The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 26

Dr. Abbott (City or London School), in two articles in the Modern Review, 1882, endeavours Lo minimize the effect of the qnotations on which we have commented, by emphasizing their verbal disagreement with the text of John; and. following the line of Dr. Davidson and A. 'l'homa, be shows that there are plaoes in .)ustin's argument where, if the martyr be.d believed in the authoritative value or John's Gospel, be wonld have cited it as fe.r more apposite than the passage from the prophets of the Old Testa- ment or from the eynoptists that be does cite. It is very remarkable that Justin shouid not have quoted this Gospel when endeavouring to prove the pre-existence of Christ; but we cannot say what a writer of the second century would think most con- vincing, and the argument e silentio is very perilous. 2. In addition to this testimony, let us review the confirmatory evidence which undeniably establishes the existence of the Fourth Gospel between Justin and Irenreus. (1) HERA0LEON. We have spoken at length of Irenreus, whose evidence establishes the reverence paid to the Gospel when be wrote his cbier work, A.D. 180, but in this work (' Adv. Hrer.,' ii. 4) he speaks of one, Hcracleon, a Gnostic, whose doctrines of reons is combined with that of Ptolemreus (cf. Hippolytus, 'Ref. Hrer.,' vi. 35 and 29). Heracleon must have lived, then, before Irenmue. He was a disciple of Valentinus, the great poet and genius of the Gnostic schools. Now, if that fact can be established -and nothing seems clearer-then John's Gospel must have been in wide circulation, and held in extraordinary reverence by persons both within nnd outside the Church; for it can be shown that Heracleon actually wrote a complete commentary on John's Gospel, to which Origen set himself to reply in later times. "Ah, great God!" says Volkmar, "if between A.D. 125 and 155 a commentary was composed on John's Gospel, such as that of which Origen has preserved considerable extracts, what yet remains to be discussed? It is very certain that it is all over with the critical thesis of the composition of the Fourth Gospel in the middle of the second century." (2) TATIAN, Tatian, a disciple of Just.in, between A.D. 166 and 170, wrote his • Discourse to the Greeks,' and a work the name of which is preserved by Eusebius, To .o.,a.ncrudpa,v-a. "patchwork," or "combination," or perhaps "harmony," of "four Gospels." What four Gospels were they? Eusebius does not say, but he calls them "the Gospels," and that is sufficient. Eusebius, 'Hist. Eccl.,' iv. 29: '' Tatian put together, I know not how, a sort of patchwork or combination of the Gospels, and called it the DIATEBSAnON,1 which is current with some." The author of 'Supernatural Religion' argues from this, unadvisedly, that Eusebius had never seen the document. 'l'hat one of them was the fourth is probable, because in the ' Discourse to the Greeks 'we find a quotation from eh. i. 3, 5 and iv. 24. 'l'he exact words are, Kal TOuTo ltrrw If.pa. TO •lp11µhov, 'H cr,coTla To ,Piiis ou ,canuv,µ.{3d.vn. Altogether too remarkable to be explained away. Further, Theodoret (' Hmr. Fab.,' i. 20) tells us this " harmony" was a defective per- formance, omitting the genealogies, denying the reality of the body of Christ, and that he was Son of David according to the flesh. He says that he found (about A.D. 420) two hundred copies of this work in his churches in his small diocese of Cyrus, in Syria., and that the faithful did not discern the mischievous character of the compilation, and that he, Theodoret, substituted for them copies of the four Gospels. [This simple fact shows to wba.t an enormous extent copies of the Gospels may have been diffused throughout the Christian world, and is used by Norton (loc. cit., c. 1) to defend his calculation that not fewer than sixty thousand copies of the Gospel! must have existed in the fifth century.] Victor of Capua, in the sixth century, speaks of Tati11n's work as 11 3,d. .,,,,,.,.. instead of a Ilia: ncrcrdpa,v. But surely Eusebius of the fourth century and Theodoret of the fifth century are rather better authorities than Victor. A Syrian writer, Bar-Salibi, in the 1 Dr. ~almon (' Introduotion to the New Testament,' p. 98) has quoted e.n interesting eommumoe.tion from Professor Mahaffy, illustre.ting the meaning of the word li,a: Tecr,nipwv. There were, se.ys ho, three oombine.tions of notes in musio which were rega.roed as concord, : ~,a: ,racri.v, the whole octave: 3,d. 1revn, the first and fifth: and 3,d. Tecrcrcl.p01v, the first and fourth: all the rest of the intorvn.ls were discards. This he explains scientifica.lly as correct, although our modern methods of tunina- instruments havo created a harmony between thirdJI as wtill. The term li,aTeucrdpwv m11yhove been incorrectly used when tnrn~ferred from musio to litero.ture, to denote a harmony of four.  XXlt INTRODUCTION 'l'O