As to the style of Jesus' discourse there is a very remarkable difference' between our gos pel and the Synoptics. The parables are ab sent, although Jesus speaks in figures. In the Synoptics Jesus usually talks in a popular, sim ple, straightforward way and the common peo ple hear Him gladly or with interest. In our i gospel Jesus' speech is allusive, obscure, figura tive, perpetually provoking question as to His meaning, even when speaking most confiden tially to His disciples. The subjects of His discourse are not the same. In the Synoptics Jesus talks only rarely about Himself, mainly about conduct, morality, religion in the broad sense and the life it calls for. In our gospel His subject is mainly Himself : His signifi cance, His relation to the Father, belief in Him, etc. In the Synoptics, His audience is usually the masses — the common people to whom He ministered as a physician to the sick with His "good news* of the Kingdom. In our gospel His audience is usually either some isolated individual, or the (hostile) "Jews,* or His disciples.
Finally, our gospel differs from the Synop; tics in that it is very definitely a theological writing, which cannot be said of the other gospels. The gospel opens with a section that is doctrinal in the fullest sense, a section which no one but a profound theologian could have com posed. And throughout the work, in apparently simple language, doctrines of highest import ance are set forth. Nothing like this is found in the Synoptics.
The facts mentioned thus far are patent to all.. No theory of the gospel's origin can be ac cepted that fails to give a reasonable explana tion of them.
III. Internal Evidence as to Authorship. —Turning now to the question of authorship, we shall consider first the internal evidence. That is, what evidence, explicit or unintentional, does the book furnish as to its author, or the time and place of its compOsition.
Explicit statements are few and'not definite. Such are i, 14f, "we beheld his glory,* "of his fulness have we all received,* and xbt, 35, "He that hath seen (the blood and water) hath borne witness.* To whom do "we* and "he* refer? Is there here a claim or assertion by the author that he was a personal disciple of Jesus? Such seems to be the view of xxi, 24, but this is in the appendix, the authorship and date of which is a problem by itself. We also find hints concerning a disciple, indefinitely in dicated as present (i. 35-42), at other times designated as the disciple Jesus loved* (xiii, 23; xix, 26; xx, 2), or simply as "the other disciple* (xviii, 15; xx, 4, 8). So far as our limited knowledge of the Apostolic Age permits a judgment, these allusions can refer to but one individual, the Apostle John, one of the three "pillars* (Gal. ii, 9) and one of the three disciples closest to Jesus (Mark ix, 2ff. and Its; xiv, 32ff. and ups). In the passages cited it is not expressly claimed that the un named disciple was the author of the gospel or the main source of its contents, but xix, 35, taken in connection with verses 25 and 26, im plies this, and such is the view of ch. xxi (cf. v. 24).
It is entirely in harmony with such a claim that our gospel assumes an intimate acquaint ance with the minute details of Jesus' ministry, —the very hour when events took place, how He sat "thus* on the well-curb, details of topog raphy, etc.,—and with the Judaism of the time
When Jesus lived. It will probably be conceded by every impartial critic that no serious error has been proved against the gospel. The al leged anachronism in the name "sea of Ti berias* collapses in view of Josephus' similar, although not exactly identical, expression in his history of the Jewish War (iii, 3, 5; iv, 8, 2) written between 75 and 79 A.D. The alleged scientific objection to the and water* (xix, 34) is shown to be baseless by Sir A. R. Simpson, M.D., in The Expositor,' 1911, Vol. II, pp. 300 ff. Many apparent improbabilities, indeed, suggest themselves, but these are not proofs that the work does not rest upon the testimony of an apostle or eyewitness.
Such, in general, seems to be the claim or assumption of the book itself, and it has been commonly received for centuries as guaran teeing apostolic authorship. But the book also gives other evidence regarding itself on which the chief stress is laid to-day by many critics and which, it is claimed, makes it impossible to hold to apostolic authorship, and neces sitates a date not earlier than the first decade of the 2d century. Very briefly stated this evi dence consists in the distinctly theological char acter of the Fourth Gospel and especially in the mature and developed type of its theological conceptions. The use made explicitly in the prologue of the Logos-idea and implicitly (it is claimed) throughout the book, which ever has in mind the Logos-Christ; the central signifi cance assigned to the person of Christ, the (Logos) Son, the revealer of the Father and imparter of eternal life to those who come to know Him ; the highly spiritualized eschatology in contrast to the realistic type of the Synop tics; and in general the indications that the author was familiar with and had assimilated the main Pauline doctrines, but had sought to modify or complete them in certain important respects,— such facts, it is claimed, point deci sively to some one of the post-apostolic genera tion as the author. It is also claimed, and not without reason, that the author had in mind certain Docetic and Gnostic errors which he attempted to refute, errors that were particu larly prevalent and dangerous in the first dec ades of the 2d century. Admitting the correct ness of these observations, the problem is, do they decisively prove that the gospel could not have been written by the Apostle John? Arguments drawn from the structure of the book are of uncertain value. In both style and structure the gospel is unique and amenable to no rule. Certain sections, as chs. v and vi and chs. xv and xvi, appear to have been shifted from their original positions, but minute study reveals so many instances of abrupt transitions, of broken or interrupted narrative or discourse, and of unexplained situations that the simple hypothesis of misplaced sheets (of the original MS.) will not suffice. It is a case either of extensive editing by a later hand of a document originally shorter and more orderly than our present gospel, or of a work unique in char acter and quite careless of ordinary rules of composition. If it is a case of editing, the task of ascertaining the scope and order of the orig inal (apostolic?) material is a hopeless one.