that “the utmost one can admit in an unprejudiced way, is that the external evidence is evenly balanced pro and con, and leads to no decision. Perhaps, however, it would be truer to say it is more un- favourable than favourable to the authenticity.’”’ Such a conclusion can only excite astonishment.
2. Internal evidence of Fohannine authorship. The internal evidence has usually been grouped under four heads, showing respectively that the author was (1) a Jew, (2) a Palestinian, (3) an eye-witness, (4) the Apostle John.
(1) That the writer was a Jew is proved by his Hebraistic style, by his knowledge of Hebrew and Aramaic, and by his familiarity with Jewish traditions, ideas, modes of thought, expectations, customs. Although written in Greek which is neither awkward nor ungrammatical, the Gospel uses a small number of words and only such as are familiar in ordinary conversation. The vocabulary is much more limited than that of the well-educated Paul, and the style reveals none of the nicety found in the Epistle to the Hebrews. One chief distinction between Hebrew and Greek style is that the Greek writer by means of multitudinous particles exhibits with precision the course of thought by which each clause is connected with that which goes before it: the Hebrew writer contents himself with laying thought alongside of thought and leaving it to the reader to discover the connection. The most casual reader of the Rourth Gospel speedily finds that the difficulty of understanding it is the difficulty of perceiving the sequence of the clauses. Any one accustomed to a Greek style would on reading the Fourth Gospel conclude that its author was not familiar with Greek literature.
It would also naturally be concluded that the writer was a Jew from his inserting translations of Aramaic names, as in i. 38, i. 41, 1, 42, ix. 7, xix. 13, xix. 17, xx. 21; and especially from his familiarity with Jewish customs, ideas, and institutions. Thus he knows that it is a Jewish custom to sit under the fig tree, i. 49; to have water-pots for purposes of purification, ii.6; to embalm the dead, xix. 40; to wash the feet before meals, xiii.4. He is familiar with Jewish ideas, as that it is wrong for a Rabbi to speak with a woman, iv. 27, that disease is the result of sin, ix. 2; that Elias was to come before the Messiah, i. 21; that it defiles a Jew to enter a Gentile dwelling, xviii. 29. So intimate an acquaintance with the Jewish Messianic ideas as is shown in chap. vii. cannot easily be ascribed to any but a Jew. Jewish institutions are also well known: Levites and priests
} See further in Lightioot’s Bibl. Essays, p. 16 ff. Weiss, Introd., ii., 359.