The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 14

conspicuous in the Fir_st and Third Gospels ;-what a miracle of ingenuity the Fourth Gospel becomes I It 1s even more wonderful than if it be regarded as a simple record of the memories of an unforgotten past. 'l'he.t Just.in, Montanus, e.nd Valentinus, the.t Ignatius and Polyoarp, should have had this venerated fragment in their hands, and used it severally in defence of theit· own positions, is quite e.s credible as that !rename and Origen, Clemens Alex. and Tertullinn or the followers of Basileidos, should subsequently have done the s~me. But thi; hypothesis demands the first appearance of the Gospel in the first century. Such I\ conclusion renders the Johannine authorship so immensely probable that those who i.re driven to the former, but deny the latter view adopt e. variety of methods to evade the inferenoe. ' Granting an early elate, Keim, e.g., has evaded the force of the conclusion by aareein" wit~ _Reuterde.hl and Liitz~lbnrge~ in the endeavour to refute the widely "spread trad1t1on of St. John's residence ID Ephesus and to rehabilitate the old shadow of the Presbyter John. He refuses credence to the point-blank assurance of Iremeus who is said to have blundered in reporting what Polyca.rp had told him. He think~ that Irenaaus led all subsequent writers to regard Polycarp as a disciple of the Apostle John, whereas he supposes that the martyr's intimacies had never gone beyond those of the venerable Presbyter John. Scholten even goes so far as to deny the apostolic origin of th~ Apocalyps~, which th~ school of Baur and Hilg~nfeld had made the key- stone of their construction. He th10ks an unknown person m Ephesus was its author who, havinj1: adopt.ed the name of John in order to give his work greater currency, w~ supposed afterwards to have been the apostle. The consequence of these violent hypotheses is that John the son of Zebedee, instead of being regarded as the author of five of the New Testament books, sinks into utter obscurity after the reference made to him in Gal. iL; and that tradition and literature have been equally deceived through a perverse and unfortunate blunder of Irenrens. In the course of our exposition we shall have frequent opportunities of indicating the extraordinary positions of Albrecht Thoma (' Die Genesis des Johannes-Evangeliums ein Beitrag zu seiner Anslegnng Geschichte und Kritik '). He reviews the sources, the history, the contents, of the Gospel with great eloquence and va'st knowledge; but he 3ees in the Fourth Gospel the artistic setting forth of the ideas of the middle of the 11econd century with reference to the origin of Christian history ; e.g. the ninth chapter is the evangelist's method of describing the conversion of St. Paul; "Judas" is a covert reference to Simon Magus; and the twenty-first chapter is the J ohannine version of the Act.a of the Apostles. In every line of the Gospel he discerns the influence of the Alexandrine school of thought. Gebhart, in his 'Theology of the Apocalypse,' defends, with great ability, the identity ~f it.s authorship with that of the Gospel, but he renounces the historicity of the Gospel Both documents, he thinks, may have been produced by the son of Zebedeo, but they are both imaginative elaborations of the same fundamental ideas-one in the form of history and the other in that of apocalyptic vision. Ewald and Rew;s do in a certain way admit the authenticity, but deny the historical character of the discourses and miracles of the Fourth Gospel. In his latest edition of • The History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Testament,' translated by Houghton, Reuss will not admit more than a bare possibility that it was produced by the son of Zebedee. "It was certainly not written by the author of the Apocalypse," nor by "the John of GaL ii;" but Reuss admits that this John may have suffered as great a transformation as Paul and as Peter are seen to have done. "A germ of profound religiosity may have been implanted in a heart which needed only change of air and soil to bring it to maturity." Reuss will not be moved by the Easter controversy to decide against the Johannine authorship, nor does he think that the speculation that some pupil of the apostle produced it on the basis of some genuine and original informa- tion, sol vcs the difficulty. Tobler (' Die Evangelien-Fra.gm.:' 1858) advocated the view that Apollos was the author, in virtue of the most important chronological, historical, and autoptic matter which it contains· and Renan, in the latest editions of the 'Life of Jesus,' supposes that a "semi-Gnostic' constituted himself the editor of the narratives of the aged apostle, 11,nd perhaps possessed some notes, dictated by the fatter, which formed the primary  •rm:: GOSPEL ACCORDING TO BT. JOHN. mBteriale of hie work. Reuee pronounces that tbie view "eacrificee the spirit to the nppmtmnce, nnd in fact is too sharp-sighted." Mangold's ediUon of Bleek'e 'Einleitung' ndmite tho sufficiency of the external evidences, but regards the internal difficulties of tho authenticity to bo insurmountable. On the other hand, B. Webs, in his' Life of Jesus' (Eng. tmns.), Jaye powerful emphasis on the historicity of the Go"l)el and loses no opportunity of demonstrating the light which it throws upon the sy~optio narmtlve. Holtzmnnn (' Lebrbuch der hietorisch-kritiscben Einleitung in dae N.T.:' 1885) hns emphasized the strongly subjective elements of the narrative, it& artistic arrange- ment, the sources from which the author must have drawn his material. Of these, with Albrecht 'l'homa, he assigns a large place to the Pauline Epistles. He measures the amount of dependence upon the synoptic Gospels, discriminating between the kind of aid he derived from Mark and Luke; he finds the unhistorical in the method by which the great attributes of God are revealed in the concrete life of the incarnate Logos, but uses some of the worn-out arguments to rid these instances of the Divine energy of Jesus, of their historic character. The great puzzle appears to him to consist of the twofold character of the Gospel-the blending of historic detail with lofty ideality. The solution of it attempted by B. Weise does not satisfy Holtzmann. The symbolism of the Gospel for him detracts from its historicity, forgetful, as it seems to us, that the lives of our greatest men and the history of the epochs of our race are charged with events which become symbolic of life-purposes or world-wide tendencies. Julius Cresar crossing the Rubicon, Socrates in his prison, William of Normandy falling on the soil of Pevensey, Luther at the Diet of Worms, etc., are instances in point. Heitzmann falls back on the Baurian method of discovering an "historical situation," but does not feel that he has solved the problem. 'l'he defenders of the authenticity against every attack and on every ground hav~ beeu very numerous. Every one of the special assaults bas called up an army of defence, and in the writings of Hengstenberg, Tholuck, Luthardt, Lange, Lucke, Bleek, Meyer, De Pressense, and Godet, few points or speculations have been left untouched. Canon vVestcott's • Introduction to the Study of the Gospels' and the 'Introduction to the Commentary on St. John;' Dr. Ezra Abbott's• External Evidence of the Authorship of the Gospel;' Mr. Matthew Arnold, in • God and the Bible;' Mr. R. Holt Hutton, in an essay of great value, • Essays, Theological and Literary,' voL i. ; Beiscblag, 'Studien und Kritiken, 1874-5,' and published separately),-have discussed the chief points with masterly hand. Mr. Sanday, 'The Authorship and Character of the Fourth Gospel' and ''l'he Gospels in the Second Century,' with quiet force has set aside the conclusions of the author of 'Supernatural Religion;' Oosterzee (' Das Johannes-evangelium, Vier Vortrnge,' and Eng. trans., 1869); Milligan, in Contemporary Review, 1867-1871, and in 'Introduction to Commentary' by himself and Professor Moulton, have grappled with various parts of the controversy. Seeing that Holtzmann, Mangold, S. Davidson, Thoma, and others maintain the adverse opinion still, the controversy cannot be said to have terminated; and we cannot proceed with our Exposition without placing before the readers of the • Pulpit Commentary' an outline of the evidences both "external" and "internal" on the faith of which we hold that this most wonderful of all the biblical writings is not the dream of a second-century sage, but the sacred record of a personal experience. That which is to some students clear evidence of the antecedency of the Gospel becomes, in the hand of others, proof that "the evangelist" had material ready to his hand in the floating ideas of the second century. Prepossession and preconceived opinion may bias the impartial critic. Let it be understood that prepossessions are not all on one side. The "sceptic" here has, moreover, far more at stake than the "apologist." The Christian believer is not dependent on the Fourth Gospel, however much he might deplore the sacrifice of its historicity. The fall of this Gospel from its high place would not touch the authenticity of the Gospel of Luke, nor that of the Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, and Philippians. All the essentials of the faith would be left intact. But, on the other hand, the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel becomes an impregnable defence of supernatural revelation, of the incarnation of the Son of God, of the resur- r~ct~on nnd glory of the Obrist. If the Fourth Gospel was the work of the beloved d1sc1ple, then the "scientific" instrument which has been elaborated with infinite caru JOHN, O i.viii INTRODUOTION TO