JOHN, GOSPEL OF
JOHN, GOSPEL OF
thought. He does not once mention the name ol' St. John ; but the Church at Philippi had not been directly in contact with that Apostle. Moreover, his habits of quotation hardly lead us to expect any other result (of. AT in Apost. Fathers, p. 84).
(6) Irenreus gives Polycarp a foremost place among the elders whom tie quotes. He says that he 'had not only been instructed by Apostles, and associated with many who had seen the Christ, but had also been placed by Apostles in Asia in the Church at Smyrna as a bishop, whom we also saw in our early life' (iv ttj irpdrri ijKiKig.) {Hcer. III. iii. 4). Eusebius has preserved for us a letter of his to Florinus, in which he gives an account of his listening with peculiar attention to Polycarp, and vividly recalls tne very place where he sat when he discoursed, his manner of life, and his personal appearance, ' and how he would describe his inter- course with John, and with the rest who had seen the Lord, and how he would relate their words. And whatsoever things he had heard from them about the Lord, and about His miracles, and about His teaching, Polycarp, as havin" received them from eye-witnesses of the life of the Word, would relate them in accordance with the Scriptures ' {ap. Euseb. HE v. xx. 6). Again, Irenteus also, in a letter to Victor, bishop of Rome, on the Paschal controversy, uses as an argument tlie fact that Polycarp followed the example of ' John the disciple of the Lord, and the rest of the Apostles with whom he consorted. ' Irenoeus is undoubtedly referring to the Apostle John ; and if that be so, there can be little doubt that ' the Scriptures ' to which Polycarp referred contained the Fourth Gospel in some form. Thus the silence of Poly- carp, in the solitary writing that has come down to us, is balanced by the explicit statement of Irenffius that Polycarp knew St. John, and referred to him in his discourse.
Opponents of the Johannine authorship of the Gospel have
They allege that he made a mistake in rejjarding Papias as a hearer of John, and that he has possibly done the same in the case of Polycarp. The John to whom Polycarp referred may have been the Presbyter. Irenseus was still a boy (U Tec^iuv) when he heard his teacher. At the same time, it is hardly likely that the vivid personal impression he has of Polycarp contains a mistake of this kind. Polycarp evidently mentioned the name of John with some frequency, and there is no evidence that the Presbyter John was a man of such note in Asia as to be thus referred to in Polycarp's lectures. It is inconceivable
that, if there had been any prospect of confusion in 1 as listening to him, Polycarp would i (see Stanton, Gospel'i a.s Hist. Dod.
(4) We have still to deal with a group of writ- ings classed among the Apostolic Fatliers, whose evidence on the subject is rendered vague and in- conclusive, inasmuch as they contain no definite quotations from the Gospel, and there is also un- certainty as to their dates, (a) The Epistle of Barnabas reflects the condition of thought in Egypt, and the date may lie anywhere between 79 ancl 132. The theory that Barnabas used the Fourth Gospel found strangely a strong champion in Keim, who assigned tlip datp 1-20-130 (./e.siw o/" Naz. i. 192-195). Loisy, on tlir dilior liand, accept- ing the date c. 130, uru^~ , ,,,,,1,1, :. mnorance of the Gospel on the part of K:mi,tl«>, ;iimI uses the argu- ment to prove that tin- .lolianiune \vritings h.ad not yet taken complete possession of ecclesiastical usa"e {Lc QiiatriAme Ev. p. 5). In Barnnhas, use is made of the idea of the Brazen Serpent ; and the conceptions of 'eternal life,' which often incurs, and of 'feeding upon the words of life,' seem In point to the influence of a Johannine curnni ..t thought. (A) Only one of tlie epistles known iind. r the name of Clement of Rome is genuine. It w.is written from the Roman community to the Corin- thian, c. 100. Here, again, the WTiter seems to l)e influenced by Johannine teaching (cf. Clem. xlix.
pupil of Valentinus ; and it is exceptionally 1 evidence, not only for the early existence bu
and Jn H^'-^, 1 Jn 5'=). (t) The Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, is a composite document, and is the earliest manual of Cnurch procedure extant. The elements of which it is composed may have been in use at tlie end of the 1st cent., but the wi>rk 111 its piescut form was pub- lished much later. Ii ((jiitaius a specimen of a praj-er of thanksgiviiiu for use utter the Eucharist, in which there is a very reiiuukable parallel to the anti-sacranientarian treatment of the ideas of the Supper in the Fourth Gospel (ch. 6) : ' Thou, Almighty Master, didst create all things for thy name's sake, and didst give food and drink unto men for enjoyment, that they might render thanks unto thee ; but didst bestow upon us spiritual food and drink and eternal life through tliy Son ' {Did. X. 3). (rf) The Shepherd of Hermas (c. 100 Zahn, 135-145 Hamack) displays a Johannine colouring of thought.