there are divergences so considerable as to indicate an original witness. Por, to interpret these divergences, as Oscar Holtzmann does, as misunderstandings of his sources, is rather, if it may without offence be said, a misunderstanding of John. It may rather be said that, in several instances, we find additions and corrections which are requisite for the understanding of the Synoptists. From the first three Gospels the reader might gather that our Lord’s ministry extended over only one year; the Fourth Gospel definitely mentions three Passovers (ii. 13; vi. 4; xiii. 1), with a possible fourth (v. 1). The probabilities here are certainly in favour of the representation of the Fourth Gospel, and it may be shown that even in the Synoptic narratives a longer ministry is implied than that which they expressly mention. Again, the ministry in Jerusalem, as recounted in the Fourth Gospel, alone enables us to understand the lament which finds a place in the Synoptics, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often,” etc. The call of those who afterwards became Apostles, the arrival in Galilee of scribes from Jerusalem to watch Jesus, and other incidents recorded by the Synoptists, only become fully in- telligible when read in the light of the narrative given in the Fourth Gospel. Evidently the author of this Gospel had, at least on some points, access to more accurate and complete information than that which was accessible to the other evangelists.
The independence of the Fourth Gospel is further shown by its omission of such remarkable scenes as the Temptation, the Trans- figuration, the Agony in the Garden, and by its introduction of places and persons unnamed in the other Gospels; as, Aenon, Salim, Sychar, Bethany beyond Jordan, Nicodemus, Nathanael, the Samari- tan woman, the man born blind, the dead Lazarus, Annas. The most natural way to account for this is to suppose that we have here the additional information which an Apostle would necessarily possess. The alternatives are that we must refer it to the creative imagination of the writer, or to the tradition of our Lord’s life which had been handed down irrespective of the Synoptic Gospels, the «“ Johanneisches vor Johannes’’. But why deny this tradition to the Apostle John? In whom could it find a more suitable repository 2 Unquestionably there underlies this Gospel a full and significant tradition, but there seems no good reason for allotting the tradition to one source and the Gospel to another. Much more probable is the account of Eusebius, who tells us “that John, having spent all
1H. E., iii., 24: Ιωάννην Φασὶ τὸν πάντα χρόνον ἀγράφφ κεχρηµένον κηρύγµατι Τέλος καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν γραφὴν ἐλθεῖν.