by which the author of a historical novel is so largely assisted in the present day ” (Expositor, Jan., 1890, p. 13).
A few years ago the writer’s ignorance of the localities he men- tioned was insisted upon. But since the Palestinian Survey the tables are turned. It is now admitted that competent knowledge of the localities is shown. Schiirer, 6.6., says: ‘“ Among serious difficulties we need no longer reckon at the present day the supposed ignorance of Palestinian and Jewish matters from which Bretschneider and Baur inferred that the author was neither a Palestinian nor in any sense a Jew. The geographical errors and ignorance of things Jewish have more and more shrunk to a minimum.” The argument now is, “admitting that the writer shows local knowledge, this does not prove that he was a native of Palestine. He may have derived his knowledge from books, or from occasional residence in the country.” Professor Sanday has been at pains to show that any knowledge which could have been derived from such geographers as Pomponius Mela, Ptolemy, or Strabo, was of the scantiest possible description. Holtz- mann, though strongly opposed to the Johannine authorship, admits that the topographical knowledge indicates that the author had visited the holy places, but not that he was a Palestinian. He had then been a resident in Palestine, knew the places he spoke about, and so far was not romancing.
One distinction of the Jew of the dispersion was his use of the LXX., instead of the Hebrew Bible. What Old Testament then does the writer of the Fourth Gospel use? He is found to depart from the LXX., and to use language more closely representing the Hebrew. Until a very few years ago, this was accepted as proof that he read the Hebrew, and used it. But recently there has been a growing conviction that during the Apostolic Age other versions of the Old Testament, or of some books and portions of it, were extant in Greek. And it is argued that John might have used some of these. But when it is found that in some of his quotations his language is closer to the original than that of the LXX., or than the versions of Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, it is certainly reasonable to conclude that he used the Hebrew, and translated for himself, and was, therefore, a native Palestinian.?
(3) There is reason to believe that the author was an eye-witness of the events he relates. In the first place, the writer claims to be an eye-witness. This is surely of some account. The expression
4 See this handled with his usual fairness by Professor Sanday, Expositor, March, 1802.