JOHN"
975
JOHN"
whether another John existed in Asia Minor contempo- rary with John the Apostle would, of course, be of little import, but the fact that the apostolical authorship of some of the epistles and of the Apocalypse is doubted has called to critical inipiiry most of the leading theo- logical minds of our day. The result is that, while some have conceded the existence of another John, clothed even with episcopal dignity (Dijllinger, First Age of the Church, p. 113), others have denied alto- gether the probability of the existence of such a person contemporary with the apostle John (see Schaff, Church History, Apostolic Age, p. 421, note). Dr.W. L. Alex- antler, in reviewing the proofs of those who assert the existence of John and his authorship of some of the Jo- hannean writings, thinks that in the way of this assump- tion stands the following: 1. "The negative evidence arising from the sQence of all other ancient authorities, especially the silence of Polycrates, bishop of Ephesns, who, in a list of eminent teachers and bishops in Asia Minor, preserved by Euseliius (Hist. Eccl. v, 24), makes no mention of John the Presbyter; and, 2. The positive evidence afforded by the statement of Irenseus, who not only omits all mention of the Presbyter, but says that Papias was a hearer of John the Apostle along with Polycarp {adv. Iheres. v, 33). [Not so thinks Donald- son in his Jiist. Christ. Lit. and Doctr. i, 312 sq.] This counter evidence has appeared to some so strong that they have thought it sufficient to set aside that of Pa- pias, who, they remind us, is described hy Eusebius as a man of a very small intellect {m<ho^Qa ajjiKpuQ riv voiiv, Hist. Eccles. iii, 39). [See Schaff; below.] But this seems going too far. Papias describes himself as a hearer of the presbyter John (Euseb. v, 24), and in this he coidd hardly be mistaken, whatever was his defi- ciency in intellectual power [ this view is advocated by Zahn (in his Hernias) and Riggenbach (Jahrb. detttscher Theol. xiii, 319); against it, see Steitz (in Jahrb. xiv, 145 sq.)J ; whereas it is very possible that Ircnajus may have confounded the presbyter with the apostle, the latter of whom would be to his mind much more famil- iar than the former. The silence of Polycrates may be held proof snfficient that no John the Presbyter Avas bishop of Ephesus, or famed as a teacher of Christianity in Asia Minor; but, as Papias does not attest this, his testimony remains nnaflfected by this conclusion. On the whole, the existence of a John the Presbyter seems to be proved by the testimony of Papias; but beyond this, and the fact that he was a disciple of the Lord, nothing is certainly known of him. Credner contends that TrptaftvTipui; is to be taken in its ordinary sense of 'older,' and that it was applied to the person men- tioned by Papias either becanse he was the senior of St, John, or because he arrived before him in Asia Mi- nor; but this is improbable in itself; and, had Papias meant to intimate this, he would not have simply called him o TTpfalivripoc 'liO(h'vt]c (see Liddon, p. 514). In his statement Trptcjivripoc is plainly opposed to airocr- roXoc as a distinctive title of office" (Kitto, Cyclop, s. v.). We cannot close without permitting Dr. Schaff" (Apost. Ch. Hist. p. 421 sq.) to give his view on this important question. He says: "There is room even to inquire whether the very existence of this obscure presbyter and mysterious duplicate of the apostle John rests not upon sheer misunderstanding, as Herder suspected {Of- fenb. Joh. p. 20G, in the xiith vol. of Herder's Werhe zvr Theol.). We candidlj- avow that to us, notwithstand- ing what Lticke (iv, 39G sq.) and Credner (Einleit. in's N. Test, i, 694 sq.) have said in its favor, this man's existence seems very doubtful. The only proper, orig- inal testimony for it is, as is well known, an obscure passage of Papias in Eusebius, iii. 39." After doubting the propriety of giving credit to a statement of Papias not reiterated by any other authority of the early Church, he says : " It is very possible that Pajiias meant in both cases one and the same John, and repeated his name perhaps on account of his peculiarly close contact with him. (See above, Dr. Alexander's view.) So Ire-
naeus, at least, seems to have understood him, when he calls Papias a disciple of the apostle io\m (without men- tioning any presbyter of that name) and friend <if Poly- carp {Ado. Hinr. v, 33). The arguments for this inter- pretation are the following : (1) The term ' presbyter' is here probably not an official title, but denotes age, in- cluding the idea of venerableness, as also Credner sup- poses (p. 097), and as may be inferred from 2 John 1 and 3 John 1, and from the usage of Irena?us, who ap- plies tlK! same term to his master Polycarp {Adv. Hcer, V, 30), and to the Roman bishops before Soter (v, 24). This being so, we cannot conceive how a contemporary of John, bearing the same name, should be distinguished from the apostle by this standing title, since the apostle himself had attained an unusual age, and was probably even sixty when he came to Asia Minor. (2) Papias, in the same passage, styles the other apostles also 'pres- bj'ters,' the ancients, the fathers; and, on the other hand, calls also Aristion and John (personal) ' disciples of the Lord.' (3) The evangelist designates himself as ' the elder" (2 John 1 and 3 John 1), which leads us to suppose that he was frequently so named by his ' little children,' as he loves to call his readers in his first epis- tle. For this reason also it would have been altogether unsuitable, and could only have created confusion, to denote by this title another John, who lived with the apostle and under him in p]phesus. Credner supposes, indeed, that these two epistles came not from the apos- tle, but, like the Apocalypse, from the 'presbyter John' in question. But it is evident at first sight that these epistles are far more akin, even in their language, to the first epistle than to the Apocalypse (comp. 2 Jolm 4- 7 with 1 John ii, 7, 8 ; iv, 2, 3 ; 2 John 9 with 1 John ii, 27 ; iii, 9, etc.). This is De Wette's reason for consid- ering them genuine. When Credner supposes that the presbyter afterwards accommodated himself to the apos- tle's way of thinking and speaking, he makes an entire- 1}' arbitrary assumption which he Limself condemns in pronouncing a like change in the apostle 'altogether unnatural and inadmissible' (p. 733). (4) The Eplusian bishop Polycrates, of the 2d century, in his letter to Victor, bishop of Rome, on the Paschal controvcrsv (in Euscl). V, 24), mentions but one John, though he there emunerates tlie fieya'Xa aToix^in of the Asian Church, Pliilip. with liis|ii<iiis daughters, Polycarp, Thraseas, Sa- garis, l'ai)irius, INklito, most of whom were not so im- portant as the presbyter John must have been if he were a personal disciple of the Lord, and the author of the Apocalypse. We can hardly think that in this connec tion, where it was his object to present as many authori' ties as possible for the Asiatic usage respecting the feast, Polycrates would have passed over this John if he had known anything about him, and if his tomb could have been really pointed out in Ephesus, as the later Diony- sius and Jerome intimate. Jerome, however, in speak- ing of this, expressly observes, 'Nonnulli putant, duas memorias ejusdem Johannis evangelists esse' (De Vir. HI. c. 9) ; Avhich, again, makes this whole story doubt- ful, and destroys its character as a historical testimony in favor of this obscure presbyter."