JOHN, GOSPEL OF.
(1) Authenticity and Credibility. During the eighteenth century and the first ten years of the nineteenth, the Gospel of John was attacked, but with feeble arguments, by some English_ deists and by four German theologians: Bretschneider (probabilia de Evangelii et Epistolarum fohannis ongine et indole, 182°) ; Strauss, (The Life of Jesus); Liitzelberger (Die kirchliche Tradition aber den Apostel Johannes und seine Schriften, 184o); and Schwegler (Der biontanismus und die Christliche Kirche des zweiten Jahrhunderts, 1841). However, even in Germany, the opponents of its authenticity have not met with much sym pathy.
The credibility of the Gospel of St. John is open to attack on account of its differing so much, as well in substance as in form, from the three first Gospels, and on account of its apparent contradiction of them. Among the apparent con tradictions may be mentioned the statements that Christ was crucified on the same day on which the Passover was to be eaten (John xviii :28), while according to the other Gospels Jesus ate the Passover with his disciples; and that Jesus, be fore he went to Gethsemane, offered up a prayer full of sublimity and confidence (xvii), while according to the other Gospels he endured in Gethsemane a very heavy internal conflict, re specting which John is silent. But the most strik ing difference is that of the speeches. This differ ence is, perhaps, still more apparent in the form than in the substance of them.
(2) The History and the Speeches. This difference may be accounted for by supposing that John intended to relate and complete the history of the Lord according to his own view of it. We are led to this supposition from the fol lowing circumstances; that, with the exception of the history of his passion and his resurrection, there are only two sections in which John coin cides with the synoptic gospels (vi:1-21; xii:r) ; that he altogether omits such important facts as the baptism of Jesus by John, the history of his temptation and transfiguration, the institution of the Lord's supper, and the internal conflict at Gethsemane; and that chapters i:32 ; :24; xi:2, indicate that he presupposed his readers to be al ready acquainted with the Gospel history. He confined himself to such communications as were wanting in the others, especially with regard to the speeches of Jesus. The historical section in chapter vi he communicated because it is con nected with the subsequent speeches of Jesus; and chapter xii:r, because it was of importance for him to relate the history of Judas, so that each event should clearly be understood to be the result of a preceding fact. The history of
Christ's sufferings and resurrection, being a prominent part, could not be omitted, although, in the account of these also. John differs in his state ments frorh the writers of the other Gospels Clemens Alexandrinus (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. vi: 14) relates, as he says, upon the statement of old Presbyters, that John wrote his Gospel at the re quest of his friends, in order to place by the side of the ownaruca ebirryAla, bodily sosfiels, his rm.
parocav sibiritztal gosfiel. The same account is confirmed by a Latin fragment of the second century preserved by Muratori, in which it is recorded that the aged apostle was solicited by his co-disciples to commit his Gospel towriting.
Now with regard to the difference of form. In the Gospel of John, Jesus seldom speaks in gnomes, sentences, and parables, but generally in longer speeeches, the parts of which are not closely connected, containing frequent repetitions, and the linguistic characteristics of which strongly re semble those of John's epistles.
The gentle and feminine charactier of the dis ciple allows us to suppose that, to a certain de gree, he adopted as his own the expressions of the Redeemer, and, consequently, that many terms in which the Epistles agree with the Gospel did not originate with the disciple, but with Christ himself. We find an example of the manner in which the disciple adopted the expressions of his Master in John xii :43, compared with v We do not deny that the formation of sentences and expressions is considerably influenced by the peculiar character of the disciple, but with regard to the particular contents of the speeches, we see no reason why we should doubt their authenticity. Strauss himself makes a concession from which much results, namely, that the most characteristic speeches in John are those in which occur the an titheses of crdpt and rveripa, _flesh and sisirit, and cricirros, light and darkness, ?*s.:2) and advaros, and death, etpw and scd7w, above and below ; and also the mystical expressions of dpros Tijs bread of li fe, Gawp 1-csv, living water. These terms are even by Strauss (vol. i. p. 176) considered to be parts of the original speeches of Christ, and he asserts that the evangelist only developed them in the style of the Alexandrian writers.