Gospel of St John

Origin and Authorship.

The question as to the book's origin has lost its poignancy through the ever-increasing recogni tion of its intrinsic character. Thus the defenders of the apostolic authorship, the Unitarian James Drummond (1903), the Anglican William Sanday (1905), the Roman Catholic Theodore Calmes (1904), can tell us: the first, that "the evangelist did not aim at an illustrative picture of what was most characteristic of Jesus"; the second, that "the author sank into his own consciousness and at last brought to light what he found there"; the third, that "the Gospel contains an entire theological system," "history is seen through the intervening dogmatic development," "the Sa maritan woman is . . . a personification," "the behaviour of the Greeks is entirely natural in such a book." We thus get at cross purposes with this powerful, profound work: only some such position as Abbe Loisy's critical summing up (1903) brings out its specific greatness. "What the author was, his book, in spite of himself, tells us to some extent : a Christian of Judeo-Alexan drine formation; a believer without, apparently, any personal reminiscence of what had actually been the life, preaching and death of Jesus; a theologian far removed from every historical preoccupation, though he retains certain principal facts of tradi tion without which Christianity would evaporate into pure ideas; and a seer who has lived the Gospel which he propounds." "To find his book beautiful and true, we need but take it as it is and understand it." "The church, which has never discussed the literary problem of this Gospel, in nowise erred as to its worth." Several traditional positions have indeed been approximately maintained or reconquered against the critics. As to the Gospel's date, critics have returned from 16o-17o (Baur), 15o (Zeller), 13o (Keim), to 10-115 (Renan) and 8o-1 io (Harnack): since Irenaeus says its author lived into the times of Trajan (9o-117), a date somewhere about 105 would satisfy tradition. As to the place, the critics accept proconsular Asia with practical unanimity, thus endorsing Irenaeus's declaration that the Gospel was pub lished in Ephesus. As to the author's antecedents, critics have ceased to hold that he could not have been a Jew-Christian, and admit that he must have been by birth a Jew of the Dispersion or the son of Christian parents who had been such Jews. And as to the vivid accuracy of many of his topographical and social details, the predominant critical verdict now is that he betrays an eye-witness's knowledge of the country between Sichem and Jordan and as to Jerusalem; he will have visited these places, say in 9o, or may have lived in Jerusalem shortly before its fall. But the reasons against the author being John the Zebedean or any other eyewitness of Jesus' earthly life have accumulated to a practical demonstration.

As to the external evidence for the book's early date, we must remember that the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation, though admittedly earlier, are of the same school, and, with the great Pauline Epistles, show many preformations of Johannine phrases and ideas. Other slighter prolusions will have circulated in that PhiIonian centre Ephesus, before the great Gospel englobed and superseded them. Hence the pre cariousness of the proofs derived from more or less close parallels to Johannine passages in the apostolic fathers. Justin Martyr (163-167) certainly uses the Gospel; but his conception of Jesus' life is so strictly Synoptic that he can hardly have accepted it as from an apostolic eyewitness. Papias of Hierapolis, in his Exposition of the Lord's Sayings (145-16o), appears nowhere to have mentioned it, and clearly distinguishes between "what Andrew, Peter, . . . John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples spoke," and "what Aristion and the presbyter John, the Lord's disciples, say." Thus Papias, as Eusebius, about 314,

insists, knew two Johns, and the apostle was to him a far-away figure; indeed early mediaeval chroniclers recount that Papias "in the second book of the Lord's sayings" asserted that both the sons of Zebedee were "slain by Jews," so that the apostle John would have died before 7o. Irenaeus's testimony is the earliest and admittedly the strongest we possess for the Zebedean author ship; yet, as Calmes admits, "it cannot be considered decisive." In his work against the Heresies and in his letter to Florinus, about 185-191, he tells how he had himself known Bishop Poly carp of Smyrna, and how Polycarp "used to recount his familiar intercourse with John and the others who had seen the Lord"; and explicitly identifies this John with the Zebedean and the evangelist. But Irenaeus was at most 15 when thus frequenting Polycarp; writes 35 to 5o years later in Lyons, admitting that he noted down nothing at the time ; and, since his mistaken descrip tion of Papias as "a hearer of John" the Zebedean was certainly reached by mistaking the presbyter for the apostle, his additional words "and a companion of Polycarp" point to this same mistaken identification having also operated in his mind with regard to Polycarp. In any case, the very real and important presbyter is completely unknown to Irenaeus, and his conclusion as to the book's authorship resulted apparently from a comparison of its contents with Polycarp's teaching. If the presbyter wrote Reve lation and was Polycarp's master, such a mistake could easily arise. Certainly Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, made a precisely similar mistake when about 190 he described the Philip "who rests in Hierapolis" as "one of the twelve apostles," since Eusebius rightly identifies this Philip with the deacon of Acts xxi. A posi tive testimony for the critical conclusion is derived from the existence of a group of Asia Minor Christians who about 165 rejected the Gospel as not by John but by Cerinthus. The attribu tion is doubtless mistaken ; but could Christians who were suffi ciently numerous to deserve a long discussion by St. Epiphanius in 374-377, and who upheld the Synoptists, stoutly opposed the Gnostics and Montanists, and had escaped every special designa tion till the bishop nicknamed them the "Alogoi" (irrational rejectors of the Logos-Gospel), dare, in such a time and country, to hold such views, had the apostolic origin been incontestable? Surely not. The Alexandrian Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Euse bius, Jerome and Augustine only tell of the Zebedean what is traceable to stories told by Papias of others, to passages of Revelation and the Gospel, or to the assured fact of the long lived Asian presbyter.

As to the internal evidence, if the Gospel typifies various im perfect or sinful attitudes in Nicodemus, the Samarifan woman and Thomas; if even the mother appears to symbolize faithful Israel : then, profoundly spiritual and forward-looking as it is, a type of the perfect disciple, not all unlike Clement's perfect "Gnostic," could hardly be omitted by it ; and the precise details of this figure may well be only ideally, mystically true. The original work nowhere identifies this disciple with any particular historic figure. "He who saw" the lance-thrust "hath borne witness, and his witness is true," is asserted (xix. 35) of the disciple. Yet "to see" is said also of intuitive faith, "whoso bath seen Me, bath seen the Father" (xiv. 9) ; and "true" appears also in "the true Light," "the true Bread from heaven," as char acterizing the realities of the upper, alone fully true world, and equals "heavenly" (iii. 12) ; thus a "true witness" testifies to some heavenly reality, and appeals to the reader's "pneumatic," i.e., allegorical, understanding.