聖書注解書

本章の趣旨と目的は、キリストに対する私たちの信仰——彼が神の永遠の子であり、真のメシヤであり、世の救い主であるとの信仰——を強めることにある。それは私たちが彼を受け入れ、私たちの預言者、祭司、王として彼に頼り、彼に治められ、教えられ、救われるために自分自身をささげるためである。このために、ここに次の事がらがある。一、霊感を受けた筆者自身による彼についての証し。初めに、自分の書物全体がその証明となるはずの事がらを、率直に提示する（ヨハネ 1:1-5）。また（ヨハネ 1:10-14）。さらに（ヨハネ 1:16-18）。二、バプテスマのヨハネによる彼についてのあかし（ヨハネ 1:6-9、またヨハネ 1:15）。しかし最も十分に、特に（ヨハネ 1:19-37）。三、アンデレとペテロに対する（ヨハネ 1:38-42）、またピリポとナタナエルに対する、ご自身の啓示（ヨハネ 1:43-51）。

序

第四福音書の著者は、ガリラヤ湖の漁師であったゼベダイの二人の息子のうちの弟であった。ゼベダイはベツサイダに住んでおり、そこはペテロとその兄弟アンデレ、またピリポの出生地でもあった。彼の母の名はサロメであった。サロメは、欠点がなかったわけではないが

(Mt 20:20-28)、

主のガリラヤ伝道巡回のひとつに同行し、主の身体的な必要に仕えた、愛すべき尊敬すべき婦人たちのひとりであった。彼女は主に従って十字架のもとに行き、主の埋葬の後に塗るために甘い香料を買い求めたが、週の初めの朝にそれを墓に持って来たとき、自分たちの愛の奉仕が、到着する前に主の復活によって栄光をもって取って代えられたことを見出した。彼の父ゼベダイは、かなり良い境遇にあったと思われ、自分の船を持ち、雇い人を置いていた

(Mr 1:20)。

われらの伝道者は、父とともに漁師として働いていたが、疑いなくバプテスマのヨハネの弟子であり、イエスと最初の面会をした二人のうちのひとりであった。彼は日常の職業に従事している間に召された

(Mt 4:21, 22)、

また忘れられない機会に再び召され

(Lu 5:1-11)、

ついに十二使徒のひとりとして選ばれた

(Mt 10:2)。

彼は十二人のうちの最年少であった――ダ・コスタが呼ぶところの「ベニヤミン」である――そして、彼とその兄弟ヤコブは、心を知る方によって母語で「ボアネルゲ」と名づけられた。伝道者マルコは

(Mr 3:17)

これを「雷の子」という意味だと説明している。おそらく彼らの生来の性格の 激しさによるものであろう。彼らとペテロは、

Lu 9:28

に見られる選ばれた三人を構成した。

しかし、この弟子に与えられた最高の栄誉は、食卓で主の身近な席に「イエスの愛された弟子」として迎え入れられたことであり

(Joh 13:23; 20:2; 21:7, 20:24)、

また死につつある贖い主からご自身の母の世話を委ねられたことである

(Joh 19:26, 27)。

この区別が、ヨハネの主の御霊および思いとの共感によるものであることには、合理的な疑いがあり得ない。その共感を、彼らの共通の主のすべてを見通す目は、ほかのだれのうちにも見出されなかった。そして、これが彼の生涯や働きにおいて仲間の使徒たちによって見られることはおそらくなかったであろうが、彼の著書において驚くべき形で現れており、キリストのような霊性、天に属する性質、愛において、ほかのすべての霊感された書物をしのぐと言って差し支えない。

ペンテコステの日の御霊の注ぎの後、彼は常にペテロとともにいたが静かであった。ペテロは、パウロの出現まで、幼子のような教会の偉大な代弁者かつ行動する者であった。主イエスへの愛が、彼を自発的に主の傑出したしもべのそばに引き寄せ、また彼の鍛えられた激しさが、イエスについてのあかしのゆえにすべてを犠牲にしてペテロとともに勇敢に立ち、ともに苦しむことを可能にした。しかし、最年少の使徒としての彼のへりくだった謙遜は、彼を語り手や単独の行動者ではなく、兄弟使徒の感嘬する聞き手、忠実な支持者とした。教会史は一致して、ヨハネがアジア州に赴いたことを証言している。しかし、これはペテロとパウロの両者の死後以外にはあり得なかったことはほぼ確実である。彼はエペソに居住し、そこを中心としてその地域の諸教会を監督し、時折訪問した。そして彼はほかの使徒たちより長く生きた。イエスの母がこれより先に死んだのか、それともヨハネとともにエペソに行き、そこで死んで葬られたのかについては意見が分かれている。彼の晩年の二三の逸話が伝承によって伝えられているが、少なくともその一つは合理的な蓋然性のしるしを帯びている。しかし、ここでそれらを述べる必要はない。ドミティアヌス帝の治世（主後81〜96年）に、彼は「神の言とイエス・キリストのあかしとのゆえに」「パトモスと呼ばれる島」（エーゲ海にある小さな岩礁で、当時はほとんど人が住んでいなかった）に流された

(Re 1:9)。

エイレナイオスとエウセビオスは、これがドミティアヌス帝の治世の終わりごろに起こったと言っている。彼が沸騰した油の大釜に投げ込まれ、奇跡的に救い出されたというのは、テルトゥリアヌスやヒエロニムスが伝えているものの、信用に値しない伝説のひとつである。彼の流刑からの帰還は、ネルウァ帝の短いが寛容な治世の間に行われた。彼はトラヤヌス帝の治世にエペソで死んだ[エウセビオス、教会史、3.23]。年齢はある人々によれば九十歳以上、ほかの人々によれば百歳、さらにほかの人々によれば百二十歳であった。中間の数字が一般に真実に最も近いと考えられている。

この福音書の年代について、エルサレム崩壊前に書かれたとする論拠は（すぐれた批評家たちの一部が依拠しているが）、きわめて薄弱な性質のものである。たとえば、

Joh 5:2

の「エルサレムの羊の門のそばに、ある池がある」という表現や、

Joh 21:18

の預言に従って起こったペテロの殉教への言及がないこと――これはあまりにもよく知られていて言及を要しない事柄であった。この福音書がエルサレム崩壊のずっと後に、またほかのすべての使徒たちの死後に書かれたことはほぼ確実であるが、正確な時期は定められない。おそらく彼の流刑以前であった。そして、主後90年から94年の間に年代づけるならば、おそらく真実に近いであろう。

この福音書がより直接的に意図した読者について、その時期が遅いことから異邦人であったと自然に推測されるが、すべてのユダヤ人に親しまれていた事柄についての数多くの説明は、これを疑う余地のないものにしている。

十八世紀の終わりごろまでは、この福音書の真正さと権威について疑いが向けられることはなかった。また、それらの疑いが公式的な攻撃として具体化したのは、1820年にブレッチュナイダーが有名な論考[Probabilia]を発表したときであった。しかし彼は、後にその結論が満足のいくように論破されたことを率直に認めた。これらに言及することは不快であると同時に不必要である。それらは、ほとんどの場合、この福音書に記録されているわれらの主の説教に関する主張から成り、すべての霊的な思いに反発するものである。チュービンゲン学派は、彼ら特有の推論の方式によって、第四福音書のヨハネ以後の年代という理論に再び生命を与えようと最善を尽くした。また、一部のユニテリアン系批評家は今なおそれに固執している。しかし、第三福音書に関する同様の推測についてのファン・オオステルゼーの見事なことばを借りれば、「見よ、それを死体として運び出す者たちの足は、すでに戸口にいる」

(Ac 5:9)。

この福音書に、ほかの福音書がその真実性を明るくあかししているのと同様に、歴史的真理のしるしと、ほかの福音書が持たないような並外れた栄光を見ない霊的な識別力を少しでも持つ人がいるであろうか。そして、もしこれが歴史的に真実でなく、そのまま真実でないならば、決して人間によって書かれも、構想されもしなかったはずではないかと言わない人がいるであろうか。

この福音書の特異性のうち、ここでは二つだけを注記する。ひとつはその反省的な性質である。ほかの福音書が純粋に物語であるのに対し、第四伝道者はダ・コスタ[Four Witnesses、234頁]の言うように、「あちこちで立ち止まる。あるときは理由を与え、あるときは注意を引き、結果を導き出し、適用を行い、あるいは賛美のことばを表現するために」。参照。

Joh 2:20, 21, 23-25; 4:1, 2; 7:37-39; 11:12, 13, 49-52; 21:18, 19, 22, 23。

この福音書のもう一つの特異性は、その補足的な性質である。これによって、ここでは、われらの主の歴史における最も重要な詳細の多くを意図的に省略し（その唯一の理由として、それらが先行する三つの福音書を通じて読者のすべてに家庭語のように親しまれていたことを挙げる）、それらに代えてほかの福音書には見出せない膨大な量の豊かな内容を置いたという熟考以上のことを意味している。ここでは特に、この福音書を際立たせる追加の性質、とりわけわれらの主の公の奉仕の期間に起こった過越の祭の諸記録や、エルサレムでの教えの記録に言及している。これらがなければ、主の奉仕の期間やその計画についての概念は、きわめて不完全なものとなったであろう。しかし、これらの追加のもう一つの特徴は、同様に注目に値し、同じように重要である。ダ・コスタ[Four Witnesses、238、239頁]のことばをやや省略して再び用いれば、「われらの主の奇跡のうち、この福音書に記録されているのはわずか六つだけであるが、これらはすべて最も顕著な種類のものであり、深さ、適用の特殊性、意味の豊かさにおいてほかのものをしのぐ。この六つのうち、ほかの三つの福音書に見出されるのはひとつだけ――パンの増やし――である。その奇跡は、おそらくそれが提供した重要な教えの機会のゆえに

(Joh 6:1-71)、

ここに新たに記録されているのである。ほかの五つの神の力のしるしは、ほかの三つの福音書に記録された多くの中から、自然界の普通の法則と秩序に対するさらに高い力の表示を提供することによって選び出されている。すなわち、ここには、イエスが行われた奇跡の最初――水をぶどう酒に変えること

(Joh 2:1-11)、

貴族の息子を離れた所からいやすこと

(Joh 4:43-54)、

イエスのことばによる足の不自由な人や中風の人の数多くのいやしのうち、ただひとつ――三十八年間無力であった人のいやし

(Joh 5:1-9)、

多くの盲人のいやしのうち、ただひとり――生まれつき盲人であった人のいやし

(Joh 9:1-12)、

ラザロの回復が、ヤイロの娘のように死の床からでも、ナインのやもめの息子のように棺台からでもなく、墓から、しかもそこに四日間横たわり、腐敗へと沈みつつあった状態からの回復

(Joh 11:1-44)、

そして最後に、主の復活の後、テベリヤの海での奇跡的な魚の捕獲

(Joh 21:5-11)

が記録されている。しかし、これらはすべて主に、それらが引き出した、驚くべき説教や対話――友人にも敵にも、弟子たちにも群衆にも――を記録する機会を与えるために記録されているのである」。

この福音書の特異性のほかの例や、それに関連するほかの論点は、注解の過程で現れるであろう。

ヨハネによる福音書 序論

この福音書の著者ヨハネは、ゼベダイとサロメの子であった。Matthew 27:56 と Mark 15:40-41 とを比較せよ。その父はガリラヤの漁師であったが、財産にまったく欠けていたわけではなく、生活の最下層にあったわけでもなかったようである。父のもとには雇い人たちがいた(Mark 1:20)。サロメは、救い主が旅をされるときに同行してその必要に仕えた一人として記されている(Matthew 27:55; Mark 15:41)。また、ヨハネは大祭司カヤパに顔が知られていた(John 18:15)。十字架上で、イエスはご自身の母マリアをヨハネに託され、ヨハネは彼女を自分の家に迎えた(John 19:26-27)。歴史が伝えるところによれば、マリアはキリストの十字架刑の後およそ15年、死に至るまでヨハネとともに暮らしたのである。これらすべての事実から、ヨハネにはいくらかの財産があり、他のどの使徒よりも広く知られていた可能性が高いと思われる。

ヨハネはイエスに召されたとき、使徒たちの中で最も若かったが、最も長く生きた。安らかな死を遂げたと考えられるのは、彼ただ一人である。彼は、父と兄ヤコブとともにテベリヤ湖で網を繕っていたとき、イエスに従う者として召された(Matthew 4:21; Mark 1:19; Luke 5:10)。

ヨハネは、救い主から特別な恵みと友情の中へと受け入れられた。古代の教父の一人(テオフィラクト)は、ヨハネがイエスと親族関係にあったと述べている。彼はこう言う。「ヨセフは先妻によって七人の子、すなわち四人の息子と、マルタ、エステル、サロメという三人の娘をもうけた。サロメの子がヨハネである。それゆえサロメは我らの主の姉妹とみなされ、ヨハネはその甥であった」と。これが事実であるなら、ヤコブとヨハネが御国での第一位を求め、それを期待した理由を説明しうるかもしれない(Matthew 20:20-21)。彼らはまた、我らの主の「兄弟たち」「姉妹たち」と呼ばれた人々である可能性もある(Matthew 13:55-56)。これはまた、救い主が十字架上でご自身の母をヨハネの世話にゆだねられた理由をも説明しうるかもしれない(John 19:27)。

ヤコブとヨハネの兄弟は、ペテロとともに、幾度も我らの主から特別な恵みにあずかることを許された。ヤイロの娘が起こされるときに立ち会うことを許されたのは、この弟子たちだけだった(Mark 5:37; Luke 8:51)。救い主が変貌された山に付き従うことを許されたのも、ただ彼らだけであった(Matthew 17:1; Mark 9:2)。同じ三人は、ゲツセマネの園での苦しみの場に立ち会うことも許された(Matthew 26:36-45; Mark 14:32-42)。さらに、エルサレムとユダヤに臨む荒廃を明らかにされたとき、救い主が特に語りかけられたのは、アンデレを加えたこの弟子たちであった(Matthew 24:12; Mark 13:3-4 と比較せよ)。ヨハネはまた、主イエスとの特別な友情の中に受け入れられていた。それゆえ彼は「イエスが愛しておられたその弟子」として言及され(John 19:26)、主の晩餐が制定された際にイエスの胸に身を寄せていた者として描かれている(John 13:23)。これは並外れた友情の証しである。その箇所の注釈を参照せよ。贖い主がすべての弟子たちに心を寄せておられたとはいえ、主の性質が柔和で愛すべきヨハネの性質と気脈を通じていたと考えることに何の不自然さもない――こうして、クリスチャンの間に特別な友情が生まれることの実例が認められ、確立されたのである。

イエスの母マリアの世話は、ヨハネにゆだねられた。キリストの昇天の後、彼はしばらくの間エルサレムにとどまった(Acts 1:14; Acts 3:1; Acts 4:13)。ヨハネはまた、ペテロとともにサマリヤに遣わされ、そこで福音を宣べ伝えたことによっても言及されている(Acts 8:14-25)。そして Acts 15 からは、紀元49年か50年のエルサレムの会議に彼が同席していたことがわかる。これらはすべて、ヨハネがキリストの十字架刑の後15年、すなわちマリアの死までエルサレムに住んでいたと述べるエウセビオスの記述と一致する。この時まで、彼は異邦人への福音宣教に従事していなかった可能性が高い。

ヨハネが最初にいつ異邦人の間へ出て福音を宣べ伝えたかは、確実には知られていない。通説では、ローマとの戦争が勃発するまでユダヤとその周辺に住み、紀元69年か70年ごろに小アジアに入ったと考えられている。パウロがそれらの地方を訪れた時点でヨハネがエペソにいなかったことは明らかである。パウロとルカの旅路の記録には、ヨハネへの言及が一度も現れないからである。

教会史が伝えるところによれば、ヨハネは生涯の後半を小アジアで過ごし、その地方の主要な都市エペソに主として住んでいた。エペソでの彼の居住については、確実なことはほとんど知られていない。生涯の後半、彼はパトモス、すなわちエーゲ海にある周囲約20マイルの小さな荒涼とした島に流された。これは一般に、ドミティアヌスの治世末年の迫害の期間中のことと考えられている。ドミティアヌスは紀元96年に死去した。ヨハネはその直後、皇帝トラヤヌスの治世に帰還したと考えられる。その島で彼はヨハネの黙示録を書いた(Revelation 1:9 の注釈を参照せよ)。パトモスからの帰還後、彼は死ぬまでエペソで平穏に暮らした。その死は帰還後まもなく訪れたと考えられている。彼はエペソに葬られ、使徒の中で殉教しなかったのは彼ただ一人であると一般に考えられてきた。彼が非常に高齢まで生きたことは明らかである。実際、キリストが彼に従うよう召されたときの年齢は不明だが、25歳あるいは30歳未満であったとは考えられない。もしそうであれば、彼が死んだとき100歳に近かったはずである。

エペソにとどまっていた間のヨハネについては多くの逸話が伝えられているが、その真実性を裏付ける十分な証拠はない。ある人々は、迫害の時期に彼がローマへ連行され、煮えたつ油の大釜に投げ込まれたが、傷を負うことなく出てきたと述べている。また、ある日エペソの浴場に入ったとき、救い主の神性を否定したケリントスの存在に気づき、ケリントスの教えへの不同意を示すため、慌ててそこから逃げたとも言われる。さらに、晩年には彼が長い説教をすることができなくなったと言われるが、これについては疑いの余地がない。彼は集会へ運ばれ、「子どもたちよ、互いに愛し合いなさい」ということのほかは何も語らないのが常であった。ついに弟子たちは、なぜ常に同じことを語り続けるのかと尋ねた。彼は答えた。「主の戒めであるからだ。これが行われるなら、それで十分である」。

学者たちは、この福音書が書かれた時期について大きく意見が分かれている。ウェットシュタインは、救い主の昇天の直後に書かれたと考えた。ミルとルクレールは紀元97年に書かれたとし、ラードナー博士は、エルサレムの陥落の直前、紀元68年ごろのことであるとした。通説では、パトモスからの帰還後にエペソで書かれた、すなわち遅くとも紀元97年か98年のことであったとされる。この問題については何一つ確定的に決定できることはなく、しかもそれはごく些細な問題である。

この福音書がヨハネによって書かれたことは疑いを容れない。これは古代の教父たちによって十分に裏付けられており、初期の時代の啓示の最も鋭い敵であったケルスス、ポルフィリウス、ユリアヌスによってさえ疑われなかった。ヨハネの著作であることが広範に疑われたことは一度もなく、この書は、新約聖書の書物の中でも正典としての権威が争われなかったものの一つである。ラードナー、あるいはペイリーの『Evidences』を参照せよ。

この書を著した目的は、ヨハネ自身が John 20:31 において述べている。すなわち、イエスがキリスト、神の子であること、また信じる者がその名によっていのちを得ることを示すためであった。「この目的は福音書全体を通して保たれており、これを解き明かそうとするときには常に心に留められるべきである」。ケリントスの追随者とグノーシス主義者とを論駁するために彼がこの書を書いたと示そうとする様々な試みがなされてきたが、そのような目的があったことを裏付ける満足すべき証拠は何も提示されていない。

ヨハネは他の福音書記者たちの後に書いたので、彼らが省略した多くの事柄を記録している。ヨハネは、イエスの神性について、彼らよりもはるかに詳しく論じている。ヨハネは、彼らが省略した、イエスの伝道の初期に関する多くの事柄を語っている。彼は彼らよりもはるかに多くのキリストの講話を記録しており、とりわけ晩餐制定の際の興味深い講話を記している(John 14-17 を参照せよ)。

この福音書には、ユダヤ人のために書かれたのではないことを示す証拠があることが指摘されてきた。著者は、ユダヤ人であれば説明を要さなかったはずの語句や習慣を説明している(John 1:38, John 1:41; John 5:1-2; John 7:2; John 4:9 を参照せよ)。ギリシャ語における文体は、彼が学問を修めていない者であったことを示している。それは単純で、平明で、修辞を凝らしていない、彼のような境遇の者が用いたであろうと考えられる文体である。同時にそれは威厳を備え、純粋で深遠な思想を含んでおり、多くの点で新約聖書の書物の中で最も解釈が困難である。この書は、キリストご自身、その目的、そのわざについて、他のどの福音書よりも多くを含んでいる。他の福音書記者たちが主として奇蹟を記録し、イエスが神から遣わされたことの外的証拠を示すことに携わっていたのに対し、ヨハネは主として、キリストがどのような方であったのか、またその独自の教えが何であったのかを私たちに語ることに携わっている。彼の狙いは次のことを示すことであった。

1. イエスがメシアであること。

2. 「イエスご自身の言葉から」、メシアがどのような方であるかを示すこと。

他の福音書記者たちは、イエスのたとえ話、奇蹟、律法学者たちやファリサイ派との論争のみを記録しているが、ヨハネが主として記録しているのは、イエスがご自身について語られた講話である。「メシア、神の子」に関する真の教理を、単純な言葉で、しかも最も荘厳な構想をもって学びたいと願う者、神の真の本性と性格、そしてその贖罪所に近づく道を学びたいと願う者、クリスチャンの敬虔の真の性質、あるいは信仰的な慰めの源泉と性格を見たいと願う者、この世界が見てきた最も純粋な人格の模範を常に自らの前に置き、人に与えられてきた中で最も純粋な教えを観想したいと願う者は、ヨハネの福音書を祈りをもって学ぶ以上に良い方法はない。付け加えれば、この福音書はそれ自体が、啓示の真実性に関する覆すことのできない証拠である。ヨハネは漁師であり、世に名声のない、学問のない者であった(Acts 4:13)。今日、あの身分にある者で、このような書を著すことができる人がいるだろうか。霊感の影響下にあるのでない限り、あの身分の者が、これほど崇高な神についての観念を抱き、これほど純粋な道徳観を提示し、イエス・キリストの人格のように模倣しがたいほど愛らしく純粋な人格を描きうると考えることができるだろうか。これらの問いを発すること、それ自体がすでに答えである。そしてこの福音書は、これを書いた漁師が人間を超えた導きの下にあり、彼が記した約束(John 16:13。John 14:26 と比較せよ)に従って「すべての真理の中へと導き入れられた」ことの、反論不可能な実証として世の終わりまで立ち続けるであろう。また、彼の描いた人格――すなわち主イエスの人格――が実在のものであったことの、反論不可能な証拠としても残り続ける。それは完全な人格である。一点の欠陥もない。

これはどのようにして起こったのか。完全な人格を描こうとする試みはしばしばなされてきた――そして他のあらゆる場合において、そのたびに失敗してきた。ホメロスとウェルギリウス、また古代の歴史家たちが、最も純粋な模範を前にし、想像力のあらゆる助けを借りながらも、完全な人格を描写することにおいてすべて失敗してきたとき、いかにしてこれがついにユダヤ人の漁師によってのみ成し遂げられたのか。もう一つの考えを心に留めるなら、この困難はさらにいっそう大きくなる。ヨハネが描いているのは、神性を持つと彼が信じた方である(John 1:1)。それは「人の性質の中の神」を描こうとする試みであり、神的な存在が人と結合されるとき、あるいは人の姿において現れるときに、どのように行動されるかを示そうとするものである。そしてその描写は完全である。主イエスによって語られた言葉の一つ一つ、またその方に帰せられる感情の一つ一つの中に、この想定と矛盾するものはない。ところが、これと同じ試みはしばしばなされ、そのたびに失敗した。ホメロスとウェルギリウス、およびすべての古代の詩人たちは、神々が降りて来て人と語り合うならどのような者であるかを示そうと試みた。そして彼らはどのような者だったのか。ユピテル、ユノ、ウェヌス、マルス、ウルカヌスとはどのような者たちだったのか。情欲と、ねたみと、争いと、血に満ちた存在たちである。神的な性質が人の性質と結合されたこと、またそのような結合にふさわしく生き、行動されることについて、これまでに与えられた唯一の成功した記述が、ユダヤ人の漁師によって与えられたのは、どのようにしてか。その人格が実在のものであり、書き手がホメロスの天才とウェルギリウスの想像力をはるかに超える導き――聖霊の導き――の下にあったとしないならば、どのようにしてありえようか。

Preface to the Gospel According to St. John, With A Short Account of His Life

John, the writer of this Gospel, was the son of a fisherman named Zebedee, and his mother's name was Salome. Compare Matthew 27:56, with Mark 15:40, and Mark 16:1. His father Zebedee was probably of Bethsaida, and with his sons James and John followed his occupation on the sea of Galilee. The call of these two brothers to the apostleship is related, Matthew 4:21, Matthew 4:22; Mark 1:19, Mark 1:20; Luke 5:1-10. John is generally supposed to have been about 25 years of age when he began to follow our Lord.

Theophylact makes him one of the relatives of our Lord, and gives his genealogy thus: "Joseph, the husband of the blessed Mary, had seven children by a former wife, four sons and three daughters-Martha, (perhaps, says Dr. Lardner, it should be Mary), Esther, and Salome, whose son John was; therefore Salome was reckoned out Lord's sister, and John was his nephew." If this relationship did exist, it may have been, at least in part, the reason of several things mentioned in the Gospels: as the petition of the two brothers for the two chief places in the kingdom of Christ; John's being the beloved disciple and friend of Jesus, and being admitted to some familiarities denied to the rest, and possibly performing some offices about the person of his Master; and, finally, our Lord's committing to him the care of his mother, as long as she should survive him. In a MS. of the Greek Testament in the Imperial Library of Vienna, numbered 34 in Lambecius's Catalogue, there is a marginal note which agrees pretty much with the account given above by Theophylact: viz. "John the evangelist was cousin to our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh: for Joseph, the spouse of the God-bearing virgin, had four sons by his own wife, James, Simon, Jude, and Joses, and three daughters, Esther, and Thamar, and a third who, with her mother, was called Salome, who was given by Joseph in marriage to Zebedee: of her, Zebedee begot James, and John also the evangelist." The writer of the MS. professes to have taken this account from the commentaries of St Sophronius.

This evangelist is supposed by some to have been the bridegroom at the marriage of Cana in Galilee: see John 2:1.

John was with our Lord in his transfiguration on the mount, Matthew 17:2; Mark 9:2; Luke 9:28; during his agony in the garden, Matthew 26:37; Mark 14:33; and when he was crucified, John 19:26.

He saw our Lord expire upon the cross, and saw the soldier pierce his side with a spear, John 19:34, John 19:35.

He was one of the first of the disciples that visited the sepulchre after the resurrection of Christ; and was present with the other disciples, when Jesus showed himself to them on the evening of the same day on which he arose; and likewise eight days after, John 20:19-29.

In conjunction with Peter, he cured a man who had been lame from his mother's womb, for which he was cast into prison, Acts 3:1-10. He was afterwards sent to Samaria, to confer the Holy Ghost on those who had been converted there by Philip the deacon, Acts 8:5-25. St. Paul informs us, Galatians 2:9, that John was present at the council of Jerusalem, of which an account is given, Acts 15:4, etc.

It is evident that John was present at most of the things related by him in his Gospel; and that he was an eye and ear witness of our Lord's labors, journeyings, discourses, miracles, passion; crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension. After the ascension he returned with the other apostles from mount Olivet to Jerusalem, and took part in all transactions previously to the day of pentecost: on which time, he, with the rest, partook of the mighty outpouring of the Holy Spirit, by which he was eminently qualified for the place he afterwards held in the apostolic Church.

Some of the ancients believed that he went into Parthia, and preached the Gospel there; and his first epistle has been sometimes cited under the name of the Epistle to the Parthians.

Irenaeus, Eusebius, Origen, and others, assert that he was a long tune in Asia, continuing there till Trajan's time, who succeeded Nerva, a.d. 98. And Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, a.d. 196, asserts that John was buried in that city. Jerome confirms this testimony, and says that John's death happened in the 68th year after our Lord's passion.

Tertullian and others say that Domitian having declared war against the Church of Christ, in the 15th year of his reign, a.d. 95, John was banished from Ephesus, and carried to Rome, where he was immersed in a cauldron of boiling oil, out of which however he escaped unhurt; and that afterwards he was banished to the isle of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea, where he wrote the Apocalypse. Domitian having been slain in a.d. 96, his successor Nerva recalled all the exiles who had been banished by his predecessor; and John is supposed to have returned the next year to Ephesus, being then about ninety years of age. He is thought to have been the only apostle who died a natural death, and to have lived upwards of 100 years. Some say, having completed 100 years, he died the day following. This Gospel is supposed by learned men to have been written about a.d. 68 or 70; by others, a.d. 86; and, by others, a.d. 97; but the most probable opinion is that it was written at Ephesus about the year 86.

Jerome, in his comment on Galatians 6, says that John continued preaching when he was so enfeebled with old age that he was obliged to be carried into the assembly; and that, not being able to deliver any long discourse, his custom was to say, in every meeting, My dear children, love one another! The holy virgin lived under his care till the day of her death, which is supposed to have taken place fifteen years after the crucifixion.

John is usually painted holding a cup in his hand, with a serpent issuing from it: this took its rise from a relation by the spurious Procorus, who styles himself a disciple of St. John. Though the story is not worth relating, curiosity will naturally wish to be gratified with it. Some heretics had privately poisoned a cup of liquor, with which they presented him; but after he had prayed to God, and made the sign of the cross over it, the venom was expelled, in the form of a serpent!

Some of the first disciples of our Lord, misunderstanding the passage, John 21:22, John 21:23, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? believed that John should never die. Several in the primitive Church were of the same opinion; and to this day his death is doubted by persons of the first repute for piety and morality. Where such doctors disagree, it would be thought presumption in me to attempt to decide; otherwise I should not have hesitated to say that, seventeen hundred years ago he went the way of all flesh, and, instead of a wandering lot in a miserable, perishing world, is now glorified in that heaven of which his writings prove he had so large an anticipation, both before and after the crucifixion of his Lord.

Eusebius (Hist. Eccles. lib. iii. cap. 24) treats particularly of the order of the Gospels, and especially of this evangelist: his observations are of considerable importance, and deserve a place here. Dr. Lardner has quoted him at large, Works, vol. iv. p. 224.

"Let us," says he, "observe the writings of this apostle which are not contradicted by any. And first of all must be mentioned, as acknowledged of all, the Gospel according to him, well known to all the Churches under heaven. And that it has been justly placed by the ancients the fourth in order, and after the other three, may be made evident in this manner. Those admirable and truly Divine men, the apostles of Christ, eminently holy in their lives, and, as to their minds, adorned with every virtue, but rude in language, confiding in the Divine and miraculous power bestowed upon them by our Savior, neither knew, nor attempted to deliver the doctrine of their Master with the artifice and eloquence of words. But using only the demonstration of the Divine Spirit, working with them, and the power of Christ performing by them many miracles, they spread the knowledge of the kingdom of heaven all over the world. Nor were they greatly concerned about the writing of books, being engaged in a more excellent ministry, which was above all human power. Insomuch that Paul, the most able of all in the furniture both of words and thoughts, has left nothing in writing, beside some very short (or a very few) epistles; although he was acquainted with innumerable mysteries, having been admitted to the sight and contemplation of things in the third heaven, and been caught up into the Divine Paradise, and there allowed to hear unspeakable words. Nor were the rest of our Savior's followers unacquainted with these things, as the seventy disciples, and many other beside the twelve apostles. Nevertheless, of all the disciples of our Lord, Matthew and John only have left us any memoirs: who too, as we have been informed, were compelled to write by a kind of necessity. For Matthew having first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go to other people, delivered to them in their own language the Gospel according to him, by that writing supplying the want of his presence with those whom he was then leaving. And when Mark and Luke had published the Gospels according to them, it is said that John, who all this while had preached by word of mouth, was at length induced to write for this reason. The three first written Gospels being now delivered to all men, and to John himself, it is said that he approved them, and confirmed the truth of their narration by his own testimony; saying there was only wanting a written account of the things done by Christ in the former part, and the beginning of his preaching. And certainly that observation is very true. For it is easy to perceive that the other three evangelists have recorded only the actions of our Savior for one year after the imprisonment of John, as they themselves declare at the beginning of their history. For, after mentioning the forty days' fast, and the succeeding temptation, Matthew shows the time of the commencement of his account in these words: When he had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed out of Judea into Galilee. In like manner, Mark: Now after that John, says he, was cast into prison, Jesus came into Galilee. And Luke, before he begins the account of the acts of Jesus, gives a like hint in this manner: that Herod added yet this, above all, that he shut up John in prison. For these reasons, as is said, the Apostle John was entreated to relate, in the Gospel according to him, the time omitted by the four evangelists, and the things done by our Savior in that space, before the imprisonment of the Baptist; And they add, farther, that he himself hints as much, saying, This beginning of miracles did Jesus: as also in the history of the acts of Jesus he makes mention of the Baptist as still baptizing in Aenon, nigh unto Salem. And it is thought that he expressly declares as much, when he says, For John was not yet cast into prison. John, therefore, in the Gospel according to him, relates the things done by Christ while the Baptist was not yet cast into prison. But the other three evangelists relate the things that followed the Baptist's confinement. Whoever attends to these things will not any longer think the evangelists disagree with each other, forasmuch as the Gospel according to John contains the first actions of Christ, while the others give the history of the following time. And for the same reason John has omitted the genealogy of our Savior according to the flesh, it having been recorded before by Matthew and Luke; but he begins with his divinity, which had been reserved by the Holy Ghost for him, as the most excellent person." The whole of this chapter, with the preceding and following, may be profitably consulted by the reader. See also Lardner, Works, vol. iv. 224, and vi. 156-222.

Besides the Gospel before us, John is generally reputed to have been the author of the three epistles which go under his name, and of the Apocalypse. The former certainly breathe the genuine spirit of this apostle; and are invaluable monuments of his spiritual knowledge and deep piety, as well as of his Divine inspiration: as the Gospel and Epistles prove him to have been an evangelist and apostle, his book of Revelations ranks him among the profoundest of the prophets.

Learned men are not wholly agreed about the language in which this Gospel was originally written. Some think St. John wrote it in his own native tongue, the Aramean or Syriac, and that it was afterwards translated, by rather an unskilful hand, into Greek. This opinion is not supported by strong arguments. That it was originally written in Greek is the general and most likely opinion.

What the design of St. John was, in writing this Gospel, has divided and perplexed many critics and learned divines. Some suppose that it was to refute the errors taught by one Cerinthus, who rose up at that time, and asserted that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was the real son of Joseph and Mary; that, at his baptism, the Christ, what we term the Divine nature, descended into him, in the form of a dove, by whose influence he worked all his miracles; and that, when he was about to suffer, this Christ, or Divine nature, departed from him, and left the man Jesus to suffer death. See Irenaeus, advers. Haereses.

Others suppose he wrote with the prime design of confuting the heresy of the Gnostics, a class of mongrels who derived their existence from Simon Magus, and who formed their system out of Heathenism, Judaism, and Christianity; and whose peculiar, involved, and obscure opinions cannot be all introduced in this place. It is enough to know that, concerning the person of our Lord, they held opinions similar to those of Cerinthus; and that they arrogated to themselves the highest degrees of knowledge and spirituality. They supposed that the Supreme Being had all things and beings included, in a certain seminal manner, in himself; and that out of Him they were produced. From God, or Bythos, the infinite Abyss, they derived a multitude of subaltern governors, called Aeons; whom they divided into several classes, among which we may distinguish the following nine. Πατηρ, Father; Χαρις, Grace; Μονογενης, First-begotten; Αληθεια, Truth; Λογος, Word; Φως, Light; Ζωη, Life; Ανθρωπος, Man; and Εκκλησια, Church; all these merging in what they termed Πληρωμα, Fulness, or complete round of being and blessings: terms which are of frequent occurrence in John's Gospel, and which some think he has introduced to fix their proper sense, and to rescue them from being abused by the Gnostics. But this is not very likely, as the Gnostics themselves appealed to St. John's Gospel for a confirmation of their peculiar opinions, because of his frequent use of the above terms. These sentiments, therefore, do not appear to be tenable.

Professor Michaelis has espoused the opinion, that it was written against the Gnostics and Sabians, and has advanced several arguments in its favor; the chief of which are the following.

"The plan which St. John adopted, to confute the tenets of the Gnostics and the Sabians, was first to deliver a set of aphorisms, as counterpositions to these tenets; and then to relate such speeches and miracles of Christ as confirmed the truth of what he had advanced. We must not suppose that the confutation of the Gnostic and Sabian errors is confined to the fourteen first verses of St. John's Gospel; for, in the first place, it is evident that many of Christ's speeches which occur in the following part of the Gospel, were selected by the evangelist with a view of proving the positions laid down in these fourteen verses; and, secondly, the positions themselves are not proofs, but merely declarations made by the evangelist. It is true that for us Christians, who acknowledge the Divine authority of St. John, his bare word is sufficient; but as the apostle had to combat with adversaries who made no such acknowledgment, the only method of convincing them was to support his assertion by the authority of Christ himself.

"Some of the Gnostics placed the 'Word' above all the other Aeons, and next to the Supreme Being: but Cerinthus placed the 'Only begotten' first, and then the 'Word.' Now St. John lays down the following positions: -

"1. The Word and the Only begotten are not different, but the same person, John 1:14. 'We beheld his glory, as of the only begotten of the Father.' This is a strong position against the Gnostics, who usually ascribed all the Divine qualities to the Only begotten. The proofs of this position are: the testimony of John the Baptist, John 1:18, John 1:34; John 3:35, John 3:36; the conversation of Christ with Nicodemus, John 3:16, John 3:18, in which Christ calls himself the only begotten Son; the speech delivered by Christ to the Jews, John 5:17-47; and other passages, in which he calls God his Father.

"2. The Word was never made, but existed from the beginning, John 1:1. The Gnostics granted that the Word existed before the creation; but they did not admit that the Word existed from all eternity. The Supreme Being, according to their tenets, and, according to Cerinthus, the only begotten Son likewise, as also the matter from which the world was formed, were prior in existence to the Word. This notion is contradicted by St. John, who asserts that the Word existed from all eternity. As a proof of this position may be alleged perhaps what Christ says, John 8:58.

"3. The Word was in the beginning with God, John 1:1, John 1:2. The Gnostics must have maintained a contrary doctrine, or St. John, in confuting their tenets, would not have thought it necessary to advance this position, since God is omnipresent, and therefore all things are present with him.

"4. The Word was God, John 1:1. The expression, God, must be here taken in its highest sense or this position will contain nothing contrary to the doctrine of the Gnostics. For they admitted that the Word was an Aeon, and therefore a deity in the lower sense of the word. The proofs of this position are contained in the 5th, 10th, (John 10:30), and 14th (John 14:7, John 14:11) chapters.

"5. The Word was the creator of all things, John 1:3, John 1:10. This is one of St. John's principal positions against the Gnostics, who asserted that the world was made by a malevolent being. The assertion, that the Word was the creator of the world, is equivalent to the assertion, that he was God in the highest possible sense. In whatever form or manner we may think of God, the notion of Creator is inseparable from the notion of Supreme Being. We argue from the creation to the Creator; and this very argument is one proof of the existence of God.

"6. In the Word was life, John 1:4. The Gnostics, who considered the different attributes or operations of the Almighty, not as so many separate energies, but as so many separate persons, considered Life as a distinct Aeon from the Word. Without this Aeon, the world, they said, would be in a state of torpor; and hence they called it not only Life, but the Mother of the living; from this Aeon, therefore, might be expected the resurrection of the dead and eternal life. The proofs of this position are in John 3:15, John 3:21; the whole of the sixth, and the greatest part of the eighth chapter, as also John 14:6, John 14:9, John 14:19. But no part of St. John's Gospel is a more complete proof of this position than his full and circumstantial account of the resurrection of Lazarus, which the other evangelists had omitted." - See more in Michaelis's Introduction to the New Testament. And, for a general account of the Logos, see John 1, at the end.

Though it is likely that the Gnostics held all these strange doctrines, and that many parts in John's Gospel may be successfully quoted against them, yet I must own I think the evangelist had a more general end in view than the confutation of their heresies. It is more likely that he wrote for the express purpose of giving the Jews, his countrymen, proper notions of the Messiah and his kingdom; and to prove that Jesus, who had lately appeared among them, was this Christ. His own words sufficiently inform us of his motive, object, and design, in writing this Gospel: These things 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, John 20:31. This is a design as noble as it is simple; and every way highly becoming the wisdom and goodness of God.

The eternity of the Divine Logos, or Word of God, the dispenser of light and life, John 1:1-5. The mission of John the Baptist, John 1:6-13. The incarnation of the Logos or Word of God, John 1:14. John's testimony concerning the Logos, John 1:15-18. The priests and Levites question him concerning his mission and his baptism, John 1:19-22. His answer, John 1:23-28. His farther testimony on seeing Christ, John 1:29-34. He points him out to two of his disciples, who thereupon follow Jesus, John 1:35-37. Christ's address to them, John 1:38, John 1:39. Andrew invites his brother, Simon Peter; Christ's address to him, John 1:40-42. Christ calls Philip, and Philip invites Nathanael, John 1:43-46. Christ's character of Nathanael, John 1:47. A remarkable conversation between him and this disciple, John 1:48-51.

John's introduction is from John 1:1-18. Some harmonists suppose it to end with John 1:14. but, from the connection of the whole, John 1:18 appears to be its natural close, at it contains a reason why the Logos or Word was made flesh. John 1:15 refers to John 1:6-8, and in these passages John's testimony is anticipated in order of time, and is very fitly mentioned to illustrate Christ's pre-eminence. John 1:16, John 1:17 have a plain reference to John 1:14. See Bp. Newcome.

INTRODUCTION TO JOHN

The author of this Gospel is John, the son of Zebedee and Salome, the brother of James the greater; he outlived the rest of the disciples, and wrote this Gospel after the other evangelists; and in it many things are recorded, which are not in the other Gospels; as various discourses of Christ, and miracles done by him; several incidents in his life, and circumstances that attended his sufferings and death: the occasion of it is generally thought to be the errors of Ebion and Cerinthus, who denied the divinity of Christ, asserted he was a mere man, and that he did not exist before his incarnation; and the design of it is to confute them: and it is easy to observe, that he begins his Gospel with the divinity of Christ; asserts him to be God, and proves him to be truly and properly so, by the works of creation, which were wrought by him, as well as shows that he was really man. Clemens (a) calls this Gospel of John, pneumatikon euaggelion "a spiritual Gospel", as indeed it is; consisting of the spiritual discourses of our Lord, on various occasions, both at the beginning, and in the course of his ministry, and especially a little before his sufferings and death: and the same writer observes, that John, the last of the evangelists, considering that in the other Gospels were declared the things relating to the body of Christ, that is, to him, as he was after the flesh; to his genealogy and birth as man; to what was done to him, or by him, in his infancy; to his baptism, temptations, journeys, &c. at the request of his familiar friends, and moved by the Spirit of God, composed this Gospel. Moreover, it is observed by some (b), that the other three evangelists only record what was done by Christ, in one year after John the Baptist was cast into prison, as appears from Matthew 4:12 wherefore John, at the entreaty of his friends, put these things into his Gospel, which were done or said by Christ, before John was cast into prison. He was called very early by Christ, though young; and was with him throughout the whole of his ministry, and was an eye and ear witness of what he here relates, and his testimony is to be received; he was the beloved disciple, he leaned on the bosom of Jesus, and had great intimacy with him; and might be privy to some things, which others were not acquainted with; and though he was a Galilean, and an unlearned man, Acts 4:13 yet being endowed with the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit, he was abundantly qualified to write this book: for what some ancient writers (c) say of him, that he was a priest, and wore a plate, that is, of gold upon his forehead, cannot be true, since he was not of the tribe of Levi; and besides, only the high priest wore that upon his mitre; unless they mean, as seems most likely, that he was a Christian bishop: perhaps the mistake may arise from John the Baptist, who was of the priestly order, and is called by some Jewish writers (d), John the high priest. When and where this Gospel was written, is not certain; some say in (e) Asia, after he had wrote his Revelation in Patmos; and others say particularly, that it was wrote at Ephesus; the title of it in the Syriac version, signifies much, which runs thus;

"the holy Gospel, the preaching of John, which he spoke and published in Greek at Ephesus.''

And to the same purpose is the title of it in the Persic version;

"the Gospel of John, one of the twelve apostles, which was spoken in the city of Ephesus, in the Greek Roman tongue.''

(a) Apud Euseb. Eccl. Hist. l. 6. c. 14. (b) Ib. l. 3. c. 24. (c) Polycrates in ib. l. 3. c. 31. & l. 5. c. 24. & Hieron. Catalog. Script. Eccles. fol. 96. sect. 55. (d) Ganz Tzemach David, par. 1. fol. 25. 2.((e) Hieron. Prolog. Evang. Joannis.

DE S. JOANNE EVANGELISTA.

WE pause on the threshold that leads from the Three Gospels to the Fourth, as from the Holy Place to the Holy of Holies; and I feel that there can be no better introduction to that innermost sanctuary than the hymn of which it has been truly said, that “sacred Latin poetry scarcely possesses, if indeed it possess,” anything grander or loftier. (Archbishop Trench, Sacred Latin Poetry, p. 72.) Many readers of this Volume will, I believe, thank me for giving them the opportunity of reading that hymn in the unapproachable majesty of the original. Others will, I hope, appreciate it in some measure, even in the weaker medium of a translation. The writer is unknown, but he was clearly one who had been trained in the school of Adam of St. Victor, whose hymn on the Cherubic Emblems of the Gospels has been already given (p. xliv.), and the disciple was not inferior to his master.

E. H. P.

Verbum Dei, Deo Natum,

Quod nec factum, nec creatum,

Venit de cœlestibus;

Hoc vidit, hoc attrectavit,

Hoc de cœlo reseravit,

Joannes hominibus.

Inter illos primitivos

Veros veri fontis rivos

Joannes exiliit;

Toti mundo propinare

Nectar illud salutare,

Quod de throno prodiit.

Cœlum transit, veri rotam

Solis vidit. ibi totam

Mentis figens aciem;

Speculator spiritalis,

Quasi Seraphim sub alis,

Dei vidit faciem.

Audiit in gyro sedis

Quid psallant cum citharædis,

Quater seni proceres:

De sigillo Trinitatis

Nostræ nummo civitatis

Impressit characteres.

Volat avis sine meta

Quo nec vates nec propheta

Evolavit altius:

Tam implenda quam impleta,

Nunquam vidit tot secreta

Purus homo purius.

Sponsus, rubra veste tectus,

Visus, sed non intellectus,

Redit ad palatium:

Aquilam Ezechielis

Sponsæ misit, quæ de cœlis

Referret mysterium.

Dic, dilecte, de Dilecto,

Qualis, adsit, et de lecto

Sponsi Sponsæ nuncia;

Dic quis cibus angelorum,

Quæ sint festa superorum

De Sponsi præsentia.

Veri panem intellectus,

Cænam Christi super pectus,

Christi sumptam resera:

Ut cantemus de Patrono,

Coram Agno, coram Throno,

Laudes super æthera.

The Word of God, the Eternal Son,

With God, the Uncreated, One,

Came down to earth from Heaven;

To see Him, handle Him, and show

His heavenly life to men below,

To holy John was given.

Among those four primeval streams

Whose living fount in Eden gleams,

John’s record true is known;

To all the world he poureth forth

The nectar pure of priceless worth

That flows from out the Throne.

Beyond the Heavens he soared, nor failed,

With all the spirit’s gaze unveiled,

To see our true Sun’s grace;

Not as through mists and visions dim,

Beneath the wings of Seraphim

He looked, and saw God s face.

He heard where songs and harps resound

And four and twenty elders round

Sing hymns of praise and joy:

The impress of the One in Three,

With print so clear that all may see,

He stamped on earth’s alloy.

As eagle winging loftiest flight

Where never seer’s or prophet’s sight

Had pierced the ethereal vast,

Pure beyond human purity,

He scanned, with still undazzled eye,

The future and the past.

The bridegroom, clad in garments red,

Seen, yet with might unfathomed,

Home to his palace hies;

Ezekiel’s eagle to His bride

He sends, and will no longer hide

Heaven’s deepest mysteries.

O loved one, bear, if thou can’st tell

Of Him whom thou did’st love so well,

Glad tidings to the Bride;

Tell of the angels’ food they taste,

Who with the Bridegroom’s presence graced,

Are resting at His side.

Tell of the soul’s true bread unpriced,

Christ’s supper, on the breast of Christ

In wondrous rapture ta’en;

That we may sing before the Throne

His praises, whom as Lord we own,

The Lamb we worship slain.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN.

John.

BY

THE REV. H. W. WATKINS, M.A.,

Professor of Logic and Moral Philosophy at King’s College, London.

Quarti euangeliorum Iohannis ex decipolis

cohortantibus condescipulis et eps suis

dixit conieiunate mihi odie triduo et quid

cuique fuerit reuelatum alterutrum

nobis ennarremus eadem nocte reue

latum andreae ex apostolis ut recognis

centibus cuntis Iohannis suo nomine

cuncta discriberet et ideo licit uaria sin

culis euangeliorum libris principia

doceantur Nihil tamen differt creden

tium feidei cum uno ac principali s̄pū de

clarata sint in omnibus omnia de natidi

tate de passione de resurrectione

de conuersatione cum decipulis suis

ac de gemino eius aduentu

Primo In humilitate dispectus quod fo

tu secundum potestate regali pre

clarum quod foturum est. quid ergo

mirum si Iohannes tam constanter

sincula etiā In epistulis suis proferat

dicens In semeipsu Quæ uidimus oculis

nostris et auribus audiuimus et manus

nostrae palpauerunt haec scripsimus

uobis

[Tregelles, CANON MURATORIANUS.

See Introduction, page 377.]

INTRODUCTION

TO

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN.

I.LIFE OF THE APOSTLE JOHN.

II.AUTHORSHIP OF THE GOSPEL.

III.TIME WHEN AND PLACE WHERE THE GOSPEL WAS WRITTEN.

IV.THE PURPOSE WHICH THE WRITER HAD IN VIEW.

V.CONTENTS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE GOSPEL.

VI.SKETCH OF THE LITERATURE OF THE SUBJECT.

I. Life of the Apostle John.—Our sources of information for the life of the Apostle John are, (1) the Four Gospels themselves; (2) the Acts of the Apostles, with references in the Epistles; (3) the traditions which have come to us in the history of the early Church.

(1) From the Gospels we know that St. John was the son of Zebedee and Salome.

The father is mentioned only once in the narrative (Matthew 4:21-22; Mark 1:19-20), but the name occurs frequently as distinguishing the sons. He had “hired servants” (Mark 1:20); and John’s own connection with the family of the high priest (John 18:15; but see Note here), and the committal of Mary to his care (John 19:27), may also point to a position removed at least from the necessity, but not from the practice, of labour, which was customary among Jews of all classes (Matthew 4:21).

Of Salome we know little more. It has been assumed above that she was the wife of Zebedee, and the mother of St. John; and the assumption is based upon a comparison of Matthew 20:20; Matthew 27:56; Mark 15:40; Mark 16:1. (Comp. Notes on these passages.) It has also been frequently assumed that she was the sister of Mary, the mother of our Lord, mentioned in John 19:25 (comp. Note there); and although this cannot be regarded as proved, it is the most probable interpretation. It would follow from this that St. John was the cousin-german of our Lord. Salome was also one of the band of women who ministered unto the Lord of their substance (Matthew 27:56; Luke 8:3); and this falls in with the general impression which the narrative gives of the position of the family. She was present at the Crucifixion (Mark 15:40), and was one of those who brought spices for the embalmment (Mark 16:1). In one other passage she is mentioned, and there she appears as asking for her two sons the position of honour in the Messianic kingdom (Matthew 20:20 et seq.). Her prominence as compared with her husband, and the title “mother of Zebedee’s children,” makes it probable that she outlived him, and that the influence of the mother, whose zeal and love for her sons are illustrated in her ambitious request for them, was that which chiefly moulded the Apostle’s earlier years.

Another member of the household is known to us—James, who is usually mentioned first, and was presumably the elder of the pair of brothers. At the time of his death he was, however, known to St. Luke as “James the brother of John” (Acts 12:2), and the same writer inverts the order of the names in the same chapter (Luke 9:28 [? reading], Luke 9:52). In Acts 1:13, too, the better reading is Peter and John and James. The home of the family was on the shores of the Lake of Galilee, at Bethsaida, according to the usual conclusion from Luke 5:9 and John 1:44; or, perhaps, at Capernaum, which was not far from Bethsaida (Mark 1:29).

The sons of Jonas were companions of the sons of Zebedee when they are first mentioned, and had probably been friends in boyhood and youth. Whether the home was at Bethsaida or Capernaum, the Apostle was by birth a Galilean, as were all the Twelve, with the exception, perhaps, of Judas Iscariot. (Comp. Notes on John 6:71, and Acts 2:7.) He belonged, then, to the free, industrious, and warlike people of the North, who were despised by the more cultured inhabitants of Jerusalem, and upon whom the yoke of Judaism pressed less heavily than it did upon the dwellers in Judæa. Removed from the influence of scribes and Pharisees on the one hand, he would on the other hand grow up in contact with men of alien races and creeds, who were found in large numbers in the populous cities of Galilee. The union of Jewish and Greek characteristics which mark the man would be thus formed insensibly in the boy.

We know too little of the family life in Galilee eighteen centuries ago to be able to realise with any fulness and certainty how the years of the Apostle’s boyhood and youth were spent; and yet there are certain bold lines which can be distinctly traced. Up to the age of six he, like other Jewish children, would be taught by his parents at home, and then sent to one of the public schools, which, in the period after the Captivity, had been established in every town and important village in Judæa and Galilee. We know that after the fall of Jerusalem Tiberias became the seat of the most famous rabbinic school, and it is probable that there were already established on the shores of the Sea of Galilee the seminaries of doctors who had been themselves trained at Jerusalem. The lad would have gone to one of these higher seminaries at the age of sixteen, and would thus have been fitted for the work which, in the providence of God, lay before him, though he was not technically trained at the feet of a rabbi, and was therefore classed among the “unlearned and ignorant” (Acts 4:13).

At the age of twelve or thirteen, John would have been taken up, as we know that Jesus was, to keep the feasts at Jerusalem. The holy city, bound up with prophecy and psalm; the temple, the centre of every highest hope and thought which, at mother’s knee or at the feet of the teacher, had been instilled into his mind, now burst in all the glory of its reality upon this Galilean boy. What Oxford and Cambridge are to English schoolboys, or Rome to the pilgrim from distant lands, all this, and a thousand times more than all this, was the city of Zion to the Jewish pilgrim. Well may it be that the gorgeous ritual of the temple so impressed itself upon the receptive youthful mind as to furnish the imagery in which the Visions of the Apocalypse were afterwards to be clothed.

These visits would be repeated three times each year, and form the great events in the year’s course. The caravans, the pilgrim-songs, the discourses of rabbis and teachers, the ritual of the feasts themselves, would all leave their mark upon the opening mind, and lead to question and answer as to what these things meant.

In the intervals between the feasts, there would be the regular synagogue services and instructions, the converse with teachers and friends, the daily task in his father’s trade, the growth and development of character in and through all these outer circumstances.

The most prominent thought of the times, the subject on which men were ever musing and speaking of, was the expectation of the Messiah. Probably every well-trained Jewish boy expected that the Messiah would come before his own life would end. Together with this expectation of the Messiah there were hopes of freedom from the oppression of Rome; and the deep feeling of the masses frequently found vent in open insurrection. One remarkable attempt to throw off the hated yoke, which was for a time successful—when Judas the Gaulonite, and Sadoc the Pharisee, ruled the whole country—must have occurred when John was yet a boy, and his spirit must have been fired by the cry of their watchword, “God only is our Lord and Master.” (Comp. Jos. Ant. xviii. 1.)

And so the years went on. Boyhood passed into youth, and youth into manhood. The study of the law and the prophets, the singing of psalms, the utterance of prayers, the feelings and hopes of his countrymen, must, with successive years, have brought a new meaning. The dreams of childhood and visions of youth grew into the deeper thoughts and fuller hopes of manhood.

Such was the relation of John’s mind to the preparation of the past and to the hopes of the future, when the Baptist appeared as the herald of the coming King, and passing from Judæa northwards through the Jordan Valley, cried with a voice which, like a trumpet-blast, awoke men from their spiritual slumber, “Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” Among those who flocked to this new teacher were the sons of Zebedee and the sons of Jonas. The first chapter of this Gospel leads to the thought that they were prominent among the Forerunner’s disciples; and to the heart of no one, it may be, of all who heard him did his burning words come with greater power than to that of the young follower whose name was in the after-history to eclipse his own. For days, or weeks, or months, perhaps, the spirit of John the Baptist was leading the spirit of John the son of Zebedee onward from Old Testament prophecy to Him in whom Old Testament prophecy was to be fulfilled. Neither knew, indeed, that the fulfilment was so near at hand until the Baptist saw the Messiah coming to be baptised, and the disciple heard the cry, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.” On the following day the words so full of meaning were again spoken, and a pair of disciples. of whom Andrew was one, and John almost certainly the other, passed from the discipleship of the Baptist to that of the Messiah Himself. They “remained with Him that day,” the crisis of the life, in which its whole current was changed. (See Notes on chap John 1:35-42.)

The next period of the life is one with which we are familiar from the Gospels themselves, and one which, therefore, needs but a brief treatment here. John seems at once to have followed Jesus; to have been present, and, perhaps, even to have been a central figure, at the marriage at Cana (John 2, Note on John 2:5); to have gone thence with Him to Capernaum and Jerusalem (John 2:12; John 2:22); to have been with Him on the return to Samaria; and then probably for a time to have gone back to his ordinary life, learning in the calmness of its retirement the meaning of the lessons which the words and deeds of Jesus had taught him.

From that retirement he is again called, and perhaps the call was repeated (comp. Notes on Matthew 4:18 and Luke 5:1-11), to be a fisher of men and an Apostle of the Church of Christ. With James his brother, with Simon and Andrew his friends, he is always named in the first group of the Apostles; and with James and Simon he forms the band of three who are the nearest friends and companions of the earthly life of Christ. They alone are with Him in the presence of death (Mark 5:37); in the Mount of Transfiguration; in the garden of Gethsemane. Peter and John follow Him within the high priest’s house at the trial (John 18); John at least was present at the Crucifixion; and both ran together to the sepulchre. From the call to the Apostleship to the close of the human life of Christ, the story of the life of St. John is bound up with the outer events of the life of his Master. Following in His steps; hearing, and, with greater receptive power than any other hearer, grasping the truths that Christ taught; seeing, and, with greater spiritual intuition than any other witness, reading the signs that Christ did; loving with fuller love, and therefore more fully loved; he was preparing to be prominent among witnesses to, as he had been prominent among those who were witnesses of, the works and teaching and love of Christ.

But his character is not represented as simply receptive. He who gave to Simon the name of Peter to mark him out as the rock-man of the Church, gave to James and John, as marking out some characteristics in them, the title “Boanerges” or “Thunder-sons.” (Comp. Note on Mark 3:17.) If “Son of Perdition” was the name of him in whom there was the special characteristic marked by “perdition” (comp. Note on John 17:12), and “Son of Exhortation” that of him who had this special gift (comp. Note on Acts 4:36), then “Sons of Thunder” marks out some force of character—sudden, impulsive, vehement, as the thunder’s roll. Of this we find traces in the earlier Gospels. These sons of Zebedee, seeking with their mother the chief places in the Messianic kingdom, declare that they are ready to face all the dangers and difficulties before them; to drink of His cup; to be baptised with His baptism (Matthew 20:20-24; Mark 10:35-41). They forbad those who cast out devils in Christ’s name, and would call fire from heaven to consume those who received not their Lord (Luke 9:49-54). Of the spirit of the Elijah of the Old Testament they had learnt in the school of the Elijah of the New Testament, and had carried, perhaps, something of the Baptist’s stern denunciation of sin, and of his hardness of life and manner, into the work of Christ.

But if this is the character of John as drawn in the earlier Gospels, it is not that which is drawn in the Fourth Gospel itself. There he is the son of love, gentleness, receptivity, rather than the son of thunder; and these are the aspects of his character which have for the most part impressed themselves on Christian art and thought. The difference has often been noted, and for the most part noted by those who have drawn from it the inference that the two pictures cannot represent the same man, and that the later is the ideal of an after age. But the picture of the natural man, taken in the fire and vigour of youth, may furnish but few points of resemblance with that which represents him in the mellow ripeness of age. Great minds are wholly changed by half a century of expansion and growth; and experience would seem to show that the earnest, forceful, impulsive character is that which ripens into calm and gentle love. If the youth represents love bursting forth in active strength, the old age represents love passively resting in being loved. The pictures, it should be remembered also, are drawn from different stand-points. The former is from without, representing the character in youth, as seen in its manifestations by others; the latter is from within, representing the character at the close of life, as the writer knew himself, and knew himself to be receptive of the love of Christ.

(2) For the next period of the life of St. John our only authorities are the Acts of the Apostles and their letters. Here, as in the Gospels, he is closely connected with St. Peter. They are named together among those who were “in the upper room” (John 1:13); they go up to the Temple together (John 3:1), and are together before the Sanhedrin (John 4:13; John 4:19); they are sent together on the mission to Samaria (John 8:14). Both are in Jerusalem after the Herodian persecution, in which James was killed with the sword (John 12:2), and are at the first great council (John 15:6; comp. Galatians 2:9). These scanty notices give all that we know of a period which must have extended over some twenty years. While James was the first bishop of the Jerusalem Church, and Peter was the leader of Christianity among the Jews, it can hardly be that St. John was living a life of retirement. Other missions, like that to the Samaritans, may in part have occupied this interval; or he may have carried on a work less prominent, but not less useful, than that of St. Peter and St. James in Jerusalem itself; or he may have returned to Galilee to do a like work there. Wherever he dwelt he doubtless regarded the solemn committal of the Virgin Mary to his care (John 19:26) as binding while she lived. If we may accept the traditions which place her death in the year A.D. 48 as approximately true, it may account for the fact that St. John is not mentioned with St. Peter and St. James as in Jerusalem during St. Paul’s first visit after his conversion, about A.D. 38 (Galatians 1:18-19); but he is so mentioned, and is regarded as one of the “pillars of the Church,” at the visit to the council in A.D. 51 (Galatians 2:4).

In connection with this residence at Jerusalem, extending, it may be, over many years, we have to bear in mind that while Galilee is the scene of the narrative of the earlier Gospels, Jerusalem is specially that of the Fourth. It assumes a minute acquaintance with persons and places which could be possessed only by one who had resided in the city. (Comp. p. 374.)

(3) Passing to the later period of the Apostolic life, we are left without any certain guide. He is nowhere mentioned in the New Testament after the Jerusalem council in A.D. 51. It would seem probable that he was not there during St. Paul’s visit of Acts 21, but the argument from silence ought never to be pressed, nor should it be forgotten that St. Luke records the visit only in so far as it concerned St. Paul. We may with greater reason infer that he was not at Ephesus when St. Paul bade farewell to the elders of that city (Acts 20), nor yet when he wrote the Ephesian epistle and the later pastoral letters. It may be, indeed, that he had left Jerusalem, but had not yet arrived at Ephesus. A work of which we have no record is suggested by some MSS. of the First Epistle, which assert that it was written to the Parthians, and a tradition of such work seems to have been known to Augustine. It is, however, more probable that the Apostle continued in Jerusalem until the destruction of the city, and that he was then borne on the westward-flowing current of Christianity to the city of Ephesus, which, from the middle of the first to the middle of the second century, was its most important centre. (Comp. § III. p. 376.)

Ephesus was the link between the east and the west, between the mystic philosophies of Asia and the schools of Greece. More than any other city it had a charm for St. Paul, who had preached in it and the surrounding towns during three years, and had planted there Churches, which he saw flourish under his care, but in the midst of which he saw also seeds of future error. (Acts 20:29-30. Comp. Notes on Acts 19, and Introduction to the Epistle to the Ephesians.) From the Book of Revelation (Notes on Revelation 1:9 to Revelation 2:29) we may infer that, in addition to Ephesus, the surrounding Churches of Smyrna, and Pergamos, and Thyatira, and Sardis, and Philadelphia, and Laodicea were the special objects of the Apostle’s care, and that in one of the persecutions which fell upon the early Church he was banished to the island of Patmos. (Comp. Introduction to the Book of Revelation.) Returning from Patmos to Ephesus after the accession of Nerva, if we may accept the early tradition, he continued there to an extreme old age, combating heresies, and teaching the truth.

The old age of St. John became the centre of legends, partly based upon fact, and partly ideal, which the early Christians loved to tell, and many of which have come down to our own day. They thought of his life as charmed, so that poison could not affect it, nor any form of death destroy it; they told—and it was not, Clement of Alexandria says, a story, but a true account—how the old man pursued a lost convert, whom he had committed to the charge of a bishop in Asia Minor, and regained him in the robber’s den; how, like the Jewish high priest, he wore upon his head the plate of gold inscribed with “Holiness to the Lord;” how he, with something of the spirit of earlier days, flew from the bath in which the heretic Cerinthus was, lest it should fall upon him; how he was borne into the church when all power to move was gone, and, as if echoing the farewell words of Christ, which he himself had heard, said, “Little children, love one another, little children, love one another;” and how, when asked why he always said this one thing, the old man replied, “Because this is the Lord’s command, and if this is done, all is done.”

Cassian (Collat. xxiv. c. 2) relates an anecdote, which may be given as an illustration of the impression of the Asiatic Church with regard to the character of the Apostle. “The blessed Evangelist was one day gently stroking a partridge, when a young man, returning from hunting, asked in astonishment how a man so illustrious could spend his time in such a manner? What have you got in your hand?’ replied the Apostle. ‘A bow,’ said the young man. ‘Why is it not strung?’ ‘Because if I carried it strung always it would lose the elasticity which I shall want in it when I draw the arrow.’ ‘Do not be angry, then, my young friend, if I sometimes in this way unstring my spirit, which may otherwise lose its spring, and fail at the very moment when I shall need its power.’”

But space would fail to enter on a field so tempting and so full of beauty as the traditional history of the old age of St. John. Uncertain as we have found the history to be, we cannot expect to have any exact knowledge of the time of his death. Irenæus speaks of him as alive after the accession of Trajan (A.D. 98); Jerome places the death at sixty-eight years after the Crucifixion. He lived, then, until near the close of the first century, or, it may be, that he lived on into the second century; and if we accept the tradition that he was some years younger than our Lord, we have to think of him—the martyr in will, but not in deed—as sinking peacefully to the grave, beneath the weight of more than fourscore years and ten.

[For the matter of this section, comp. Godet, Introduction, Historique et Critique, 1876, pp. 35-75 (translated in Clark’s Library); Lücke, Commentary, 1840, vol. i., pp. 6-40; Neander, Planting of Christianity (Bohn’s Library); Stanley, Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age; Macdonald, Life and Writings of St. John, 1876; Trench (Francis), Life and Character of St. John, 1850; Plumptre, Article “John the Apostle,” in Smith’s Dictionary of the Bible, vol. i., pp. 1103 et seq.; Archbishop Tait, “St. John’s Connection with Christian History and Evidence,” Good Words, July, 1868; Miss Yonge, The Pupils of St. John the Divine.]

II. Authorship of the Gospel.—The evidence for the authorship of any writing consists of two distinct branches, of which one (1) traces the external history of the writing, and the other (2) is based upon the contents of the writing itself.

(1) The writing which everybody now understands by “The Gospel according to St. John” has borne this title through the whole history of the Church, and during by far the greater part of that history has borne it without question. From the last quarter of the second century to the last quarter of the eighteenth century the writing was received with almost one consent, as the authentic witness of the Apostle John; but this period of clear and unbroken reception was preceded by one of twilight, in which it is difficult to trace the lines of evidence, and has been followed by one of destructive criticism, extending to our own day. It is believed that to every new investigator who unites competence with candour, the light of the second century becomes more and more clear in the evidence it supplies of the reception of the Gospel as St. John’s; and that the chief result of the criticism which would destroy, has been to bring out a criticism of defence which has made the external evidence of the Johannine authorship more conclusive than it has ever been before.

The evidence adduced for the reception of the Gospel as by St. John, at the close of the second century, comes from every quarter of the Church. Irenæus at Lyons, himself a disciple of Polycarp, who was a disciple of St. John; Tertullian at Carthage, writing against the heretic Marcion; Clement at Alexandria; the Muratorian Fragment at Rome (comp. General Introduction, page XIII., and § IV., p. 377); the Peshito version from Syria; the Old Latin from Africa—all are witnesses, speaking with a voice the meaning of which cannot be doubted, and the authority of which cannot be impeached.

Following the line of evidence backwards through the earlier decades of the century, we meet with a fragmentary literature; and the value of the evidence depends upon considerations such as how far we have a rational ground to expect that in Apologies, Letters, Homilies, Apocalyptic Visions, there would be references to a writing like the Fourth Gospel; how far such references are actually found; how far the literary habits of the age justify us in saying that a reference is or is not a quotation; how far it is likely that a Gospel which is confessedly much later than the others, and was possibly (see p. 377) for years known only to a limited circle, should, in comparison with these, have influenced the scanty literature of the next age.

To discuss this question is, obviously, far beyond the limits of the present sketch, and requires an acquaintance with languages and a literature, which can hardly be within the reach of those for whom the present pages are meant. The result to which the opinions of the most competent scholars seems to be tending is, that we have in the literature of the earlier part of the second century fully as much reference to the Fourth Gospel as we could reasonably expect it to furnish; and that a full and fair examination of that literature, even as it has come down to us, must pronounce it to be in support of the Johannine authorship. Upon this point, those of us who are ordinary readers must be content to accept the witness of experts; and there are few students of English Divinity who will doubt that the writer of the following words speaks with an authority shared by no living author.

“If the same amount of written matter—occupying a very few pages in all—were extracted accidentally from the current theological literature of our day, the chance, unless I am mistaken, would be strongly against our finding so many indications of the use of this Gospel. In every one of the writers, from Polycarp and Papias to Polycrates, we have observed phenomena which bear witness, directly or indirectly, and with different degrees of distinctness, to its recognition. It is quite possible for critical ingenuity to find a reason for discrediting each instance in turn. An objector may urge in one case that the writing itself is a forgery; in a second, that the particular passage is an interpolation; in a third, that the supposed quotation is the original, and the language of the Evangelist the copy; in a fourth, that the incident or saying was not deduced from this Gospel, but from some apocryphal work containing a parallel narrative. By a sufficient number of assumptions, which lie beyond the range of verification, the evidence may be set aside. But the early existence and recognition of the Fourth Gospel is the one simple postulate which explains all the facts. The law of gravitation accounts for the various phenomena of motion, the falling of a stone, the jet of a fountain, the orbits of the planets, and so forth. It is quite possible for any one who is so disposed to reject this explanation of nature. Provided that he is allowed to postulate a new force for every new fact with which he is confronted, he has nothing to fear. He will then—

‘Gird the sphere

With centric and eccentric scribbled o’er

Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb,’

happy in his immunity. But the other theory will prevail, nevertheless, by reason of its simplicity.” (Prof. Lightfoot, in Contemporary Review, Feb., 1876.)

Important as these results of modern scholarship are, the results attained by the greatest thinkers and scholars at the close of the second century itself are of still greater importance. We have seen above that there was a general consensus of independent testimony to the acceptance of the Gospel by St. John. The evidential value of this fact cannot be over-estimated. Men like Irenæus, and Tertullian, and Clement, were neither morally dishonest nor intellectually incapable. They had to deal, moreover, with opponents who would quickly have exposed deceit and detected error. They and their opponents were intellectually, as well as physically, the children of the second century; their own lives went back far into it; they were removed by one generation only from the probable date of St. John’s death; they had means of inquiry which we have not, and evidence upon which to base their judgment which has been for the most part lost; and it is scarcely too much to say that, had it been wholly lost, the convictions based upon this evidence would have remained irresistible. The evidence of the Versions is of the same nature, showing that the translators accepted this Gospel as an undoubted portion of the sacred canon. We find that the moment the historic mists which hang over the second century pass away, the reception of the Gospel stands out in the clear light as an undoubted fact. The light did not create this reception, but made visible that which was there before.

The Gospel continued to be received, not without here and there an objection, but without any of historic importance, until the close of the eighteenth century, when Edward Evanson published The Dissonance of the Four generally received Evangelists, and the Evidence of their Authenticity Examined (Ipswich, 1792. 8vo). The object was to show that the Fourth Gospel was from a Platonist of the second century. Evanson was answered in the following year by Dr. Priestley and David Simpson, and for a time the scene of the controversy was shifted from English ground. The seed sown took root on the Continent, where it brought forth a host of smaller works, and notably the Von Gottes Sohn der Welt Heiland of Herder (Riga, 1797), in which the author seeks to show that St. John described an ideal not an historic Christ. The well-known Introductions of Hug (1st ed., 1808) and Eichorn (1st ed., 1810) seem to have produced a strong reaction, and during the next decade the older opinion was again triumphant in Germany. In 1820 there appeared at Leipzig Bretschneider’s famous Probabilia, in which he endeavoured to show the inconsistencies between the Fourth Gospel and the earlier three, and to prove that the writer was not an eye-witness, nor a native of Palestine, nor a Jew, and therefore not St. John. The work was more thorough than any of its precursors, and sent a shock through the whole theological world. There were, of course, many replies, and in the following year Bretschneider himself seems to have departed from his positions, and stated that his object was to promote the truth by discussing the subject. Once again came the reaction; and now, indeed, German thought, led by Schleiermacher, and sending forth Lucke’s Commentary (1st ed., 1820; 2nd ed., 1833; 3rd ed., first part, 1840), which is still a classical work on the subject, was in danger of the other extreme of exalting the Fourth Gospel at the expense of the earlier three. This school maintained its ascendency until 1835, when another shock was sent through Europe by the “Life of Jesus,” of David Friedrich Strauss (Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet, Tübingen, 1835-6). The position of Strauss himself with regard to the Fourth Gospel was simply negative. He denied that the Gospel was by St. John, but did not venture upon the harder task of finding another author. But disciples are bolder than their master, and the Tübingen school did not long shrink from a positive hypothesis. Differing on other points, Baur, 1844, Zeller, 1845, and Schwegler, 1846, agreed that the Fourth Gospel belonged to the second half of the second century. Later investigations have again led to a reaction, and the Gospel is now confidently asserted to be the product of the first half of the century. To take but two representative names—Hilgenfeld (Einleitung, Leipzig, 1875) does not now doubt that the Gospel was written between A.D. 132 and 140, and Keim (Jesu von Nazara, 1875) would now, with equal confidence, give about A.D. 130 as its date. The last phase of the history again leads us to English ground, and must be fresh in the memory of English readers. The author of Supernatural-Religion (London, 1st ed., 1874; 6th ed., 1875) could not pass over the question of the Fourth Gospel, and concluded that “there is the strongest reason for believing that it was not written by the son of Zebedee.” English scholars have been no longer able to look at the question from without; it has been brought home to them, and has demanded an answer at their hands. That answer has been, and is being given, and the apparent result is that to the author of no English work published during the present generation will the seekers of truth have more cause to be thankful than to the anonymous author of Supernatural Religion, who has led to inquiry upon this subject.

(2) Passing to the writing itself, we have to ask what answer the Fourth Gospel gives to the honest inquirer about its authorship. The inquiry is a wide one, and depends upon the careful study of the whole Gospel. Many points in the inquiry are indicated in the Notes of this Commentary, and others will suggest themselves to the attentive reader. This section can only hope to point out the method in which he should pursue the inquiry. (Comp. especially Sanday’s Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, John 19)

The chief centres round which modern criticism has grouped her questions respecting the internal evidence, are the following:—

(a) Was the author a Jew?—The line between the Hebrew and Greek languages—between Hebrew and Gentile modes of thought—is so definitely and clearly drawn that there ought to be to this question an undoubted answer. The Gospel deals with the ministry of our Lord among the Jews, and it ought not to be difficult to say, with an approach to certainty, whether or not the many Jewish questions which necessarily arise are treated as a Jew naturally would treat them, and as no one but a Jew possibly could treat them. This, like every question related to the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, has met with answers diametrically opposed to each other; and yet the evidence for an affirmative answer seems irresistible.

1. The evidence of style can carry no weight with one unacquainted with the Hebrew and Greek languages, but the best Hebraists do not doubt that the style of the Fourth Gospel, while much more Greek than that of the Apocalypse, is still essentially Hebrew. Even Keim admits this (Jesu von Nazara, vol. i. p. 116); and Ewald regards it as beyond question that the writer is a “genuine Hebrew, who carries in himself the spirit of his mother tongue” (Johanneischen Schriften, vol. i. p. 44). (Comp. e.g. Notes on John 1:3; John 1:19; John 1:38; John 1:51; John 13:1.) It is not, however, simply that individual expressions are Hebraic, but that the Hebrew spirit comes out in the whole tone and structure of the writing.

2. Still more important than the evidence of style is that which comes from the exact acquaintance with the current Hebrew thoughts, into which a Gentile could not possibly have thrown himself. (Comp., as a few instances out of many, the thoughts about the Messiah in John 1:19-28; John 4:25; John 6:14-15, et al.; about baptism, John 1:25; John 3:22; John 4:2; about purification, John 2:6; John 3:25; John 11:55, et al.; about the Samaritans, John 4:9; John 4:22; about the Sabbath, John 5:1 et seq.; John 9:14 et seq.; about circumcision, John 7:22; about the notion that a Rabbi may not speak with a woman, John 4:27; about the Jew’s manner of burying, John 11:44, and John 19:40.) These thoughts meet us in every chapter. They flow naturally from the Jewish mind, and could flow from no other.

3. Not less striking than the acquaintance with current Jewish ideas is the knowledge of the Jewish Scriptures. The Fourth Gospel is, in this respect, almost as Hebrew as the first. There can be no need to quote passages, but there are some of special interest because they show that the writer did not know the Old Testament through the Greek version (LXX.)only; but that he translated for his Greek readers from the original Hebrew text. (Comp. Notes on John 1:29; John 12:13; John 12:15; John 12:38; John 12:40; John 13:18; John 19:37.)

4. The prominence given to the Jewish feasts, and the way in which the writer makes them centres, and groups events and discourses around them, is one of the striking features of the Gospel. We have Passover (John 2:13; John 2:23; John 6:4; John 13:1; John 18:28); Tabernacles (John 7:2); Dedication (John 10:22); “A feast of the Jews” (? Purim, John 5:1). The writer does not simply name these feasts, but knows their history, and significance, and ritual. He is familiar with “the last day, the great day,” of Tabernacles (John 7:37), and with the technical “Lesser Festival” (Note on John 7:14); with the fact that Dedication was in winter (John 10:42); and with the “preparation” of the Passover (John 19:31).

(b) Was the author a native of Palestine?—Attention is frequently directed in the Notes to the minute knowledge of places. It will be sufficient here to refer to John 1:28 (Bethany beyond Jordan), John 1:44 (Bethsaida), John 1:46 (Nazareth); John 2:1 (Cana); John 3:23 (Ænon); John 4:5[18] (Sychar); John 5:2 (Bethesda); John 8:20 (The Treasury); John 9:7 (Siloam); John 10:23. (Solomon’s Porch), John 10:40 (Bethany, comp. John 1:28); John 11:54 (Ephraim); John 18:1 (Kedron), John 18:15 (the high priest’s palace); John 19:13 (Gabbatha), John 19:17 (Golgotha); John 20:18 (Bethany near Jerusalem).

[18] The writer takes this opportunity of remarking that the suggestion made in the Note on this word in chap. 4:5, that Askar=’A-Sychar, has been already made by Prof. Lightfoot in the Contemporary Review for May, 1875. When the Note was being printed he sought, without success, for any confirmation of the suggestion, which probably arose from a latent remembrance of Prof. Lightfoot’s article.

There is constantly some explanation added to a name. It is translated for Greek readers; or the moment it is mentioned some incident connected with it occurs to the writer’s mind. Many of these examples show an exact acquaintance with the topography of Jerusalem, which must have been acquired before its destruction. The customs of the Temple are familiarly known (John 2:13-17); and not less so are the haunts and habits of the fishermen on the Sea of Tiberias (John 6:17-24; John 21:6-11), or the synagogue at Capernaum (John 6:17).

The argument from these details is cumulative, and, taken as a whole, must be acknowledged to be of very great weight. Let the reader carefully note the incidental way in which all this accuracy comes out, and he will feel that it is not acquired, and that the one simple explanation is that it belongs to a writer who was born and had lived among the places he is writing of, and now dwells upon them with loving memory.

(c) Did the author live at the time of our Lord’s ministry?—The remarks upon Jerusalem immediately above have their bearing upon this question also, but that which is here specially important is to estimate the evidence which comes from the circle of thoughts in the midst of which the Gospel was written. How difficult it is at any period to realise the ideas of an earlier period every dramatist and writer of fiction knows. He may clothe his characters in the dress of their day, and surround them with the manners and customs of the past, but unless they are in a consummate master’s hands they will think and speak in the present. The question then is, does the writer of the Fourth Gospel think and speak the thoughts and words of the first century or not? Now the fall of Jerusalem was a great gulf across which the ideas of the Jews about the Messiah could not pass. With it disappeared from the minds of that generation all hope for a temporal Messianic reign in Jerusalem. And yet this expectation runs like a thread through the whole texture of this Gospel. The inference is that the writer grew up amidst this expectation—lived through the conflict between Jesus, who taught the spiritual nature of Messiah’s kingdom, and the Jews, who could grasp only the temporal—and narrated at the close of the century that in which he himself had taken part, and which with him survived the destruction of Jerusalem.

Other instances of this knowledge of the thoughts of the period are of frequent occurrence. Comp., e.g., John 4:20-21 (Jerusalem, the place of worship); John 7:1-13 (murmuring among the people about Jesus); John 9:8 (the neighbours’ remark about the blind beggar); John 10:19-21 (division among the Jews); John 11:47-53 (consultation of the Sanhedrin); John 19 (the various phases of thought during the trial).

(d) Was the author an Apostle?—The Fourth Gospel tells us more of what passed in the Apostolic circle than we can gather from the whole of the three earlier Gospels. The writer is as familiar with the thoughts which were suggested at the time to the Apostles as he is with the thoughts of the Jews exemplified in the last section. Take, e.g., John 2:20-22, where the writer records the saying of our Lord regarding the Temple, and how the disciples understood this after the resurrection. There are instances of the same kind of knowledge in John 4:27; John 7:39; John 12:6; John 13:28-29; John 20:9; John 20:20; and the reader may without difficulty note others.

The minute knowledge of incidents in the relation between the Apostles and the Lord would seem to point exclusively to one of the Twelve as the writer. Comp. John 1:38; John 1:50 (Andrew, Simon, Philip, Nathaniel, and the unnamed disciple); John 6:5-7 (the question to Philip); John 6:8 (Andrew’s remark); John 6:68 (Peter’s question); John 6:70 (the explanatory remark about Judas); John 9:2 (the question about the man born blind); John 11:16 (the character of Thomas and the name Didymus, comp. John 14:5; John 20:24; John 20:28; John 21:2); John 12:21-22 (visit of the Greeks); John 13 (the Last Supper); John 18:16 (the exact position of Peter and the other disciples and the porteress); John 20:3-8 (the visit to the sepulchre).

The Notes point out in several instances the agreement between the character of Peter as drawn in the Fourth Gospel and that which is found in the Synoptists. More striking still, because inconceivable, except by one who drew it from the life, is the character of our Lord Himself. As we try and think out the writer’s representation of the human life of Christ, we feel that we are being guided by one who is not picturing to us an ideal, but is declaring to us that which was from the beginning, which he had heard, which he had seen with his eyes, which he had looked upon, and his hands had handled of the Word of Life. (Comp. 1John 1:3.)

(e) Was the author an eye-witness?—This question has in part been answered above; but it will add strength to the opinion which is probably fixing itself in the candid reader’s mind if some of the instances of vivid picturing which Renan and others have noticed in this Gospel are collected here.

1. With regard to persons, all that has been said of individual Apostles applies. Add to them Nicodemus (John 3, Note); Martha and Mary (John 11); Malchus (John 18:10); Annas, and Caiaphas, and Pilate (John 18); the women at the cross (John 19:25); the Magdalene (John 21:1).

2. The indication of places and of feasts given above apply also in answer to this question.

3. The writer knows the days and the hours when events occurred. He was there, and is writing from memory, and knows that it was about the tenth (John 1:39), or seventh (John 4:52), or sixth hour (John 4:6; John 19:14). (Comp. John 1:29-35; John 1:43; John 2:1; John 2:13; John 4:40; John 11:6; John 11:39; John 12:1.)

4. We find running all through the Gospel an exactness of description, a representation of the whole scene photographed, as it were, upon the writer’s memory, which is of greater weight than any number of individual quotations. Let any one read, e.g., John 1:38-51, or John 2:13-17, or John 20:8-10—and these are only instances chosen by way of illustration—and he will, as he thinks of them, see the whole picture before his mind’s eye. The only explanation is, that the writer was what he claims to be—a witness whose record is true (John 19:35). (Comp. John 1:14; John 1:16; John 21:24.) In this respect the Fourth Gospel reminds us of that by St. Mark.

(f) Was the author one of the sons of Zebedee?—Assuming that he was an eye-witness and an Apostle, we are sure that he was not Andrew, who is named in the Gospel four times, nor Peter (thirty-three times), nor Philip (twice), nor Nathanael (five times), nor Thomas (five times), nor Judas Iscariot (eight times), nor Judas, not Iscariot (once). Of the five other Apostles, Matthew is necessarily excluded, and James the son of Alphæus, and Simon the Canaanite occupy too unimportant a position in the Synoptic narrative to bring them within the limits of our hypothesis.

The sons of Zebedee remain. Now, what is the relation of the Fourth Gospel to them? While they are prominent among the members of the first Apostolic group in the Synoptists, and in the Acts of the Apostles, they are not even mentioned in this Gospel. In John 1:41 (see Note there), it is probable that both are referred to, but neither are named. In John 21:2, they are, on any interpretation, placed in an inferiority of order unknown to the earlier or later history, and are probably named last of those who were Apostles. This omission of names is not confined to the sons. It was so with the mother also. All we know of her comes from the earlier Gospels. We gather, indeed, from John 19:25 that she was one of the women at the cross; but we have to turn to the parallel passages before we read of Salome or the mother of Zebedee’s children.

Such are the facts; but if one of these brothers is the writer of this Gospel, then, and as far as we now know, thus only are the facts explained and the conditions met. But if the author was one of the sons of Zebedee, we can go a step further and assert that he was St. John, for St. James was a martyr in the Herodian persecution (Acts 12:1; A.D. 44).

(g) Was the author the “disciple whom Jesus loved?”—(John 13:23; John 19:26; John 20:2; John 21:7; John 21:20. Comp. John 18:15; John 20:2-4; John 20:8.) The concluding words of the Gospel (John 21:24), as compared with Luke 24:7; Luke 24:20, formally assert this identification. It may be granted that these words are not those of the writer, but an attestation on the part of the Ephesian Church. Still they are part of the Gospel as it was first published, and are the words of one who claims to speak from personal knowledge.

But admitting that the writer was the disciple whom Jesus loved, then we have the key to what seems an impossible omission of the sons of Zebedee in this Gospel. The writer deliberately omits all mention of his own family, but his writing is the record of events in which he had himself taken part, and in this lies its value. His own personality cannot therefore be suppressed. He is present in all he writes, and yet the presence is felt, not seen. A veil rests over it—a name given to him, it may be, by his brethren, and cherished by him as the most honoured name that man could bear; but beneath the veil lives the person of John, the son of Zebedee and Salome, and the Apostle of the Lord.

We have now found in the Gospel answers to the questions which have been so often asked, and very variously answered, during the last half-century. If the answers are taken as but small parts of a great whole, and the Gospel itself is carefully read and studied, the evidence will in all its fulness be such as cannot be gainsaid. In the spirit of the striking words which we have quoted above (p. 372), it may be said that while here minute criticism thinks it may trace an error, or there some part of the evidence may be explained away—while various separate hypotheses may be invented to account for the various separate facts—the one postulate which accounts for the whole of the phenomena, and does violence to none, is that the Fourth Gospel is the work of the Apostle whose name it bears.

Here the two lines of external and internal evidence meet, and if each points only with a high degree of probability, then both together must approximate to certainty.

The indirect line of argument may fairly be used as evidence which leads to the same results. The Fourth Gospel existed as a matter of fact, and was accepted as by St. John, in the last quarter of the second century. If it is asserted that the author was not St. John, we have a right to demand of the assertor that he should account for the fact of its existence, and for the fact of its reception at that time, as the work of the Apostle. This demand has never been met with evidence which would for a moment stand the test of examination.

From one point of view the arguments we have now followed will to most readers seem satisfactory; from another point of view they are painful enough. The fact must be apparent to all that many men have followed out these same arguments to a wholly different result. Among them are men of the highest intellectual culture, and with special knowledge of these special subjects; men whose ability no one has a right to question, and whose honesty no one has a right to impeach. And yet contradictory results cannot both be true. If Lightfoot and Westcott, Ewald and Luthardt are right, then Strauss and Baur, Keim and Hilgen-feld are wrong. Assertions like the following cannot be reconciled:—

“The elaborate explanations, however, by which the phenomena of the Fourth Gospel are reconciled with the assumption that it was composed by the Apostle John are in vain, and there is not a single item of evidence within the first century and a half which does not agree with internal testimony in opposing the supposition.”[19]

[19] Supernatural Religion, Ed. 6, vol. ii., p. 470.

“We have seen that whilst there is not one particle of evidence during a century and a half after the events recorded in the Fourth Gospel that it was composed by the son of Zebedee, there is, on the contrary, the strongest reason for believing that he did not write it.”[20]

[20] Ibid. p. 474.

“That John is really the author of the Gospel, and that no other planned or interpreted it than he who at all times is named as its author, cannot be doubted or denied, however often in our own times critics have been pleased to doubt and deny it on grounds which are wholly foreign to the subject; on the contrary, every argument, from every quarter to which we can look, every trace and record, combine together to render any serious doubt upon the question absolutely impossible.” (Heinrich Ewald, quoted by Professor Westcott as “calm and decisive words,” which “are simply true.”[21])

[21] Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, Ed. 3. p. 10. The quotation and comment are repeated in Ed. 4, 1872.

“Those who since the first discussion of this question have been really conversant with it, never could have had, and never have had, a moment’s doubt. As the attack on St. John has become fiercer and fiercer, the truth during the last ten or twelve years has been more and more solidly established, error has been pursued into its last hiding-place, and at this moment the facts before us are such that no man who does not will knowingly to choose error and reject truth can dare to say that the Fourth Gospel is not the work of the Apostle John.”[22]

[22] Ewald, in Göttingen Gel. Anz., Aug. 5, 1863, reviewing Renan’s Vie de Jésus. Quoted by Gratry, Jésus-Christ, p. 119, and by Professor Liddon, Bampton Lectures for 1866, Ed. 7, p. 218.

In one case or the other the human intellect, honestly inquiring for the true, has been convinced of the false. Plain men may well ask, Which are we to believe, or how can we be certain that either is true? The negative criticism has not shrunk from poisoning its arrows with the assertion that bigotry in favour of received opinions has closed the eyes of its opponents to the light of truth. It may sometimes be so; but unless much of the criticism of the present day is strangely misread, there is a blinding bigotry which prevents men from seeing the truth of received opinions simply because they have been received. There are minds to which the “semper, ubique, et ab omnibus” marks out an opinion for rejection, or at least for cavil. And yet the world is wiser than any one man in it, and truth has been written in other languages than German, and seventeen centuries of a belief which has borne the noblest results and commanded the assent of the noblest intellects, will hold its ground against the changing moods of the last fifty years. The “higher criticism” must not wonder if humbler minds withhold their assent to its dicta until it has agreed upon some common ground of faith which is not always shifting, and individual disciples have proved the depth of their own convictions by adhering to them. These combatants in the battle between error and truth are men of war armed in the armour of their schools, but plain men will feel that they have .not essayed this armour and cannot wear it; and will go down to the battle with the moral Philistines who threaten Israel, trusting in the simple pebble of the old faith, and in the arm nerved by a firm trust in the presence of God.

The Fourth Gospel foreshadows its own history. It tells of Light, Truth, Life, Love, rejected by the mere intellect, but accepted by the whole man; and it has been with the historical as with the personal Christ represented in its pages. “Men learned to know Him, and to trust Him before they fully understood what He was and what He did. The faith which in the Gospel stories we see asked for and given, secured, and educated, is a faith which fastens itself on a living Saviour, though it can but little comprehend the method or even the nature of the salvation . . . As it was with the disciples, so also it is with ourselves. The evidential works have their own most important, most necessary office; but the Lord Himself is His own evidence, and secures our confidence, love, and adoration by what He is, more than by what He does.”[23]

[23] Bernard, “Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament,” The Bampton Lectures for 1864, pp. 43, 44.

For the many to whom the evidences as to the authorship of the Fourth Gospel must come as the testimony of others, and to whom the conflict of testimony must oftentimes bring perplexity, the ultimate test must lie in the appeal of the Gospel to the whole man. If the heart studies the Christ as portrayed in this writing, it will need no other proof of His divinity, but will bow before Him with the confession, “Truly this was the Son of God.” Yes; and it will feel also that the penman was one who, more deeply than any other of the sons of men, drank of the Spirit of Christ—that he was a disciple who loved the Lord, a disciple whom Jesus loved; and it will feel that the voice of the Church is the voice of the heart of humanity, feeling as itself feels and speaking as itself speaks, that this writing is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that it is the “Gospel according to St. John.”

[For the matter of this section the student may conveniently refer to Lücke, Godet, and Liddon, as before; Luthardt, St. John the Author of the First Gospel, English translation, Clark, 1875, in which the Appendix on the Literature, revised and enlarged by Gregory, is a valuable and distinctive feature; Hutton, Essays Theological and Literary, vol. i. pp. 144-276, 1871; Sanday, Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel, 1872; The Gospels in the Second Century, 1876; Westcott’s Introduction, Ed. 4, 1872, and Canon of the New Testament, Ed. 3, 1870; or in an easier form, Bible in the Church, Ed. 2, 1866; Leathes, The Witness of St. John to Christ, 1870, The Religion of the Christ, 1874: Lightfoot, Articles in the Contemporary Review, beginning in December, 1874; Article, “The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel,” in Edinburgh Review, January, 1877; Articles on “St. John, and Modern Criticism,” by Beyschlag, in Contemporary Review, October and November, 1877: and on the other side, Supernatural Religion, Ed. 6, 1875, vol. ii. pp. 251-476; Davidson, Introduction to the New Testament, 1868, vol. ii. pp. 323-468; Tayler, The Fourth Gospel, Ed. 2, 1870.]

III. Time when and Place where the Fourth Gospel was written.—(1) If the Gospel was written by St. John, its date must be placed within the limits of the first century. There is good reason for thinking that the last chapter (see Notes upon it) is an appendix, coming chiefly from the hand of the Apostle himself, but that the closing verses (John 21:24-25) give the corroborative testimony of others. The fact of an appendix, and the difference of its style from that of the earlier writing, points to an interval of some years, during which, it may be, the original Gospel was known to a limited circle before it was openly published. This appendix is, however, incorporated with the earlier writing in all the oldest copies and versions, and was probably, therefore, thus incorporated during the lifetime of the Apostle. The beginning of the last decade of the first century is a limit, then, after which the Gospel could not have been written by St. John. In fixing a limit before which it could not have been written, there is greater difficulty, but the following considerations point to a date certainly not earlier than A.D. 70, and probably not earlier than A.D. 80.

(a) The absence of all reference to St. John in the Pastoral Epistles of St. Paul.

(b) The style, though strongly Hebraic, is much less so than the Book of Revelation. It is Hebrew partly clothed in Greek, and for this development of thought and language we may assign a period of ten or twenty years. The relation of the Epistles and the Apocalypse to the Gospel belongs to the Introductions to those books; but it will be found that the Gospel probably occupies a middle place, being considerably later than the Apocalypse, and somewhat earlier than the Epistles.

(c) The subject-matter of the Gospel, while representing a later development of theology than that of the Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians, points to a much earlier development than that which we find in the earliest of the Gnostic systems at the beginning of the second century. (Comp. Excursus A, p. 552.)

(d) The references to the Jews, their customs, places, &c., are as to things at a distance and in the past, and needing explanation in the present. See, e.g., John 4:9; John 5:1-2 (comp. John 11:18); John 5:16; John 5:18; John 7:13, and the instances given above (pp. 373-5).

The earliest historical evidence we have is that of Irenæus, who places the Gospel according to St. John after the other three, i.e., as he places the Gospels according to St. Mark and St. Luke after the deaths of St. Peter and St. Paul, not earlier than A.D. 70, and probably some years later. (See Eusebius, Eccles. Hist., v. 8.)

The general voice of antiquity gave A.D. 85 or 86 as the exact year, and while we cannot regard this as authoritative, it falls in with the probabilities of the case. Without fixing the year thus definitely, we may regard the date as one which could not be much earlier than A.D. 80, or much later than A.D. 90, and conclude that the Gospel in its present form approximates to the later, rather than to the earlier date.

(2) The passage of Irenæus above referred to gives us also a definite statement that the place from which the Gospel was written was Ephesus. “Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned on His breast—he again put forth his Gospel while he abode in Ephesus in Asia” (Against Heresies, iii. 1, Oxford Trans., p. 204; also Eusebius, Eccles. Hist., v. 8). This statement is confirmed by the whole tenor of tradition from the second century downwards, and was never, seemingly, questioned until the commencement of the nineteenth century. It falls in with the other scanty hints of facts in St. John’s life, and is in entire harmony with the stand-point of the Gospel. It will be unnecessary to weary the reader with proofs of that which hardly needs to be proved. The facts may be found in a convenient form in Luthardt, St. John the Author of the Fourth Gospel, Eng. Trans., pp. 115, 166, but even Davidson admits that “Lützelberger and Keim push their scepticism too far in denying John’s residence in Asia Minor.”

Again, the indirect argument holds good. If Ephesus is not the place from which the Gospel was written, what other place can be named with any show of probability? The only city besides Ephesus in which we might have expected the thoughts of the Prologue is Alexandria (comp. Excursus A: Doctrine of the Word, p. 552), but there is not the shadow of a reason for connecting St. John with this city.

IV. The Purpose which the Writer had in View.—Here, again, there are two lines of evidence which may guide our inquiries: (1) the statements of early writers, which may represent a tradition coming from the time of publication when the purpose was well known; and (2) the indications which may be gathered from the writing itself.

(1) The earliest statement we possess is that of the Muratorian Fragment (see p. 368, and comp. Tregelles, Canon Muratorianus, 1867, pp. 1-21, and 32-35), which tells us that “The author of the fourth Gospel was John, one of the disciples. He said to his fellow disciples and bishops who entreated him, ‘Fast with me for three days from to-day, and whatever shall be made known to each of us, let us relate it to each other.’ In the same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the Apostles, that John should relate all things in his own name with the recognition of them all. And, therefore, though various elements are taught in the several books of the Gospels, this makes no difference to the faith of believers, since all things are set forth in all of them in one supreme spirit, about the birth, the passion, the resurrection, the conversation with the disciples, and His double advent, the first in the lowliness of humiliation which (? has been accomplished), the second in the glory of royal power, which is to come. What wonder, therefore, is it if John so constantly brings forward, even in his Epistle, particular (? phrases), saying in his own person, ‘What we have seen with our eyes, and heard with our ears, and our hands have handled, these things have we written unto you.’ For he thus professes that he was not only an eye-witness, but also a hearer, and more than this, a writer in order, of all the wonderful works of the Lord.”

On this question the testimony of Irenæus has a special value, from the fact that he was separated from the time of St. John by one generation only, and was directly connected, through Polycarp, with the circle in which the Gospel was first circulated. It may be well, therefore, to quote his words at some length:—“In course of preaching this faith, John, the disciple of the Lord, desirous by preaching of the Gospel to remove the error which Cerinthus had been sowing among men; and long before him those who are called Nicolaitans, who are an offshoot of the knowledge [Gnosis] falsely so called; to confound them and persuade men that there is but one God, who made all things by His word, and not, as they affirm, that the Creator is one person, the Father of the Lord another, and that there is a difference of persons between the Son of the Creator and the Christ from the higher Æons, who both remained impassible, descending on Jesus, the Son of the Creator, and glided back again to his own Pleroma; and that the Beginning is the Only Begotten, but the Word the true Son of the Only Begotten; and that the created system to which we belong was not made by the First Deity, but by some Power brought very far down below it and cut off from communion in the things which are beyond sight and name. All such things,, I say, the Lord’s disciple desiring to cut off, and to establish in the Church the rule of truth, viz., that there is one God Almighty, who by His Word hath made all things visible and invisible; indicating, also, that by the Word whereby God wrought Creation, in the same also He provided salvation for the men who are part of Creation;—thus did he begin in that instruction which the Gospel contains [then follows John 1:1-5].” In the next section he quotes John 1:10-11; John 1:14 against Marcion and Valentinus and other Gnostics who held the Creation by angels or demi-gods. (Adv. Hœr., lib. iii., John 11, Oxford Trans., pp. 229 et seq.)

In an earlier passage Irenæus gives the following account of the heresy of Cerinthus: “And a certain Cerinthus too, in Asia, taught that the world was not made by the First God, but by a certain Power far separated and distant from the Royalty which is above all, and which knows not the God who is over all. And he added that Jesus was not born of a virgin (for that seemed to him impossible), but was the son of Joseph and Mary like all other men, and had more power than men in justice, prudence, and wisdom. And that after His baptism there descended on Him from that Royalty which is above all, Christ in the figure of a dove, and that He then declared the unknown Father and did mighty works; but that in the end Christ again soared back from Jesus, and that Jesus suffered and rose again, but Christ remained impassible as being spiritual” (lib. 1, cap. xxvi., Oxford Trans., p. 77).

In lib. 3, cap. iii., Oxford Trans., p. 208, Irenæus relates the story of the Apostle flying from Cerinthus in the bath. This is repeated in Eusebius, iii. 28, Bagster’s Trans., p. 131.

Tertullian, Epiphanius, and Jerome agree in the statement that the Gospel was written to meet the heresy of Cerinthus, but speak of the Ebionites instead of the Nicolaitans.

Clement of Alexandria is quoted by Eusebius, as saying, “John, last of all, perceiving that what had reference to the body in the gospel of our Saviour was sufficiently detailed; and being encouraged by his familiar friends and urged by the Spirit, he wrote a spiritual gospel (Eccles. Hist., lib. vi., cap. xv., Bagster’s Trans., pp. 247-8), and Eusebius himself says, “The three Gospels previously written having been distributed among all, and also handed to him, they say that he admitted them, giving his testimony to their truth; but that there was only wanting in the narrative the account of the things done by Christ among the first of his deeds and at the commencement of the Gospel. . . . For these reasons the Apostle John, it is said, being entreated to undertake it, wrote the account of the time not recorded by the former Evangelists, and the deeds done by our Saviour which they have passed by . . .” (lib. iii., cap. xxiv., Bagster’s Trans., pp. 126, 127).

We have in these extracts three points of view, distinct but not different, from which it was conceived that the writer undertook his work. His aim was didactic, to teach that which was revealed to him; or it was polemic, to meet the development of Gnosticism in Asia Minor, of which we find traces in the later Pauline epistles; or it was historic, to fill up by way of supplement those portions of the life of our Lord which earlier evangelists had not recorded. In the later fathers and commentators, now one, now another, of these views is prominent. They do not exclude each other: to teach the truth was the sure way to make war against error; to teach the truth historically was to represent it as it was revealed in the life of Him who was the Truth.

We have to think of the Apostle as living on to the close of the first century, learning in the thoughts and experience of fifty years what the manifestation of Christ’s life really was, and quickened by the presence of the promised Paraclete, who was to bring all things to his mind and guide him into all truth (comp. John 16). He lives among the speculations of men who have tried in their own wisdom to cross the gulf between God and man, and have in Ephesus developed a Gnosticism out of Christianity which is represented by Cerinthus, who was himself trained in Alexandria: just as in this latter city there had been a Gnosticism developed from Judaism, which is represented by Philo. He feels that he has learnt how that gulf was bridged in the person of Jesus Christ; he remembers His acts and words; he knows that in Him, and Him only, does the Divine and human meet; and he writes his own witness at once, in the deeper fulness of its truth, instructing the Church and refuting heresy, and supplying the spiritual Gospel which was as a complement to the existing three.

If we turn to the fourth Gospel itself we find that each line of this three-fold purpose may be distinctly traced. The didactic element is apparent throughout. That the writer had before him, not only the instruction of the Church, but also the refutation of the errors of Gnosticism—and that not only in the special features connected with Cerinthus—is clear from the Prologue. We have seen how Irenæus applies this to Cerinthus, but the very term λόγος (comp. Excursus A: Doctrine of the Word, p. 552 [Electronic version note: Excurses A follows the John book comments below.]) shows that the writer did not contemplate his school only. There was an easy connection between Ephesus and Alexandria at the time, and we have an example of it in the teaching of Apollos in Acts 18:24. Now the distinctive tenets of all Gnosticism were that the Creator was not the Supreme God, and that matter was the source of all evil. In “all things were created by Him,” we have the answer to one; in “The Word was made flesh,” the answer to the other.

The writer gives in John 20:21, a formal statement of his own purpose: “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.” It is usual to refer to these words as though nothing was further from the writer’s thoughts than any polemic purpose. But in the passage quoted from Irenæus, on the heresy of Cerinthus, it will be seen that the separation of the divine Christ from the human Jesus was a prominent tenet. This verse declares that the purpose of the Gospel was to establish the identity of the human Jesus and the Christ who is the Son of God, as an article of faith, that in that faith they might have life through His name.

Eusebius gives no authority beyond “they say” for the statement that St. John had seen the earlier Gospels, and it does not follow that he had seen them in their present form. That he could have done so is, à priori, improbable, and there is no evidence of any such circulation of them as would be implied. It is further improbable from the relation between the subject-matter of the fourth Gospel as compared with the three; it contains too much that is common to all to be regarded as a mere supplement; it differs too much in arrangement, and even in details, to have been based upon a study of the others. Moreover it is in itself a complete work, and nowhere gives any indication that it was intended to be simply an appendix to other works.

The origin of the Gospels has been dealt with in the General Introduction (see p. xxvii. [Electronic version note: The General Introduction is in the Matthew book comments.]). There would be, probably, in the first generation after the life of Christ an oral Gospel, in which all the chief events of His life and the chief discourses were preserved. In different Churches different parts would be committed to writing, and carefully preserved, and compared with similar writings elsewhere. Such documents would form the basis of the Synoptic Gospels. Such documents doubtless existed at Ephesus, and John had access to them; but it is to his personal remembrance of Christ’s life and work, and his residence in Jerusalem, and his close union with the Virgin Mary, that we are to trace his special information. Mary, and his own mother Salome, and Mary Magdalene, and Nicodemus, and the family of Bethany, and the Church at Jerusalem, are the sources from which he would have learnt of events beyond his personal knowledge.

[For the matter of this section comp., in addition to the books quoted, Lücke and Godet as before (this part of Lücke’s Einleitung is of great value, and may be read in the Prolegomena of Alford, who adopts it. and in that of Wordsworth, who rejects it); Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies of the First and Second Centuries, 1875; Neander, Church History, § 4, Clark’s Eng. Trans., vol. i., pp. 67-93; Ueberweg, History of Philosophy, Eng. Trans., 1874, § 77; Wood’s Discoveries at Ephesus, Lond., 1877; Introductions, in this Commentary, to the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians.]

V. Contents and Characteristics of the Gospel.—The Gospel is divided into two main sections at the close of John 12. The great subject of the first of these sections is the manifestation of Christ; and that of the second is the result of this manifestation. The first represents the life; the second, the passion, death, and resurrection. Subdividing these main sections, we have the following outline of the general contents of the Gospel:—

(1) Prologue. The link with the eternity of the past (John 1:1-18).

(2) Manifestation of Jesus. Varying degrees of acceptance (John 1:19 to John 4:54).

(3) The fuller revelation and growth of unbelief among the Jews (John 5:1 to John 12:50).

(4) The fuller revelation and growth of faith among the disciples (John 13:1 to John 17:26).

(5) The climax of unbelief. Voluntary surrender and crucifixion of Jesus (John 18:1 to John 19:42).

(6) The climax of faith. Resurrection and appearances of Jesus (John 20).

(7) Epilogue. The link with the eternity of the. future (John 21).

The reader will find a detailed analysis of these sections inserted for the sake of convenient reference in the following notes. It has been attempted by a consecutive enumeration to indicate the lines of thought running through the whole Gospel; but these are many, and a brief sketch may be helpful to those who attempt to trace them.

(1) The Prologue (John 1:1-18) strikes, in a few words, the key-note of the whole. The Word with God, and God, revealed to men, made flesh—this is the central thought. The effect of the revelation, received not, received; light not comprehended in darkness, but ever shining; this, which runs like a thread through the whole Gospel, is as a subsidiary thought present here.

(2) The manifestation of Jesus (John 1:19 to John 4:54) is introduced by the witness of the Baptist, and one of the characteristic words of the Gospel, which has already occurred in Luke 24:8 (see Note on it), is made prominent in the very first sentence of the narrative portion. This witness of John is uttered to messengers from the Sanhedrin, is repeated when Jesus is seen coming unto him, and spoken yet again on the following day.

The witness of John is followed by the witness of Christ Himself. At first He manifests Himself in private to the disciples, when their hearts respond to His witness, and at the marriage feast, when the voice of nature joins itself with that of man; and then publicly, beginning in His Father’s house, and proceeding in a widening circle, from the Temple at Jerusalem to the city, and then to Judæa, and then Samaria, and then Galilee. Typical characters represent this manifestation and its effects—Nicodemus, the Master in Israel; the despised woman of despised Samaria, herself steeped in sin; the courtier of alien race, led to faith through suffering and love. This period is one of acceptance in Jerusalem (John 2:23); Judæa (John 3:29); Samaria (John 4:39-42); Galilee (John 4:45; John 4:49); and yet its brightness is crossed by dark lines (John 2:24-25), and the struggle between light and darkness is not absent (John 3:18; John 3:21).

(3) Following this public manifestation, we have in the third section (John 5:1 to John 12:50) the fuller revelation of Christ; and, side by side with it, the progressive stages of unbelief among the Jews.

He is Life, and shows this in the energy given to the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda; but they persecute Him because He did these things on the Sabbath day. He shows that His work is one with the Father’s, but they seek to kill Him as a blasphemer. Thus early is the issue of the struggle foreshadowed; and thus early does He point out that the final issue is not in physical death, and trace to the absence of moral preparation the true reason of His rejection (John 5).

He is Life, and shows this in blessing the food which gives sustenance to thousands, and in declaring Himself to be “the bread of life,” but they think of manna in the desert, and murmur at one whom they knew to be Jesus-bar-Joseph claiming to have come down from heaven; and again the line between reception and rejection is drawn. Many go back, but some rise to a higher faith; yet even the light which shines in this inner circle is crossed by the presence of one who is a devil (John 6).

He is Truth, and declares at the Feasts of Tabernacles that His teaching is from heaven, and that He Himself is from heaven, whither He will return. The perception of truth is in the will to obey it. He that willeth to do His will shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God. The effect of this teaching is that many believe, but that the Pharisees send officers to take Him. He is Life, and declares that in Him is the living water which the ritual of the great day of the Feast represented, and this is followed by a division among the people, and even in the Sanhedrin itself (John 7).

He is Light, and declares Himself to be the true Light of the World, of which the illumination of the Feast was but a type. They murmur at successive points in His teaching, and in answer He declares to them what the true witness is, what His own return to the Father is, what are true discipleship and true freedom and true life, by the word of the Son, who was before Abraham. Their hatred passes from words to acts, and they take up stones to cast at Him (John 8:12-59). [The paragraph from John 7:53 to John 8:11 does not belong to this place. See Note upon it.]

He is Light, and shows this by giving physical sight to the man born blind. The Pharisees seek to disprove, and then to discredit, the miracle, and again there is a division. Some say that this man is not of God because He keepeth not the Sabbath. Others ask how a man that is a sinner can do such miracles. Jesus Himself declares the separation which His coming makes between those who are spiritually blind and those who spiritually see (John 9).

He is Love, and declares this in the allegory of the Good Shepherd. Again a division is made prominent between those who are willing to accept and those who have willed to reject Him. Then comes Dedication, and the request to declare plainly whether He is the Christ. The answer brings again to them the earlier teaching of moral preparedness, and they take up stones to stone Him. They justify their act by the charge of blasphemy, which He proves from the Scriptures to be without foundation. But their determination has gone beyond the reach of reason, and they seek again to take Him. Rejected by His own, and in His own city, He withdraws from it to Bethany beyond Jordan. The darkness comprehends not the light, but still it shineth, and “many believed on Him there” (John 10).

He is Life, and Truth, and Love, and shows this in going again to Judæa to conquer death, and reveal the fuller truth of the Resurrection and Life, and sympathise with the sorrowing home. The attributes of divinity are so fully manifested that many of the Jews believe, but with the clearer light the darkness is also made more fully visible, and the Sanhedrin formally decree His death. When this decree is passed He again withdraws to the wilderness, but disciples are still with Him (John 11).

As the Passover draws near He is again at Bethany. Love to Him is shown in the devotion of Mary; the selfishness and hatred which shut out love, in the murmur of Judas and the consultation of the chief priests to destroy the life of Lazarus which Jesus had restored. But conviction has seized the masses of the people, and the King is received into the royal city with shouts of “Hosanna!” Even the Pharisees feel that the “world is gone after Him,” and there is present the earnest of a wider world than that of which they thought. Men came from the West to the cross, as men had come from the East to the cradle, and are the firstfruits of the moral power which is to draw all men. Life conquering in death is the thought suggested by the presence of the Greeks; light and darkness is again the form in which the thought of His rejection by the Jews is clothed. But the struggle is drawing to a close, and the writer adds his own thoughts and gathers up earlier words of Jesus on those who rejected Light and Truth and Life and Love (John 12).

(4) With the next section (John 13:1 to John 17:26) we pass from the revelation to the Jews to the fuller revelation to the disciples. It is the passing from hatred to love, from darkness to light; but as in the deepest darkness of rejection rays of light are ever present, so the fullest light of acceptance is never free from shadows.

His Love is shown by the significant act of washing the disciples’ feet, and this is spiritually interpreted. His words of love cannot, however, apply to all, for the dark presence of the betrayer is still with them. When Hatred withdraws from the presence of Love, and Judas goes out into the night, then the deeper thoughts of Jesus (which are as the revelation of heaven to earth) are spoken without reserve. This discourse continues from John 13:31 to John 16:33, when it passes into the prayer of the seventeenth chapter.

It tells them of His glory because He is going to the Father; of the Father’s house where He will welcome them; that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life; that being absent, He will still be present, answering their prayers, sending to them the Paraclete, abiding in them; that His peace shall remain with them. It tells, in the allegory of the Vine, that there is an unseen spiritual union between Him and the Church, and every individual member of it; that there is, therefore, to be union between themselves; that the world will necessarily hate them because they are not of it; but that the Paraclete in them, and they themselves, of their own knowledge, should be the witness to the world.

It tells them the truth so hard to learn—that His own departure is expedient; declares the coming and the office of the Paraclete, and His own spiritual power with them, and comforts them with the thought of the full revelation of the Father, and the final victory over the world which He has overcome. Their faith rises to the sure conviction that He is from God. But even this full acceptance is not unclouded; He knows they will all be scattered, and leave Him alone.

And then having in fulness of love taught them, He lifts His eyes to heaven and prays for Himself, for the disciples, and for all believers, that in Him, as believers, they may have the communion with the Godhead which comes from the revelation of the Father through the Son.

(5) But here again in the narrative Darkness alternates with Light, and Hatred with Love. From the sacred calm of this inner circle we pass (John 18:1 to John 19:42) to the betrayal and apprehension, the trials before the Jewish and Roman authorities, the committal and crucifixion, the death and burial. Unbelief has reached its climax, and hatred gazes upon Him whom it has crucified.

(6) But love is greater than hatred, and light than darkness, and life than death. From the climax of unbelief we pass to the climax of faith. Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, and Joseph of Arimathæa, join with the band of women in the last office of love. The appearance to Mary Magdalene, to the ten Apostles, to the eleven now including Thomas, has carried conviction to all, and drawn from Him who is last to believe the fullest expression of faith, “My Lord and my God” (John 20).

The writer has traced the struggle between acceptance and rejection through its successive stages, and now that the victory is won the purpose of His work is fulfilled. There is a faith more blessed than sight, and these things are written that we may believe.

(7) The things which the writer has told are but a few of those with which his memory was stored. There were many signs not written in this book. He afterwards (comp. Notes on John 21) adds one of those which serves as a link with the future, in part, perhaps, to prevent a misconception which had sprung up about his own life. Other disciples, too, give to his writing the stamp of their own knowledge of its certain truth.

Such are the characteristics of this Gospel. We feel as we read them that we are in a region of thoughts widely different from those of the earlier Gospels. The characteristic thoughts naturally express themselves in characteristic words, and many of these are dwelt upon in the following Notes. The reader will not need to be reminded, as he again and again comes upon the words “light” (which occurs twenty-three times), “life” (fifty-two times), “love” (seven times; 1 John seventeen times), “truth” (twenty-five times), “true” (ideally, nine times), “witness” (substantive and verb, forty-seven times), “believe” (ninety-eight times), “world” (seventy-eight times), “sign” (seventeen times), that he has in such words the special forms which express the special thoughts which have come to us through St. John. Some characteristics in style have been pointed out in § II. as bearing upon the authorship of the Gospel.

VI. Sketch of the Literature of the Subject.—References have already been given, under the earlier sections of this Introduction, to works where the reader may find fuller information upon the different topics dealt with. Here it is intended to note such works as the ordinary reader may without difficulty have access to, and which bear upon the subject-matter of the Gospel itself.

Of the older commentaries, Chrysostom’s Homilies on the Gospel of St. John, and the Tractatus 124 in Joannem of Augustine, may be read in the Oxford Library of the Fathers. The Commentary of Cyril of Alexandria has lately been translated by Mr. P. E. Pusey, Oxford, 1875. The Aurea Catena of Thomas Aquinas is accessible in the Oxford translation of 1841-45.

Of more modern Commentaries, Lampe’s three quarto volumes in Latin (Basileœ, 1725-27), take the first place, and are a storehouse from which almost all his successors have freely borrowed. The century and a half which has passed since his book appeared has been fruitful in works on St. John. A selection of exegetical works prefixed to the second volume of Meyer’s Commentary, Eng. Trans., 1875, contains more than forty published during this period, and the number may be largely increased. The Appendix to the English translation of Luthardt’s St. John the Author of the Fourth Gospel, contains a list of some 500 works and articles upon the authenticity and genuineness alone, which has been published since the year 1790.

In our own day the best results of New Testament criticism, as applied to this Gospel, have been presented to the English reader in the Commentaries of Tholuck, Ed. 7, 1857, Eng. Trans., 1860; Olshausen, edited by Ebrard and Wiesinger, 1862, Eng. Trans., 1855; Bengel, Eng. Trans., 1874; Luthardt, Ed. 2, 1875-6, Eng. Trans., 1877; Godet, Ed. 2, with critical Introduction, 1877, Eng. Trans., 1877; Meyer, Ed. 5, 1869, Eng. Trans., 1875, all published by Messrs. Clark, of Edinburgh.

In our own country the Commentaries of Wordsworth, 1868, and Alford, Ed. 7, 1874, are known to all students of the New Testament, and the latter work has been also arranged specially for English readers (1868). Two works, which are less known than they deserve to be, may be specially noted as furnishing in a convenient form the patristic interpretation: Commentary on the Authorised English Version of the Gospel according to St. John, by the Rev. F. H. Dunwell, London, 1872; and The Gospel of John, illustrated from Ancient and Modern Authors, by Rev. J. Ford, London, 1852. Two other English books on this Gospel deal specially with its subject-matter: the well-known Discourses at Lincoln’s Inn of the late Frederick Denison Maurice, a work marked by his spiritual insight and earnest devotion, and containing a striking criticism on Baur’s mythical theory, Camb. 1857; and The Doctrinal System of St. John, by Professor Lias, London, 1875.

For all questions of geography, chronology, and Jewish antiquities, the English reader has the latest results of scholarship in the Biblical Dictionaries edited by Dr. William Smith and by Dr. Kitto, Ed. 3, 1866; in Dean Stanley’s Sinai and Palestine; in the Reports of the “Palestine Exploration Fund;” in the Synopsis of Dr. Karl Wieseler, Eng. Trans., 1864; in the Chronological and Geographical Introduction of Dr. Ch. Ed. Caspari, Eng. Trans., 1876. Special reference may be made to the articles on Jewish subjects by Dr. Ginsburg in Kitto’s Cyclopœdia. See, e.g., in connection with this Gospel the articles on “Education,” “Dispersion,” “Dedication” “Purim,” “Passover,” and “Tabernacles.”

On questions of the text, and the translation of the text, a very valuable help has been furnished in The Holy Bible, with Various Renderings and Readings from the Best Authorities, London, 1876; this Gospel has also been revised by “Five Clergymen,” London, 1857, and the results have been incorporated in The New Testament, Authorised Version Revised, London, 1876, of the late Dean Alford, who was one of them.

The aim of the present writer has been to help the English reader to understand the Gospel according to St. John. Within the brief limits of time and space at his command, he has tried to think out and express the writer’s meaning; and in the many difficulties which beset his path, has not consciously neglected any important guide. He is not unaware that some subjects are dwelt upon but briefly, and that others are entirely passed over, upon which the reader may seek information; but the pages of a Commentary are not those of a Theological Encyclopædia, and his own pages are but part of a greater whole. He trusts that no part of any text has been passed over without an honest attempt to ascertain and give its true meaning. The attempt will not be in vain if it helps any who have not access to works of greater learning and scholarship, to study and learn for themselves the meaning of words which, without such study, no one can teach.

It remains for the writer to express his obligations to the works which he has above mentioned, and to many others from which, directly and indirectly, thoughts have been suggested. To Lücke, Luthardt (especially in the Analysis), Godet, and Alford (both Commentary and Translation), he is conscious of owing a constant debt; but the work which has influenced his own thoughts most in the study of the New Testament, and without which the following Notes, though entirely differing from it in purpose and character, could not have been written, is the Kritisch Exegetisches Handbuch of Dr. Heinrich Meyer.

EXCURSUS ON NOTES TO ST. JOHN.

EXCURSUS A: DOCTRINE OF THE WORD.

“Geschrieben steht: ‘Im Anfang war das Wort!’

Hier stock’ ich schon! Wer hilft mir weiter fort?

Ich kann das Wort so hoch unmöglich schätzen

Ich muss es anders übersetzen

Wenn ich vom Geiste recht erleuchtet bin.

Geschrieben steht: ‘Im Anfang war der Sinn’

Bedenke wohl die erste Zeile

Dass Deine Feder sich nicht übereile.

Ist es der Sinn, der Alles wirkt und schafft?

Es sollte stehn: ‘Im Anfang war die Kraft!’

Doch, auch indem ich dieses niederschreibe

Schon warnt mich was, dass ich dabei nicht bleibe,

Mir hilft der Geist! Auf ein mal seh’ich Rath

Und schreibe getrost: ‘Im Anfang war die That!’”

—Faust von Goethe.

“’Tis written: ‘In the beginning was the Word,’

Here am I balked: who now can help afford?

The Word?—impossible so high to rate it;

And otherwise must I translate it,

If by the Spirit I am truly taught.

Then thus: ‘In the beginning was the Thought,’

This first line let me weigh completely,

Lest my impatient pen proceed too fleetly.

Is it the Thought which works, creates, indeed?

‘In the beginning was the Power,’ I read.

Yet, as I write, a warning is suggested

That I the sense may not have fairly tested.

The Spirit aids me; now I see the light!

‘In the Beginning was the Act,’ I write.”

—Bayard Taylor’s Translation.

THESE well-known lines are quoted here because they forcibly express the difficulty, not to say the impossibility, of fully knowing and fully conveying the sense of the term λόγος (Logos), which in our version is rendered “Word.” To understand the meaning of Logos is to understand the Gospel according to St. John; and one of the greatest difficulties which the English reader of St. John has to encounter is that it cannot be translated. Our own English term “Word” was chosen as representing Verbum, which is found in all the Latin versions, though in the second century both Sermo (discourse) and Ratio (reason) seem to have been in use as renderings. In a Latin translation of Athanasius de Incarnatione (1612) the rendering of Logos is Verbum et Ratio, and this presents the double meaning of the term, which it is of the utmost importance to bear in mind. The nearest English derivative is “Logic,” which is from an adjective derived from logos; and we understand by it, not an art or science which has to do with words, but one which has to do with thought and reason. The Greeks used logos in both senses, and Aristotle (Poster. Anal. i. 10) found it necessary to distinguish between the “logos within” (thought) and the “logos without” (speech). The Stoics introduced the phrase logos endiathetos (verbum mentis) for “thought,” and logos prophorikos (verbum oris) for “speech”; and these phrases were made prominent in the language of theology by Philo Judæus. The term, then, is two-sided, and the English term “Word” not only fails altogether to approach the meaning of the “logos within” (verbum mentis), but it also fails to represent the most important part of that side of the meaning which it does approach; for the “logos without” (verbum oris) is speech or discourse, rather than the detached “word.”

The term logos occurs frequently in the New Testament in the sense of utterance; but when used in this sense it differs from the kindred words (rhema and epos) in that it always has to do with the living voice. It may mean that which any one said—sc., discourse, argument, doctrine, narrative, matter (about which speech was made); so, on the other hand, it is often used for reason (the faculty), account (to take and to give), reckoning, cause. St. John himself uses the term in this Gospel some thirty-six times in the more general meaning. In the Prologue it is used four times, and in each instance with reference to the person of our Lord. In 1John 1:1 (see, Note there) the phrase “Word of Life” occurs; and in 1John 5:7 the term “Word” is found absolutely, but this verse is not in any MS. older than the fifteenth century. In Revelation 19:13 the term “Word of God” is found, and in Hebrews 4:12-13 (see Note), the Greek term is found in the sense “word of God,” and “account” (“with whom we have to do”). But the absolute use of the term Logos in a personal sense is confined to the four instances in the Prologue of this Gospel, and it is this special meaning which we have to investigate.

The answers to our inquiry must be sought in the sense attached to the term at the time when, and by the persons among whom, the Gospel was written. In the opening verses of St. John we are at once in the midst of thoughts and terms quite distinct from any with which we are familiar from the earlier Gospels; but they are clearly quite familiar to both the writer and his readers. He uses them without note or comment, and assumes that they convey a known and definite meaning. Now, there are three circles in which we find these thoughts and terms then current:—

(1) We meet with the term Logos, expressing a person or personified attribute, in the Gnostic systems which flourished at the commencement of the second century. In Basilides (became prominent about A.D. 125) the Logos is the second of the intelligences which were evolved from the Supreme God—“Mind first is born of the unborn Father, from it again Reason (Logos) is born; then from Reason, Prudence; and from Prudence, Wisdom and Power; and from Wisdom and Power, the Virtues and Princes and Angels—those whom they call ‘the first.’” (Irenæus, i., xxiv. 3; Oxford Trans, p. 72.)

In Valentinus, who seems to have been a Christian in earlier life (prominent A.D. 140-160), we meet with a more complicated development. The first principle is Proarche, or First Beginning; Propator, or First Father; Bythos, or the Deep. He is eternal and unbegotten, and existed in repose through boundless ages. With Him there existed the Thought (Ennoia) of His mind who is also called Grace and Silence. When Bythos willed to put forth from Himself the beginning of all things, Thought conceived and brought forth Understanding (Nous) and Truth. Understanding was also called Only-begotten and Father, and was the principle of the whole Pleroma. The Understanding produced Reason (Logos) and Life, and from this pair was produced the Man and the Church. These four pairs—Deep (Bythos) and Thought (Ennoia), Understanding (Nous) and Truth (Aletheia), Reason (Logos) and Life (Zoe), Man (Anthropos) and Church (Ecclesia), form the first octave or ogdoad. From Logos and Zoe, proceeded five pairs, which made the decad; and from Anthropos and Ecclesia six pairs, which made the dodecad. These together constituted the thirty aeons. There was also an unwedded æon called Horos (Boundary), or Stauros (Cross), who proceeded from Bythos and Ennoia, and whose office it was to keep every existence in its proper place (Irenæus, 1:1; Oxford Trans. p. 3 et sea.). In all this, and in the names of other æons, as Comforter, Faith, Hope, Love, we have, so far as terms and expressions go, much that may remind us of the teaching of St. John. But it is the product of a mind acquainted with Christianity, and blending it with other systems.

(2) We meet with the doctrine of the Word also in the circle of Jewish thoughts. Traces of it are found, indeed, in the poetry of the Old Testament itself. (Comp. Psalm 33:4; Psalm 33:6; Psalm 119:89; Psalm 119:105; Psalm 107:20; Psalm 147:15; Psalm 147:18; Isaiah 40:8; Isaiah 55:10-11; Jeremiah 23:29.) We find also that the Wisdom of God is personified as in Job 28:12 et seq. and Proverbs 8, 9. In the Apocryphal Books, Ecclesiasticus and The Wisdom of Solomon this personification becomes more definite. See Ecclesiasticus 1:1; Ecclesiasticus 1:4; Ecclesiasticus 24:9-21, and Wisdom Of Solomon 6:22 to Wisdom Of Solomon 9:18, and note especially, Wisdom Of Solomon 9:1-2, where “Thy word” and “Thy wisdom” are parallels; Wisdom Of Solomon 9:4, “wisdom, that sitteth by Thy throne;” Wisdom Of Solomon 16:12, “Thy word, O Lord, which healeth all things;” Wisdom Of Solomon 18:15, “Thine almighty word leaped down from heaven out of Thy royal throne.” Any inference which we draw from these books must, however, be checked by the fact that they belong to the border-land between Hebrew and Greek thought, and that while the Book of Wisdom cannot belong to an earlier date than the middle of the second century B.C., it may belong to the first century A.D., and was even ascribed to Philo himself, as we know from St. Jerome.

We have foreshadowings of the personal Word which are more distinctly Jewish in the Targums,[24] where the Memra da-Yeya (Word of the Lord) becomes almost a synonym of the divine name. “‘By Myself have I sworn” (Genesis 22:16) becomes “By My Word have I sworn.” In Genesis 16 Hagar sees the “Word of the Lord” and afterwards identifies Him with the “Shekinah.” So we read that the Word of the Lord was with Ishmael, with Abraham, with Isaac, with Joseph. Jacob’s vow (Genesis 28:20) is thus read in the Targum of Oukelos, “If the Memra da-Yeya will be my help, and will keep me in that way in which I go, and will give me bread to eat and raiment to wear, and bring me again in peace to my father’s house, then Memra da-Yeya shall be my God.” The Jerusalem Targum reads Memra da-Yeya for the Angel-Jehovah in the revelation to Moses (Exodus 3:14). In Isaiah 63:7-10, the Targum of Jonathan reads the Memra for the Angel, the Redeemer, and Jehovah; and in Malachi 3 identifies the Coming One with the Angel of the Covenant, and the Memra of the Lord. Dr. Etheridge noted in the Targum of Oukelos, in the Pentateuch only, more than 150 places in which the Memra da-Yeya is spoken of. In the later Targums it is still more frequent.

[24] Targum means translation or interpretation. The word was technically given to the Chaldee paraphrases of the Old Testament, which sprung up after the Captivity, when the mass of the people had lost the knowledge of the older Hebrew. At first these Targums were oral, and writing them was prohibited. When written Targums first came into existence is unknown. Zunz and others think there were written Targums on several books of the Old Testament as early as the time of the Maccabees. (Comp. Article “Targum,” in Kitto’s Biblical Cyclopœdia, vol. iii., p. 948 et seq.)

(3) Another region of thought in which we find analogies to the doctrine of the Word, is the Judæo-Alexandrine philosophy, which is represented by Philo. A Jew by birth, and descended from a priestly family, Philo was some thirty years old at the commencement of the Christian era. From the study of the Old Testament he passed to that of Plato and Pythagoras, and with such devotion that there was a common proverb, “Either Plato philonises, or Philo platonises.,, He drank not less deeply of the spirit of other teachers and in the allegorical interpretation of the Essenes, the Cabbalists, and the Therapeutæ, he found the mean between the Hebrew tradition of his youth and the Greek freedom of thought with which he became familiar in later years. The dualism of the Greek philosophers and the Biblical account of creation were both rejected for the Eastern theory of emanation. He thought of God as Eternal Light, from Whom all light comes; whose radiance cannot be gazed upon by human eyes, but which was reflected in the Word, or, as the Scripture calls it, Divine Wisdom. This he conceived to be not a mere abstraction. but an emanation, a real existence, and a person. He calls Him, for example, the “first begotten of God,” “the Archangel,” and, adopting the language of the Stoics (comp. p. 552), the Logos Endiathetos. From this proceeded a second emanation, the Logos Prophorikos, which manifests the Logos Endiathetos, and is Himself manifested by the Universe. The Logos is, then, in the conception of Philo, the link between the Universe and God, between objective matter and the spiritual Light which man cannot approach. On the spiritual side, the Logos is spoken of in terms which make it not seldom doubtful whether the thought is of a person or of an idea; on the material side, the Logos is the active reason and energy, and sometimes seems to be almost identified with the Universe itself. The bridge passes imperceptibly into the territory on either side.

Such are, in a few words, the systems of thought, which stand in relation more or less appreciable to the Johannine doctrine of the Word. The question is, from which, if indeed from any one of these, was the form of St. John’s teaching derived?

The Gnostic systems are excluded if our conclusion as to the authorship and date of the Gospel is valid. (Comp. Introduction, pp. 372, 376 et seq.). They are also excluded by independent comparison with the Gospel, and thus they afford a confirmation of that conclusion. They are in the relation of the complex to the simple, the development to the germ. Any one who will carefully read the extract from Irenæus which is given above will find good reason for believing that he is describing a system which may naturally enough have been developed from St. John; but from which the doctrine of St. John could not have been developed. The one is as the stream flowing in all its clearness from the fountain; the other is as the same stream lower in its course, made turbid by the admixture of human thoughts.

There remains the Judæo-Alexandrine philosophy, of which Philo is the leading representative, and the Hebrew thoughts expressed in the Old Testament paraphrases, and in the developments of later Judaism. We are to bear in mind, however, that the line between these cannot be drawn with such clearness and certainty as men generally seem to suppose. The Chaldæan paraphrases contain an Eastern element with which the nation was imbued during its long captivity, and Philo himself borrowed much from Oriental modes of thought. He was, moreover, a Jew, and the Jewish Scriptures and these very Targums were the foundation of his mental training. His philosophy is avowedly based upon the Old Testament. We are to bear in mind also when we speak of the philosophy of Philo that no philosopher arises without a cause, or lives without an effect. Philo represents a great current of thought which influenced himself and his generation, and which he deepened and widened. Of that current Alexandria and Ephesus were the two great centres, the former specially representing Judaism in contact with the freer thought of Greece, and the latter specially representing Judaism in contact with the theosophies of Asia, but both meeting and permeating each other in these great cities. (Comp. Introduction, p. 376.)

We have to think, then, of St. John as trained in the knowledge of the Hebrew Scripture and the paraphrases which explained them, and accustomed from childhood to hear of the Memra da-Yeya, the Word of the Lord, as the representative of God to man. Through the teaching of the Baptist he is led to the Christ, and during the whole of Christ’s ministry learns the truth that He only had seen the Father, and was the Apostle of God to the world. After Christ’s death the Resurrection strengthens every conviction and removes every doubt. The presence of the Spirit at Pentecost brings back the words He had given them as a revelation from God, and quickens the soul with the inspiration which gives the power to understand them. Then the Apostle goes forth to his work as a witness of what he had seen and heard, and for half a century fulfils this work. Then he writes what he so many times had told of Christ’s words and Christ’s works. He is living in the midst of men round whom and in whom that current of Judæo-Alexandrine thought has been flowing for two generations. He hears men talking of the Beginning, of Logos, of Life, of Light, of Pleroma, of Shekinah, of Only-Begotten, of Grace, of Truth, and he prefixes to his Gospel a short preface which declares to them that all these thoughts of theirs were but shadows of the true. There was a Being from all eternity face to face with God, and that Being was the true Logos, and He was not only with God, but was God. By Him did the universe come into existence. In Him was Life and the Light of men—the true ideal Light which lighteth every man. And not only was that Logos truly God, but He was truly man; the Incarnation was the answer to the problem which their systems of thought had vainly tried to fathom. The Logos, on the spiritual side, from eternity God; on the material side, in time, become flesh: this was the answer which Philo had dimly forecast. He was the Shekinah tabernacled among men, manifesting the glory of the Only-Begotten. In Him was the Pleroma. By Jesus Christ came Grace and Truth. No man had ever seen the brightness of the glory of the presence of God, but the Only-Begotten was the true Interpreter, declaring the Fatherhood of God to man.

Such is the Johannine doctrine of the Word. Shaping itself, as it must have done, if it was to be understood at Ephesus at the close of the first century, in the then current forms of thought, and in the then current terms, it expresses in all its fulness the great truth of the Incarnation. It has bridged for ever the gulf between God and man in the person of One who is both God and man; and this union was possible because there is in man a “logos within”—reason, thought, conscience;—because there is in the spiritual nature of man that which is capable of communion with God.

[This subject is dealt with in the works mentioned in the Introduction, and in a very convenient form in Liddon’s Bampton Lectures and Westcott’s Introduction. Lücke’s treatment of it (Ed. 3, vol. i., p. 249 et seq.) is one of the most valuable parts of his invaluable Commentary. See also Dorner, Doctrine of the Person of Christ, vol. i., especially Mr. Simon’s Appendix, p. 327 et seq., Eng. Trans.; Mansel’s article “Philosophy,” in Kitto’s Biblical Encyclopædia, vol. iii., p. 520 et seq.; Etheridge, Translations of the Targums on the Pentateuch, p. 14 et seq.]

EXCURSUS B: SOME VARIATIONS IN THE TEXT OF ST. JOHN’S GOSPEL.

It has often been found necessary in the preceding Notes to refer to readings differing from the Received text, on which our Authorised version is based. To justify or discuss these in any degree of fulness would be beyond the scope of the present volume; but it may be of interest, as well as of importance, to give, in two or three typical cases, an outline of the method by which the results are obtained.

John 1:18.—The Authorised version reads here, “the only begotten Son” and the Received text, upon which it is based, has ὁ μονογενὴς υἱος. But soon after the middle of the second century we find the reading μονογενὴς θεὸς—“only begotten God”—which has at least an equal, if not a superior, claim to be considered the original text.

The external evidence, judged by the testimony of MSS., of versions, and of quotations in extant works, must be admitted to be in favour of the reading, “only begotten God.”

The external evidence, judged by the testimony of MSS., of versions, and of quotations in extant works, must be admitted to be in favour of the reading, “only begotten God.”

Of the chief uncial MSS. (comp. p. xvi.), the Sinaitic, the Vatican, and the Codex Ephraem at Paris, support it; while against it are the Alexandrian MS. now in the British Museum, and a reading of Codex Ephraem from the hand of a later scribe. The preponderance in weight is, however, much greater than it seems to be numerically.

Of the Versions the Revised Syriac (Peshito), the margin of the Philoxenian Syriac, the Æthiopic (?), read “only begotten God.” All the Latin versions, the Curetonian, Philoxenian (not the margin) and Jerusalem Syriac, the Georgian, Sclavonic, Armenian, Arabic, and Anglo-Saxon read “the only begotten Son.” The Revised Syriac must here be regarded as having special weight from the fact that its evidence agrees with that of MSS. from which it usually differs.

Of the Fathers “only begotten’ God” is read certainly by Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Epiphanius, Didymus de Trinitate, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria. “The only begotten Son” is read by Eusebius, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and by the Latin writers from Tertullian downwards. The uncertain text of many of the Fathers makes their witness doubtful; but this at least seems clear, that the decided weight of Patristic evidence is in favour of “only begotten God.” Tregelles lays stress upon the fact that Arius adopted this reading, but it must be observed that Arius very likely considered “God,” as here used, in a secondary sense, and so might have regarded the passage as latently, though not on the surface, favouring his own views.

The external evidence being thus in favour of “only begotten God,” we have to inquire whether there is any sufficient ground on which it can be set aside. We are at once met by the fact that the term is unique, and therefore, it is often said, not likely to occur; whereas “the only begotten Son” is perfectly, natural, and occurs in St. John in John 3:16; John 3:18, and 1John 4:19. But we are to remember that what is unnatural to us would have been so to copyists and translators; and the fact that we have an unusual term strongly supported by external evidence is of weight just in proportion as the term is unusual. Nor need a unique term be a matter of suspicion in this Prologue, where we have found so much that is not paralleled in other parts of the New Testament. (Comp. Excursus A.)

It has been sometimes thought that “only begotten Son” may have been changed into “only begotten God” from a dogmatic bias. We have seen that Only Begotten (Monogenes) was one of the æons in the Ogdoad of Valentinus (p. 553); but there was the greatest care to separate the æons from the original Bythos, and no copyist in the Valentinian interest would have applied the term “God” to the “Only Begotten.” Unique as the term was, and unknown to Christian orthodoxy, no copyist, on the other hand, would have ventured to adopt it in the interests of Christianity.

A priori reasons would seem, then, to unite with external evidence in favour of the unfamiliar reading, “only begotten God.” We find it beyond all question soon after the middle of the second century. It is almost impossible to believe that it was of set purpose, and quite impossible to believe that it was by accident, read instead of “only begotten Son,” and the only alternative is that it is part of the original Gospel. The doubtful word was probably written, with the usual contraction, in the uncial characters, ΘC (ΘEOC), and this was read by copyists as the more familiar ΥC (ΥIOC); and thus by the change of a single letter and the addition of the article, “only begotten God” passed into “the only begotten Son” and the original text passed into an oblivion, from which it has never been rescued.

But although the term “only begotten God” is unfamiliar to us, it is not foreign to the thought of the Prologue, the very central idea of which is that the Logos was with God, and was God. The eternal Sonship of the Logos is expressed in the parallel sentence “in the bosom of the Father,” and in this term “only begotten God” the Prologue repeats emphatically at its conclusion the text with which it opened: “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.” The omission of the article gives the sentence a meaning which it is difficult to express in translation, but which in Greek makes the term “only begotten God” an assertion—“No man hath seen God at any time; only begotten God as He is, He who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him.”

[Comp. for fuller information on this important reading Professor Abbot’s articles in the Andover Bibliotheca Sacra (Oct. 1861), and Unitarian Review (June, 1875), and Professor Drummond in Theological Review (Oct. 1871). There is an elaborate and careful note based on Professor Abbot’s article in Alford’s Commentary, in loco. He decides for the Received text, which is followed also by Wordsworth (but without any note on the reading), Tischendorf, and Scrivener. Tregelles, on the other hand, reads “only begotten God,” which is also adopted by Westcott and Hort. The remarkable Dissertation upon it, read before the University of Cambridge by Dr. Hort in 1876, will perhaps turn the current of thoughtful opinion in favour of the reading he advocates.]

John 7:53 to John 8:12.—This section illustrates a critical question of a wholly different nature. We have in the Received text no less than twelve verses which, by the admission of all competent authorities, have no valid claim to be considered part of the Gospel according to St. John. They are found in no Greek MS. earlier than the sixth century; they are not an original part of any of the oldest versions; they are not quoted as by St. John before the last half of the fourth century.

The external evidence leaves, therefore, no room for doubt that they are an interpolation, and as we have seen in the Notes upon the passages, this is entirely borne out by the matter and style of the verses themselves, and by the break which they cause in the narrative. At the same time they leave the impression, which becomes more vivid on every fresh study of the section, that they are a genuine record of an incident in the life and teaching of Christ. It would have been impossible for any writer in the early Church to have risen so far above the ordinary feeling upon such a question; and their whole tone is that of the words of Christ, and not of the words of man.

The external evidence leaves, therefore, no room for doubt that they are an interpolation, and as we have seen in the Notes upon the passages, this is entirely borne out by the matter and style of the verses themselves, and by the break which they cause in the narrative. At the same time they leave the impression, which becomes more vivid on every fresh study of the section, that they are a genuine record of an incident in the life and teaching of Christ. It would have been impossible for any writer in the early Church to have risen so far above the ordinary feeling upon such a question; and their whole tone is that of the words of Christ, and not of the words of man.

But if they are the words of Christ, and yet not part of the Fourth Gospel, how did they come to be inserted in this place? We must remember, as this Gospel itself reminds us, that we have no complete record of the works and words of Christ, and that there must have been many incidents treasured in the memory of the first disciples which have not come down to us. (Comp. Acts 20:35, and Note there.) We know from Eusebius that many such incidents were narrated in the five books of Papias, who thus gives his own purpose and plan:—“I shall not regret to subjoin to my interpretations also, for your benefit, whatsoever I have at any time accurately ascertained and treasured up in my memory, as I have received it from the elders, and have recorded it in order to give additional confirmation to the truth by my testimony. For I have never, like many, delighted to hear those that tell many things, but those that teach the truth; neither those that record foreign precepts, but those that are given from the Lord to our faith, and that came from the truth itself. But if I met with any one who had been a follower of the elders anywhere, I made it a point to inquire what were the declarations of the elders; what was said by Andrew, Peter, or Philip; what by Thomas, James, John, Matthew, or any other of the disciples of our Lord; what was said by Aristion and by the presbyter John, disciples of the Lord; for I do not think that I derived so much benefit from books as from the living voice of those that are still surviving” (Euseb. Eccles. Hist. iii., xxxix.; Bagster’s Trans., p. 142). At the end of the same chapter Eusebius says, “He also gives another history, of a woman who had been accused of many sins before the Lord.” The reference is almost certainly to the incident in the present paragraph, and in it we have the probable key to the insertion here. A copyist would write the section from Papias in the margin of his MS., perhaps, as Ewald suggests, to illustrate the statement, “Ye judge after the flesh; I judge no man” (John 8:14); and from the margin it found its way, as other such passages did, into the Cambridge and other MSS. Adopted from the margin, it would be placed in the text where there was space for it on the page of the MS., and this would account for the fact that it is found in different positions; for it is placed by one MS. after John 7:36; by several at the end of the Gospel; by four important cursives at the end of Luke 21. The copyists felt, then, that it was an incident which should have a place in their MSS., but they felt free to decide chat place at their own discretion.

Augustine held that the passage had been omitted on the ground of the supposed encouragement it gave to lax views, and this position has been maintained by others in ancient and modern times. It does not, however, account (1) for the fact that John 7:53 is part of the doubtful passage; (2) the great variations of place and of readings in the MSS. where it is found; (3) the internal differences of matter and style.

[Comp. Scrivener’s New Testament Criticism, Ed. 2, p. 530 et seq.; Alford’s note in loco, in which he incorporates the results of Lucke’s full discussion; Lightfoot, in Contemporary Review, Oct. 1875.]

John 18:1.—This is a variation of another kind, and one of little practical importance, except that the Received text has furnished ground for one of the instances quoted in proof of the position that the writer was not a Jew of Palestine. It is of interest as illustrating the way in which various-readings have arisen.

Our Authorised version has “the brook Cedron,,, departing from the Received text, which has the article in the plural,, and must be rendered “the brook (or, more exactly, the winter-torrent) of the cedars.” The article is, however, in the singular in the Alexandrian MS., which supports the Authorised version, and this reading is adopted by Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann, and Meyer. The Sinaitic and Cambridge MSS. have both the article and the substantive in the singular—“the brook Cedrus,” or “the brook of the cedar”—and this is the reading adopted by Tischendorf (Ed. 8). The Vatican MS., and a later correction of the Sinaitic MS., read with the Received text “the brook of the cedars,” and this is the reading adopted by Alford, Tregelles, and Westcott and Hort.

Our Authorised version has “the brook Cedron,,, departing from the Received text, which has the article in the plural,, and must be rendered “the brook (or, more exactly, the winterIt must be allowed that this reading, “the brook of the cedars,” has most external support. But against it is the fact that both the other texts agree in reading the singular article. The probable explanation is that the original text was του κεδρών (the Kedron)—i.e., the Hebrew name of the torrent (Kidrôn), meaning “black” or “dark,” was written in Greek letters. But this termination of the substantive would seem to a Greek copyist like a genitive plural (κέδρων), for the uncial MSS. would have no accents, and he would make the article agree with it, reading τῶν κέδρων (“of the cedars”). Another copyist would do just the opposite, changing the number of the substantive to agree with the article, and reading του κέδρον (“of the Cedrus,” or “of the cedar”). In this way the reading of the Alexandrian MS., which is adopted in the Authorised version, explains, on the one hand, how that of the Sinaitic and Cambridge MSS., and, on the other hand, how that of the Vatican MS., would arise; and being the only one of the three which explains the others, it probably represents the original text.

There is in any case no foundation for the argument that the writer was unacquainted with Hebrew, for even if the true reading be “of the cedars” (τῶν κέδρων) a Jew may have chosen it to represent the Hebrew word from its similarity in sound. It is remarkable that in the LXX. translation of 2Samuel 15:23 the word occurs twice (once in the Hebrew and English), i.e., as an appellative and as a proper name. Comp. 1Kings 15:13 (LXX.).

EXCURSUS C: THE SACRAMENTAL TEACHING OF ST. JOHN’S GOSPEL.

The Fourth Gospel contains no record of the institution of Holy Baptism or of the Eucharist. This will not surprise us if we remember that it belonged to a generation later than the journeys and letters of St. Paul, in which we find that both sacraments had become part of the regular life of the Church. That which was constant and undoubted, and was part of the gospel wherever it was proclaimed, and in the formularies of which the very words of institution were preserved, needed not to be told again. But that which is not told is assumed. Like the Transfiguration, the Agony in Gethsemane, the Ascension, both sacraments are more than recorded; they are interwoven in the very texture of the Gospel. The discourse with Nicodemus in John 3. and the discourse in the synagogue at Capernaum in John 6. could not have been written at the close of the first century without being understood by the writer, and without being intended to be understood by the readers, as discourses on Holy Baptism and the Eucharist. In the Notes on these chapters an attempt has been made to bring out their true meaning in detail, and to these the reader is referred. Nor are we concerned here with the controversies which in after ages have gathered round these centres. All that can be attempted is to point out that the differences of opinion with regard to the general interpretation of the chapters as a whole have arisen from reading them with preconceived convictions as to their meaning, and from confounding things which ought to be distinguished. It may be granted that no one who heard the discourse at Capernaum could understand it of the solemn institution, which was still in the future, and then wholly outside any possibility of current thought; but it does not follow that the discourse was not intended to teach the doctrine of the Eucharist, and to be interpreted in the events and words of the Last Supper. It takes its place among the many things which the disciples afterwards remembered that He had said unto them, and believed the Scripture and the word which Jesus had said. (Comp. Note on John 2:22.) The conclusion that the words have no reference to the Eucharist would require the statement, not that the disciples could not understand them at the time, but that Jesus Himself did not; and no one who is prepared to admit that to Him the future was as the present, and that when He said, “I am the Bread of Life,” “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you,” He knew that He would also take bread and break it, and say, “This is My body, which is given for you; this do in remembrance of Me;” and would take the cup, and say, “This cup is the new testament in My blood, which is shed for you,” can doubt that He taught in word at the one Passover that which He taught in act and word at the other. It may be granted, again, that when St. John heard, with or from Nicodemus, of the new birth which was of water and of the Spirit, he may have asked, as the teacher of Israel did, “How can these things be?” but the statement that the discourse does not apply to the sacrament of Baptism is inconsistent with the commission to the Apostles to baptise all nations, and the fact that the day of Pentecost and the history of the Apostolic Church must have brought to the writer’s mind in all its fulness what the meaning of the spiritual birth was. It may be granted that these truths, as they were revealed by Jesus Christ, were beyond the comprehension of any who heard them, and that the teaching of these chapters is inconsistent with the degree of faith and spiritual receptivity which even at the end of our Lord’s ministry is found in the circle of the Apostles; but we are to remember once more that the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is in this very Gospel itself promised to guide them into all truth, and that in the person of him who records the promise there is the evidence that it had been fulfilled.

“We have seen in John 20:22-23, how the Apostle thinks of the act of breathing on the disciples, with which Jesus accompanied the gift of the Holy Ghost and the power to remit sins, as itself a sacramental sign; and throughout the Gospel we have seen how he regards every work of Jesus as a sign of a spiritual reality beyond. The whole Gospel is, so to speak, sacramental. The Word became flesh, and the whole life in the flesh was a manifestation which the physical eye could look upon and the physical ear could hear, that by means of these senses the human spirit may perceive the nature of the Eternal Spirit in whose image it was made. The spiritual was manifested in material form, that in it the spiritual nature of man embodied in material form may have communion with God. Every word and work was “an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace,” and at the time when the Apostle wrote two of these signs were specially regarded by the Church as those “ordained by Christ Himself as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.” (Comp. Notes on Matthew 26:26-29; Matthew 28:19; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:19-20; Acts 2:46; 1 Corinthians 11)

EXCURSUS D: THE DISCOURSES IN ST. JOHN’S GOSPEL.

No difficulty with regard to this Gospel has been more strongly felt by those who accept the authenticity, or more cogently urged by those who reject it, than the way in which the discourses of our Lord as they are recorded in the Fourth Gospel differ from the shorter detached sayings and parables with which we are familiar in the Synoptists. “Il faut faire un choix” says M. Renan, “si Jésus parlait comme le veut Matthieu, il n’a pu parler comme le veut Jean.” This is not all; for not only are these discourses of Jesus unlike those of the earlier Gospels, but the Fourth Gospel preserves unity of style, whether Jesus is speaking, or John the Baptist, or the writer himself. Further, while this style widely differs from that of the earlier Gospels, it very clearly resembles that of the First Epistle of St. John.

This difference must, to a large extent, be at once admitted by every candid inquirer; but M. Renan’s inference will not follow unless the difference is so great that it cannot be accounted for. It may be assumed here that the arguments of the Introduction have led the reader to think that the Johannine Authorship of the Gospel, is, at least, in the highest degree probable. The writer claims, as we have seen (p. 374), to be an eye-witness and to have seen and heard that which he records, and others give their sanction to the claim. It follows, therefore, even if all that has been said about these discourses and their difference from those of the Synoptists can be established, that we have nothing more than a difficulty which our ignorance cannot explain; but this cannot weigh against the position which, on so many other grounds, has been established. But is the difference—great as it undoubtedly is—wholly inexplicable, or, indeed, greater than under all the circumstances we have a right to expect?

(1) It must be remembered, in the first place, that the ground common to the Fourth Gospel and the earlier three is much greater than it is often supposed to be. The following parallels are given that the reader may conveniently estimate it. The texts may be found quoted in parallel columns in Godet and Luthardt; and the weight of their cumulative testimony can be felt only by one who will carefully compare them.

John 2:19;

Matthew 26:61; Matthew 27:40; Mark 14:58.

John 3:18;

Mark 16:16.

John 4:44;

Matthew 13:57; Mark 6:4.

John 5:8;

Matthew 9:6; Mark 2:9; Luke 5:24.

John 6:20;

Matthew 14:27.

John 6:35;

Matthew 5:6; Luke 6:21.

John 6:37;

Matthew 11:28-29.

John 6:46;

Matthew 11:27; Luke 10:22.

John 12:7;

Matthew 26:12; Mark 14:8.

John 12:8;

Matthew 26:11; Mark 14:7.

John 12:25;

Matthew 10:39; Matthew 16:25; Mark 8:35; Luke 9:14.

John 12:27;

Matthew 26:38; Mark 14:24.

John 13:3;

Matthew 11:27.

John 13:16; John 15:20;

Matthew 10:24; Luke 6:40.

John 13:20;

Matthew 10:40; Luke 10:16.

John 13:21;

Matthew 26:21; Mark 14:18.

John 13:38;

Matthew 26:34; Mark 14:30; Luke 22:34.

John 14:18;

Matthew 28:20.

John 14:28;

Mark 13:32.

John 14:31;

Matthew 26:46.

John 15:21;

Matthew 10:22.

John 16:32;

Matthew 26:31; Mark 14:27.

John 17:2;

Matthew 28:18.

John 18:11;

Matthew 26:55.

John 18:17;

Matthew 27:11; Mark 15:2; Luke 23:3.

John 20:23;

Matthew 16:19; Matthew 18:18.

The passages in Matthew 11:25-27; Matthew 15:13 and Luke 10:22 should be specially noticed, as containing thoughts like those which meet us in St. John.

(2) If we accept the common belief that our Lord spoke in the current Syro-Chaldaic, then the discourses of the Greek Gospels are translations, and a translator’s own style naturally impresses itself upon his work.

(3) The scene of the Fourth Gospel is, for the most part, Jerusalem; that of the Synoptists is Galilee. In the one case our Lord is chiefly addressing scribes and Pharisees, Rabbis and elders; in the other case He is chiefly addressing the multitudes of Galilee, peasants and fishermen, who flocked to hear Him. It is true that one of the most striking of the discourses of the Fourth Gospel was delivered in the synagogue at Capernaum (John 6:59), but in this discourse it is the hierarchical party (“the Jews,” see Note on John 1:19) who murmur at Him, and it is to them that the discourse is chiefly addressed. Is the difference in the discourses greater than that between a University sermon of a distinguished teacher, and the address delivered in a village church or in the open air by the same man?

(4) We possess no part of the teaching of Christ in full. The Fourth Gospel does not profess to be more than an historical résumé, a fragment of a great whole, which could not possibly be produced (John 20:30-31; John 21:24-25). We read it in detached portions, and think of it as representing the teaching of the ministerial life of Christ; but we seldom realise that the whole of the teaching which we have would have occupied but a few hours in delivery, whilst it is set in an historical framework which extends over months and years. Now, in making a summary of the discourses of Christ, nothing is more natural than that each writer should have chosen such portions as fell in with the bent of his own mind, the depth of his own perception, and the special object in writing which he himself had in view. And as nothing is more natural, so nothing can be more providential than that the teaching of Christ should be thus preserved as it presented itself to minds of widely-differing types, who are representatives of the differing thoughts and culture of every age. From this it results that the peasant and the fisherman, the scribe and the scholar, in all places and in all times, alike find in the doctrine of Christ the truth that satisfies the soul.

(5) The unity of style in the whole of the Fourth Gospel, and the similarity between that of the Gospel and that of the First Epistle, must be evident to every thoughtful reader. It does not follow that this style is wholly St. John’s. Surely we may believe rather that the loving and beloved disciple, who in closest intimacy drank of his Master’s spirit and listened to His words, caught in some degree the very form in which that Master spoke. The difficulty felt as to the unity of style is in truth an argument of no small weight in favour of the authenticity. No criticism has been able to dismember this Gospel, and assign part to one writer and part to another. It stands or falls as a whole, and the conviction which comes from the study of individual parts applies therefore to every part. The unity of style with that of the Epistle enables us to add the independent testimony which we have for the Epistle (comp. Introduction to it) to the general testimony in favour of the Gospel.

(6) Still it is impossible to deny that there is a subjective element in the discourses recorded in the Fourth Gospel: they cannot have been stored in the mind of the beloved disciple for fifty years without bearing the impress of that mind. He cannot have written in Ephesus at the close of the first century without being influenced by the current of thought in the midst of which he lived; and the purpose with which the Gospel was written (see Introduction, p. 377) must have moulded the form which it took. But is it therefore the less authentic? Does it the less produce the exact teaching of Christ? To answer these questions in the affirmative is to forget that the author, like other holy men of old, was inspired of God; to forget that the man was inspired, not the form or the word; to forget that presence of the Paraclete which was, as this very Gospel emphatically declares, “to teach all things, and bring all things to remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you,” and “to guide into all truth.”

It is not, then, necessary to make our choice between St. Matthew and St. John, or to believe that the Gospel is not the “Gospel of Jesus Christ” because it is “the Gospel according to St. John.” Rather, it is necessary to study the works and words of Christ as each Evangelist, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, has recorded them, and in each part to seek to catch something of the fulness of that life which no record can convey; and as the experience of men in all ages has proved, there is no part in which that life is so fully presented as in the discourses related by St. John.

[Comp. Westcott, Introduction, p. 281 et seq.; Sanday, Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel, p. 69 et seq.; Godet, Introduction, pp. 163-205; Luthardt, St. John the Author of the Fourth Gospel, pp. 224-244; and especially the comparison between the Sermon on the Mount and the Teaching in the Fourth Gospel, appended to Professor Maurice’s Discourses, pp. 488-492.]

EXCURSUS E: THE OMISSION OF SYNOPTIC THE RAISING OF LAZARUS IN THE GOSPELS.

This omission has so often been made a difficulty, and to many minds is perhaps so real a difficulty, that a few words may be added upon it, though the Notes have already indicated what is probably the true solution. (Comp. especially Notes on John 11:8-16.) If, as there is every reason to believe, the Gospel according to St. Mark represents the original document on which the Synoptic Gospels are founded; and if St. Mark is also the interpreter of St. Peter, who wrote whatsoever he recorded with great accuracy (Euseb. Eccles. Hist. iii. 39; comp. Introduction to St. Mark), then the absence of St. Peter from the body of disciples who journeyed to Bethany with our Lord would be a sufficient reason why this miracle was not included in the Synoptic tradition, and why it is therefore not recorded in any one of the earlier Gospels.

No stress can be laid upon the common explanation that silence was imposed upon the Evangelists who wrote during the lifetime of the sisters or of Lazarus himself. There is no such reticence in the case of the young man at Nain, or of the daughter of Jairus; and the feeling forces itself upon the mind that such an explanation owes its existence to the necessity which has been felt to explain the difficulty somehow. This necessity has been felt, perhaps, too strongly. To us the miracle seems to stand alone as an exercise of power which every one who knew of it must have regarded as we regard it, and which no record of the life and works of Christ could omit. But the miracle differs essentially from others only in the fulness of our knowledge of it, and the circumstances which attended it. Each Evangelist does record a miracle of raising from the dead, and St. Luke records two. They are not dwelt upon as in any way beyond the limits of the miraculous power of Christ, which every Evangelist fully sets forth. All Jews, indeed, had expected such power to accompany the Messianic reign; they knew from their Scriptures that it had been vouchsafed to Elijah; they record (Matthew 11:5; Luke 7:22), without any comment, the answer to the Baptist, “The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them;” and St. Luke records also in the Acts that the power of life and death was committed to the Apostles. The common feeling is shown in this very narrative, where the Jews ask, “Could not this Man which opened the eyes of the blind have caused that even this man should not have died?” (John 11:37.)

Stress may with greater confidence be laid upon the fact that the miracle at Bethany does not fall in the local sphere of the Synoptic narratives, but that it does naturally fall in with the Jerusalem ministry, which is specially related by St. John. His connection with the city, and residence in it, would certainly bring him into contact with the family at Bethany, and supply him with details which no other Evangelist would know. Knowing this incident himself, and knowing that the Synoptists had not recorded it, knowing too that it explained much that they did record, and was indeed the key without which the events of the last week could not be accounted for, he here, as elsewhere, adds to their narrative that which was lacking in it. It is one of the many instances in which the exact fitting of independent portions of the history prove that they are parts of one great whole.

The question of the authenticity of this record is, of course, implied in the often-asked question, “Why is it found only in St. John?” and behind this lies the wider question of the credibility of miracles. All that has been said in the Introduction on the Authenticity of the Gospel as a whole applies to this part of it; and there is no part of it which bears the impress of historical truth more fully than this does. The characters of Martha and Mary, the dialogues, the feelings of the Jews, the whole picture, are drawn to the life.

The silence of the record is itself significant. It is an inspired historian, and not a forger of the miraculous, in whose narrative Lazarus himself utters no word.

“Where wert thou, brother, those four days?”

There lives no record of reply,

Which telling what it is to die

Had surely added praise to praise.

Behold a man raised up by Christ!

The rest remaineth unreveal’d;

He told it not; or something seal’d

The lips of that Evangelist.”

EXCURSUS F: THE DAY OF THE CRUCIFIXION OF OUR LORD.

[For this Excursus, which deals with a difficulty belonging to the Four Gospels rather than to the Fourth Gospel, Professor Plumptre has been kind enough to make himself responsible.]

(1) The narratives of the first Three Gospels, and that of the Fourth, agree in the statement that on the night that immediately preceded the betrayal or the crucifixion of our Lord, He and His disciples met together at a supper. As to what that supper was they seem at first to differ. The first Three agree in speaking of it as the first day (Matthew and Mark), or the day (Luke), of the feast known as that of unleavened bread, the day when “the Passover must be slain” (Mark, Luke). The disciples ask where they are to prepare the Passover. They are sent to the owner of the upper room, where they are met with the message that their Lord purposes to eat the Passover there. When they arrived they “made ready the Passover” (Matthew, Mark, Luke). As they begin He tells them that He has eagerly desired to eat that Passover with them before He suffered (Luke 22:15). At a certain stage of the meal, which corresponded with the later ritual of the Paschal Supper, He commands them to see in the bread and the cup which He then blessed the memorial feasts of the New Covenant. The impression, primâ facie, left by all the Three, is that our Lord and His disciples partook, at the usual time, of the Paschal Supper. In St. John, on the other hand, there is no record of the institution of this memorial feast. The supper is introduced as “before the feast of the Passover” (John 13:1). When Judas leaves the room the other disciples think that he is sent to buy what was needed for the feast (John 13:29). When the priests are before Pilate they shrink from entering into the Prætorium, lest they should be defiled, and so be unable to eat the Passover (John 18:28). The impression, primâ facie, left by St. John’s Gospel is that our Lord’s death coincided with the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb; that left by the Three is that the Paschal lamb had been sacrificed the previous evening.

(2) The difference has been regarded by many critics as altogether irreconcilable, and conclusions have been drawn from it unfavourable to the authority of one or both the narratives. Those who look on the Gospel of St. John as the work of a writer of the second century, see in this discrepancy a desire to give a sanction to the local usage of the Church of Ephesus, or to force upon his readers, as in his relation of “a bone of Him shall not be broken” (John 19:36), the correspondence between the Passover and the death of Christ. Those who accept the Gospel as St. John’s, wholly or in part, see in his narrative a correction, designed or undesigned, of the narrative of the Three, and look on that narrative accordingly as more or less untrustworthy. Some even of those who shrink from these conclusions have been content to rest in the conviction that we have no adequate data for the solution of the problem.

Some minor difficulties gather round the main question. It was not likely, it has been urged, that on the very night of the Passover the high priests should have taken the counsel and the action that led to the capture in Gethsemane; nor that on the day that followed, “a day of holy convocation” (Exodus 12:16), they should have sat in judgment, and appeared as accusers before Pilate and Herod; nor that Simon of Cyrene should have come from the country (Mark 15:21); nor that Judas should be supposed to have been sent, if it were the Paschal Supper, to make purchases of any kind—as if the shops in Jerusalem would on such a night be open (John 13:29).

The day of the Crucifixion is described by all four Evangelists as “the preparation,” which it is assumed must mean “the preparation for the Passover.” In St. John (John 19:14) it is definitely spoken of as “the preparation of the Passover.”

(3) Some solutions of the problem, which rest on insufficient evidence, may be briefly noticed and dismissed. (a) It has been supposed that our Lord purposely anticipated the legal Paschal Supper, and that the words “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15), were an intimation of that purpose. Against this, however, there is the fact that the disciples, who could have no such anticipatory purpose, ask the question where they are to prepare, and then actually prepare the Passover as a thing of course, and that the Three Gospels, as we have seen, all speak of the Last Supper as being actually on the first day of the feast of unleavened bread, which is the Passover. (b) It has been conjectured that the Galilean usage as to the Passover may have varied from that of Judæa; but of this there is not the shadow of evidence, nor is it likely that the priests who had to take part in the slaying of the Paschal lambs would have acquiesced in what would seem to them a glaring violation of their ritual. (c) Stress has been laid on the fact that in the later ritual of the Passover week a solemn meal was eaten on the day that followed the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb, which was known as the Chagigah (= festivity, or festive meal). This also was a feast upon flesh that had been offered in sacrifice, and it has been thought by some who seek to reconcile the four narratives, that this was the feast for which Judas was supposed to be ordered to make provision, that this was “the Passover,” the prospect of which led the high priests to keep clear of entering under the roof of the Prætorium. In many ways this seems, at first, an adequate solution of the difficulty, but there is no evidence that the term “the Passover,” which had such a strictly definite significance, was ever extended to include this subordinate festivity.

(4) It remains to examine the narratives somewhat more closely, and with an effort to realise, as well as we can, the progress of the events which they narrate. As a preliminary stage in the inquiry, we may note two or three facts which cannot well be excluded from consideration. (a) The narrative of the first Three Gospels, probably independent of each other, represents, on any assumption, the wide-spread tradition of the churches of Judæa, of Syria, and of Asia, of St. Matthew, St. Peter, and St. Paul. It is antecedently improbable that that tradition could have been wrong in so material a fact. (b) The Fourth Gospel, whether by St. John or a later writer, must, on any assumption, have been written when that tradition had obtained possession of well-nigh all the churches. It is antecedently improbable either that such a writer should contradict the tradition without knowing that he did so, or that, if he knew it, he should do so silently and without stating that his version of the facts was more accurate than that commonly received. It is at least a probable explanation of his omitting to narrate the institution of the Lord’s Supper that the record of that institution was recited whenever the disciples met to break bread at Ephesus as elsewhere (1Corinthians 11:23-26), and that he felt, therefore, that it was better to record what others had left untold than to repeat that with which men were already familiar. If he was not conscious of any contradiction, then his mode of narrating, simply and without emphasis noting facts as they occurred, was natural enough.

(5) It remains to be seen whether there is, after all, any real discrepancy. Let us picture to ourselves, assuming for a time that the Last Supper was the Paschal meal, what was passing in Jerusalem on the afternoon of that 14th of Nisan. The Passover lamb was, according to the law (Exodus 12:6; Leviticus 23:5; Numbers 9:3; Numbers 9:5), to be slain “between the two evenings.” The meaning of the formula is not certain. If, as some have supposed, it meant between the evening of the 14th and that of the 15th of Nisan, it gives a space of twenty-four hours within which the lamb might be slain and eaten, and then the whole apparent contradiction between the two narratives disappears. It was open to the disciples to eat their Passover on the 14th of Nisan, to the priests to eat theirs on the 15th. The occurrence, however, of the same expression in the rules as to the daily evening sacrifice (Exodus 29:39; Exodus 29:41; Numbers 28:4) excludes this interpretation, and it seems more probable that it covered the period that preceded and followed the setting of the sun. (Comp. Deuteronomy 6:2.) Looking to the prominence given to the ninth hour (3 P.M.), by the connection with the evening sacrifice and prayer (Acts 3:1), it would be probable enough that the slaughter of the Paschal lambs would begin at that hour, and this conclusion is expressly confirmed by Josephus, who states that they were slain from the ninth to the eleventh hour, i.e., from 3 to 5 P.M. (Wars, vi. 9, §3). It is clear, however, that the process would take up the whole of that time, and would tend to stretch beyond it. Josephus (ut supra) reckons the number of lambs that had to be sacrificed at 270,000. Some were certain to begin their Paschal meal two hours before the others.

(6) Everything indicates that the disciples were among the earliest applicants for the priests’ assistance. The Galileans abstained from work, as a rule, on the feastday, more rigidly than the dwellers in Judæa, and this would naturally lead to their making their preparations early. Peter and John are, accordingly, sent to prepare “when the day came.” They get the room ready. They hasten, we may believe, to the Court of the Temple with the lamb. They sit down to their meal “at evening,” i.e., about sunset, or 6 P.M. (Matthew 26:20; Mark 14:27; Luke 22:14). It was in the nature of the case certain that the priests would be the last to leave the courts of the Temple, where they had to wait till the last lamb was offered, to burn the fat and offer incense, and cleanse the Temple, and purify themselves by immersion from the blood of the sacrifices, and that their Paschal meal would, therefore, be the latest at Jerusalem. They could scarcely expect in any case to eat their Passover before 9 or 10 P.M.

Now let us turn to the upper room, in which our Lord and the disciples were assembled. At a comparatively early stage of the meal, before the fourth, or possibly before the third of the four cups of wine which belonged to the ritual of the feast, Judas leaves to do his traitor’s work. He has reason to believe that his Master will go out that evening, as was His wont, to Gethsemane. He goes at once to the priests, say about 8 or 9 P.M., with the welcome tidings. The urgency of the case, the sacred duty of checking the false and blasphemous Prophet who called Himself the Son of God, the urgency of the policy which sought to prevent the tumult which might have been caused by an arrest in the day-time, are all reasons for immediate action. The Paschal meal is postponed. They will be able, by-and-by, to comply with the rule that it must be consumed before the morning (Exodus 12:10). The guards are summoned and sent on their errand, as they had been once before on the “great day” of the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:37-45). Messages are despatched to call the members of the Sanhedrin (or, at least, a sufficient number for the purpose) to the hurried meeting, which was held before dawn. Assume these facts, and all runs smoothly. When Judas leaves, the disciples, looking forward to the usual festive Chagigah on the following day, the feast as distinct from the Passover, suppose that he is gone to prepare for that, and there is no ground for thinking that at that hour the markets would be shut, or that lambs, and bread, and wine might not be purchased, or, at least, ordered for the following day. When the priests, on the other hand, refused to enter into the Prætorium, “lest they should be defiled,” it was because they, and they alone, perhaps, in all Jerusalem, had still to eat the Passover which others had eaten on the previous evening. Had their meal been due on the evening that followed the Crucifixion, their scruples would have been needless. They had but to wash and wait till sunset, and they would have been purified from all defilement. With them the case was more urgent. Probably even the pressure of hunger made them anxious to finish the untasted meal of the previous evening. It was then “early,” say about 4 or 5 A.M. When Pilate gave his sentence it was “about the sixth hour,” i.e., assuming St. John to use the Roman reckoning of the hours, 6 A.M. (But see Notes on John 4:6; John 19:14.) Then their work was done. As soon as they had left the matter in Pilate’s hands they could eat their Passover, turning the supper into a breakfast. This they had time for while their Victim was being mocked by the Roman soldiers and led out to Calvary. When it was over, they were able to reappear between 9 A.M. and noon, and to bear their part in the mockings and blasphemies of the multitude (Matthew 27:41; Mark 15:31). The disciples, on the other hand, who had eaten their Passover, found nothing to hinder them (this is obviously true, at least, of the writer of the Fourth Gospel) from going into the Prætorium, hearing what passed between Pilate and his prisoner (John 18:33-40), and witnessing, it may be, the scourgings and the mockings. Joseph of Arimathæa was not deterred by any fear of defilement from going to Pilate, for he too had, we must believe, eaten his Passover at the proper time (Matthew 27:57).

(7) So far, then, on this view all is natural and consistent. St. John omits the fact of the meal being the Passover, as he omits the institution of the Lord’s Supper, because these were things that were familiar to every catechumen, and confines himself to points of detail or of teaching which the current tradition passed over. He is not conscious that he differs from that tradition at all, and therefore neither emphasises his difference, nor is careful to avoid the appearance of it. On the other hand, the assumption that the Passover followed the Crucifixion involves the almost incredible supposition that the chief priests could remain by the cross till 3 P.M., and then go to Pilate (John 19:31) regardless of their previous scruples; that nearly the whole population of Jerusalem, men and women, instead of cleansing their houses from leaven and preparing for the Passover, were crowding to the scene of the Crucifixion; that Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathæa and the Maries were burying the body of Jesus, and so incurring, at the very hour of the Passover, or immediately before it, a ceremonial defilement which would have compelled them to postpone their Passover for another month (Numbers 9:10). They go, the first at least of them, to Pilate, and both the visits are, it will be noted, recorded by the same Evangelist who recorded the scruples of the priests, without any explanation of what, on the other theory, is the apparent inconsistency.

(8) There remains only a few minor points above noticed. And (a) as to the Preparation. Here the answer lies on the surface. That name (Paraskeüè) was given to the day of the week, our Friday, the day before the Sabbath, and had absolutely nothing to do with any preparation for the Passover. The Gospels show this beyond the shadow of a doubt (Mark 15:42; Matthew 27:62; Luke 23:54). If any confirmation were wanted, it may be found in the fact that the name is applied in a Græco-Roman decree quoted by Josephus (Ant. xvi. 6, § 2) to the week-day which answers to our Friday. Even the phrase which seems most to suggest a different view, the “preparation of the Passover” in John 19:14, does not mean more, on any strict interpretation, than the “Passover Friday,” the Friday in the Passover week, and coming, therefore, before a Sabbath more solemn than others (John 19:31). It may be noted further that the term Paraskeüè was adopted by the Church, Western as well as Eastern, as a synonym for the Dies Veneris, or Friday, (b) The supposed difficulty as to Simon of Cyrene is of the slightest possible character. There is nothing to indicate that he was coming from field-labour. And if he had eaten his Passover on the previous day, either in Jerusalem or its immediate neighbourhood, there was nothing either in law or custom to prevent his entering the city on the following morning. (c) The questions connected with the action of the priests, and the thoughts of the disciples as to the meaning of our Lord’s command to Judas, have been already dealt with.

It remains, in submitting this explanation to the judgment of the thoughtful reader, that I should acknowledge my obligations to the exhaustive article on PASSOVER by the late Rev. S. Clark, M.A., in the Dictionary of the Bible, and to two articles on THE LAST SUPPER OF THE LORD in vols. 8 and 9 of the Contemporary Review by the Rev. Professor Milligan, D.D., of Aberdeen.

EXCURSUS G: THE MEANING OF THE WORD “PARACLETE.”

“A Paraclete, then, in the notion of the Scriptures is an Intercessor.”—Bp. PEARSON.

In the Notes on John 14:16; John 14:26; John 15:26; John 16:7, the word Paraclete (παράκλητος) has been rendered Advocate in preference to “Comforter,” which is the translation in the Authorised version. The object of this Excursus is to explain and justify this preference, for although the change is accepted by the majority of competent scholars, and the older rendering is probably destined to become obsolete, it, for the present, holds a place in the memory and feelings of English readers, from which it will not be removed unless a sufficient reason be shown.

The facts of the case are briefly as follows:—

(1) The word παράκλητος is a verbal adjective of passive signification, the simple meaning of which is “a person called to the side or another.” It acquired the sense of an agent, and the constant meaning in the classical writers is “Advocate,” in the technical forensic sense. This latter word is of exactly the same formation, and expresses in Latin just what Paraclete expresses in Greek. No instance can be quoted in which παράκλητος is used by any classical writer in the sense of “Comforter.” It is quite beside the question to quote passages in which derivatives of the same root are used in this sense; the point is that παράκλητος acquired a definite technical meaning, and neither has nor can have any other meaning.

(2) The classical usage being thus undoubted, we have next to examine its meaning in Biblical Greek. It nowhere occurs in the LXX. translation of the Old Testament, though other derivatives of the same root are common. In Job 16:2 (“miserable comforters are ye all”) the active form, παρακλήτωρ, is used, not the passive, παράκλητος. In the Greek of the New Testament it occurs only in this Gospel and in 1John 2:1, where it is rendered “Advocate.” The phrase, “another Paraclete,” in John 14:16, implies that Christ thought of Himself, as St. John in the Epistle speaks of Him, as a Paraclete; and no one can doubt that in these five passages the word has one and the same meaning. It can hardly be doubted, further, that the necessary meaning in the Epistle is “Advocate,” and it will follow that the meaning of the word in the Greek of St. John is the same as that in the Greek of the classical authors.

(3) That the meaning of “Advocate” was attached to the word in the Greek of the first and second Christian centuries may be seen from the following passages:—

“For it was indispensable that the man who was consecrated to the Father of the world should have as a paraclete His Son, the being most perfect in all virtue, to procure forgiveness of sins and a supply of unlimited blessings” (Philo, Vit. Mos. iii. 14; Bohn’s Trans., vol. iii., p. 102.) The student of Philo will find the word used in the same sense in de Josepho, § 40, and in Flaccum, §§ 3 and 5. These references are of special value from the fact that Philo was, like St. John, a Jew by birth and culture, who became later in life a student of the Greek language and literature. (Comp. Excursus A, p. 552.)

“Who will be our advocate if our deeds are found not to be holy and upright?” (Clem. Rom., cap. 6.)

“Advocates of the rich, unjust judges of the poor, sinners in all things.” (Ep. of Barnabas, cap. xx., speaking of those who walk in “the path of darkness;” Hoole’s Trans., p. 101.)

(4) It is true that many Greek Fathers take παράκλητος, both in the Gospel and the Epistle, in the active sense. “He is called Paraclete,” says Cyril of Jerusalem, “because He comforts, and consoles, and helps our weakness.” (Catech. xvi. 20.) How this error arose—for that an error it is all analogy of words of like form goes to show—it is not difficult to see. The word παράκλητος occurs only five times in the New, and nowhere in the Old Testament. The cognate active forms, meaning comfort, exhort, con sole, occur frequently in the LXX. And considerably more than 100 times in the New Testament. Read, e.g., 2Corinthians 1:1-7. The ordinary sense, then, overrode the technical meaning of one form of the word, and the idea of advocacy was lost in that of comfort.

(5) The Vulgate reads in the Gospel Paracletus, or Paraclitus, and Advocatus in the Epistle; but the old Latin originally had Advocatus throughout. (Comp. Tertullian, adv. Prax. Cap. ix; De Monog. cap. iii.)

(6) These facts taken together have convinced most scholars who have investigated the question, that “Comforter” cannot be regarded as a tenable rendering of the Greek word παράκλητος, and the conviction is one which seems to be extending among English scholars. But here, as in other cases which we have met in the study of St. John, the attention of scholars has been directed too exclusively to the meaning of the Greek word. It is important to bear in mind that the author is, like Philo, a Jew writing Greek, and in this fact we shall, it is believed, find the true key to the sense in which he used the word. The Hebrews had, in their contact with other nations, borrowed many words from them, and it necessarily followed from the conquests of Greece and Rome that the Greek and Latin military and legal terms were well known to them. Now παράκλητος was, as we have seen above, a technical legal term, and it was literally taken over into the later Hebrew and written Peraklit, or, in the definite form, Peraklita. It means, when thus taken over, “Advocate,” and a careful examination of the Talmudic passages, quoted in Buxtorf and Levy, leaves the impression that it has no other meaning. The opposite Greek word, κατήγορος (Katēgoros, accuser), was adopted in the same way. Like παράκλητος, it was clipped of its termination, and was written Kattēgor, or Kattegor a. That this word κατήγορο was used in Palestine in the first century we know from Acts 23:30; Acts 23:35; Acts 24:8; Acts 24:16; Acts 24:18; and from the interpolated passage, John 8:10. In all these cases the full Greek word is used. But St. John himself has occasion to speak of an “accuser of the brethren” (Revelation 12:10), and what word does he use? He actually writes in Greek the clipped Hebrew form Kattēgor, a word which is wholly unknown to the Greek language, and which was so strange to copyists that they altered it, and wrote the fuller form. The Gospel and the Epistle tell us then of a Paraclete ever present with the believer, and of a Paraclete who is with the Father; the Apocalypse tells of the “Kattēgor of the brethren.” With this contrast in his mind, let the reader turn to such a passage as the following, taken from the Mishna, “Rabbi Elias ben Jacob saith, ‘He that keepeth one commandment obtains for himself one Peraklit, but he who committeth one sin obtains for himself one Kattēgor’” (Pirke Aboth, iv. 11); or the following, “If a man have distinguished Peraklits he is snatched from death” (Schab. fol. 32, 1); and it will be hardly necessary to produce further proof that Advocate is the true meaning of the word Paraclete. Two other important facts bearing upon the meaning of this word in the later Hebrew and Syriac languages, may, however, be noted:—

(a) The word Peraklita is twice used in the Targum on Job, viz., in Job 16:20, where the Targum reads, “My Peraklits are my friends” (Hebr., “My mockers are my friends;” or, “My friends scorn me,” Auth. vers.), and in Job 33:23, where it reads, “An angel as Paraclete,” where the Hebrew is probably, “An angel as mediator;” Auth. vers., “A messenger with him, an interpreter.” It is significant that Peraklita is not used in the Targum of Job 16:2 (see above, § 2), though it almost certainly would have been had it meant “Comforter,” for it was at hand, and occurs in the very same chapter.

(b) The word Peraklita is used in each of the passages in this Gospel, and also in the passage in the Epistle in the Peshito-Syriac translation. This fact means that the word was in the second century incorporated in the cognate Syriac language, and that if it be taken to mean Advocate in the Epistle it must be so taken in the Gospel also. The same version also renders Katēgor in Revelation 12:10 by a derivative of the Greek word.

(7) It is believed that enough has now been said to justify the rendering in the Notes, and to show that “Comforter” cannot be retained as a translation of παράκλητος, at any rate in the modern sense of the word. It may be questioned, however, whether our translators did not include the sense of “Advocate” in the word “Comforter” (Low Lat., Confortare; Old Fr., Conforter), which originally meant “strengthener,” “supporter.” The older meaning of the word will be at once seen in the following passages from Wiclif’s version:—

“And he coumfortide hym with nailes that it shulde not be moued” (Isaiah 41:7;—A.V., “fastened”).

“And an aungel apperide to him fro hevene and coumfortide him” (Luke 22:43;—A.V., “strengthening him”).

“And whanne he hadde take mete he was coumfortid” (Acts 9:19;—A.V., “he was strengthened”).

“Do ghe manli and be ghe coumfortid in the Lord” (1Corinthians 16:13;—A.V., “Quit you like men, be strong”).

“I mai alle thingis in him that coumfortith me” (Philippians 4:13;—A.V., “that strengthened me”).

This sense is not uncommon in Elizabethan English. Thus Hooker, e.g., says, “The evidence of God’s own testimony, added unto the natural assent of reason, concerning the certainty of them, doth not a little comfort and confirm the same” (Eccles. Pol., Book i.); and again,—

“The very prayer of Christ obtained angels to be sent Him as comforters in His agony” (Ibid., Bk. v. § 48).

The truth that the Holy Ghost is the Comforter is independent of this translation, and is, indeed, more fully established by the rendering Advocate. The comfort which comes from His presence is not simply that of consolation in sorrow, but that of counsel, guidance, pleading with God, conviction of the world. He is to abide in the disciples for ever, and teach them all things (John 14:16-17; John 14:26); to witness with them of Christ (John 15:26); to convict the world of sin, righteousness, judgment; to guide the disciples into all truth (John 16:7-13); to make intercession with groanings which cannot be uttered (Romans 8:26), as Christ Himself had done (John 17), and as the great High Priest ever liveth to do (Hebrews 7:25). He is “another Advocate,” to be to believers in all time what Christ was to the first disciples, to be in men an Advocate on earth as Christ is for men an Advocate with the Father (1John 2:1).

[Comp. Lightfoot On a Fresh Revision of the New Testament, pp. 50-55; Trench On the Authorised Version, p. 23; and especially Hare, Mission of the Comforter, Note K, p. 309, Ed. 3; and Pearson On the Creed, p. 329, Note. The student will find references to the Rabbinical writings and Targums in Schottgen, vol. i., p. 1119, and Buxtorf’s and Levy’s lexicons under the words Peraklît(a), Kattēgor(a), and Sannîgor.]

The Gospel According to John

Introduction

The life of John covers a period from near the beginning of the first century to the beginning of the second. He was a native of Galilee, and, according to tradition, of the town of Bethsaida, which was on the western shore of the Lake, not far from Capernaum and Chorazin. His father was Zebedee. His mother, Salome (Mark 16:1; Matthew 20:20), was among the women who supported the Lord with their substance (Luke 8:3), and attended Him to His crucifixion (Mark 15:40). The family was not without worldly means. Zebedee was a fisherman, and had hired servants in his employ (Mark 1:20). Salome ministered to Jesus, and John seems to have had his own house (John 19:27). He was, apparently, one of the disciples of John the Baptist; and while engaged in his father's craft, was found and called by Jesus (Matthew 4:21; Mark 1:19). Of the two mentioned in John 1:35, only one, Andrew, is named (John 1:40); the other is commonly supposed to have been John, who suppresses his own name, as in other instances where he refers to himself (John 14:23; John 18:15; John 19:26; John 20:2, John 20:4, John 20:8; John 21:20).

As soon as Jesus was made known to him, he became His enthusiastic disciple. His peculiar intimacy with our Lord is marked by the phrase "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and also by the fact that he was one of the three chosen to be with Him at certain special and momentous crises. He was admitted to the death-chamber of the ruler's daughter (Mark 5:37) and witnessed her restoration to life; he was present at the Transfiguration (Luke 9:28), and with Peter and James was chosen by the Master to bear Him company during His agony in Gethsemane (Mark 14:33). He accompanied Jesus, after His arrest, into the palace of the High Priest, and secured entrance for Peter (John 18:15, John 18:16). He stood by the cross with the mother of Jesus, and to his care Jesus committed her (John 19:25-27). With Peter he ran to the sepulchre on the morning of the Resurrection at the summons of Mary Magdalene, entered the empty tomb, and saw and believed (John 20:2-8). After the Resurrection he appears engaged in his former employment on the Lake of Galilee. He is the first to recognize the risen Lord standing upon the shore (John 21:7), and is the subject of Peter's inquiry, "Lord, what shall this man do?" when he is seen by Peter to be following Jesus (John 21:20).

His apostolic activity was in the first thirty years after the Ascension. In Jerusalem his position among the apostles was not exceptionally prominent. At the time of the Stephanic persecution he remained with the other apostles at Jerusalem (Acts 8:1); but when Paul, three years after his conversion, came to that city (Galatians 1:18), he met there only Peter, and James the Lord's brother. From this, however, it does not follow that the remaining apostles had permanently departed from Jerusalem and settled elsewhere. In Galatians 2:9, Paul alludes to John as having been present in Jerusalem at the time of the council (Acts 15). The narrative in Acts does not mention him in connection with the council, but Paul, in the Galatian letter, refers to him as one of the pillars of the church with James and Cephas.

The commonly received tradition represents him as closing his apostolic career in Asia and at Ephesus. An old tradition affirms that he left Jerusalem twelve years after the death of Christ. In no case, therefore, did he go immediately to Ephesus. Definite notices as to his abode in the interval are wholly wanting. It is a noteworthy fact that the lives of so many of the world's leaders include spaces which remain a blank to the most careful biographer, and into which the world's curiosity can never penetrate. Such is the period of Paul's retirement in Arabia, of Dante's exile, and, to some extent, of Jesus' temptation in the wilderness. Some later traditions assert that he visited Parthia, and Jerome groundlessly conjectures that he had preached in Judaea. There is some plausibility in the supposition that he may have betaken himself to Antioch at the time of Paul's first missionary journey. It is certain that, much later, John was a successor of Paul at Ephesus. Neither at the departure of Paul to Miletus (Acts 20) nor during the composition of the Ephesian letter is there a trace of John's presence at Ephesus.

Tradition is also agreed that John was banished to the isle of Patmos by the Roman authority. Irenaeus says that he was banished in the reign of Domitian: another tradition assigns the exile to the reign of Nero. From this exile he was permitted to return, it is said, under Nerva (a.d. 96-98). The date of his death is unknown. Jerome places it sixty-eight years after the death of Christ.

The dominant characteristic of John's nature is contemplative receptivity. Every word of his Lord is taken into his deepest heart, held fast and pondered. "He does not ask, 'What shall I do?' but 'What does he do?'" Hence it is clear why the finest and subtlest flavor of Jesus' personality has been caught by him. With this receptiveness goes a power of impartation. "Every man," says Ebrard, "can see the sunset-glow on an Alp, but not everyone can paint it." John, like a mirror, not only received but reflected. While the other Evangelists perceived that element of Jesus' teaching and work which produced the most immediate and striking outward results, as the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, John discerned the meaning and the bearing of less prominent incidents, such as the conversation at Jacob's well. Paul, like John, has the quality of inwardness, but Paul reasons where John contemplates. John is tenacious and intense; Paul equally so, but more deft than John. John broods over his thought; Paul thrusts and parries with it.

Yet John is no sentimentalist. He is not the lovely, effeminate youth of picture. His mental and moral fiber is strong. He received the title "Son of Thunder" from One who never misread character. Not irascible, as some have too hastily inferred from Luke 9:54, he illustrates the peculiarity of many affectionate and contemplative natures, which flash into a startling impetuosity on occasions which appeal to their more radical view of truth and to their longer range of vision. John was incapable of half-enthusiasms and of suspended faith. To whatever he addressed himself, he was totus in illis. In his own way, he is no less plain-spoken and severe than Paul. He is direct where Paul is sometimes ironical. He is neither gentle nor vague in his language concerning those who deny that Jesus is the Christ (1 John 2:22), nor concerning the lineage of him that committeth sin (1 John 3:8) and the moral quality of him that hateth his brother (1 John 3:15; 1 John 4:20). In the Apocalypse he enters with profoundest sympathy into the divine indignation against evil, and contemplates with unfeigned joy its wholesale and crushing defeat and punishment. He seems to cheer the progress of the Conqueror upon the white horse. The issues between truth and falsehood, life and death, light and darkness, love and hatred are stated by him with a stern and decisive sharpness, and as absolute finalities. The quality of sin is conceived according to the scale of his adoring love for Christ. He deals with it as wickedness rather than as weakness, though not overlooking the latter. For him the victory of the Gospel is not a prophecy, but an accomplished fact. Faith overcometh the world. The overcoming Christ is already present in every believer.

Such a character would not have been adapted to Paul's work. It was not sufficiently versatile and many-sided. John had not Paul's pioneer instinct, his pushing activity, and his executive power. He was fitted to raise the superstructure rather than to lay foundations; to be a teacher rather than an evangelist. It was his to complete the teaching of the other apostles by unfolding the speculative mystery of the incarnation and the secret of the inward union of the believer with Christ; to purge the Church from speculative error, and to hold up, over against the Gnostic caricature, the true image of the Son of Man.

The writings ascribed to John are the Gospel, three Epistles, and the Apocalypse or Revelation.

The Gospel

The nearly unanimous tradition of the Church assigns the fourth Gospel to John. It is unquestionably the work of a Jew, an eyewitness, and a disciple of Jesus. It was probably written toward the close of the first century, and therefore later than the other three Gospels. According to the earliest evidence, it was composed at Ephesus, at the request of John's intimate friends, who desired to have his oral teaching recorded for the permanent use of the Church.

There are three theories as to the motive of its composition. According to the first, known as the "supplementary" theory, John wrote the fourth Gospel as a supplement to its predecessors, in order to supply what was wanting in the synoptic narrative. This Gospel is indeed supplementary in fact, but not in motive. It is supplementary in that the writer constantly assumes that certain facts are already known to his readers, and adds other facts from his own special information. But the Gospel itself expressly disclaims all intention to be complete (John 21:25), and is an original conception, both in form and substance, having a distinct plan of its own, and presenting a fresh aspect of the person and teaching of our Lord. "It is the picture of one who paints, not because others have failed to catch the ideal he would represent, but because his heart is full and he must speak."

The second theory is that the Gospel is "polemical" or controversial, designed to oppose the errors of the Nicolaitanes and of Cerinthus. But the Gospel is polemical only incidentally, as the presentation of the positive truth suggests particular points of error. The point of view is not controversial. The writer is moved by the pressure of his great theme to set it forth in its positive aspects, and not with special reference to the errors of his time.

The third theory, known as the "irenic" or conciliatory, maintains that the Gospel was intended to reconcile divergent religious views, and to bring into their right relation truths which heresy perverted. The Gospel is conciliatory in fact, not from definite intent, but from the very nature of the subject - the Word made flesh, in which all religious controversies are reconciled. "Just as it rises above controversy while it condemns error, it preserves the characteristic truths which heresy isolated and misused. The fourth Gospel is the most complete answer to the manifold forms of Gnosticism, yet it was the writing most used by the Gnostics. It contains no formal narrative of the institution of sacraments, and yet it presents most fully the idea of sacraments. It sets forth with the strongest emphasis the failure of the ancient people, and yet it points out most clearly the significance of the dispensation which was committed to them. It brings the many oppositions - antitheses - of life and thought, and leaves them in the light of the one supreme fact which reconciles all, the Word became flesh; and we feel from first to last that this light is shining over the record of sorrow and triumph, of defeat and hope" (Westcott).

The object is distinctly stated in the Gospel itself. "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" (John 20:30, John 20:31). The last of these three - life in Christ through faith - is the key to the two others. The readers were already disciples; and in vindicating the two propositions that Jesus is the Christ and that Jesus is the Son of God, the object was not to lead to the acknowledgment of His divine mission, but to exhibit these as the ground of a living communion of believers with God, and of a richer spiritual life. The character of the Gospel is predominantly historic. Even the doctrinal portions have a historic background and a historic embodiment. The doctrine, for instance, of the essential antagonism between light and darkness, it set forth in the narrative of the hostile attitude of the Jews toward Christ; and the discussions with them have their root and material in this same antagonism. The historical material is carefully selected with a view to its bearing on the particular conception of Christ's person and work which is announced in the Prologue. The history is the practical exhibition of the Logos-doctrine in the person and earthly life of the Man Jesus. The miracles are invariably termed signs, and are regarded as expressions and evidences of the divine personality of the worker.

The Gospel is characterized by the profuse employment of symbolism. This accords with its Hebrew fiber, and also, largely, with the nature of its subject. For not only was John a Jew, familiar with the symbolic economy and prophecy of the Old Testament, but Jesus, the central figure of his Gospel was, pre-eminently the fulfiller of the Law and of the Prophecies. Christ's own teaching, too, was largely symbolic; and John's peculiar, profound spiritual insight detected in His ordinary acts that larger meaning which belonged to them in virtue of Jesus' position as the representative of humanity; and that unity of the natural and spiritual worlds which was assumed in the utterances of our Lord in which the visible was used as the type of the invisible. "John," says Lange, "gives us not only a symbolism of the Old Testament word, of Old Testament institutions, histories, and persons; he gives also the symbolism of nature, of antiquity, of history and of personal life; hence the absolute symbolism, or the ideal import of all real existence, in significant outlines."

The relation of the Gospel to the Old Testament is pronounced. The center of the Old Testament system is the manifestation of the glory of God - the Shekinah. John declares that this glory appears essentially in Christ. He recognizes the divine preparation among the nations for Christ's coming, and the special discipline of Israel with a view to the advent of the Messiah. In the Jews he discerns the special subjects of the Messianic economy. Nathanael is an Israelite indeed: the temple is the Father's house: salvation is from the Jews: the Jewish Scriptures testify of Christ: the testimonies to Christ are drawn from the three successive periods of the people's training - the patriarchal, the theocratic, and the monarchical: the Serpent in the wilderness prefigures Christ's "lifting up," and the Passover His own sacrifice as the Lamb of God.

The fourth Gospel is the only one of the four which is developed according to a prearranged and systematic plan. This plan may be generally described as the exhibition of "the parallel development of faith and unbelief through the historical presence of Christ." The Gospel accordingly falls into two general divisions: the Prologue (1:1-18); the Narrative (1:19-21:23). The narrative consists of two parts: the self-revelation of Christ to the world (1:19-12:50); the self-revelation of Christ to the disciples (13-21). In the development of this plan the author dwells upon three pairs of ideas: witness and truth; glory and light; judgment and life. "There is the manifold attestation of the divine mission; there is the progressive manifestation of the inherent majesty of the Son; there is the continuous and necessary effect which this manifestation produces on those to whom it is made; and the narrative may be fairly described as the simultaneous unfolding of these three themes, into which the great theme of faith and unbelief is divided" (Westcott). The plan is foreshadowed in the Prologue. He who was the Word, in the beginning with God, by whom all things came into being, was life and light - the light of men. To Him witness was born by John, who was sent to testify of Him that all men might believe on Him. But though He was made flesh and dwelt among men, though He came unto His own home, though He was full of grace and truth, the world knew Him not, and His own people refused to receive him. There were, however, those who did receive Him; and to such He gave power to become sons of God through faith in His name. They became such, not in a physical sense, not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God. They received of his fullness.

Accordingly the Gospel treats of the nature of Christ, and of the witness born to Christ by John, by the disciples, and by miracles. It goes on to describe the conflict between the eternal Light and the darkness as embodied historically in the persistent opposition of the Jews to Jesus. He came to them and they received Him not. Then the other aspect is presented - the blessing of those who did receive Him, the impartation of sonship and the consequent privilege of communion with the divine nature. From the thirteenth to the end of the seventeenth chapter is described Christ's revelation of Himself to His disciples in ministries of love and in confidential discourse. The darkness did not overcome the light. The apparent defeat through death was converted into victory through resurrection. This victory of the light is unfolded from the eighteenth to the end of the twentieth chapter, in the story of the betrayal, the passion, and the resurrection. The twenty-first chapter forms an Epilogue in which the divine light again shines forth in miracle, ministry, and counsel, before the final departure to the Father.

Relation to the Synoptic Gospels

The fourth Gospel exhibits marked differences from the others both in chronological arrangement and in the selection of material. As regards the latter, it contains much that is peculiar to itself, and falls in with the Synoptists only in a few sections.

But, while independent, it is not contradictory of the Synoptic Gospels. All the four Gospels are consciously based upon the same great facts; and the author of the fourth owns and confirms the first three. The incidents common to the fourth Gospel and all the Synoptists are, the baptism of John; the feeding of the five thousand; the triumphal entry into Jerusalem; the last supper and the passion and resurrection. John, with Matthew and Mark, relates the walking on the sea and the anointing at Bethany.

John's Gospel also implies acquaintance with incidents which he does not relate. Such are the circumstances of Christ's baptism; the position and character of Simon Peter; Christ's early home at Nazareth and later residence at Capernaum; the number of the disciples; the date of the Baptist's imprisonment; the Ascension, etc. The same imagery appears, in the figures of the bride and the bridegroom, the harvest, the servant, the vine. The same sayings occur, and verbal and other coincidences are frequent.

The inner coincidences are still more striking. John's portrait of Jesus, for instance, is, in many particulars, unique. It is fuller, more subtle, and indicates a closer intimacy. John deals with His person, where Matthew and Luke deal with His offices. In Matthew He is the fulfiller of the law; in John He foreshadows the grander and richer economy of the Spirit. Nevertheless, John's Christ is the same figure which appears in the lines of the Synoptists. In both He is the teacher, the meek and lowly one, the worker of miracles of power and mercy. In both He is plain of speech toward those who would become his disciples, the hater of hypocrisy, the reader of men's hearts.

Similar coincidences appear in the portraits of prominent disciples, notably of Peter. Though appearing in some scenes not noted by the Synoptists, the Peter of their Gospels is easily recognized in the portrait by his fellow disciple. He is the same combination of impulsive boldness and cowardice; of affectionateness and brusqueness; as quickly responsive to love as to anger; as prompt to leap into the lake at the sight of his Lord, as to smite Malchus.

The inner coincidences are also to be discerned in John's assumption of facts recorded by the other evangelists, so that the coincidence sometimes appears in what he does not record. Giving no details of the birth of Christ, like Matthew and Luke, he tells us that the Word became flesh. The childhood, with its subjection to parental authority appears in the story of the wedding at Cana. While the Synoptists dwell upon the event of the incarnation, he dwells upon the doctrine. The sacraments of Baptism and of the Eucharist, the institution of which he does not relate, are assumed as familiar in the conversation with Nicodemus and in the discourse at Capernaum. The ascension is not described, but is predicted in Christ's words to Mary. Similarly, the work of Jesus in Galilee, which John does not narrate, is presupposed in the sixth and seventh chapters. The anointing at Bethany is assumed to be known, as is the hearing of Jesus before Caiaphas.

With these coincidences marked differences appear. Setting aside the omission by Mark of the Gospel of the infancy, the Synoptic narrative falls into three parts: 1, The ministry of the Baptist, the baptism and temptation of Jesus. 2, The return of Jesus to Galilee, followed by a series of connected narratives concerning His teaching and miracles in this and surrounding districts, without any intimation that, during this time, He also visited Judaea and Jerusalem. 3, Hereupon all the three pass at once from the last journey of Jesus to Jerusalem to the Passover, at which He was crucified. Hence, as Dean Alford remarks, "had we only their accounts, we could never, with any certainty, have asserted that He went to Jerusalem during His public life, until His time was come to be delivered up. They do not, it is true, exclude such a supposition, but rather, perhaps, imply it. It would not, however, have been gathered from their narrative with any historical precision."

Turning now to John's Gospel, we find Christ's ministry in Galilee between the Baptism and the Passion interrupted by journeys to Jerusalem. He goes up to the Passover, on which occasion occur the cleansing of the temple and the visit of Nicodemus (John 2:13; John 3:1-21). A second visit is made to an unnamed feast of the Jews (John 5:1), during which He heals the impotent man at Bethesda, excites thereby the hostility of the Jews, and delivers the discourse in 5:17-47. He goes up again at the Feast of Tabernacles (John 7:10), and, ten months later, appears at the Feast of Dedication (John 10:22). An interval is spent on the other side of the Jordan (John 10:40), at Ephraim in the wilderness of Judaea (John 11:53-54), and at Bethany (11, John 12:1), after which He makes His triumphal entry into Jerusalem (John 12:12 sqq.). According to John, therefore, between Christ's last journey from Galilee to Jerusalem and His triumphal entry, there is an interval of several months, spent partly in Jerusalem and partly in the neighboring districts; while according to the Synoptists it seems that He went from Galilee to Jerusalem to the last Passover only a short time before it began; and that He had previously remained continuously in Galilee or in the neighborhood, having taken up His abode there at the beginning of His public ministry.

In the Synoptists the scene of Christ's work is almost exclusively Galilee, while John mentions only five events connected with the Galilaean ministry. On the other hand, the fourth Gospel assumes a knowledge of Jesus' activity in Galilee and Peraea (John 6:1; John 7:1, John 7:11, John 7:52; John 10:40).

The difference between John and the Synoptists also appears in the form of the narrative. The latter represent Jesus' teaching as dealing mainly with the humble peasantry. It is proverbial, popular, abounding in parable, and the discourses are brief. John represents Christ as speaking in long and profoundly thoughtful discourses. While John has nothing answering to the Sermon on the Mount and the groups of parables, the other evangelists have nothing answering to the interviews with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, and the disciples before the Passover. In John the discourses are more dramatic and dialectic; in the Synoptists, proverbial, parabolic, and prophetic. Yet John's account of Jesus' teaching is not wanting in short paradoxical sayings, such as abound in the Synoptists (see John 2:19; John 4:32, John 4:34, John 4:35; John 7:33; John 5:17; John 6:27, John 6:33, John 6:62); nor, though no parable is worked out by John, are parabolic sayings wanting, such as the Good Shepherd, the Vine, the Living Water, and the Bread of Heaven.

In another and deeper aspect his Gospel stands related to the others as completing. He alone has seized and preserved certain sides of the life and teaching of the Lord, such as His utterances as to His eternal relation to the Father and His eternal unity with Him (John 3:13 sqq.; John 5:17 sqq.; John 6:33, John 6:51; John 7:16, John 7:28 sqq.; John 8:58, and elsewhere). It is to John, in short, that we owe the view of the speculative side of Christ's work; while as regards the relation of believers to their Lord, John gives us those deep and comforting words concerning the mystical unity and community of life between Himself and His disciples, into which they will enter through the Holy Spirit.

Yet these deeper and more mystical views were not altogether the outcome of John's characteristic personality. They were also toned and shaped by the peculiar conditions of the Church and of the religious thought of his time. The conflict of Christianity was no longer with Judaistic error; no longer between the Gospel and the Law; between circumcision and uncircumcision; but with an essentially heathen Gnosticism which appealed to the Church with the claim of a profound insight into Christianity, and sought to wrest the Gospel to its own service. It has already been remarked that the aim of the fourth Gospel was not distinctively polemic. John was impelled to write by the pressure upon his own soul of the truth "God manifest in the flesh," rather than by the aggressions of heresy; but none the less the utterances of a Cerinthus lent sharpness to the lines of the Apostle's portrait of the Son of Man, and no more impressive answer to such teaching could have been given than John furnished in the words of the Lord himself concerning His own pre-existence and eternal Godhead, and in His testimony that the Father has created all things through the Word. (See John 1:3, John 1:14, John 1:33, John 1:34, John 1:49; John 3:13, John 3:14; John 5:23, John 5:26; John 6:51, John 6:62; John 8:58; John 13:23 sqq.; John 17:1, John 17:2, John 17:16, John 17:19; John 18:6, John 18:11, John 18:37).

Style and Diction of John

John's style in the Gospel and Epistles is marked by simplicity and ease. It is plain without elegance, and the diction is comparatively pure so far as words and grammar are concerned, but animated with a Hebrew genius. Godet describes the style as characterized by "a childlike simplicity and transparent depth, a holy melancholy, and a vivacity not less holy; above all, the sweetness of a pure and gentle love."

The vocabulary is meager. The same expressions continually recur. Thus we find φῶς (light), 23 times; δόξα, δοξάζεσθαι (glory, to be glorified), 42; ζωή, ζῆν (life, to live), 52; μαρτυρεῖν, μαρτυρία (to witness, testimony), 47; γανώσκειν (to know), 55; κόσμος (world), 78; πιστεύειν (to believe), 98; ἔργον (work), 23; ὄνομα (name), and ἀληθεία (truth), each 25; σημεῖον (sign), 17.

The meagerness of the vocabulary, however, is compensated by its richness. The few constantly recurring words are symbols of fundamental and eternal ideas. "They are not purely abstract notions, but powerful spiritual realities, which may be studied under a multitude of aspects. If the author has only a few terms in his vocabulary, these terms may be compared to pieces of gold with which great lords make payment" (Godet).

A similar sameness is apparent in the constructions. These are usually simple, plain, and direct. The sentences are short and are coordinated, following each other by a kind of parallelism as in Hebrew poetry. Thus where other writers would employ particles of logical connection, he uses the simple connective καὶ (and). For example in John 1:10, John means to say that though Jesus was in the world, yet the world knew Him not; but he states the fact in two distinct and independent propositions: "He was in the world, and the world knew Him not." So in John 8:20. Jesus spake in the treasury, teaching in the temple, and yet, though He appeared and taught thus publicly, no one laid hands on Him. John writes: "These words spake Jesus as He taught in the temple, and no man laid hands on Him." He uses and, where the antithetic but might be expected (John 1:5; John 3:11; John 15:24). There is also a frequent absence of connecting particles. There is not, for instance, a single one in the first seventeen verses of chapter 15. Out of the wealth of Greek particles, John uses only five. He abounds in contrasts or antithetic parallelisms without connecting links. Thus, "the law was given by Moses: grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (John 17:17): "No one ever saw God: the only-begotten Son revealed Him" (John 1:18). Compare John 8:23; John 15:5, etc. This simple coordination of clauses is assisted by the repetition of a marked word or phrase, so that a connection between two statements is established and the idea carried forward in a new direction (see John 10:11; John 15:13 sqq.; John 15:1, John 15:5; John 17:14 sqq.; John 6:39, John 6:40, John 6:44).

The narrative is direct. Even the words of others are given directly and not obliquely. Instead of saying "This is the witness of John when the Jews sent to ask him who he was, and he confessed that he was not the Christ" - John says, "This is the witness of John when the Jews sent to ask him Who art thou? and he confessed I am not the Christ" (John 1:19). Compare John 7:40 sqq.; John 2:3 sqq.; John 4:24 sqq.; John 5:10 sqq.; John 6:14; John 8:22; John 10:2 sqq. Illustrative details are not wrought into the texture of the narrative, but are interjected as parentheses or distinct statements (see John 6:10; John 4:6; John 10:22; John 13:30; John 18:40). John's style is circumstantial. An action which, by other writers, is stated as complex, is analyzed by him and its components stated separately. Thus, instead of the usual Greek idiom, "Jesus answering said," John writes, "Jesus answered and said," thus making both factors of the act equally prominent (see John 12:44; John 7:28; John 1:15, John 1:25). This peculiarity is further illustrated by the combination of the positive and negative expression of the same truth (see John 1:3, John 1:20; John 2:24; John 3:16; John 5:5; John 18:20; 1 John 1:1, 1 John 1:6; 1 John 2:4, 1 John 2:27). The detachment, however, is only superficial. The inner connection is closely held in the writer's mind, and is impressed upon the reader by that constant iteration which, upon a hasty view, savors of monotony, but which serves to represent the central thought in its manysidedness, and to place it in its commanding relation to subordinate thoughts. His frequent use of the particle οὐν (therefore) directs attention to the sequence of events or ideas (John 2:22, John 3:25, John 3:29; John 4:1, John 4:6, John 4:46; John 6:5; John 7:25; John 8:12, John 8:21, John 8:31, John 8:38; John 10:7; John 12:1, John 12:3, John 12:9, John 12:17, John 12:21). The phrase in order that (ἵνα), marking an object or purpose, is of frequent occurrence, and exhibits the characteristic of John's mind to regard things in their moral and providential relations. Thus John 4:34 : "My meat is in order that I may do the will of Him that sent me;" the emphasis lying not on the process, but on the end. Compare John 5:36; John 6:29; John 8:56; John 12:23; John 13:34; John 17:3.

The subject or the significant word of a sentence is often repeated, especially in dialogues (which are characteristic of John's Gospel), where, by the constant repetition of the names of the parties they are kept clearly before the reader's mind (see John 2:18; John 4:7 sqq.; John 8:48 sqq.; John 10:23 sqq. Also John 1:1, John 1:7, John 1:10; John 4:22; John 5:31; John 6:27; John 11:33).

The demonstrative pronoun is habitually introduced to recall the subject, when a clause has intervened between the subject and the verb (see John 15:5; John 7:18; John 10:1; John 12:48; John 14:21, John 14:26; John 15:26). The personal pronoun is frequently employed, especially that of the first person. "In this respect," says Westcott, "much of the teaching of the Lord's discourses depends upon the careful recognition of the emphatic reference to His undivided personality" (see John 8:14, John 8:16; John 5:31).

The quotations are commonly from the Septuagint, and never immediately from the Hebrew.

List of Greek Words and Phrases Used by John Only

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