Spirit and the eternal life, appear in a practical form in the Epistle lus well as in the Gospel. There ii no necessity to invoke the shadowy form of the Presbyter .lohn to explain the iili'erences be- tween the two documents. They must stand or fall together. Testimony to one becomes a witness for the coexistence of the other. They combine to give us the best insight into the mind of the author of both. What is worthj' of particular attention is the conviction that we have here not only the ajiostleof love, but one whose wrath llamed against untruthfulness, unbelief, and the spirit of the world. Let special notice be taken of 1'" 2»-"- "••• ;5ij. 8. u. 1B4S 510. 19 While there is every rea.son for recognizing, throughout, the discijile whom Jesus loved anil the author of the Fourth Gospel, there is a striking correspondence with the disciple who was ready to call lire from heaven upon those who rejected the Lord and His tnith. The lirst Epistle is a link between the Synoptic John and the per- sonality of whom we are in search.
E. 'Ihe Second and Third Epiitles of John, so far as they bear on the character of the author of the Fourth Gospel. The authenticity and canonicity of the smaller Ei)istles have had to sustain a heavy fire of criticism. Even Eusebius hesitated to acknowledge them as St. John's own, but Clemens Alexandrinus, Irenajus, and Dionysius have little doubt about them. The small circu- lation of these private letters is enough to account for their non-inclusion in the Peshitta, though Ephraera Syrus quotes them. The ^lur. Canon leaves it doubtful whether the compiler knew of more than two Epistles in all ; Theodoret does not mention them. Theodore of Mopsuestia rejected them. Jerome, building on the view taken by Eusebius of the supposed reference to the Presbyter John by Papias, is disposed to attribute them to that shadowj' personage ; but he does not linally come to that conclusion, as he enumerates seven Catholic Epistles. In modern times the circumstance that the author calls him- self 'the elder' has been pressed against their apostolic authority ; but it sliould be remembered that St. Peter (1 P 5') calls himself uvfiTrpfapi-repoi, and that Papias calls the apostles, including St. John, ' elders.' Irenaeus gives the same title to Polycarp ; and when writing to Soter, Bishop of Home, gives no higher title to his predecessors in that see, though these are supposed to have in- cluded both St. Peter and St. Paul. These con- siderations show that the title is one which St. John might, consistently with much other u.sage, have used for himself. And that Diotrephes u.sed malicious words about John the apostle is no reason for thinking that the author was other than the apostle, when we bear in mind the parallel experience of the greate-jt of the apostles. These Epistles teach the same fundamental truths, and are characterized by the same omissions as the first Epistle and the Gospel, in neither of which is there distinct reference to the Church or the Christian sacraments. The prime words are used in all three Epistles, such as dX^Seia, iyiv-q, ivri- XptffTos, TTtpnra.Te'ii', etc. There is the same limpid style, aphoristic utterance, and extraordinarily simple way of saying deep, loving, and terrible things. Our conclusion is that these two Epistles do much to link together the authorship of the Gos[)el with their own, as well as demonstrably prove that any specially prophetic and 'thunderous' symptoms of character discovered in the Synoptic Gospels were not absent from the man who wrote witli intense affection, breaking into Hames of wrath, the Fourth Gospel. [On this subject see detailed treatment in Pitlp. Com. Introduction ; I'brard's Cumm. on the Epistles of John ; Huther, Haupt, Westcott, Liicke, Alexander, and others
JOHX, GOSPEL OF
JOHN, GOSPEL OF
70"
an well as the art. John, Epistles of, in this Dictionary].
F. A general compariton between the authors of the Apocalypse and of the Fourth Gospel. — The criticism of the Apoc. begun by Visclier, witli Hamack's co-operation, and the theory of a Jewish document whit'li is said to lie at the heart of it, and to be touched up by Christian vision and interlineated ^vith Christian doctrine, have not reached a final stage. The theory might account for some of the most ditlicult phenomena without taking the authorship out of the hands of the Apostle John. But this is not the place to di.scuss either the authorship or the date of the Apoca- lypse. External evidence for the later date and the apostolic origin of the book is stronger than that for any other book in NT. The chief argu- ment on which a much earlier date is assigned turns on purely internal considerations, such as, e.Q., the suggestion that Jerua. is still standing when the Apoc. is written, that the succession of Roman emperors fixes the moment of its j^and denouement, that ' the number of the Beast is a cryptogram of Nero Ctesar, whose anticipated reappearance after his supposed assassination was conlidently feared by the world and the Church. These are controversial matters capable of decision only by careful exegesis, and much balancing of opposing theories. Davidson, Kenan, and Karrar have argued in favour of this earlier date ; while Lucke, Hengstenberg, and many others have taken the opposite side. It is admitted by all that the longer the interval between the composition of the Apoc. and the Gospel, the easier it becomes to argue that the fiery enthusiasm and prophetic blasts, and the imaginative intensity, more Hebrew than Greek, of the young apostle, may have sub- sided by long meditation and reflection on the vitalizing words of the Master in the days of His flesh ; that the atmosphere of Ephesus and the wide diffusion of Hel. and Alex, culture may then have had time to purge his style and refine his tone, and direct him to a new standpoint of thought and feeling. Many scholars, from Dionvsius of Alexandria, who elaborated the contrasts between the Apoc. and the Gospel almost as completely as has been done by modem critics, down to the early followers of Baur, such as Zeller and Hilgenfeld, have come to the conclusion that no ingenuity can ever show the two books to have originated from the same mind, whatever interval or change of scene may be intercalated between them. Some then, with F. C. Baur, by establishing the apostolic authorship of the Ajjoc, have believed that they demolished the authenticity of the Gospel ; while otheni, by relinnuishing the Apoc. and handing it over t« some Judaic zealot, have believed that they left the course open to a full acceptance of the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel. But however great the contrast's of an earlier and later style, — a-s witness, comparatively, in our own day, those of Burke and Carlyle, — a much greater •onHict and dissimilarity may be observeu when a man of comniandinj^r powers distinctly seta him- self to approach a dilierent subject, or to look and write from a new standpoint, ^iany writers, like Swift, Cowper, Wordsworth, and Tenny- son, were throughout their career able to adopt, whether by dramatic temperament or deliberate tours de force, glaring contrasts of form, dialect, style, tone, manner, which are enough to deceive those who cannot discern the subtle resemblances, and, moreover, have no external evidence of author- ship to guide them in their conclusions. The dilierent attituile and atmosphere, the modilied diction and general purpose of the two books, are not sufficient (whatever bo the theory of date) to divorce them from each other while the internal