He is well acquainted with the confused politico-ecclesiastical Messianic ideas and expectations of the Jews (1:19-28, 45-49; 4:25; 6:14, 15 7:26; 12:34, and other passages); with the hostility between Jews and Samaritans (4:9, 20, 22 8:48); with Jewish usages and observances, as baptism (1:25; 3:22, 23 4:2), purification (2:6; 3:25, etc.), ceremonial pollution (18:28), feasts (2:13, 23; 5:1 7:37, etc.), circumcision, and the Sabbath (7:22, 23). He is also acquainted with the marriage and burial rites (2:1-10; 11:17-44), with the character of the Pharisees and their influence in the Sanhedrin, the relationship between Annas and Caiaphas. The objection of Bretschneider that he represents the office of the high-priest as an annual office arose from a misunderstanding of the phrase "that year" (11:49, 51 18:13), by which he means that memorable year in which Christ died for the sins of the people.
3. The author was an eye-witness of most of the events narrated. This appears from his life-like familiarity with the acting persons, the Baptist, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, Thomas, Judas Iscariot, Pilate, Caiaphas, Annas, Nicodemus, Martha and Mary, Mary Magdalene, the woman of Samaria, the man born blind; and from the minute traits and vivid details which betray autopticity. He incidentally notices what the Synoptists omit, that the traitor was "the son of Simon" ( 6:71; 12:4; 13:2, 26 at Thomas was called "Didymus" (11:16; 20:24 21:2); while, on the other hand, he calls the Baptist simply "John" ( he himself being the other John), without adding to it the distinctive title as the Synoptists do more than a dozen times to distinguish him from the son of Zebedee. [1077] He indicates the days and hours of certain events, [1078] and the exact or approximate number of persons and objects mentioned. [1079] He was privy to the thoughts of the disciples on certain occasions, their ignorance and misunderstanding of the words of the Master, [1080] and even to the motives and feelings of the Lord. [1081]
No literary artist could have invented the conversation of Christ with Nicodemus on the mystery of spiritual regeneration (John 3), or the conversation with the woman of Samaria (John 4), or the characteristic details of the catechization of the man born blind, which brings out so naturally the proud and heartless bigotry of the Jewish hierarchy and the rough, outspoken honesty and common sense of the blind man and his parents (9:13-34). The scene at Jacob's well, described in John 4, presents a most graphic, and yet unartificial picture of nature and human life as it still remains, though in decay, at the foot of Gerizim and Ebal: there is the well of Jacob in a fertile, well-watered valley, there the Samaritan sanctuary on the top of Mount Gerizim, there the waving grain-fields ripening for the harvest; we are confronted with the historic antagonism of Jews and Samaritans which survives in the Nablus of to-day; there we see the genuine humanity of Jesus, as he sat down "wearied with his journey," though not weary of his work, his elevation above the rabbinical prejudice of conversing with a woman, his superhuman knowledge and dignity; there is the curiosity and quick-wittedness of the Samaritan Magdalene; and how natural is the transition from the water of Jacob's well to the water of life, and from the hot dispute of the place of worship to the highest conception of God as an omnipresent spirit, and his true worship in spirit and in truth. [1082]
4. The writer represents himself expressly as an eye-witness of the life of Christ. He differs from the Synoptists, who never use the first person nor mix their subjective feelings with the narrative. "We beheld his glory," he says, in the name of all the apostles and primitive disciples, in stating the general impression made upon them by the incarnate Logos dwelling. [1083] And in the parallel passage of the first Epistle, which is an inseparable companion of the fourth Gospel, he asserts with solemn emphasis his personal knowledge of the incarnate Word of life whom he heard with his ears and saw with his eyes and handled with his hands (1 John 1:1-3). This assertion is general, and covers the whole public life of our Lord. But he makes it also in particular a case of special interest for the realness of Christ's humanity; in recording the flow of blood and water from the wounded side, he adds emphatically: "He that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true: and he knoweth that he saith things that are true, that ye also may believe" (John 19:35). Here we are driven to the alternative: either the writer was a true witness of what he relates, or he was a false witness who wrote down a deliberate lie.
5. Finally, the writer intimates that he is one of the Twelve, that he is one of the favorite three, that he is not Peter, nor James, that he is none other than the beloved John who leaned on the Master's bosom. He never names himself, nor his brother James, nor his mother Salome, but he has a very modest, delicate, and altogether unique way of indirect self-designation. He stands behind his Gospel like a mysterious figure with a thin veil over his face without ever lifting the veil. He leaves the reader to infer the name by combination. He is undoubtedly that unnamed disciple who, with Andrew, was led to Jesus by the testimony of the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan (1:35-40), the disciple who at the last Supper "was reclining at the table in Jesus' bosom" (13:23-25), that "other disciple" who, with Peter, followed Jesus into the court of the high-priest (18:15, 16), who stood by the cross and was intrusted by the dying Lord with the care of His mother (19:26, 27), and that "other disciple whom Jesus loved," who went with Peter to the empty sepulchre on the resurrection morning and was convinced of the great fact by the sight of the grave-cloths, and the head-cover rolled up in a place by itself (20:2-8). All these narratives are interwoven with autobiographic details. He calls himself "the disciple whom Jesus loved," not from vanity (as has been most strangely asserted by some critics), but in blessed and thankful remembrance of the infinite mercy of his divine Master who thus fulfilled the prophecy of his name Johanan, i.e., Jehovah is gracious. In that peculiar love of his all-beloved Lord was summed up for him the whole significance of his life.
With this mode of self-designation corresponds the designation of members of his family: his mother is probably meant by the unnamed "sister of the mother" of Jesus, who stood by the cross (John 19:25), for Salome was there, according to the Synoptists, and John would hardly omit this fact; and in the list of the disciples to whom Jesus appeared at the Lake of Galilee, "the sons of Zebedee" are put last (21:2), when yet in all the Synoptic lists of the apostles they are, with Peter and Andrew, placed at the head of the Twelve. This difference can only be explained from motives of delicacy and modesty.
What a contrast the author presents to those pseudonymous literary forgers of the second and third centuries, who unscrupulously put their writings into the mouth of the apostles or other honored names to lend them a fictitious charm and authority; and yet who cannot conceal the fraud which leaks out on every page.
Conclusion.
A review of this array of testimonies, external and internal, drives us to the irresistible conclusion that the fourth Gospel is the work of John, the apostle. This view is clear, self-consistent, and in full harmony with the character of the book and the whole history of the apostolic age; while the hypothesis of a literary fiction and pious fraud is contradictory, absurd, and self-condemned. No writer in the second century could have produced such a marvellous book, which towers high above all the books of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus and Tertullian and Clement and Origen, or any other father or schoolman or reformer. No writer in the first century could have written it but an apostle, and no apostle but John, and John himself could not have written it without divine inspiration.
[1036] John 14:26; 16:18. Comp. Matt. 10:19, 20; Luke 12:12; Acts 4:8.
[1037] Adv. Haer., III., cap. 1, § 2.
[1038] Ibid. III. 11, 1.
[1039] "Ut recognoscentibus omnibus, Joannes suo nomine cuncta describeret.
[1040] "Sic enim non solum visorem, sed et auditorem, sed et scriptorem omnium mirabilium Domini per ordinem profitetur." See the Latin text as published by Tregelles, also in Charteris, l.c., p. 3, and the translation of Westcott, History of the Canon, p. 187.
[1041] Matt. 10:2; Luke 6:14; Mark 3:16; 13:3; John 1:41; 12:22; Acts 1:13.
[1042] Quoted by Westcott and Hilgenfeld. I will add the original from Migne, Patrol., V. 333: "Cum enim essent Valentinus et Cerinthus, et Ebion, et caeteri scholae satanae, diffusi per orbem, convenerunt ad illum de finitimis provinciis omnes episcopi, et compulerunt eum, ut et ipse testimonium coscriberet."
[1043] Preface to Com in Matt.
[1044] Adv. Haer., III. 11, 1.
[1045] Basilides in Hippolytus, Ref. Haer., VII. 22.
[1046] In Eusebius, H. E., VI. 14 (quoting from the Hypotyposes):ton Ioannen eschaton sunidonta hoti ta somatika en tois euangeliois dedelotai protrapenta hupo ton gnorimon[i.e., either well known friends, or distinguished, notable men], pneumati theophorethenta, pneumatikon poiesai euangelion. Origen had a similar view, namely, that John alone among the Evangelists clearly teaches the divinity of Christ. Tom. 1:6 in Joan. (Opp., IV. 6).
[1047] H. E., III. 24. Jerome repeats this view and connects it with the antiheretical aim, De vir. illustr., c. 9, comp. Com. in Matt. Proaem. Theodore of Mopsuestia thought that John intended to supplement the Synoptists chiefly by the discourses on the divinity of Christ. See Fritzsche's ed. of fragments of his Commentaries on the New Test., Turici, p. 19 sq. (quoted by Hilgenfeld, Einleitung, p. 696).
[1048] Godet expresses the same view (I. 862): "Cette intention de compléter les récits antérieurs, soit au point de vue historique, comme l'a pensé Eusébe, soit sous un rapport plus spirituel, comme l'a déclaré Clément d'Alexandrie, est donc parfaitement fondée en fait; nous la constatons commne un but secondaire at, pour mieux dire, comme moyen servant au but principal."
[1049] Opera, IV. 6: tolmeteon toinun eipein aparchen men pason graphon heinai ta euangelia, ton de euangelion aparchen to kata Ioannen.
[1050] DeWette says that the discourses of Christ in John shine with more than earthly brilliancy (sie strahlen in mehr als irdischem Brillantfeuer, Exeg. Handbuch, I.3, p. 7). Holtzmann: "The fundamental ideas of the fourth Gospel lie far beyond the horizon of the church in the second century, and indeed of the whole Christian church down to the present day" (in Schenkel's "Bibel. Lexik.," II. 234). Baur and Keim (I. 133) give the Gospel the highest praise asa philosophy of religion, but deny its historical value.
[1051] Renan and John Stuart Mill have confessed a strong antipathy to these discourses. Renan's last judgment on the Gospel of John (in L'église chrét., 1879, p. 51) is as follows: "On l'a trop admiré. Il a de la chaleur, parfois une sorte de sublimité, mais quelque chose d'enflé, de faux, d'obsur. La naïveté manque tout à fait. L'auteur ne raconte pas; il démontre. Rien de plus tatigant que ses longs récits de miracles et que ces discussions, roulant sur des malentendus, où les adversaires de Jésus jouent le rôle d'idiots. Combien à ce pathos verbeux nous préférons le doux style, tout hébreu encore, du Discours sur la montagne, et cette limpidité de narration qui fait le charme des évangélistes primitifs! Ceux-ci n'ont pas besoin de répéter sans cesse que ce qu'ils racontent est vrai. Leur sincérité, inconsciente de l'objection, n'a pas cette soif fébrile d'attestations répétéesqui montre que l'incrédulité, le doute, ont déjà commencé. Au ton légèrement excité de ce nouveau narrateur, on dirait qu'il a peur de n'étre pas cru, et qu'il cherche à surprendre la religion de son lecteur par des affirmations pleines d'emphase." John Stuart Mill (Three Essays on Religion, p. 253) irreverently calls the discourses in John "poor stuff," imported from Philo and the Alexandrian Platonists, and imagines that a multitude of Oriental Gnostics might have manufactured such a book. But why did they not do it?