RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA
John the Apostle
Note must be taken, however, of the theory of
Weizsacker, that the book is a product of the
school of John the apostle, written in
2. Internal the spirit and the name of the master,
Testimony and that of Renan (from the thirteenth
to Au- edition of his Vie de Jesus on; fol-
thorship. lowed, though a little less definitely, by Harnack) that "John the Presbyter," a disciple of the apostle and depending on his narrative, wrote it. If it be noticed that throughout the whole Gospel the two apostles who with Peter stood next to Jesus are never once named, it appears that this is too constant an attitude to be fortuitous, and that it can be explained only by the author's feeling that it was unfitting to introduce into the sacred history his own and his parents' names. The " disciple whom Jesus loved " of the last supper (xiii. 21-25) must have been an apostle, and one of the inner circle even among the apostles. That he was the author of the book is expressly stated in the supplementary chapter xxi. The solemn close of chapter xx., looking back upon a completed work, shows that this was not written at the same time with the rest; but the fact that neither in the Fathers nor in the oldest versions and the extant Greek manuscripts is there any trace of an existence of the book without this chapter shows that it must have been added before the Gospel had been widely circulated, or soon after the composition of the first twenty chapters. Whoever, then, wrote xxi. 24 testified in the apostle's lifetime that he was the author of the book; and the internal evidence for its authenticity is supported by a unanimous tradition which apparently can be traced up to his very friends and disciples. If the relation between the writer and the first readers was as close as it appears to have been, there is no room for deliberate deceit on the part of the former or for unconscious error of the latter. Those who have upheld the opposite theory have depended far too little on positive study of the text and positive information to assert that the book was written by Cerinthus, or by a second-century Gentile Christian with Gnostie tendencies, or by a Jewish Christian who had never been outside of Syria, or by a disciple or disciples of John at Ephesus, or by a " Presbyter John."
The upholders of these various views have agreed
only in the negative judgment that an immediate
disciple of Christ can not have written the book,
for the reason that its contents are
3. Objec- incredible on historical, psychological,
tions to or philosophico-dogmatic grounds. Of Johannine these grounds the following brief
Author- sketch will suffice: (1) On account of sllip- the great difference in language and manner of thought it seems impossible, they say, that the same man (even at different periods of his life) could have written the Gospel and the letters on one side and the Apocalypse on the other. (2) If the synoptic Gospels are older than the fourth, as both tradition and criticism show, and are a trustworthy reproduction of the general tradition of the years 60-100, then the incompatibility of their narrative with John's in the whole plan of the story and in certain important
details (for example the chronology of the Passion) will render impossible a belief in the composition of the Fourth Gospel by an eye-witness. (3) Still more, the picture given in it of the person of Jesus, his relation to his disciples, and the tone of his reputed speeches differ fundamentally from those given by the synoptics; and this difference leads to the belief that the Fourth Gospel was written by a man of the second or third generation, under the influence of speculative and churchly ideas. (4) One of these ideas is the doctrine of the Logos, which comes from Philo or the Alexandrian philosophy and can not have been known by the Galilean fisherman. (5) The way in which the writer introduces himself with apparent unconsciousness, at the same time putting himself forward as the favorite disciple, is morally more conceivable in a later writer who more or less assumed the character of the apostle than in the latter himself. (6) Evidences of ignorance of the historical and geographical conditions of Palestine in the time of Christ are adduced, though less confidently in modern times than was formerly the case. (7) The tradition as to the residence of the apostle John at Ephesus is partly uncertain, because depending on the testimony of writings bearing his name; partly equivocal in that the apostolic character of the John who lived there between 70 and 100 is not clearly shown; and partly unfavorable to the composition of the Fourth Gospel by this John, of whom words and acts are reported (e.g., in connection with the Quartodeciman controversy) which do not harmonize with the thought of the evangelist. While a discussion of the first six points is impossible here, the last must be dealt with at some length, because it relates to the last period of the apostle's life and because the whole historical foundation for his literary activity is involved in it.
Even if the Apocalypse is pseudonymous, which
few nowadays maintain, it still teaches that at the
date of its composition (about 95 a.d.) there was a
well-known and revered Christian of
4. John's Jewish birth named John, whose per-
Besidence manent home was on the mainland at and his enforced habitation at that
Ephesus. time the island of Patmos. As far as tradition speaks clearly, it constantly designates him as an apostle, whether it mentions him as the author of the Johannine writings, or as a teacher in the province of Asia, or as an authority for the ecclesiastical usages prevalent there. There has been much discussion of the passage in Eusebius where he cites Papias, and apparently in part at least misunderstands him. Without discussing this at length, it is safe to say that the " Presbyter John " is a product of the critical and exegetical weakness of Eusebius; and the question becomes merely who was the John who (according to the testimony of the Apocalypse and of his disciples Polycarp, Papias, and the other " presbyters " mentioned by Irenseus) lived at Ephesus in the closing years of the first century, exercised a predominant influence on the Church of the province, died after the accession of Trajan or about 100, and (by the testimony of Polycrates, bishop
John the Apostle John the Baptist