The Pulpit Commentary — John — Volume 1 — Section 471

Yer. 37.-Good news for the thfrsty. Jesus uttered forth this cry on the great day of the feast-a. time of ce9Sing from work, a time of solemn assembly. Quietly e.s Je8U8 hail gone· np to the feast, by this time he had become the Centre of o. vast concourse. Because the concourse would be vast and not over-quiet, e.nd also because his message, if important, was tremen<lously important, he cried. We feel that, in doing this, that Yoice which spake as never man spake would only rise from sweetness to sublimity. I. \YHY Dm JESUS PUT ms INVITATION IN THIS PARTICULAR WAY? It could hardly be beClluse of the present surroundings of the people. Jerusalem was plentifully sup- plied with water. Not a soul in the crowd but could get a drink very quickly. The main reason must be found in the feast which bad brought the people together. It was the feast imtitutcd to commemorate the forty years in the wilderness, and &erious people would call to mind all the events of that period. Prominent among the experiences cf wandering Israel was the miraculous supply of water. Where would the people have been but for the God who turned bitter waters into sweet, and made springs to burst forth in the desert? Thus the observers of the feast would be led to think of the intenser thirst of the inward man. Jesus tried to put the truth in every possible way. What did not catch the experience of one would catch that of another. Not everybody would this appeal of the Lord touch. 'l.'hey would not have been through the experiences and reflections which gave a proper feeling of the urgency and the pain of thirst. But if in all that crowd hearing the cry of Jesus there was but one, only one, who had known the agonies of thirst far away in some sandy waste where no water was, it was worth while for Jesus to shout aloud so that that single man might hear. II. How Tms Th"'VITATION IS TO BE MADE ATTRACTIVE TO us. We knolV nothing by our own experience of dry and thirsty lands. ,vander anywhere through broad Eng- land and you can get a drink of water for the asking. We may sometimes have been inconvenienced a little, but that is no sufficient experience of thirst which lasts only for an hour or two. Reading accounts of some shipwrecks, we may gather a little of the feeling. Coleridge puts it thus in 'The Ancient :Mariner•- " Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink." Of all the physical wants man can feel, none is capable of being raised to such a pitch o! intensity as the want of water. So, dowu underneath the figure Jesus employs, there is a suggestion of the terri"ble suffering some have to undergo i"n finding spiritual truth and peace. As few comparatively know the full suffering of bodily thirst, so few compara- tively know the full suffering of spiritual thirst. Few know such a state of heart as would warrant them in saying that their souls thirst for God. The way of agony is the way some must t~avel before they can he filled with the fulness of God. But intense agony in the sphere of the spiritual, 11.s in the sphere of the natural, must be an excep- tional thing. Yet who can tell but he may illustrate the exceptional, and so need to get guidance through the word of Jesus here? There are many things that say, "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." Then the thirsty drink, and 6nii their thirst unquenched and intensified. We may have our natural Elims. What if they change to Marahs? What if the rushing stream dries away to a. few tantalizing and useless drops ?-Y. EXPOSITION. concluded to have fanned no portion of the CHAPTER VIIL original Fom·th Gospel; and then the in- Ch. vii 53--viii. 11.--(8) The perioope ternal grounds on which it he.s been rejected, adultertE. (a) EuurslL8 on the genuineneu and some of the speculations as to its origin of eh. mi. 53----tiiii. 11. It is our duty and ve.lne. to examine the various grounds on which Doubts have beset the authenticity of the UriB pe.ssage ha.s been almost Ulliversally passage from the fourth and fifth centuriee OH. vm. 1-50.J TITE GOSPEL ACCOHDING TO ST. JOHN. am In the Enetem Church, both on·extemnl nnrl summarizing Liicke's diRm1~sion of the evi- lnterno.l grounds. The authority o.nd prac- dence, incli11es rather in its favour, anrl tice nf Augustine, Ambrose, 11nd Jerome g11ve thinks it may have been early admitted in to it o. secure resting-pince till the criticism the Fourth Gospel from that according to of Era.smue re-o.wo.kened donbt. Ce.lvin ex- the Hebrews, or from somo Ur-marcWI pressed o. more favoumble opinion concern- (Holtzmann). M'Clellan ancl Stier vehe- ing it. Jo.neenius rejected it. Grotiue con- mently maintain it on both internal and sidered it o.e 11n addition to John's Goepel external grounds. Ederebeim says that it from the he.nd of Po.pins or one of his friends presents " insuperable difficulties in the e.ncl fellow-disciples of John. Wettstein, "un-Jewish" account given of the accusers, Semler, Griesbach, 11nd Wegscheider seemed the witnesses, the public examination, the to leave for it no place in Scripture. Lach- bringing of the woman to Jesus, and the mann omitted it from his text. It has been punishment claimed." Renan, 'Ecce Homo,' condemned 11s spurious by the gree.t bulk of and Farrar, have made very powerful bio- modern critics, even of different schools and graphic use of the narrative. on somewhat different grounds. Some have The e1Jidence agai1'1lt it is: 1. That ~, (A), rejected it as a spurious forgery (see Heng- B, (C), (L), X, (<l), 33, 131, and 157 omit it. etenberg, in loc.); Keim derives much the A and C e.re here defective, but they leave so.me conclusion from its supposed teaching; no sufficient space for ita insertion ; L and others have e.dmitted that, though it is not <l leave gaps, to notify some omission, which without a powerful apostolic ring about it, the copyist for some reason did not or dared yet its proper place was probably at the close not fill. Though found in D, E, F, G, H, K, of Luke xxi., where it is found in cursive M, S, V, T, <l, A, TI, and numerous cursives, 69 and three other oureivee (13, 124, 346). it is nevertheless obelized in some of the Others (Scrivener) that, from its interruption form or n.s don btful. of the narrative, it has no place here, but may The first Greek writer in the twelfth cen- be poesiblyrege.rdedo.e an appendix to John's tury (Euthymins Zygadenns) who in this Gospel, or a po.rt of the later edition of that portion of the Gospel refers to the passage Gospel which contained eh. xxi. There is no distinctly says that from eh. vii. 53 to viii. 11 snffioient ground on whioh to build this hy- the passage was not found, or it wo.s obelized pothesis of two editions ( cf. notes on oh. xxi. in the most acm1,rate cop-ies; wherefore, be I). There e.re, however, mo.nusoripts whioh adds, it was first a gloss, and then an ap- preserve the pare.graph in this position, viz. pendix (rrap.-ypa.,,.,.a, ,. written alongside the oursive 1, and the majority of the of,'' 1<al ,rpocrB-filCTJ, " added to"), and " a Armenian manuscripts. A very damaging token of this is seen in the fact that Ch.ry- note accompanies it in 1 (see Tregelles, who soetom had me.de no mention of it." gives it at length). The following critical 2. It was found in different places, even editors have either displaced it or entirely in several of the manuscripts which contain rejected it from this place in John's Gospel, it (see above). though many among them admit its virtue.I 3. Ancient versions, such as some of the authenticity as e. record of a genuine occru·- Ito.lie, lEgyptian, Old Syriac, Gothic, ee.rly rence in the life of our Lord : Lachmann, manuscripts of the Peschito and Armenian Tregelles, Tischendorf, Alford, Liicke, Versions, omit it. Meyer, Godet, Milligan, Scrivener, Moul- 4. It was not read by Tertnlli.an (see• Da ton, Westcott and Hort, the Revised Text, Pudio.,' o. 6), Cyprian, Origen, Theodore and even Weiss and Wordsworth. On the of Mopsuestia, Ch.ryeostom, Cyril of Alexan- other hand, it he.a been defended by Mill, dria, and Theophyle.ot, where it might have Lampe, Michaelis, by Bengel, Scholz, Wie- been expected. seler, Ebrard, Lange, Stier, M'Clellan, and 5. Though found in D (Codex Bezm), yet by some of the Tiibingen school like Hil- this testimony, without confirmation, throws genfeld, who, attaching it to the Gospel, doubt over it, by its adoption of the paragre. ph. have made use of it to destroy the historic D has given us severlll other e.ddilions charncter of the Gospel itself. Griesbach re- (euch as Matt. xx. 28; Luke vi. 5), which tains itwitb double marks of doubt. Farrar, have never passed into authentic Sc1ipture.  344 THE GOSPEL ACCORDING 'l'O ST. JOHN. [ea. vm. 1-59,