The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 112

fate, God, or the ,leYil (see eh. v. 39, 40, H, 47; see Godet's admirl\blo discussion, 'Intronuction,' vol. i. 182, etc.). We 11re here concerned with the relation of the Fourth Gospel to the synoptio three, and cannot do other than come to the conclusion that there is nothing in the contents of the synoptic Gospels to invalidate the historicity of the Fourth Gospel. We shall now proceed to some of the special characteristics of the Gospel which are supposed by some critics to dest-roy its authenticity as the work of the Apostle John. 4. The sty le and diction of t-he evang<>list. This is said on all hands to be a good specimen of Hellenistic Greek, and not to be more Hebraistic than other portions of the New Testament, but rather less so 1-a circumstance which is to be easily accounted f~r, if ~~ ~ar in_ mind t~e apostle's long residence in a Greek-speaking province, and his fam1han~y .~1th Gent.il~s as well ~ Jews in Patmo~, Ephesus, and possibly Rome, Those pecuhant1es to winch some critics appeal as indicating contmst between the diction of Christ as recorded by John and that attributed to him by the synoptists, are extremely few and unimpressive. The mere fact that John should use in his own narrative, or put into the lips of various interlocutors, certain words and phrases, is nothing more t-han to say that this most remarkable author had a moderate amount of individu- ality-that he had a certain style of his own. Thus that he should use such words ns l."6p1Z1<11£, r..,.,-A71JU1, 41rOll'IIJ'4')'lll')'OS, /31/3p,I,1r,m11, ,,,,.__(l'/,,coµ.011, lirutp6 ..,,, lilliuµ.os, '1,,c11l11111, l1r1xpl,111, et,ICT/, 6p,µ.µ,rra., ,cepµ.,a., 1e0Auµ/31,6pa., µ.ovo'Y•vfis, 111rr11p, ,S(,.,,, ,rpo/311n,cf,, 1rpoa-a.lT71s, and many others only resembles what may be stated or almost every book of the New Testament. The vocabulary of the evangelist is small, and the same expressions are repeated with ~ t frequency. 4>r.iis occurs twenty-three times; lio(a, lio(&(,1r811,, forty-two times; (o,f,, (ff11, fitty-two times; µ.apTvpla., µ.11pTVpiiv, forty-seveu times; 'Y"'tf,o-,c,111, fifty-five times; ,c61rµ.,,s, seventy-eight times ; ,r10-T,uu11, ninety-eight times ; rnov, twenty-three times; r,.,o,,.,. and d>..716da., twenty-five times; 11'71µ.iiov, seventeen. These words are found, from their varied position and context, t,o have special connotation, and to grow in significance as we pass from the prologue to the epilogue. That we should find µ.,lrro, six times, though not used in other Gospels; that oJv should be used as a con- nective particle far more frequently than in the other Gospels; that µ.,Iv should almost be dropped out of use; that ,cal should be used where we might expect 61; that he should be so often content to bring opposing statements into simple juictaposition, leaving the conclusion to be felt rather than emphasized by himself (eh. i. 5; xv. 24; iii. 11); that the use of the optative should be discarded, unless in eh. xiii. 24; that ~&.,,as should be used in a special sense in the prologue and in the First Epistle; and that a multitude of expressions should be found in the Epistles which also occur in the narrative or reflective portions of the Gospel, all combine to show that, apart from the language put into the lips of our Lord, there is a discoverable dogmatic style adopted by this writer. It is worthy of special note that whereas, e.g., the term A&.,,os is used by the evangelist when speaking in his own name (not only in the prologue, but in 1 John i. 1 and Rev. xix. 13) of the Lord, yet John was never tempted to put this language into the lips of Jesus. Another expression common to the prologue and First Epistle is " to be born of God." There were many occasions when it would have been easy to have justified the phrase by attributing it to Jesus, but the evangelist avoids the phrase in eh. ill. and elsewhere. The charge is made that all the interlocutors, John the Baptist and Nicodemus, the woman or Samaria, the Jews and Pilate, alike speak the same Johannine dialect, and that this is also identical with that which is put into the lips of our Lord. Consequently it is inferred that the entire language of the thought which has broken away from the atmosphere and dialect of the synoptists is the invention of the writer. With the phraseology, the thought is supposed also to be Johannine, and we are said to be reading a powerful romance rather than a carefully arranged series of biographical fragments Kow, we are ready, nay, compelled, to concede a considerable subjective element in the delineation. T!Je choice of one group of discourses, debates, events, and results, rather than of another, is clearly the work of the evangelist. He himself asserts that the materials at his disposal were far more numerous than thoso which he has utilized (eh. xx. 30). The Spirit that moved him to tl1is particular choice utilized the specialty of bis meditative mind and impulsive love as the moans and process of the revelation, Wo ' Winer, • Grammar of New Testament (¾reek' (Eng. trans.), p. 85.  THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. JOHN. cxxiii