The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 10

II. Tm: DETAlLS OF THE ASSAULT, The history of the M91lnlt upon the Fourth Gospel reveals an extended campaign and ~any ~ostile ~or~ and _is instructive from t~e f~ct that many of the hypotheses (rncons1stent with its genuineness) have been relinquished by the successive assailants as incompatible with known facts of literature, or ecclesiastical order, or theological construction. The assault has been conducted along two main lines, One has been directed towards the establishment of a late date for its composition. This ho.s been effected by a destructive and a constructive process: (1) by disputing the external testimonies to its existence before the close of the second century ; (2) by endeavouring to ima!!ine the ciroumstances and condition of the Church out of which it sprang, the erro~s it was supposed to counteract, and the necessary literary antecedents of the authorship. 'l'he seccnd line of assault has been directed towards the internal incompatibilities of the narrative; the incredibility of its main teaching as the direct word of the Lord Jesus Christ; the contrast between the teaching of this "evangelist" and that of the synoptic Gospels; the improbability that the author of the document was either the "John" of the synoptic Gospels or the author of the Apocalypse. We propose to treat these matters in detail; but, before doing so, we would call atten- tion to the manner in which the assailants have conducted the campaign, and have receded from positions they had once taken up with extreme confidence. Although the English deists occasionally hinted doubts of the genuineness of the four Gospels, yet the first most deliberate assault was delivered by Edward Eve.nson, an Anglican clergyman in Gloucester, who in 1792 published his 'Dissonance of the Four generally received Evangelists, and the Evidence of their Respective Authenticity examined with that of other Scriptures deemed Canonical.' He regarded the greo.ter part of the New Testament as a. forgery, a.nd accepted as true the Gospel of Luke alone. He opposed John's Gospel from its dissimilarity with the Apocalypse, and attributed it to a Platonizing philosopher of the second century. These positions were taken up by Eckermann, by Horst (in 'Henke's Museum fiir Religionswissenschaft ') in 1803, by Cludius, by Ballenstedt (' Philo und Johannes') in 1812, and by Vogel, who in 1801 sought to bring the Evangelist John and his inter- preters to the judgment of the great day; but not until 1820 did the controversy assume a pungent phase by the publication of Bretschneider's 'Probabilia. de Evangelii et Epii:tolarum JoLannis Apostoli indole et origine.' This distinguished theologian accumulated all the difficulties besetting the problem into one vivid, powerful state- ment, and appeared to conclude that the Gospel was written by a.n Alexandrine philosopher in the first half of the second century. The English deists were replied to by Le Clerc and Lampe. Evanson was met by Priestley and Simpson. Storr replied to Eckermann with such force that the latter relracted his doubts; and the whole position of Bretschneider was handled with such dexterity by Olshausen, by Liicke in his celebrated' Kommentar,' and by others, that Bretschneider confessed that his doubts were resolved, and that the object he had in view was accomplished in having provoked a more thorough vindication of the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel 'l'his left the atmc,sphere clearer, and the ground secure for Schleiermacher to regard the Christ of John ae the true Christ, and to bnse bis theology e.nd his view of the historical Christ upon the Fourth Gospel rather than upon any other portion of the New Testament. De Wette, in hie 'Einleitung' to his first edition of his 'He.ndbuch' (1825), expressed serious doubts of the prof// of the genuineness of the Gospel now possible to us; and in 1837 he confesses to his "dearest  'l'HE GOSPiiL ACCORDING TO ST. ,JOHN. xiii