The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 54

referring to the Re.me circurust:mces, designe.ks "Jamcs, Cephas, and John," as those" who 800med to be pillars" of the Church: and St. Paul speaks of their giving the rio-ht hands of fellowship to himgelf for au apostolata to the Gentiles. 'l'he essence of the 1.'tibiugen hypothesis is tho.t Paul wrung a dubious and halting assent to his univcrsulism from the pillnr-11postle~, and that, by the force of his character and the brilliancy of his success among the Gentileg, he compelled a temporary truce, which wns afterwards broken. Bnt there is quite enough in the synoptic narrative to show that our Lord hnd already laid the foundations of the spiritual Church, and had uttered principles which would destroy the Levitical Law as a condition of life. Take e.g. Matt. xv. 18-20 and Mark vii. 18-20, where Christ had declared that the heart is the source of defilement, not the neglect of ceremonial traditious. Take also Mark ii. 28, where ho claimed to be "Lord of the sabbath" (cf. Matt, xii. 8). There we.s latent in the cus- tomary preaching of the twelve apostles what would entirely justify Paul's emancipa- tion of the Gentile Church from the Mosaic yoke of reremony, and explain Paul's willingness to submit the matter to the arbitrament of the Jerusalem apostles. After their wise decision, John again quietly drops out of sight.. When Peter is afterwards to be blamed and withstood at .Antioch, it was because Rome had come thither from James, who had prompted the severance, and John does not seem to have done or said anything inconsistent with the large liberality and spirituality of the first apostolic decision. "Even Barnabas," Peter, and James were can·ied away, at least for the moment, by Pharisaic exclusiveness; but there is not an atom of proof that John was so swept into the current. .And this is the last external indication of any kind that these writings of the New Testament supply touching the personality of the son of Zebedee-verily a shadowy foundation for any specific indication of character. It is, therefore, impossible to say that the son of Zebedee may not be identified with the disciple whom Jesus loved, so far as the author of the Fourth Gospel uncon- sciously delineated his own portraiture. If the antagonism between Paul and the Jeru- salem apostles be pressed hypothetically far beyond what the Epistle to the Galatians warrants, and is introduced as an explanation of a multiplicity of small details in the other Epistles; if the unwarrantable inference be drawn that the false apostles of the Second Epistle to the Corinthians are the Jerusalem apostles or their immediate repre- ~entn.tives, and the Ebionitic antagonism to Paul, evinced in the pseudo-Clementine literature, be the historical fact, and must be traced back to the original relations between them ;-then a mnltitude of other consequences follow. Then the .Acts of the .Apostles, the Epistles to the Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians must be also relin- qaished, and the Gospel of Marcion and the Clementine literature must be substituted for them. Then the Epistle of James must be regarded as a. late and antagonistic document in reply to the " vain man" Paul, and the wide views and Pauline spirit of the First Epistle of Peter, like the Gospel of John, must be interpreted as late forgeries in the interests of comprehension and peace. (3) The author of the three Epistles which bear traditionall,IJ the name of John, compared u,ith the author of the Gospel. The evidence of antiquity in favour of the ideutity of authorship of the Gospel and First Epistle, and also separately in attesta- tion of the Johannine authorship of the Epistle, is sufficient and abundant. This matter neeri not be here developed at length. It is necessary to recall the facts that : (a) The Murntorian Frn..,ment on the Canon makes special mention of the First Epistle as an appendix to the G~spel, aud then refers to" two Epi_stles '.' fn~t~er ~n. (b) T~a~ the apostolic Fathers quote it. Polycarp refers to 1 John 1v. 3 m his Epistle to ~h1l., c. vii. and iv. 9; ibid., c. viii.; • The Epistle to Diognetus' refers to or quot~s, In _eh. x., 1 John iv. 9 and 1 John i. 1. More important than these proofs of its eust- ence is (c) the quotation by Euscbius (' Hist. Eccl.,' iii. 39) of the tesLimony of Po.piaa, " who used passages from the First Epistle of John" (see _ante). The_ cele!irated quotation from Polyca.rp (c. vii.) has been regard~d of such immense weight lil the argument that some of the opponents of the genumeness of the Fourth Gospel have sought U:: minimize its importance by e □ deavouring either to invalidate the a.ut~en- ticity of the epistle of Polycarp, or to represent the unknown author ,?f. th? Ep1~_tle as quoting from Polycarp, instead of the reverse (see 'Supernatural Re 1g10n, vol. n.). The sentence is, nas -yap OS llv µ.¾ ~µ.oJvJ-yj 'l7111ovv X;n<TT~JI iv <Ta.pKl /J,.71},.v6tva,, a.vrlxp,11~0, '"'"'"· 'l'his is a 1<triking reference to the Epistle of John. Subsequently, TertulhaD  THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOllN. lxl