economy had come to an end and that John had become the successor of Paul in a thoroughly Greek city.
The traces of philosophical colouring have been exaggerated and misinterpreted. In the Platonic dialogues the circumstances, the speakers, and their utterances are all either created by the writer or employed to proclaim his own philosophy. To suppose that the Gospel was composed in some analogous manner is to misconceive it. No doubt in Ephesus John was brought into contact with forms of thought and with speculations which were little heard of in Palestine. And in so far as the ideas then prevalent were true, an intelligent Christian mind would necessarily bring them into relation with the manifestation of God: in Christ. This process would bring to the surface much of the significance both of the life and teaching of Jesus which hitherto had been unnoticed and unused. The process is apparent in the epistles of Paul as well as in the Fourth Gospel. The idea of the Logos was a Jewish-Alexandrian idea, and that the author sought to attach his Gospel-to this idea is unquestionable, but it is a very long and insecure step from this to conclude that he was himself trained in the Hellenistic philosophy of Alexandria. The Logos idea is not essential to the Fourth Gospel; it is rather the Sonship idea that is essential. But the term and the idea of the Logos are used by the author to introduce his subject to the Greek readers. As Harnack says: “The prologue is not the key to the understanding of the Gospel, but is rather intended to prepare the Hellenistic reader for its perusal”. After the introduction the Logos is never again referred to. The philosophy one finds in the Gospel is not the metaphysics of the schools, but the insight of the con- templative, brooding spirit which finds in Christ the solvent of all problems.
The originality of the author of the Fourth Gospel has recently been vigorously assailed.2 It has been shown that, in certain passages, he is dependent for his phraseology on the Synoptic Gospels; and it has been urged that an Apostle and eye-witness would not thus derive from others an account of what he had him- self seen. As a general rule it is of course true that an eye-witness would depend on his own reminiscences; but, presumably, no one denies that John knew and used the Synoptic Gospels; and that phrases which occur in them should have remained in his memory is not surprising. Even in the passages where these borrowings occur,
) Zeitschrift f. T. und K., 2nd Jahrg., p. 230. * See especially Oscar Holtzmann, Fohannesevang., p. 6 th.