It may not he necessary to hold that John wrote the hook as it lies before us. Prof. II. II. Wendt, of Jena, strongly advoeates the view that the Gospel was written by a disciple of John, who quoted largely from memoranda by the Apostle. By this hypothesis many minor in the interpretation are solved. especially of passages where the opinion of the Evangelist seems not altogether in harmony with the words of Jesus he is reporting.
However this may be. the question of the relation of the fourth Gospel to the first three demands very careful consideration. There can he no doubt of the fact that it was written on the supposition that its readers were acquainted with a Gospel history substantially identical with that in the Synoptics. Its own record is frag mentary, and presupposes ninny things as well known. At the same time its attitude toward this already current history is one of independence. It follows neither the chronological outline nor the table of contents of the older record. That was occupied mainly with Jesus' ministry in Galilee: this devotes large space to Judea. That gave the record of Jesus' work among the people; this is hugely• concerned with llis relations to the Jews or to llis own disciples. In this the speeches and conversations of Jesus hold the supreme place, and their phraseology and general content are quite different from what we have in the other record. And when the fourth Gospel
crosses the path of the others, as it does at certain points, there are marked differences in the details presented. In the one, the conscious ness of llis divine origin, the open declaration of His Alessialiship (at least to certain individuals and circles), and the insistence on the eternal value of His personality and of the truth lle proclaimed were charaeteristie of Jesus' ministry trout first to last ; in the other these matters were held in reserve until the later portion of His ministry or not expressed in the terminology of the fourth Gospel. Yet the difference is, after all, one more of form than of substance. It must be admitted that the words and teachings of Jesus in the fourth Gospel passed through the mental and spiritual laboratory of the Evangelist In-fore he Set them down. ln form, they may savor more of the disciple than of the Master: in substance, they reveal the living and abiding impression made by personal contact with ,Jesus on one of the richest spiritual natures the world has known. If John gives us an overstatement, with equal truth it may he said that the Synoptics may give us an understatement; the cold historical truth lies midway between both delineations.