistake. The testimony of churches and of a whole generation of Christians, inheritors of the same tradition at only one remove, corroborates the emphatic and repeated statements of Irenus.
It is quite true that in the first half of the 2nd cent. the references to the Gospel are neither so direct nor so abundant as might have been expected. The question whether Justin Martyr knew, and recognized, our Gospels as such has been much debated. His references to the Gospel narrative are very numerous, and the coincidences between the form of the records which he quotes and our Gospels are often close and striking, but he mentions no authors names. In his first Apol. ch. 61 (about a.d. 160), however, we read, For Christ also said, Except ye be born again, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven, which would appear to imply, though it does not prove, an acquaintance with the Fourth Gospel. Other references to Christ as only begotten Son and the Word are suggestive. The recent discovery of Tatians Diatessaron (c [Note: circa, about.] . a.d. 160) makes it certain that that harmony of the Gospels began with the words, In the beginning was the Word, and that the whole of the Fourth Gospel was interwoven into its substance. The Epistle of Polycarp to the Philippians (before a.d. 120) apparently quotes 1 Jn. in the words, For every one who does not acknowledge that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is antichrist, but no express citation is made. The Epistles of Ignatius (about a.d. 110) apparently show traces of the Fourth Gospel in their references to living water, children of light, Christ as the Word and as the door, but these are not conclusive. Papias may have known and used this Gospel, as Irenus seems to imply (adv. Hr. 36); and Eusebius distinctly says that he used testimonies from the First Epistle of John (HE iii. 39).
Some of the most noteworthy testimonies to the use of the Gospel in the former part of the 2nd cent. are drawn from heretical writings. It is certain that Heracleon of the Valentinian school of Gnostics knew and quoted the Gospel as a recognized authority, and it would even appear that he wrote an elaborate commentary on the whole Gospel. Origen quotes him as misapprehending the text, No one has seen God at any time. Hippolytus in his Refutation of all Heresies (vi. 30) proves that Valentinus (about a.d. 130) quoted Joh 10:8, The Saviour says, All that came before me are thieves and robbers, and that Basilides a little earlier made distinct reference to Joh 1:9 : As it is said in the Gospels, the true light that enlighteneth every man was coming into the world. Slighter and more doubtful references are found in the Clementine Homilies and other heretical writings, and these go at least some way to show that the peculiar phraseology of the Fourth Gospel was known and appealed to as authoritative in the middle of the 2nd century.
It is not, however, by explicit references to texts that a question of this kind can be best settled. The chief weight of external evidence lies in the fact that between a.d. 150 and 180 four Gospels were recognized in the Church as authentic records, read in the assemblies, and accepted as authoritative. Also, that the fourth of these was with practical unanimity ascribed to St. John, as written by him in Asia at the very end of the 1st century. This acceptance included districts as far apart as Syria and Gaul, Alexandria, Carthage and Rome. Can the whole Church of a.d. 180 have been utterly mistaken on such a point? True, the early Christians were uncritical in the modern sense of the word criticism. But they were not disposed lightly to accept alleged Apostolic writings as genuine. On the other hand, the inquiry into their authenticity was usually close and careful. A period of fifty years is short when we remember how generations overlap one another, and how carefully traditions on the most sacred subjects are guarded. It is hardly possible to suppose that on such salient questions as the residence of the Apostle John for twenty years in Asia, and the composition of one of the four authoritative Gospels, any serious error or confusion could have arisen so early. At least the prima facie external evidence is so far in favour of Johannine authorship that it must stand accepted, unless very serious objections to it can be sustained, or some more satisfactory account of the origin of the Gospel can be suggested.
2. Internal Evidence.The first point to be noted under this head is that the book makes a direct claim to have been written by an eye-witness, and indirectly it points to the Apostle John as its author. The phrase We beheld his glory (Joh 1:14) is not decisive, though, taken in connexion with 1Jn 1:1-4, if the Epistle be genuine, the claim of first-hand knowledge is certainly made. There can be no question concerning the general meaning of Joh 19:35, though its detailed exegesis presents difficulties. The verse might be paraphrased, He that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is genuine and real; and he knoweth that he speaketh things that are true, so that ye also may believe. No one reading this can question that the writer of the narrative of the Crucifixion claims to have been present and to be recording what he had seen with his own eyes. A peculiar pronoun is used in he knoweth, and Sanday, E. A. Abbott, and others would interpret the word emphatically, of Christ; but its use is probably due to the fact that the writer is speaking of himself in the third person, and emphasizes his own personal testimony. Parallel instances from classical and modern writers have been adduced. In Joh 21:24 further corroboration is given of the accuracy of the disciple who was at the same time an eye-witness of the events and the author of the narrative. It appears, however, to have been added to the Gospel by others. We know that his witness is true is probably intended as an endorsement on the part of certain Ephesian elders, whilst the I suppose of Joh 1:25 may indicate yet another hand. In addition to these more or less explicit testimonies, notes are freely introduced throughout the Gospel which could proceed only from a member of the innermost circle of Christs disciples, though the writer never mentions his own name. Instead, he alludes to the disciple whom Jesus loved in such a way that by a process of exhaustion it may be proved from chs. 20 and 21 that John was intended. It can hardly be questioned that the writer delicately but unmistakably claims to be that disciple himself. An ordinary pseudonymous writer does not proceed in this fashion. The authority of an honoured name is sometimes claimed by an unknown author, as in the Ascension of Isaiah and the Apocalypse of Baruch, not fraudulently, but as a literary device to give character to his theme. In this case, however, the indirect suggestion of authorship either must indicate that the Apostle wrote the book, modestly veiling his own identity, or else it points to an unwarrantable pretence on the part of a later writer, who threw his own ideas into the form of a (largely imaginary) narrative. Some modern critics do not shrink from this last hypothesis; but it surely implies a misleading misrepresentation of facts incredible under the circumstances. A third theory, which would imply collaboration on the part of one of Johns own disciples, will be discussed later.
Does the Gospel, then, as a whole bear out this claim, directly or indirectly made? Is it such a book as may well have proceeded from one who ranked amongst the foremost figures in the sacred drama of which Jesus of Nazareth was the august centre? The answer cannot be given in a word. Many features of the Gospel strongly support such a claim. Putting aside for the moment its spiritual teaching, we may say that it displays a minute knowledge of details which could have come only from an eye-witness who was intimately acquainted not only with the places and scenes, but with the persons concerned, their characters and motives. No artistic imagination could have enabled an Ephesian Christian of the 2nd cent. either to insert the minute topographical and other touches which bespeak the eye-witness, or to invent incidents like those recorded in chs. 4 and 9, bearing a verisimilitude which commends them at once to the reader. On the other hand, there is so much in the Gospel which implies a point of view entirely different from that of Christs immediate contemporaries, and there are so many divergences from the Synoptics in the description of our Lords ministryas regards time, place, the manner of Christs teaching, and particular incidents recordedas to make it impossible to ascribe it to the son of Zebedee without a full explanation of serious difficulties and discrepancies. But for these two diverse aspects of the same document, there would be no Johannine problem. It will be well to take the two in order, and see if they can be reconciled.
It has been usual to arrange the evidence in narrowing circles; to show that the author must have been a Jew, a Palestinian, an eye-witness, one of the Twelve, and lastly the Apostle John. It is impossible, however, to array here all the proofs available. It must suffice to say that a close familiarity with Jewish customs and observances, such as could not have been possessed by an Ephesian in a.d. 120, is shown in the account of the Feast of Tabernacles (ch. 7), the Dedication (Joh 10:22), Jews and Samaritans (Joh 4:19-20), conversation with women in public (Joh 4:27), ceremonial pollution (Joh 18:28), and other minute touches, each slight in itself, but taken together of great weight. The numerous references to the Messianic hope in chs. 1, 4, 7, 8. and indeed throughout the Gospel, indicate one who was thoroughly acquainted with Jewish views and expectations from within. Familiarity with the Jewish Scriptures and a free but reverent use of them are apparent throughout. The places mentioned are not such as a stranger would or could have introduced into an imaginary narrative. As examples we may mention Bethany beyond Jordan (Joh 1:28), non (Joh 3:23), Ephraim (Joh 11:54), the treasury (Joh 8:20), the pool of Siloam (Joh 9:7), Solomons porch (Joh 10:23), the Kidron (Joh 18:1). It is true that difficulties have been raised with regard to some of these, e.g. Sychar (Joh 4:5); but recent exploration has in several instances confirmed the writers accuracy. Again, the habit of the writer is to specify details of time, place, and number which must either indicate exceptional first-hand knowledge, or have been gratuitously inserted by one who wished to convey an impression of local colour. The very hour of the day at which events happened is noted in Joh 1:39, Joh 4:6; Joh 4:52, Joh 19:14; or the early morning is mentioned, as in Joh 18:28, Joh 20:1, Joh 21:4; or the night, as in Joh 3:2, Joh 13:30. The specification of six water-pots (Joh 2:6), five and twenty furlongs (Joh 6:19), two hundred cubits (Joh 21:8), and the hundred and fifty-three fishes (Joh 21:11), is a further illustration either of an old mans exact reminiscences of events long past or of a late writers pretended acquaintance with precise details.
The portraiture of persons and incidents characteristic of the Gospel is noteworthy. The picture is so graphic, and the effect is produced by so few strokes, often unexpected, that it must be ascribed either to an eye-witness or to a writer of altogether exceptional genius. The conversations recorded, the scene of the feet-washing, the representation of the Samaritan woman, of the man born blind, the portraiture of Peter, of Pilate, of the priests and the multitude, the questionings of the disciples, the revelation of secret motives and fears, the interpretations of Christs hidden meanings and difficult sayingsmay, as an abstract possibility, have been invented. But if they were notand it is hard to understand how a writer who lays so much stress upon truth could bring himself to such a perversion of itthen the author of the Gospel must have moved close to the very centre of the sacred events he describes. In many cases it is not fair to present such a dilemma as this. The use of the imagination in literature is often not only permissible, but laudable. It is quite conceivable that a Jew of the 2nd cent. before Christ might use the name of Solomon, or the author of the Clementine Homilies in the 2nd cent. a.d. might write a romance, without any idea of deception in his own mind or in that of his readers. But the kind of narrative contained in the Fourth Gospel, if it be not genuinely and substantially historical, implies such an attempt to produce a false impression of first-hand knowledge as becomes seriously misleading. The impossibility of conceiving a writer possessed of both the power and the will thus deliberately to colour and alter the facts, forms an important link in the chain of argument. Fabulous additions to the canonical Gospels are extant, and their character is well known. They present a marked contrast in almost all respects to the characteristic features of the document before us. The name of John is never once mentioned in the Gospel, though the writer claims to be intimately acquainted with all the chief figures of the Gospel history. As deliberate self-suppression this can be understood, but as an attempt on the part of a writer a century afterwards to pose as the beloved disciple, a prominent figure in elaborate descriptions of entirely imaginary scenes, it is unparalleled in literature and incredible in a religious historian.
A volume might well be filled with an examination of the special features of the Gospel in its portrayal of Christ Himself. Even the most superficial reader must have noticed the remarkable combination of lowliness with sublimity, of superhuman dignity with human infirmities and limitations, which characterizes the Fourth Gospel. It is in it that we read of the Saviours weariness by the well and His thirst upon the Cross, of the personal affection of Jesus for the family at Bethany, and His tender care of His mother in the very hour of His last agony. But it is in the same record that the characteristic glory of His miracles is most fully brought out; in it the loftiest claims are made not only for the Master by a disciple, but by the Lord for Himselfas the Light of the World, the Bread from Heaven, the only true Shepherd of men, Himself the Resurrection and the Life. He is saluted not only by Mary as Rabboni, but by Thomas as my Lord and my God. The writer claims an exceptional and intimate knowledge of Christ. He tells us what He felt, as in Joh 11:33 and Joh 13:21; the reasons for His actions, as in Joh 6:6; and he is bold to describe the Lords secret thoughts and purposes (Joh 6:61; Joh 6:64, Joh 18:4, Joh 19:28). More than this, in the Prologue of a Gospel which describes the humanity of the Son of Man, He is set forth as the only Son of God, the Word made flesh, the Word who in the beginning was with God and was God, Creator and Sustainer of all that is. This marked characteristic of the Gospel has indeed been made a ground of objection to it. We cannot conceive, it is said, that one who had moved in the circle of the Immediate companions of Jesus of Nazareth could have spoken of Him in this fashion. The reply is obvious. What kind of a portrait is actually presented? If it be an entirely incredible picture, an extravagant attempt to portray a moral and spiritual prodigy or monstrosity, an impossible combination of the human and the Divine, then we may well suppose that human imagination has been at work. But if a uniquely impressive image is set forth in these pages, which has commanded the homage of saints and scholars for centuries, and won the hearts of millions of those simple souls to whom the highest spiritual truths are so often revealed, then it may be surmised that the Fourth Gospel is not due to the fancy of an unknown artist of genius in the 2nd cent., but it is due to one who reflected, as in a mirror, from a living reality the splendour of Him who was the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.
3. Scope of the Gospel and its relation to the Synoptics.It cannot be denied that there are grave difficulties in the way of our accepting the conclusion to which we are irresistibly led by the above arguments. Some of these were felt as early as the 2nd and 3rd cents., and have always been more or less present to the minds of Christians. Others have been more clearly brought out by the controversy concerning the genuineness of the Gospel which has been waged through the last half-century. In this section it will be convenient to try to answer the questions, How does this Gospel, if written by the Apostle John, stand related to the other three?, how can the obvious discrepancies be reconciled?, and how far do the writers object and method and point of view account for the unique character of the narrative he has presented?
It is clear, to begin with, that the plan of the Fourth Gospel differs essentially from that of the Synoptics. The writer himself makes this plain in his own account of his book (Joh 20:30-31). He did not undertake to write a biography of Christ, even in the limited sense in which that may be said of Matthew, Mark, and Luke; he selected certain significant parts and aspects of Christs work, for the purpose of winning or conserving faith in Him, presumably under special difficulties or dangers. We are therefore prepared for a difference in the very framework and structure of the book, and this we assuredly find.
The Fourth Gospel opens with an introduction to which there is no parallel in the NT. The circumstances of Christs birth and childhood, His baptism and temptation, are entirely passed by. His relation to John the Baptist is dealt with from a later, doctrinal point of view, rather than from that of the chronicler describing events in their historical development. Only typical incidents from the ministry are selected, and only such aspects of these as lend themselves to didactic treatment. It will be convenient here to give a brief outline of the plan and contents of the Gospel.
The Prologue: Joh 1:1-18. The Wordin Eternity, in Creation, in History and Incarnate.
Part i.: Joh 1:19 to Joh 12:50. Christs manifestation of Himself in a Ministry of Life and Love.
1.The proclamation of His message, the testimony of the Baptist, of His works, and of His disciples. The beginnings of faith and unbelief, Joh 1:19 to Joh 4:54.
2.The period of Controversy and Conflict; Christs vindication of Himself against adversaries, partly in discourse, partly in mighty works, Joh 5:1 to Joh 12:50.
Part ii.: Joh 13:1 to Joh 20:31. Christs manifestation of Himself in Suffering, in Death, and in Victory over Death.
1.His last acts, discourses, and prayer, Joh 13:1 to Joh 17:26.
2.His betrayal, trial, death, and burial, Joh 18:1 to Joh 19:42.
3.His Resurrection and Appearances to His disciples, ch. 20.
The Epilogue: Joh 21:1-23. Further Appearances and Last Words.
Notes appended by other hands: Joh 21:24-25.
The following are some detailed differences of importance. The exact duration of Christs ministry cannot be determined either by the Synoptic narratives or by St. Johns; but it would appear that in the former it might he compressed within the compass of one year, whilst the latter in its mention of Passovers and Festivals would require more than three. Again, the Synoptic Gospels describe a ministry exercised almost entirely in Galilee up to the closing scenes in Jerusalem; St. John has little to say of Galilee, but he does mention an important visit to Samaria, and narrates at length events and controversies in Jerusalem of which the other Evangelists say nothing. On these points, however, it may be remarked that none of the Gospels professes to he complete; that an exact chronological outline can with difficulty be constructed from any of them; and that each gives passing hints of events of which the writer had cognisance, though it does not come within his purpose to describe them.
Minute difficulties of detail cannot he discussed here. But the difference between the Synoptists and St. John with regard to the date of the Last Supper and Christs death has a special importance of its own. The first three Gospels represent Jesus as partaking of the regular Passover with His disciples, and as being crucified on the 15th of Nisan; St. John describes the Last Supper as on the day of preparation, and the crucifixion as taking place on the 14th Nisan, the great day of the Passover. Various modes of reconciliation have been proposed, turning upon the meaning of the phrase eating the Passover and on the Jewish mode of reckoning days from sunset to sunset. It has been further suggested that the term Passover was applied to the eating of the sacrifice called Chagigah, which was offered on the first Paschal day immediately after the morning service. The explanations offered of the discrepancy are ingenious, and one or other of them may be correct. But it can hardly be said that any has commanded general acceptance among critics, and meanwhile the difference remains. It must not be supposed, however, that this necessarily implies an error on the part of the Fourth Gospel. Many critics contend earnestly that St. John gives the more consistent and intelligible account of the Last Supper, the trial and the death of Jesus in relation to the Jewish festival, and that the phraseology of the Synoptists may be more easily and satisfactorily explained in terms of St. Johns narrative than vice versa. The objection that the writer of the Fourth Gospel had a dogmatic reason for changing the day and representing Christ as the true Passover Sacrifice offered for the sins of the world, is not borne out by facts. The writer nowhere speaks of Christ as the Paschal Lamb (not even in Joh 19:36), and his allusion to the date is too slight and casual to warrant the supposition that he wishes to press home the teaching of 1Co 5:7. Further, if the Synoptic tradition of the date had been established, it is most unlikely that an anonymous writer of the 2nd cent. would have set himself in opposition to it. If St. John wrote of his own superior knowledge, a discrepancy is intelligible, and the correction of a previous misapprehension may have been intentional. It may be said in passing that the argument drawn from the Quartodeciman controversywhether Christians ought to keep the Passover at the same time as the Jews, i.e. always on 14th Nisan, whatever day of the week it might be, or always on Sunday as the first day of the week, on whatever day of the month it might fallcannot legitimately be made to tell against the historicity of the Fourth Gospel. The controversy concerned the relation between Christians and Jews as such, rather than the exact date of Christs death and its meaning as a Passover sacrifice.
We reach the centre of difficulty, however, when we try to understand the marked difference between the body of the Synoptic narrative on the one band and St. Johns on the other. St. Johns omissions are so striking. He never refers to the miraculous birth of Christ; he gives no account of the Transfiguration, the institution of the Eucharist, or the Agony in the Garden; a large number of miracles are not described, nor is their occurrence hinted at; no parables are recorded, though the Synoptics make them a chief feature of Christs teaching, and the very word for parable in its strict sense does not occur in the book. On the other hand, his additions are notable. How is it that the Synoptists have nothing to say of the changing of Water into Wine, of the Feet-washing, and especially of the Raising of Lazarus? Is it conceivable that if such a miracle was actually worked it could have had no place in any of the great traditional accounts of His ministry? Are we to understand that the Synoptists are correct when they place the Cleansing of the Temple at the end of Christs ministry, or St. John when he describes it at the beginning? Other apparent discrepancies are of less importance. They concern the Anointing of Joh 12:1-50 as compared with the narratives of Mat 26:1-75, Mar 14:1-72, and Luk 7:1-50; the accounts of the trial of Jesus given in the Synoptics in their relation to that of Jn.; and the appearances of the Lord after His Resurrection as recorded by St. John in the 20th and 21st chapters.
Further, the most superficial reader cannot but be struck by the different representations of Christs ministry in its main features. The Synoptic Gospels do not contain the long discourses which are reported in St. John, always couched in a peculiar and characteristic diction, nor do they mention the frequent controversies with the Jews, who are represented in the Fourth Gospel as frequently interrupting Christs addresses with questions and objections to which the Synoptists present no parallel. The very mention of the Jews, so often and so unfavourably referred to, is, it is said, a sign of a later hand. The writer of the Fourth Gospel uses the same somewhat peculiar style, whether he is reporting Christs words or adding his own comments, and it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the two. In doctrine also, it is contended, there are irreconcilable differences between the Three Evangelists and the Fourth. Judgment is viewed by the Synoptists as a great eschatological event in the future, but by St. John as a present spiritual fact accomplished even whilst Christ was on earth. It is said, further, that Gnostic and other heresies of various kinds belonging to the 2nd cent. are alluded to in the Gospel, and that the Johannine authorship is therefore untenable. Last, but by no means least, the use of the word Logos to describe the Eternal Word, and the doctrines associated with the name that are found in the Prologue, point, it is said, conclusively to an Alexandrian origin, and are practically irreconcilable with the authorship of the son of Zebedee.
An adequate solution of these acknowledged difficulties can be found only in a full consideration of the circumstances under which, and the objects for which, the Gospel was written. It is an essential part of the hypothesis of Johannine authorship that the book was not composed till a generation after the death of St. Paul, in a community where Christianity had been established for nearly half a century. Such an interval, at such a rapidly advancing period of Christian history, implied changes of a deep and far-reaching kind. An advanced Christologythat is to say, a fuller development of the doctrines implied in the fundamental Christian belief that God was in Christ, and that Christ was the Son of the living Godwas to be expected. The hearing of this truth upon current religious ideas among both Jews and Gentiles became more clearly seen in every succeeding decade. No writer, be he aged Apostle or Ephesian elder, could write in a.d. 100 as he would have written fifty years before. The very point of view from which the wonderful Life of lives was considered and estimated had changed. With it had changed also the proportionate significance of the details of that life and work. The central figure was the same. His words and deeds remained, indelibly imprinted upon the mind of one who had lived when there was mid-sea and the mighty things. But if an artist at the same time knows his work and is true to the realities he paints, his perspective changes, the lights and shadows of his picture alter, and the relative size of objects depicted is altered, when a new point of view is taken up.
If the Apostle John wrote the Fourth Gospel at all, it must have been composed under these conditions, as early tradition asserts that it was. The same tradition declares that it was written under pressure from without, that it presupposed the first three Gospels, and was not intended to cover the ground occupied by them, that it was a spiritual Gospelwhich is only another way of saying what the author himself has told us, that he recorded some among the many signs that Jesus did, viewed from the side of a Divine mission and purpose, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life through his name (Joh 20:31). Omissions and additions, therefore, such as are obvious in a comparison between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel, cannot count as arguments against the authenticity of the latter. Neither can a more completely developed doctrine of the Person of Christ, nor a somewhat altered representation of His ministry and utterances. We have rather to ask whether the modifications observable in the latest narrative of all, written after a long time, under altered conditions, and from a different point of view, imply an incompatibility so marked that it cannot be ascribed to an eye-witness and an Apostle. All the Gospels are confessedly fragmentary, and if one of the Twelve was induced after the lapse of nearly two generations to supplement the records of Christs life already in existence, and to present a selection of his own reminiscences for the purpose of inducing and maintaining Christian faith, quite as large a measure of difference in the narrative as that sketched in a previous paragraph may justly he expected. Some of those discrepancies have been exaggerated. For example, the mode of speaking of the Jews In the Fourth Gospel is prepared for by the expressions found in Mat 28:15, Mar 7:3, Luk 7:3; Luk 23:51. Indeed, such a habit of estimating and describing the members of a nation which had so steadily set itself against Christ and His followers as to have become the very embodiment of virulent opposition to Christianity, was inevitable. Again, it is undeniable that, as St. John from his later point of view discerned not only the glory that should come after the shame and the death of the Saviour, but the glory that was implied in His suffering and death on behalf of the world, so he described not only the final judgment that was to come at the end of all things, but the present judging, searching, sifting power of Christs words and presence in the earth, as the Synoptists do not. His point of view in this and in other respects is confessedly more spiritual. But he is not unmindful of that aspect of judgment which predominates in the Synoptics. In Joh 5:21-29 the two points of view are harmonized, and a very definite reference is made to a final judgment as an eschatological event. If it is true, as we read in Joh 12:31, that now is the judgment of this world, the same chapter reminds us (v. 48) that Christs word will judge men In the last day. There is no contradiction, except for shallow interpreters, between the statements that the Kingdom of pod is already come, and that its coming must he waited for with patience, perhaps during a long period. A believer in judgment already accomplished is so far prepared for the confident expectation of a final judgment at the end of the ages.
But the examination of details necessarily lies outside the scope of the present article. The only further point which can be noticed here concerns the style and diction of the Fourth Gospel, and the contrast observable between the discourses of Jesus as reported in it and in the three Synoptics. So marked a difference in this respect does obtain, that an upholder of the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel must be prepared to admit that the aged Apostle sees all the objects he describes through a medium of his own, and casts his record into a shape moulded by the habit and working of his own mind. The personal stamp of the writer is very strongly impressed upon his material. Inspiration is quite consistent with marked individuality in the prophets character and writings, and the highest kind of inspiration is inseparable from this. The accuracy of the chronicler who regards himself as a mere recording pen is one thing, the truth of the artist or historian who passes all that he knows through the alembic of his own vigorous and active mind is another. As regards the form of the narrative, St. John, if he be the writer, must have allowed himself freedom to present his record in a mould determined by the later working of his own mind and the conditions of the times in which he lived. He presents us not with an exact photographthough traces of the photography of memory are fairly abundantbut with a free and true picture of the life of Him who was and is the Life indeed.
Differences in the mode of presentation do indeed exist, but they need not he exaggerated. For example, as regards the number and length of Christs discourses recorded, the Fourth Gospel is not separated from the rest by some impassable gulf. Dr. Drummond has calculated that whilst in Mt. Christ speaks 139 times, in Jn. He speaks only 122 times; and that as regards length of speeches, Mt. records 111 utterances not exceeding 3 verses and Jn. 96; of speeches exceeding 3 and not exceeding 10 verses, Mt. gives 16 and Joh 20:1-31; whilst of discourses exceeding 20 verses, Mt. records 4 and Joh 3:1-36 only. Then as regards the character of the sayings of Jesus, it is often represented that those recorded in the Synoptics are pithy, incisive, and telling, whereas in Jn. the style is prolix and monotonous. Dr. Drummond, however, enumerates sixty detached logia taken from the Fourth Gospel quite as aphoristic and memorable as any contained in the other three, whilst it has often been pointed out that in Mat 11:25-27 Is found in germ the substance, both in matter and in form, of teaching which is fully developed by St. John. At the same time it is not denied that the Fourth Evangelist allows himself the liberty of blending text and comment in one narrative marked by the same characteristic diction, so that, as in ch. 3, it is not altogether easy to determine whether Jesus or John the Baptist or the Evangelist is speaking; or, as in Joh 17:3, whether the Evangelist has not expressed in his own words the substance of what fell from the Masters lips. Such freedom, however, is not really misleading. A measure of translation, of re-statement and reproduction, was necessary from the very nature of the case. Harnack says of the NT generally, The Greek language lies upon these writings only like a diaphanous veil, and it requires hardly any effort to retranslate their contents into Hebrew or Aramaic. Such slight, but easily penetrable veils, partly of language, partly of representation, necessarily rest over the four narratives of our Lords life and ministry which have been handed down through different media and under different conditions. The argument here briefly sketched out goes to show that the Fourth Gospel contains no representation of the Person, words, or works of Christ incompatible or seriously inconsistent with those of the Synoptics, whilst at the same time it bears the indubitable marks of a sacred individuality of its own.
4. Alternative theories.A considerable number of eminent scholars of the last two generations have not been satisfied by the line of argument indicated above, and they decline to accept not only the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel, but also its historical trustworthiness. It is easy to understand that considerations which would strongly appeal to Christian believers might have small weight with those who reject the supernatural, and cannot admit the evidence of an alleged eye-witness of the raising of Lazarus, and who profess to be able to trace the growth of the legend which transformed the prophet of Nazareth into the Word of God Incarnate. For them the document we are examining is an ideal composition of the 2nd cent., of no greater historical value than the Gospel of Nicodemus or the Clementine Recognitions. Others, who are convinced that the book embodies early and perhaps Apostolical traditions, have adopted mediating theories of different types, pointing to the use by a 2nd cent. writer of earlier sources, much as the Logia document is supposed to have been used by the author of Matthew or the Markan document by St. Luke. The late date assigned by Baur to the composition of the Gospel has long been given up as impossible, and a theory of forgery is no longer advocated by any one whose judgment is worth considering. Few responsible critics now would place the document later than a.d. 110120, and the good faith of the writer is hardly questioned even among those who most strenuously deny that his facts have any historical basis.
Among partition-theories may be classed that of Renan, who considers that the history of the Fourth Gospel is more accurate than that of the Synoptics, and that it was probably derived from the Apostle John by one of his disciples; but he slights the discourses as tedious and almost entirely fictitious. Wendt, on the other hand, holds that a third main original source of the Gospelsin addition to the Logia of Matthew and the original Markis to be found in the groundwork of the discourses of the Fourth Gospel, whilst the historical framework came from another hand and is less trustworthy. Ewald held that St. John composed the Gospel with the aid of friends and disciples whose pens are discernible in the body of the work, whilst the 21st chapter is entirely theirs, though written with the Apostles sanction and before his death. Dr. E.A. Abbott holds that John the son of Zebedee was the author of the Gospel, but not in its present shape. He says that viewed as history the document must be analyzed so as to separate fact from not-fact, but that it has considerable value in correcting impressions derived from the Synoptic Gospels, whilst the spiritual significance of the Gospel is exceedingly high. Harnack attributes the authorship to John the Elder of Ephesus, a disciple of the Apostle, who has incorporated in his work some of his teachers reminiscences, so that it might be styled Gospel of John the Elder according to John the Son of Zebedee. He holds that the Gospel, the three Epistles and the Apocalypse in its latest, i.e. its Christian, form, were all written by John the Elder in Asia about a.d. 100. Bousset ascribes the Gospel to a disciple of this John, who had access to traditional knowledge concerning Christs Judgn ministry which enabled him in some respects to correct and to supplement the Synoptic accounts. Schmiedel, on the other hand, considers that the Gospel cannot be the work of any eye-witness, Apostolic or non-Apostolic, and that it was not meant to record actual history. The author is a great and eminent soul, in whom the tendencies of his time (about a.d. 120) are brought to focus; and he finds in the Gospel the ripest fruit of primitive Christianityat the same time the furthest removed from the original form.
The mention of John the Elder brings to view the only definite alternative theory of authorship that has gained much support. It is based upon a much discussed passage from Papias, preserved for us by Eusebius (HE iii. 39), of which the following sentence is the most important: If, then, any one came who had been a follower of the elders, I questioned him in regard to the words of the elderswhat Andrew or what Peter said, or what was said by Philip, or by Thomas, or by John, or by Matthew, or by any other of the disciples of the Lord, and what things Aristion and the presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say. Upon this foundation the hypothesis has been set up that the John who at the end of the 1st cent. gained such a position of influence in Ephesus was not the Apostle, but a presbyter of the same name. It follows that Irenus totally misunderstood Polycarp when he claimed to have heard John, imagining that he meant the Apostle; and moreover, that Polycrates was mistaken in his reference to the Apostles residence in Ephesus; and further, that Clement of Alexandria and the whole Church of the 2nd cent. were similarly misled. John the Elder is at best a shadowy personage. Dr. Salmon contended that he had no real existence, but that Papias in the extract names the Apostle John twice over, though through his slovenliness of composition it might seem as if two distinct persons were intended. It would appear, however, to be fairly established that a second John, known as the Presbyter, was recognized by Papias, and perhaps by Eusebius, but he is an obscure figure; history is almost entirely silent about him, and there is no proof that he was ever in Asia at all. It is hard to believe that such a person was really the author of a book which so boldly challenged and so seriously modified evangelical tradition, and that, by an inexplicable mistake which arose within the living memory of persons actually concerned, his personality was confused with that of one of the inner circle of the twelve Apostles of the Lord.
5. Summary and Conclusion.It will be seen that some approximation has taken place between the views of those who have defended and those who have assailed the traditional view of the authorship of the Gospel, since the middle of the last century. It is fairly agreed that the date of its composition must be fixed somewhere between a.d. 90 and 110. It is further agreed by a large majority of moderate critics that the Gospel contains historical elements of great value, which must have come from an eye-witness. These are independent of all the sources upon which the Synoptists had drawn, and they enable us in many important particulars to supplement the earlier narratives. It is admitted, further, that the discourses at least contain valuable original material which may have come from John the Apostle, though many contend that this has been so worked over by a later hand that its general complexion has been altered. On the other hand, it is admitted by many who maintain the Johannine authorship, that the Apostle must have written the Gospel in advanced age, that he may have been aided by others, that he has cast his reminiscences into a characteristic form determined by the working of a mind saturated with the teaching of Christ but retaining its own individuality, and that he was of necessity largely influenced by the conditions of the time in which he wrote.
It is not pretended that the measure of approximation thus reached amounts to agreement. The difference in time between a.d. 90 and 110 may appear slight, but the earlier date admits the possibility of Apostolic authorship, and the later does not. The agreement to recognize elements of value in the historical portion of the Gospel is important, but it does not extend to the admission of the possibility that one who had himself witnessed with his own eyes the signs and mighty works that Jesus wrought, did also at the close of his life record with substantial accuracy what he had heard and seen, so that readers of to-day may be assured that they are studying history and not a work of pious Imagination. The deep chasm remains practically unbridged which separates those, on the one hand, who hold that the view of the Person and work of Christ taken in the Fourth Gospel can claim the authority of an eye-witness, one of the men who companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and went out among us, and, on the other, those who hold that the document contains a developed and practically unhistorical representation of facts, devised to support a doctrinal position which belongs essentially not to the first, but to the fourth generation of primitive Christians.
This distinction is deep and vital. It need not be exaggerated, as if such representative scholars as Harnack and Schrer on one side, and Sanday and Drummond on the other, are fundamentally antagonistic in their views of Christianity. But the distinction should not be minimized, for a deep doctrinal difference is often tacitly implied by it. John the Presbyter may seem to be removed by but a hairs breadth from John the Apostle at whose feet he sat, but it is a question of vital importance to the Christian faith of to-day whether, when we read the first and the eighth and the fourteenth chapters of the Fourth Gospel, we are listening to the voice of an Apostle recalling the memories of years long past and recording them in a form suited to strengthen the belief of his own and succeeding times, or to a developed doctrinal manifesto of the early 2nd cent., in which are included a few reminiscences derived from the lips of an aged Apostle before he passed away from earth. The difference thus indicated can with difficulty be removed, because it depends upon a still deeper difference in the mode of viewing Christian origins. The point really at issue between two classes of scholars and critics is thisDid the facts and events, a selected record of which is contained in the Fourth Gospel, take place substantially as described, or has a reconstruction of the original tradition been effected, in all good faith, for dogmatic purposes? Is the picture of the unique Person here described a faithful reflexion of a Divine Reality, or has the comparatively distant remembrance of a true prophet been sublimated into the portrayal of such a Being as never actually lived and spoke on earth?
A spiritual Gospel must be spiritually discerned. External evidence is most important in its place, and in this instance the testimony which assigns the Gospel to the Apostle John is early, wide-spread, explicit, and practically unchallenged in the early Church. Internal evidences, again, are most valuable, and the claims directly and indirectly made by the writer have been briefly described in this article, and the lines along which a vindication of those claims may be established have been indicated. Also, in determining a disputed question of authorship, alternative theories should be compared and their relative probability estimated. Accordingly, it has here been contended that the balance of probability is decidedly in favour of Johannine authorship, though some difficulties involved in that hypothesis have not been denied, and the possibility of co-operation on the part of Johns disciples in Ephesus has not been excluded. But evidences cannot prove spiritual truth, and the ultimate criterion between different views of this Gospel is practically furnished by the writers own words, These are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. Those who hold such views of God, of Jesus Christ, of history, and of the Christian religion, as to be able to accept the view that Jesus of Nazareth was indeed the Son of God, the Word of God Incarnate, who wrought works that never man wrought and spoke words such as mere man never spake, who died for our sins and rose again from the dead and lives now to impart the gift of that Spirit whom He promisedwill find little difficulty in accepting the statement that John the Apostle who saw the things recorded in the Gospel hath borne witness, and his witness is true. Those to whom such statements are on other grounds quite incredible, and who ascribe them not to the religion of Jesus and His first disciples, but to the dogma of a period which had advanced beyond the teaching of Paul to a point which is characteristic of the 2nd cent., will naturally adopt any theory of authorship that the case allows rather than admit that the Fourth Gospel was written by the son of Zebedee. Absolute demonstration is from the nature of the case impossible, but it may fairly be said that the external and internal evidences combined are such as would in any ordinary case, and apart from all doctrinal prepossessions, be considered strong, if not conclusive, in favour of the Johannine authorship of the Gospel. It may be said in closing that the conditions of current opinion have made it necessary to devote this article almost entirely to the discussion of the question of authorship. But the contents and nature of the Gospel have incidentally been brought somewhat fully into view, and an outline of its theological teaching will be found in a subsequent article.John Theology of].
W. T. Davison.
Fuente: Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible
John, Gospel of
I.INTRODUCTORY
1.Scope of Gospel
2.State of Opinion as to Date of Appearance, etc.
II.EXTERNAL EVIDENCE fOR THE FOURTH GOSPEL
1.At the End of 2nd Century
2.Irenaeus – Theophilus
3.Middle of 2nd Century
4.Ignatius, etc.
5.John the Presbyter
6.Summary
III.CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPEL: INTERNAL EVIDENCE
1.General Lines of Attack and Defence
2.Unwarrantable Critical Presuppositions
3.Real Aim of Gospel – Results
(1)Relation to Synoptics
(2)Time Occupied in the Gospel
(3)A Personal Record
(4)Reminiscences of an Eyewitness
(5)Reminiscence Illustrated
(6)Conclusions
IV.PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT IN THE GOSPEL
1.The Presentation of Jesus in the Gospel
(1)Alleged Absence of Development in Character of Jesus
(2)Alleged Autonomy of Jesus
(3)Inconceivability of Logos-Presentation
2.The Logos-Doctrine of the Prologue
3.Growth of Faith and Development of Unbelief
(1)Early Confessions
(2)Growth of Faith in the Disciples
(3)Gradual Disclosure of Messiahship: Growth of Unbelief
LITERATURE
I. Introductory.
1. Scope of Gospel:
The Fourth Gospel has a form peculiar to itself, as well as a characteristic style and attitude, which mark it as a unique document among the books of the New Testament. (1) There is a prologue, consisting of Jn 1:1-18, of which something will be said later on. (2) There is a series of scenes and discourses from the life of Jesus, descriptive of Himself and His work, and marking the gradual development of faith and unbelief in His hearers and in the nation (1:19 through 12:50). (3) There is a more detailed account of the closing events of the Passion Week – of His farewell intercourse with His disciples (Jn 13 through 17), of His arrest, trials, crucifixion, death, and burial (Jn 18 through 19). (4) There are the resurrection, and the manifestations of the risen Lord to His disciples on the resurrection day, and on another occasion eight days after (20:1-29). This is followed by a paragraph which describes the purpose of the Gospel, and the reason why it was written (Joh 20:30, Joh 20:31). (5) Finally, there is a supplementary chapter (Joh 21:1), which has all the characteristic marks of the Gospel as a whole, and which probably, therefore, proceeds from the same pen (thus Lightfoot, Meyer, Alford, etc.; some, as Zahn, prefer to take the chapter as the work of a disciple of John). The concluding verses (Joh 21:24, Joh 21:25) read: This is the disciple that beareth witness of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his witness is true. And there are also many other things which Jesus did, etc. We know that his witness is true seems to be a testimony on the part of those who knew as to the identity of the disciple, and the trustworthiness of his witness. Nor has this earliest testimony been discredited by the attacks made on it, and the natural meaning has been vindicated by many competent writers. The present tense, beareth witness, indicates that the disciple who wrote the Gospel was still alive when the testimony was given.
2. State of Opinion as to Date of Appearance, Etc.:
As to the time of the appearance of the Johannine literature, apart from the question as to the authorship of these writings, there is now a growing consensus of opinion that it arose at the end of the 1st century, or at the beginning of the 2nd century. This is held by those who assign the authorship, not to any individual writer, but to a school at Ephesus, who partly worked up traditional material, and elaborated it into the form which the Johannine writings now have; by those also, as Spitta, who disintegrate the Gospel into a Grundschrift and a Bearbeitung (compare his Das Johannes-Evangelium als Quelle der Geschichte Jesu, 1910). Whether the Gospel is looked on as a compilation of a school of theologians, or as the outcome of an editor who utilizes traditional material, or as the final outcome of theological evolution of certain Pauline conceptions, with few exceptions the appearance of the Johannine writings is dated early in the 2nd century. One of the most distinguished of these exceptions is Schmiedel; another is the late Professor Pfleiderer. One may respect Pfleiderer in the region of philosophical inquiry, but in criticism he is a negligible quantity. And the writings of Schmiedel on the Johannine question are rapidly passing into the same category.
Thus, the appearance of the Johannine writings at the end of the 1st century may safely be accepted as a sound historical conclusion. Slowly the critics who assigned their appearance to the middle of the 2nd century, or later, have retraced their steps, and assign the emergence of the Johannine writings to the time mentioned. This does not, of course, settle the questions of the authorship, composition and trustworthiness of the Gospel, which must be determined on their merits, on the grounds of external, and still more of internal, evidence, but it does clear the way for a proper discussion of them, and gives us a terminus which must set a limit to all further speculation on matters of this kind.
II. External Evidence for the Fourth Gospel.
Only an outline of the external evidence for the Fourth Gospel, which concerns both date and authorship, can be given in this article. Fuller information may be sought in the Intros to the Commentaries on the Gospel, by Godet, Westcott, Luthardt, Meyer; in Ezra Abbot’s The Fourth Gospel and Its Authorship; in Zahn’s Introduction to the New Testament, III; in Sanday’s The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel; in Drummond’s The Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel. All these and many others defend the Johannine authorship. On the other side, reference may be made to the author of Supernatural Religion, of which many editions have appeared. Among recent works, Moffatt’s Introduction to the New Testament, and B.W. Bacon’s Fourth Gospel in Research and Debate, may be mentioned as denying the Johannine authorship.
1. At End of 2nd Century:
The external evidence is as follows. At the end of the 2nd century, the Christian church was in possession of four Gospels, which were used as sacred books, read in churches in public worship, held in honor as authoritative, and treated as part of a Canon of Scripture (see GOSPELS). One of these was the Fourth Gospel, universally ascribed to the apostle John as its author. We have the evidence on this point of Irenaeus, of Tertullian, of Clement of Alexandria, a little later of Origen. Clement is witness for the belief and practice of the church in Egypt and its neighborhood; Tertullian for the church in Africa; and Irenaeus, who was brought up in Asia Minor, was a teacher at Rome, and was bishop of Lyons in Gaul, for the churches in these lands. The belief was so unquestioned, that Irenaeus could give reasons for it which would of themselves have convinced no one who had not already had the conviction which the reasons were meant to sustain. To discount the evidence of Irenaeus, Tertullian and Clement on the ground of the desire to find apostolic authorship for their sacred books, is not argument but mere assertion. There may have been such a tendency, but in the case of the four Gospels there is no proof that there was necessity for this at the end of the 2nd century. For there is evidence of the belief in the apostolic authorship of two Gospels by apostles, and of two by companions of the apostles, as an existing fact in the churches long before the end of the 2nd century.
2. Irenaeus – Theophilus:
The importance of the testimony of Irenaeus is measured by the efforts which have been made to invalidate his witness. But these attempts fail in the presence of his historical position, and of the means at his command to ascertain the belief of the churches. There are many links of connection between Irenaeus and the apostolic age. There is specially his connection with Polycarp. He himself describes that relationship in his letter to Florinus, a fellow-disciple of Polycarp, who had lapsed into Gnosticism, in which he says, I remember the events of that time more clearly than those of recent years. For what boys learn, growing with their mind, becomes joined with it; so that I am able to describe the very place in which the blessed Polycarp sat as he discoursed, and his goings out and comings in, and the manner of his life, and his physical appearance and his discourses to the people, and the accounts which he gave of his intercourse with John and the others who had seen the Lord (Euseb., HE, V, 20: McGiffert’s translation). We cannot say what was the age of Irenaeus at that time, but he was of sufficient age to receive the impressions which, after many years, he recorded. Polycarp was martyred in 155 AD, and he had been a Christian for 86 years when he was martyred. Thus there was only one link between Irenaeus and the apostolic age. Another link was constituted by his association with Pothinus, his predecessor in Lyons. Pothinus was a very old man when he was martyred, and had in his possession the traditions of the church of Gaul. Thus, Irenaeus, through these and others, had the opportunity of knowing the belief of the churches, and what he records is not only his own personal testimony, but the universal tradition of the church.
With Irenaeus should be adduced the apologist Theophilus (circa 170), the earliest writer to mention John by name as the author of the Gospel. In prefacing a quotation from the commencement of the prologue, he says, This is what we learn from the sacred writings, and from all men animated by the Spirit, amongst whom John says (Ad Autol., ii. 22). Theophilus is further stated by Jerome to have composed a Harmony of the four Gospels (De Viris Illustr., 25).
3. Middle of 2nd Century:
From Irenaeus and Theophilus we ascend nearer to the middle of the 2nd century, and here we encounter the Diatessaron of Tatian, on which much need not be said. The Diatessaron is likewise a Harmony of the four Gospels, and this Harmony dates not later than 170. It begins with the 1st verse of the Fourth Gospel, and ends with the last verse of the appendix to the Gospel. Tatian was a pupil of Justin Martyr, and that fact alone renders it probable that the Memoirs of the Apostles, which Justin quotes so often, were those which his pupil afterward combined in the Diatessaron. That Justin knew the Fourth Gospel seems clear, though we cannot argue the question here. If he did, it follows that it was in existence about the year 130.
4. Ignatius, Etc.:
But there is evidence that helps us to trace the influence of the Fourth Gospel back to the year 110. The first clear traces of the Fourth Gospel upon the thought and language of the church are found in the Epistles of Ignatius (circa 110 AD). How unmistakable these traces are is shown by the fact that not infrequently this dependence of Ignatius upon John has been used as an argument against the genuineness of the Ignatian letters (Zahn, Introduction, III, 176). This argument may now be safely used since the Epistles have been vindicated as historical documents by Lightfoot and by Zahn. If the Ignatian Epistles are saturated with the tone and spirit of the Johannine writings, that goes to show that this mode of thought and expression was prevalent in the church of the time of Ignatius. Thus at the beginning of the 2nd century, that distinctive mode of thought and speech which we call Johannine had an existence.
A further line of evidence in favor of the Gospel, which need only be referred to, lies in the use made of it by the Gnostics. That the Gospel was used by the Valentinians and Basilides has been shown by Dr. Drummond (op. cit., 265-343).
5. John the Presbyter:
To estimate aright the force of the above evidence, it is to be remembered that, as already observed, there were many disciples of the John of Ephesus, to whom the Johannine writings were ascribed, living far on in the 2nd century – bishops like Papias and Polycarp, the presbyters so often mentioned by Irenaeus – forming a chain connecting the time of the origin of the Gospel with the latter half of the century. Here arises the question, recently so largely canvassed, as to the identity of the presbyter John in the well-known fragment of Papias preserved by Euseb. (Historia Ecclesiastica, III, 39). Were there, as most, with Eusebius, understand, two Johns – apostle and presbyter (compare e.g. Godet) – or was there only one? If only one, was he the son of Zebedee? On these points wide difference of opinion prevails. Harnack holds that the presbyter was not the son of Zebedee; Sanday is doubtful; Moffatt believes that the presbyter was the only John at Ephesus. Zahn and Dom J. Chapman (John the Presbyter and the Fourth Gospel, 1911) think also that there was only one John at Ephesus, but he was the son of Zebedee. It is hardly necessary to discuss the question here, for the tradition is explicit which connected the Gospel with the apostle John during the latter part of his residence in Ephesus – a residence which there is no sufficient ground for disputing (see JOHN, THE APOSTLE).
6. Summary:
On a fair consideration of the external evidence, therefore, we find that it is unusually strong. It is very seldom the case that conclusive proof of the existence and influence of a writing can be brought so near to the time of its publication as in the case of the Fourth Gospel. The date of its publication is at the end of the 1st century, or at the latest in the beginning of the 2nd. Traces of its influence are found in the Epistles of Ignatius. The 1st Epistle of John is quoted in the Epistle of Polycarp (chapter 7). The thought and style of the Gospel had influenced Justin Martyr. It is one of the four interwoven in the Diatessaron of Tatian. It was quoted, commented on, and interpreted by the Gnostics. In truth the external evidence for the early date and Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel is as great both in extent and variety as it is for any book of the New Testament, and far greater than any that we possess for any work of classical antiquity.
The history of the controversy on the Johannine authorship is not here entered into. Apart from the obscure sect of the Alogi (who attributed the Gospel to Cerinthus!) in the 2nd century, no voice was heard in challenge of the authorship of John till the close of the 17th century, and serious assault did not begin till the 19th century (Bretschneider, 1820, Strauss, 1835, Weisse, 1838, Baur and his school, 1844 and after, Keim, 1865, etc.). The attacks were vigorously repelled by other scholars (Olshausen, Tholuck, Neander, Ebrard, Bleek, etc.). Some adopted, in various forms and degrees, the hypothesis of an apostolic basis for the Gospel, regarded as the work of a later hand (Weizsacker, Renan, etc.). From this point the controversy has proceeded with an increasing dogmatism on the side of the opponents of the genuineness and trustworthiness of the Gospel, but not less firmness on the part of its defenders. The present state of opinion is indicated in the text.
III. Characteristics of the Gospel: Internal Evidence.
1. General Lines of Attack and Defence:
The external evidence for the Fourth Gospel is criticized, but it is chiefly on internal grounds that the opposition to the Johannine authorship and historical trustworthiness of the Gospel is based. Stress is laid on the broad contrast which admittedly exists in style, character and plan, between the Fourth Gospel and the Synoptics; on its supposed philosophical dress (the Logos-doctrine); on alleged errors and contradictions; on the absence of progress in the narrative, etc. The defense of the Gospel is usually conducted by pointing out the different aims of the Gospel, rebutting exaggerations in the above objections, and showing that in a multitude of ways the author of the Gospel reveals his identity with the apostle John. He was, e.g., a Jew, a Palestinian Jew, one familiar with the topography of Jerusalem, etc., an apostle, an eyewitness, the disciple whom Jesus loved (Joh 13:23; Joh 20:2; Joh 21:7, Joh 21:20). The attestation in Joh 21:24 of those who knew the author in his lifetime is of the greatest weight in this connection. Instead of following these familiar lines of argument (for which see Godet, Luthardt, Westcott, Ez. Abbot, Drummond, etc., in works cited), a confirmation is here sought on the lines of a fresh comprehensive study.
2. Unwarrantable Critical Presuppositions:
The study of the Johannine writings in general, and of the Fourth Gospel in particular, has been approached in many ways and from various points of view. One of the most common of these ways, in recent works, is that which assumes that here we have the product of Christian reflection on the facts disclosed in the other Gospels, and that these facts have been modified by the experience of the church, and reflect the consciousness of the church at the end of the 1st century or the beginning of the 2nd century. By this time, it is assumed that the church, now mainly a Gentilechurch, has been greatly influenced by Greek-Roman culture, that she has been reflecting on the wonder of her own history, and has so modified the original tradition as to assimilate it to the new environment. In the Fourth Gospel, it is said, we have the highest and most elaborate presentation of the outcome of the process. Starting with Paul and his influence, Professor B.W. Bacon traces for us the whole process until a school of theologians at Ephesus produced the Johannine writings, and the consciousness of the church was satisfied with the completeness of the new presentation of Christianity (compare his Fourth Gospel in Research and Debate). Hellenistic ideas in Hebrew form, the facts of the Gospel so transformed as to be acceptable to the Hellenistic mind – this is what scholars of this class find in the Fourth Gospel.
Others again come to the Gospel with the presupposition that it is intended to present to the reader a complete view of the life of Jesus, that it is intended to supplement and to correct the statements of the Synoptics and to present Christ in such a form as to meet the new needs of the church at the beginning of the 2nd century. Others find a polemical aim in the Gospel. Weizsacker, e.g. finds a strong polemic aim against the Jews. He says, There are the objections raised by the Jews against the church after its secession has been consummated, and after the development of the person of its Christ has passed through its most essential stages. It is not a controversy of the lifetime, but that of the school carried back into the history of the life (Apostolic Age, II, 222). One would have expected that a statement so forcibly put would have been supported by some evidence; that we might have some historical evidence regarding a controversy between Jew and church beyond what we have in the Fourth Gospel itself. But nothing is offered by Weizsacker except the dictum that these are controversial topics carried on in the school, and that they are anachronisms as they stand. As it happens, we know from the Dial. between Justin Martyr and Trypho what were the topics discussed between Jew and Christian in the middle of the 2nd century, and it is sufficient to say that these topics, as reported by Justin, mainly regarded the interpretation of the Old Testament, and are not those which are discussed in the Fourth Gospel.
Perhaps the most surprising of all the presuppositions with regard to the Fourth Gospel is that which lays great stress on the supposition that the book was largely intended to vindicate a Christian doctrine of the sacraments which flourished at the beginning of the 2nd century. According to this presupposition, the Fourth Gospel set forth a doctrine of the sacraments which placed them in a unique position as a means of salvation. While scarcely contending that the doctrine of the sacraments held by the church of the 2nd century had reached that stage of development which meets us in the medieval church, it is, according to this view, far on the way toward that goal afterward reached. We do not dwell on this view, for the exegesis that finds sacramentarianism in the Fourth Gospel is hopeless. That Gospel does not put the sacraments in the place of Christ. Finally, we do not find the contention of those who affirm that the Fourth Gospel was written with a view of making the gospel of Jesus more acceptable to the Gentiles any more satisfactory. As a matter of fact, the Gospel which was most acceptable to the Gentiles was the Gospel according to Mt. It is more frequently quoted than any other. In the writings of the early church, it is quoted as often as all the other Gospels put together. The Fourth Gospel did not come into prominence in the Christian church until the rise of the Christological controversies in the 3rd century.
3. Real Aim of Gospel – Results:
When, after dwelling on these ways of approaching the Fourth Gospel, and reading the demands made on the Gospel by those who approach it with these presuppositions and demands, we turn to the Gospel itself, and ask regarding its aim and purpose, we find a simple answer. The writer of it expressly says: Many other signs therefore did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book: but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye may have life in his name (Joh 20:30, Joh 20:31). Pursuing this clue, and putting away all the presuppositions which bulk so largely in introductions, exegeses, histories of the apostolic and sub-apostolic ages, one meets with many surprises.
(1) Relation to Synoptics.
In relation to the Synoptics, the differences are great, but more surprising is the fact that the points of contact between these Gospels and the Fourth Gospel are so few. The critics to whom reference has been made are unanimous that the writer or the school who compiled the Johannine writings was indebted to the Synoptics for almost all the facts embodied in the Fourth Gospel. Apart, however, from the Passion Week, only two points of contact are found so obvious that they cannot be doubted, namely, the feeding of the 5,000, and the walking on the sea (Jn 6:4-21). The healing of the child of the royal officer (Joh 4:46-53) can scarcely be identified with the healing of the centurion’s servant (Mt, Lk); but even if the identification were allowed, this is all we have in the Fourth Gospel of the events of the ministry in Galilee. There is a ministry in Galilee, but the earlier ministry in Judea and in Galilee began before John was cast into prison (Joh 3:24), and it has no parallel in the Synoptics. In fact, the Fourth Gospel assumes the existence of the other three, and does not anew convey the knowledge which can be gathered from them. It takes its own way, makes its own selections, and sets these forth from its own point of view. It has its own principle of selection: that plainly indicated in the passage already quoted. The scenes depicted, the works done, the words spoken, and the reflections made by the writer, are all directed toward the aim of enabling the readers to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. In the writer’s view this would issue in their obtaining life in His name.
(2) Time Occupied in the Gospel.
Accepting this principle for our guidance, we turn to the Gospel, and the first thing that strikes the reader is the small amount of the real time filled up, or occupied, by the scenes described in the Gospel. We take the night of the betrayal, and the day of the crucifixion. The things done and the words spoken on that day, from one sunset to another, occupy no fewer than 7 chapters of the Gospel (John 13 through 19). Apart from the supplementary chapter (Joh 21:1), there are 20 chapters in the Gospel, containing 697 vs, and these 7 chapters have 257 verses. More than one-third of the whole given to the ministry is thus occupied with the events of one day.
Again, according to Act 1:3, there was a ministry of the risen Lord which lasted for 40 days, and of all that happened during those days John records only what happened on the day of the resurrection, and on another day 8 days after (John 20). The incidents recorded in the other Gospels fall into the background, are taken for granted, and only the signs done on these two days are recorded here. They are recorded because they are of significance for the purpose he has in hand, of inducing belief in the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. If we continue to follow the clue thus afforded, we shall be surprised at the fewness of the days on which anything was transacted. As we read the story of the Fourth Gospel, there are many indications of the passing of time, and many precise statements of date. We learn from the Gospel that the ministry of Jesus probably lasted for 3 years. We gather this from the number of the feasts which He attended at Jerusalem. We have notes of time spent in journeys, but no account of anything that happened during them. The days on which anything was done or anything said are very few. We are told precisely that six days before the passover Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was (Joh 12:1 ff), and with regard to these 6 days we are told only of the supper and the anointing of the feet of Jesus by Mary, of the entry into Jerusalem, the visit of the Greeks, and of the impression which that visit made on Jesus. We have also the reflections of the evangelist on the unbelief of the Jews, but nothing further. We know that many other things did happen on these days, but they are not recorded in this Gospel. Apart from the two days during which Jesus dwelt in the place where he was, of which days nothing is recorded, the time occupied with the raising of Lazarus is the story of one day (John 11). So it is also with the healing of the blind man. The healing is done one day, and the controversy regarding the significance of that healing is all that is recorded of another day (John 9). What is recorded in John 10 is the story of two days. The story of the 7th and 8th chapters, interrupted by the episode of the woman taken in adultery, which does not belong to the Gospel, is the story of not more than two days. The story of the feeding of the 5,000 and of the subsequent discourse (John 6) is the story of two days. It is not necessary to enter into fuller detail. Yet the writer, as remarked, is very exact in his notes of time. He notes the days, the number of days on which anything was done, or when anything was said. We make these remarks, which will be obvious to every reader who attends to them, mainly for the purpose of showing that the Gospel on the face of it does not intend to, at least does not, set forth a complete account of the life and work of Jesus. It gives at the utmost an account of 20 days out of the 1,000 days of our Lord’s ministry. This is of itself sufficient to set aside the idea of those who deal with the Fourth Gospel as if it were meant to set aside, to supplement, or to correct, the accounts in the Synoptics. Plainly it was not written with that purpose.
(3) A Personal Record.
Obviously the book professes to be reminiscences of one who had personal experience of the ministry which he describes. The personal note is in evidence all through the book. It is present even in the prologue, for in that verse in which he describes the great fact of the incarnation he uses the personal note, We beheld his glory (Joh 1:14). This might be taken as the keynote of the Gospel. In all the scenes set forth in the Gospel the writer believes that in them Jesus manifested forth His glory and deepened the faith of His disciples. If we were to ask him, when did he behold the glory of the incarnate Word, the answer would be, in all these scenes which are described in the Gospel. If we read the Gospel from this point of view, we find that the writer had a different conception of the glory of the incarnate Word from that which his critics ascribe to him. He sees a glory of the Word in the fact that He was wearied with His journey (Joh 4:6), that He made clay of the spittle and anointed the eyes of the blind man with the clay (Joh 9:6), that He wept at the grave of Lazarus (Joh 11:35), that He groaned in the spirit and was troubled (Joh 11:38), and that He could sorrow with a sorrow unspeakable, as He did after the interview with the Greeks (Joh 12:27). For he records all these things, and evidently thinks them quite consistent with the glory of the incarnate Word. A fair exegesis does not explain these things away, but must take them as of the essence of the manifested glory of the Word.
The Gospel then is professedly reminiscences of an eyewitness, of one who was personally present at all the scenes which he describes. No doubt the reminiscences often pass into reflections on the meaning and significance of what he describes. He often pauses to remark that the disciples, and he himself among them, did not understand at the time the meaning of some saying, or the significance of some deed, of Jesus (Joh 2:22; Joh 12:16, etc.). At other times we can hardly distinguish between the words of the Master and the reflections of the disciple. But in other writings we often meet with the same phenomenon. In the Epistle to the Galatians, e.g., Paul writes what he had said to Peter at Antioch: If thou, being a Jew, livest as do the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, how compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? (Gal 2:14). Shortly after, he passes into reflections on the situation, and it is impossible to ascertain where the direct speech ends and the reflections begin. So it is in the Fourth Gospel. It is impossible in many instances to say where the words of Jesus end and the reflections of the writer begin. So it is, e.g., with his record of the witness of the Baptist in John 3. The record of the Baptist’s words may end with the sentence, He must increase, but I must decrease (Joh 3:30), and the rest may be the reflections of the writer on the situation.
(4) Reminiscences of an Eyewitness.
The phenomena of the Gospel are thus, apparently at least, reminiscences of an eyewitness, with his reflections on the meaning of what he has experienced. He was present at the scenes which he describes. He was present on the night on which the Master was betrayed; he was present in the hall of the high priest; he was present at the cross, and bears testimony to the reality of the death of Jesus (Joh 18:15; Joh 19:35). As we read the Gospel we note the stress he lays on witness. The term frequently occurs (Joh 1:7, Joh 1:8, Joh 1:19; Joh 3:11, Joh 3:26, Joh 3:33; Joh 5:31; Joh 12:17; Joh 21:24, etc.), and is used to set forth the verified facts of experience. In these testimonies we have an unusual combination of elevated thought and minute observation. At one time the evangelist soars aloft into a spiritual world, and moves with ease among the richest and highest elements of spiritual experience. Using common words, he yet reads into them the deepest meanings regarding man, the world, and God which have ever entered into the mind of man. Sublime mysticism and open-eyed practical sense meet in his wonderful writings. Above all, we are impressed with his sense of the supreme value of the historical. All his spiritual meanings have a historical basis. This is as apparent in the 1st Epistle as it is in the Gospel, and in the Gospel it is conspicuous. While his main interest is to focus the minds of his readers on Jesus, His work and His word, yet unconsciously he has written his own spiritual biography. We gradually become aware, as we read ourselves sympathetically into the spirit of the Gospel, that we are following the line of a great spiritual awakening, and are tracing the growth of faith and love in the life of the writer, until they become the overmastering tone of his whole life. On the one hand, the book is a grand objective revelation of a unique life, the story of the self-revelation of the Son of God, of the revelation of the Father in Jesus Christ, moving onward to its consummation through the contrasted developments of faith and unbelief on the part of them who received Him, and on the part of them who received Him not. On the other hand, it has a subjective unity in the heart of the writer, as it tells of how faith began, of how faith made progress, until he came to the knowledge of the Son of God. We can enter into the various crises through which he passed, through which, as they successively passed, he won the assurance which he so calmly expresses; and these supply him with the key by means of which he is able to unlock the mystery of the relations of Jesus to the world. The victory of faith which he sets forth was first won in his own soul. This also is included in the significant phrase, We beheld his glory (Joh 1:14).
(5) Reminiscence Illustrated.
The Gospel receives powerful confirmation from reflection on the nature of reminiscence generally. A law of reminiscence is that, when we recall anything, or any occurrence, we recall it in its wholeness, with all the accessories of its accompaniments. As we tell it to others, we have to make a selection of that only which is needful to convey our meaning. Inartistic natures do not make a selection; they pour out everything that arises in the memory (compare Dame Quickly in Shakespeare). The finer qualities of reminiscence are abundantly illustrated in the Fourth Gospel, and furnish an independent proof that it is from the pen of an eyewitness. It is possible within reasonable limits to give only a few examples. Observe first the exact notes of time in John 1 and the special notes of character in each of the 6 disciples whom Jesus met on the first 4 days of His ministry. Mark the peculiar graphic note that Nathaniel was under the fig tree (Joh 1:50). Pass on to notice the 6 water-pots of stone set at Cana after the manner of the Jews’ purifying (Joh 2:6). We might refer in this connection to the geographical remarks frequently made in the course of the narrative, indicative of an intimate knowledge of Palestine, and to the numerous allusions to Jewish laws, customs, beliefs, religious ceremonies, usually admitted now to be accurate, and illustrative of familiar knowledge on the part of the writer. Our main object, however, is to call attention to those incidental things which have no symbolical significance, but are set down because, as the main happening was recalled, these arose with it. He again sees the lad with the 5 barley loaves and 2 fishes (Joh 6:9); remembers that Mary sat still in the house, when the active Martha went forth to meet the Lord as He approached Bethany (Joh 11:20); recalls the appearance of Lazarus as he came forth bound hand and foot with grave-clothes (Joh 11:44). He has a vivid picture before him as he recalls the washing of the disciples’ feet (Joh 13:1), and the various attitudes and remarks of the disciples during the whole of that eventful night. He still sees the attitude of the soldiers who came to arrest Jesus (Joh 18:3), the flashing of Peter’s sword (Joh 18:10), the share of Nicodemus in the burying of Jesus, and the kinds and weights of the spices brought by him for the embalming of the body (Joh 19:38). He tells of the careful folding of the linen cloths, and where they were placed in the empty tomb (Joh 20:4). These are only some of those vivid touches due to reminiscence which none but an eyewitness could safely make. Looking back on the past, the evangelist recalls the various scenes and words of the Lord in their wholeness as they happened, and he chooses those living touches which bear the mark of reality to all readers.
(6) Conclusions.
These touches of vivid reality warrant the conclusion that the writer in this Gospel is depicting scenes in a real life, and is not drawing on his imagination. Looking back on his own spiritual history, he remembered with special vividness those words and works of Christ which determined his own life, and led him on to the full assurance of faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God. The Gospel can be understood from this point of view: it does not seem to us that it can be understood from any other, without ignoring all the phenomena of the kind now indicated. When the Gospel is approached from this point of view, set forth by itself, one can afford to neglect many of the elaborate discussions which have arisen regarding the possible displacement of certain ehs (Spitta, etc.). Much, e.g., has been made of the sudden transference of the scene from Galilee to Judea as we pass from John 4 to John 5, and the equally sudden transference back to Galilee (Joh 6:1). Many suggestions have been made, but they all proceed on the supposition that the reminiscences were meant to be continuous, which it has been seen is not the ease. While it is very likely that there is a sequence in the writer’s thought, yet this need not compel us to think of displacements. Taken as they are in the Gospel, the selected proofs, whether they occur in Judea or in Galilee, in all instances indicate progress. They illustrate the manifested glory of Jesus, on the one hand, and the growth of faith and the development of unbelief on the other. This, however, opens up a separate line of objection and inquiry to which attention must now be given.
IV. Progress and Development in the Gospel.
It is an objection often urged against the view of the apostolic authorship of the Fourth Gospel that in it there is no progress, no development, no crisis, nothing, e.g., to correspond with the significance of the confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi. (Mat 16:13-17 parallel). This is held to be true alike of the character of Jesus, which, under the influence of the Logos-doctrine of the prologue, exhibits no development from first to last, and of the attitude of the disciples, whose faith in Jesus as the Christ is likewise represented as complete from the beginning. In reality the opposite is the case. In the course of the Gospel, as already said, the glory of the Lord is ever more completely manifested, and the disciples attain to a deeper faith, while the unbelief of those who reject Him becomes more fixed, until it is absolute. This will appear clearly on nearer examination.
1. The Presentation of Jesus in the Gospel:
The objection from the presentation of Jesus in the Gospel takes different forms, which it is desirable to consider separately.
(1) Alleged Absence of Development in the Character of Jesus.
It is affirmed, first, that there is no development in the character of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel, none of those indications such as we have in the Synoptics of widening horizons, no recognition of the fact that the meaning, purpose and issue of His calling became clearer to Him as the days passed by. To this assertion there are two answers. The first is, that in a series of scenes from the activity of Jesus, selected for the definite purpose set forth in the Gospel, there is no need to demand a continuous history of His ministry. Selection is made precisely of those scenes which set forth His insight into human character and motive, His power of sympathetic healing, His command over Nature, and His supreme authority over man and the world. The other remark is, that even in the Fourth Gospel there are hints of a crisis in the ministry of our Lord, during which He came to a clearer recognition of the fuller meaning of His mission (e.g. the visit of the Greeks, John 12). It will be seen further, below, that it is not true in this Gospel, any more than in the Synoptics, that Jesus is represented as publicly proclaiming Himself as the Messiah from the first.
(2) Alleged Autonomy of Jesus.
Akin to the above is the objection to the historicity of the Gospel that in it Jesus is represented as always directing His own course, maintaining an attitude of aloofness to men, refusing to be influenced by them. This, it is held, results from the dominance of the Logos-idea in the prologue. The reply is that there is really no essential difference between the attitude of Jesus in these respects in the Synoptics and in Jn. In all alike He maintains an attitude of authority. In the Synoptics He can say, I say unto you (Mat 5:22, Mat 5:28, Mat 5:32, etc.). In them also He claims to be the teacher of absolute truth, the Saviour, the Ruler, the Judge, of men. In this regard there is no new claim made in the Fourth Gospel: No one cometh unto the Father, but by me (Joh 14:6). But He had said, Come unto me … and I will give you rest (Mat 11:28). A claim to authority over men is thus common to all the Gospels. In all of them, too, in the Fourth no less than in the others, there is on the part of Jesus loyalty, submission, subordination to the Father. In fact this is more conspicuous in the Fourth Gospel than in the Synoptics: The Father is greater than I (Joh 14:28). The words He speaks are the Father’s words; the works He does are the Father’s (Joh 5:19, Joh 5:20; Joh 7:16, Joh 7:18, etc.): This commandment received I from my Father (Joh 10:18). In all the Gospels it is one consistent, gracious Figure who appears.
(3) Inconceivability of Logos-Presentation.
A further objection, which aims at showing that this Gospel could not be the work of a primitive apostle, may be noticed, partly from the eminence of him who makes it, and partly from the interest of the objection itself. In his work on The Apostolic Age, Weizsacker says, It is a puzzle that the beloved disciple of the Gospel, he who reclined at table next to Jesus, should have come to regard and represent his whole former experience as a life with the incarnate Logos of God. It is impossible to imagine any power of faith and philosophy so great as thus to obliterate the recollection of a real life and to substitute for it this marvelous picture of a Divine being. We can understand that Paul, who had not known Jesus, who had not come into contact with the man. should have been opposed to the tradition of the eyewitnesses, the idea of the heavenly man, and that he should have substituted the Christ who was spirit for His earthly manifestation, pronouncing the latter to be positively a stage above which faith must rise. For a primitive apostle it is inconceivable. The question is decided here and finally here (II, 211). It is easy to say, For a primitive apostle it is inconceivable, yet we know that a primitive apostle believed that Jesus rose from the dead, that He was exalted a Prince and Saviour, that He was seated at the right hand of God, that He was Lord of all (Act 2:22-36). If we grant that the primitive church believed these things, it cannot be fairly said that the further step taken in the Fourth Gospel is inconceivable. In truth, the objection of Weizsacker is not taken against the Fourth Gospel; it is equally effective against Christianity in general. If Jesus be what He is said to be in the Synoptic Gospels, and if He be what the primitive church held Him to be, the leading conception of the Fourth Gospel is credible and conceivable. If Christianity is credible, the Fourth Gospel adds nothing to the difficulty of faith; rather it gives an additional ground for a rational faith.
2. The Logos-Doctrine of the Prologue:
It is proper at this point that a little more should be said on the Logos-doctrine itself, in its bearing on the presentation of Christ in this Gospel (for the philosophical and historical aspects of the doctrine, see LOGOS). Obviously the great interest of the author of the reminiscences and reflections in the Fourth Gospel is in the personal life of the Master whom he had known so intimately. To him this real historical life was everything. On it he brooded, on it he meditated, and he strove to make the significance of it ever more real to himself first, and to others afterward. How shall he make the reality of that life apparent to all? What were the relationships of that person to God, to man, and to the world? What Jesus really was, and what were His relations to God, to man, and to the world, John endeavors to make known in the prologue. This real person whom he had known, revered, loved, was something more than was apparent to the eyes of an ordinary observer; more even than had been apparent to His disciples. How shall this be set forth? From the Gospel it is evident that the historical person is first, and the attempt to set forth the meaning of the person is second. The prologue is an attempt to find language to set forth fitly the glory of the person. The Logos-doctrine does not descend on the historic person as a garment from without; it is an endeavor to describe what John had grown to recognize as the essential meaning of the person of Jesus. It is not a speculative theory we have here, not an endeavor to think out a theory of the world or of God; it is an attempt to find suitable language for what the writer recognizes to be a great fact. We need not, therefore, seek an explanation of John’s Logos-doctrine in the speculation of Heraclitus, in theories of the Stoics, even in the eclecticism of Philo. The interests of these men are far removed from the atmosphere of the Fourth Gospel. They desired a theory of the universe; John sought to set forth the significance of a personal historical life. In the prologue he set forth that life, and he chose a word which he filled up with concreter meaning, a meaning which included the deepest teaching of the Old Testament, and the highest thought of his contemporaries. The teaching of Paul, especially in the epistles of the captivity, approaches very closely to that of the Fourth Gospel. Thus it is not a right method to bring the Logos-doctrine to the interpretation of the Fourth Gospel, and to look at all the phenomena of the Gospel as mere illustrations of that doctrine. The right method is the reverse. The Logos-doctrine has no concreteness, no living reality, taken apart from the personal life which was manifested to the apostle. The prologue represents what John had come to see as to the meaning of the personality he had historically known. He sets it forth once for all in the prologue, and never once in the Gospel does he refer to it again. We can understand that Logos-doctrine when we look at it in the light of those manifestations recorded in’ the Gospel, manifestations which enabled John to behold His glory; we cannot understand the manifestations if we look at them merely as illustrations of an abstract philosophical theorem. In brief, the Fourth Gospel is concrete, not abstract; it is not the evolution or the demonstration of a theory, but the attempt to set forth a concrete personality, and to find fitting words to express the significance of that personality as John had grown to see it.
3. Growth of Faith and Development of Unbelief:
As it is with the character of Jesus, so it is with the alleged absence of development in the faith of the disciples. Careful inquiry shows this objection also to be unfounded.
(1) Early Confessions.
Here again, it is said, we see the end from the beginning. In John 1 Jesus is twice greeted as the Messiah (Joh 1:41, Joh 1:45), and twice described as the Son of God (Joh 1:34, Joh 1:49). The Baptist at this early stage points to Him as the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world (Joh 1:29). Reference is made to the case of Nicodemus (Joh 3:1 ff), to the Samaritans (Joh 4:41 f), and other incidents of the same kind, with the view of proving that at this early stage of the ministry of our Lord such confessions are unlikely, and even impossible. It is to be noticed, however, that the confessions in these cases are represented as the outcome of special manifestations on the part of Jesus to the persons who make them. And the manifestations are such as to justify the psychological possibility of the confession. It is so in the case of Nathaniel. Nor is the objection to the testimony of John the Baptist of a kind which admits of no answer. For the Baptist, according to the Synoptics, had found his own credentials in Isa 40. There he found himself and his mission, and described himself, as we find it in the Fourth Gospel, I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as said Isaiah the prophet (Joh 1:23; compare Mat 3:3; Mar 1:2, Mar 1:3). We find also that when John heard in the prison the works of the Christ, and sent by his disciples and said unto him, Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another? (Mat 11:2), the answer of Jesus was a reference to a passage in Isa 61:1-11. According to Jesus these were the true signs of the Messianic kingdom. Is there any reason why we should not say that, as John found his own credentials in Isa 40, he would also have found the character and signs of the Coming One in the description of the suffering servant in Isa 53:1-12? If he did so, what more simple than that he should describe the Coming One as the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world? In His answer to John, Jesus simply asks him to read farther on in that prophesy which had already meant so much for him.
(2) Growth of Faith in the Disciples.
Apart from what may be made of these early confessions, it may fairly be said that there are many signs of a growth of faith on the part of the disciples. Carrying with us the fact that each of these confessions had its ground in a particular manifestation of the glory of Christ, we go on to passages which prove how imperfect was the faith of the disciples. It is to be remembered also that John has only one word to describe all the phases of faith, from the slightest impression up to whole-hearted conviction and thorough surrender. We may refer to the careful and exhaustive treatment of the meanings of the word believing by E. A. Abbott in his work, Johannine Vocabulary. In the Fourth Gospel the verb is always used, and never the noun. As the word is used, it denotes the impression made, whether that impression is slight and transient, or deep and abiding. Successive steps of acceptance are seen as the disciples advance to complete and absolute faith.
As we read the Gospel, we perceive that Jesus did test and try the faith of His disciples, and made His deeds and His words both tests of faith, and a means for its growth. As the result of the words on the bread of life, we find that many of His disciples said, This is a hard saying; who can hear it? (Joh 6:60), and on account of the difficulty of His words, Many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him (Joh 6:66). On His appeal to those who did not go away it is found that the difficulty became really an opportunity to them for a larger faith (Joh 6:68, Joh 6:69). The incidents and events of the night of the betrayal, and the conversations on that night, prove how incomplete were the faith and confidence of the disciples; how far they were from a full understanding of the Master’s purpose. Nor is it until after the resurrection, and the gladness of seeing their risen Lord in the upper room, that faith obtained a complete victory, and attained to full possession of itself.
(3) Gradual Disclosure of Messiahship: Growth of Unbelief.
On the other side, there is as manifestly an evolution of unbelief from the passing doubt of. the moment on to the complete disbelief in Jesus, and utter rejection of Him.
It is only fair here to the Gospel to observe that the confessions to which we have already referred are on the part of individuals who came into special relationship with Jesus. Such is the case with regard to Nathaniel, Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria and the Samaritan people, and the writer places the reader in that close relationship so that he who reads may believe. But such close relationship to Jesus is only the lot of a few in this Gospel. It is not true, as already remarked, that in this Gospel Jesus is represented as definitely proclaiming Himself as the Messiah. There is something of the same reserve here as there is in the Synoptics. He did not assert His claim; He left it to be inferred. His brethren hint that He ought to put His claims really to the test (Joh 7:3 f). An account of the doubts and speculations regarding Him is given in John 7. The people hesitate, and inquire, and speculate, Is He a good man, or a deceiver? (Joh 7:12) Had He really a mission from God? (Joh 7:14 ff) – all of which goes to prove that only certain individuals had such intimate knowledge of Him as to lead to acceptance. In John 10 we read, And it was the feast of the dedication at Jerusalem: it was winter; and Jesus was walking in the temple in Solomon’s porch. The Jews therefore came round about him, and said unto him, How long dost thou hold us in suspense? If thou art the Christ, tell us plainly (Joh 10:22-24). It is very clear, as Dr. Sanday says, that no sharply defined issue was set before the people. They are left to draw their own conclusions; and they draw them as well as they can by the help of such criteria as they have. But there is no entweder…oder… – either Messiah or not Messiah – peremptorily propounded by Jesus Himself (The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel, 164). The sum of the matter as regards the development of unbelief is given by the evangelist in the words: Though he had done so many signs before them, yet they believed not on him (Joh 12:37). On the other hand, the culmination of faith is seen in the word of the Lord to Thomas: Because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed (Joh 20:29).
Literature.
Besides Comms. and other works mentioned in the article, with valuable articles on the Gospel in Dicts. and Encs, the following may be consulted: M. Dods, common. Fourth Gospel in Expositor’s Greek Testament; Julicher, Eintleitung in das NT6 (1906, English Translation); E. A. Abbott, Johannine Vocabulary (1905), and Johannine Grammar (1906); H. J. Holtzmann, Evangelium, Briefe und Offenbarung des Johannes, besorgt von W. Bauer (1908); Essays on Some Biblical Questions of the Day by Members of the University of Cambridge, edited by Dr. Swete (1909), Essay IX, The Theology of the Fourth Gospel, by W.H. Inge, and Essay X, The Historical Value of the Fourth Gospel, by C.E. Brooke; Schmiedel, The Johannine Writings (English translation, 1908); J. Armitage Robinson, The Historical Character of John’s Gospel (1908); Askwith, The Historical Value of the Fourth Gospel (1910); Ezra Abbot, External Evidence of the Fourth Gospel, edited by J.H. Thayer (1891); Lowrie, The Doctrine of John (1899).