THE

HISTORICAL CHARACTES
OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL

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BY

J. ARMITAGE ROBINSON, D.

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THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER OF
ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL

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LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.,
London, New York, Bombay, and Calcutta

THE
HISTORICAL CHARACTER
OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL
THREE LECTURES DELIVERED IN WESTMINSTER ABBEY
IN ADVENT, 1907

BY
J. AEMITAGE EOBINSON, D.D.
DBA.N OF WESTMINSTER

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
NEW YORK, BOMBAY, AND CALCUTTA
1908
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CONTENTS.

PAQE
Lecture 1  7
II  28
III  47
Note. — On the Alleged Mabtyedom ov St. John
THE Apostle  64

THE HISTORICAL CHARACTER
OF ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL.
L
OuE earliest account of the life and death of
Jesus Christ makes no effort to define the nature
of His person or to interpret His relation to the
world's history. St. Mark offers us scene after
scene in quick succession, with scarcely a single
comment and with no desire to enforce a doctrine
or a moral. The naturalness with which the
story developes itself is due to mere faithfulness
to the facts ; the unity of the work is not the
result of conscious art.
Two subsequent evangelists have made St.
Mark's Gospel the basis of their fuller nar
ratives. Each of them is in his way a literary
artist : each has constantly in view the impres
sion which his work will make upon his readers
— Jewish or Gentile Christians, as the case may
be. Each rearranges the materials he borrows
from St. Mark, and modifies their phraseology
with the view of enforcing certain principles or
7

8 The Historical Character of
avoiding possible misconceptions. Each seeks
to be in some sense an interpreter of the story,
telling it afresh for the greater edification of
Christian believers. Yet this element of in
terpretation is strictly subordinate : the main
purpose of each writer is that of historical
narrative. When we open the Fourth Gospel we are at
once conscious of a different literary atmosphere.
It is not a chronicle, but a study, of the life of
Christ. The interpretative element is no longer
subordinate ; it is the dominating factor of the
composition. The meaning and issue of Christ's
work is the supreme interest : its relation to
the whole history of humanity is considered at
the outset ; its effect on individuals and classes
of individuals is traced at every step. All the
way through the Christ presents Himself for
acceptance or rejection ; men are being judged
— they pass judgment on themselves — by their
very attitude towards Him. Belief or disbelief,
and consequently life or death — this is the tre
mendous alternative. And the book is avow
edly written, not to convey historical instruction,
but to produce conviction : " These things have
been written that ye may believe that Jesus is
the Christ, the Son of God, and that beheving
ye may have life in His name " (xx. 31).
It is easy to exaggerate this interpretative ele-

St. John's Gospel 9
ment. We are, indeed, at the present time being
seriously asked to suppose that the evangehst,
eager to display his own conception of Christ's
person and mission, and finding no sufficient
illustration in the scenes which tradition offered,
gave full play to his imagination and constructed
situations, characters, and conversations to serve
his didactic purpose. But this supposition loses
sight of a consideration which ought to be always
before us in dealing with the earliest documents
of Christianity. The new religion proclaimed
itself from the outset as the truth, in contrast
to the falsity of heathen beliefs. " The truth as
it is in Jesus ; " " Truth came by Jesus Christ ; "
"Ye shall know the truth:" such is the key
note of the earliest teaching. It was the new
facts that scattered the old heathen mythologies.
It is to my mind impossible to doubt that the
evangelist of the Fourth Gospel intended the
scenes which he describes to be accepted as real
occurrences ; it is impossible to believe that he
knew them all the while to be the outcome of
his imagination.
I would not be supposed to mean that a writer
fifty years after the events would not give a
certain colour to the details of a picturesque
narrative, and would not modify the expressions
of a discourse or a conversation, so that the result
should not be a literal reproduction of what we

10 The Historical Character of
should have seen or heard had we been present.
But it is one thing to recognize a strong personal
element in the construction of a narrative, and
especially of a narrative in which dialogue plays
a large part ; it is quite another thing to suppose
that incidents have been created for the sake of
the instruction they are to convey. We may
admit that the element of interpretation has
largely controlled the structure of the book, the
choice and arrangement of materials, even the
language attributed to speakers : we may admit
that teaching which was only latent, and only
recognized long after, has been made explicit by
a writer who cannot always distinguish between
what was actually uttered and what he believes
was involved in his Master's words. But I for
one cannot admit that the writer of the Fourth
Gospel has knowingly offered us parable for fact,
and has recorded with the most vivid and con
vincing reahsm scenes of Christ's hfe which he
knew to be historically untrue.
If we could doubt of our author's own meaning,
we have but to read the first words of his Epistle,
which forms a kind of epilogue to his Gospel :
" That which was from the beginning, which we
have heard, which we have seen with our eyes,
which we have looked upon and our hands have
handled, of the Word of life . . . that which we
have seen and heard declare we unto you."

St. John's Gospel 11
These are the words of a man to whom facts
have brought a revelation : not of one who con
jures up imaginary scenes in order to clothe
spiritual conceptions in an attractive form. I
desire to recognize that the element of interpre
tation, which gradually enters into the narration
of the Gospel, reaches its maximum in St. John ;
but I am not willing to exaggerate this element
of interpretation so as to destroy the historical
character of the events which it undertakes to
interpret. We may picture to ourselves a writer at the
close of the apostolic age anxious to place on
permanent record the fruits of his long experi
ence, which has gradually revealed to him the
meaning of the unique events of his early days,
when he moved in company with Him whom
now he knows as the eternal Word who be
came flesh and dwelt among us. Such a study
of the life of Christ as he would write, an inter
pretation of His mission and its issue, composed
with the express purpose of deepening conviction
in Christians already familiar with the main
facts and the principal figures of the history,
might well be quite independent of earlier narra
tives. It might assume their general contents
to be known, it might occasionally offer a silent
correction of their order or their details, and it
might largely supplement them by dwelling on

12 The Historical Character of
incidents and teachings which they had omitted.
This is,indeed, just what we find in St. John's
Gospel. It is in the main a Gospel of paralipo-
mena, of "hnes left out," passages of our Lord's
life unrecorded hitherto.
So then we pass on from speaking of the differ
ent literary atmosphere of which we are conscious
when we turn from the Synoptists to St. John's
Gospel, to say something of two other contrasts
which immediately strike us — the difference in
the character of the teaching attributed to our
Lord, and the difference in the scenes of His
ministerial work.
The swift and vigorous sketch of our Lord's
life contained in St. Mark's Gospel presents so
natural and so convincing a development of the
historical situation, that we can readily under
stand that two subsequent evangelists should
have accepted it as the necessary groundwork
of their larger books ; so that, notwithstanding
some modifications and many additions, derived
largely from a second source, the outline of the
story as each of them tells it is practically the
same as before. This Synoptic account, as it
has for some time been named, impresses our
imagination all the more because it seems to
have a threefold attestation. In one sense,
indeed, it has ; for its acceptance by the two
later writers is a testimony to the behef of the

St. John's Gospel 13
Christian community in their day that St. Mark
had, if incompletely, yet truthfully described
the life of the Master. But the historian is
bound to remember that we have not here three
documents independent in origin and each con
firmatory of the other two, but one document
which has been adopted more or less fully by
two subsequent writers. As he cannot suppose
that either of these two writers was an eye
witness of the events which St. Mark records,
he v^ill generally prefer St. Mark's original
statements to any modifications of them which
they have introduced ; and he will regard the
Synoptic outline as ultimately representing one
clear view by one well-informed narrator of a
life of which much necessarily remains untold.
The second important document which the first
and third evangelists had in common, and
which they used in very different ways to fill
out St. Mark's brief outline, cannot now be
reconstructed as a continuous narrative. But
whatever its original form may have been, it is
plain that the embodiment of large portions of
it did not require in the judgment of either of
them the abandonment of the general scheme
of narrative which they had accepted from St.
Mark. At any rate, neither of them so far
varies from St. Mark as to narrate any ministry
of Christ in Jerusalem until the last days before

14 The Historical Character of
the crucifixion. This restriction is the more
remarkable in view of the fact that the non-
Maroan document contained the apostrophe to
Jerusalem — " How often would I have gathered
thy children, as a hen gathereth her chickens
under her wings; and ye would not".
Here, then, is a problem which the historian
has to face. His earliest document confines our
Lord's ministry in the main to Galilee, and does
not bring Him to Jerusalem at all until the last
week. Two subsequent writers have accepted
the general outline of the story in this respect,
although they embody words from another docu
ment which primd facie suggest frequent visits
to Jerusalem. On the other hand there are
two considerations to be weighed. It is unlikely
in itself that Christ should have so far departed
from religious usage as never to visit Jerusalem
for any of the great feasts during the period of
His public ministry in Galilee. It is also unlikely
in itself that He should have neglected the re
ligious centre of the nation, and made no appeal
to it until the very close.
Does not the solution of this problem lie in
the consideration that St. Mark's Gospel is
Galilean in its interest, and accordingly restricted
in its scope? Is it not easier to believe that
visits to Jerusalem should have been left un
recorded by a narrator whose interests lay in

St. John's Gospel 15
Galilee, than to suppose that such visits never
were made? At this point of perplexity St.
John's Gospel comes to our aid with a new his
torical fact. It informs us that besides the minis
try in Gahlee reported by St. Mark, and accepted
as the basis of their narratives by the first and
third evangehsts, there was also a ministry to
"Jews" in the narrower sense ("Judeans") in
Jerusalem ; that this ministry was not con
tinuous, but intermittent, taken up from time
to time as the great feasts came round ; that its
teaching was of a different character from that
which was given to Galileans, and that the situa
tion thereby created was wholly unlike that
which arose out of the Galilean ministry.
The Galilean ministry, as described by St.
Mark, opens with enthusiasm which ripens into
an unbounded popularity. When opposition
manifests itself, it is not native opposition, but
the envious interference of religious teachers,
who form part of a system which centres in
Jerusalem, and who are sometimes expressly
noted as coming from Jerusalem. The Jeru
salem ministry, on the contrary, as described
by St. John, never arouses enthusiasm. It has
to do with those who challenge it from the
outset. There is no atmosphere of simplicity
and frankness to welcome the new manifestation
of power and sympathy and liberty. The wit-

16 The Historical Character qf
ness is delivered to a hostile audience, whether
they will hear or no. Ultimate issues are
quickly raised ; for keen critics perceive at once
the claims which underlie deeds and words, and
the claims in consequence become exphcit. The
relation of the teacher to God is the vital interest.
In Jerusalem this question must needs be raised
at the outset, and must recur again and again.
Upon the answer it received, and upon the re
ception of that answer, the crisis must turn.
From the Galilean standpoint the tragic close
had been sufficiently accounted for in the simple
narrative of St. Mark. Conflict with Pharisaic
religion and disappointment of popular Messianic
expectation had nullified the effect of the Gahlean
work. There was no movement in force, no
wave of enthusiasm which could carry Jerusa
lem ; and so Jerusalem proved fatal to a Mes
sianic claimant whom it dreaded and dishked ;
it conveniently disowned Him and handed Him
over as a discredited pretender to be executed
by the Eoman government. Here was the plain
fact, and it was a sufficient reply to the natural
questions of the first generation of Gentile con
verts, living at a distance from the scenes of the
great events, and little acquainted with Pales
tinian Judaism. But the plain fact, thus simply
related, left grave questions untouched. Why
was Jerusalem so fatally hostile ? Had it never

St. John's Gospel 17
been given a chance of knowing its Messiah
except by hearsay ? Had it never seen Him till
the last week ? Such is the impression left upon
the reader of St. Mark's Gospel. Or was there a
whole region of activity unnoticed by St. Mark's
brief record? Had there been concurrently
with the development of the Galilean situation
another development unconcerned with Galilee,
which would explain the decisive blow which
was finally struck in Jerusalem ?
That such a concurrent development was
possible arises out of a peculiar phenomenon of
Jewish religious life — out of tbe custom of
attendance at the great feasts in Jerusalem.
Here were the natural opportunities for periodic
visits to the rehgious centre at its moments of
highest activity. Now the crucial historical
statement of the Fourth Gospel is this — that
from feast to feast a mission went forward,
never indeed welcomed, but persisted in with
unflinching determination until that last pass-
over which brought its final rejection. Broadly
considered, this is historically probable.
These preliminary remarks will prepare us to
recognize two ruling features which characterise
the whole of the Fourth Gospel — it is interpre
tative and it is supplementary. It sets itself
to interpret the meaning and scope of our Lord's
mission; and it does this mainly through the
2

18 The Historical Character of
medium of the hitherto unrecorded story of the
repeated manifestation of His personality and
power and the assertion of His claims, where
of necessity they must have been most thor
oughly canvassed, at the religious centre of the
national life. It is a story of days long gone by,
treasured in a loving memory, and illuminated
by an experience which has gradually learned
its inmost truth. It is a story told not by an
historian, but by a spiritual teacher ; explained
and commented on at every point in the hght
of subsequent knowledge, till at times the narra
tive seems merged in the commentary, and we
are in doubt whether the evangelist is even in
tending to record the words of another, or is
speaking to us directly in his own person. The
picture of the Christ which he draws for us is
not simply the bare recollection of what met
his untutored eyes in those far-off days, surpris
ing and amazing, contradicting expectation, and
waiting for the issue to interpret it ; it is the
full truth of what was then half-hidden, half-
revealed, but is now plainly seen to have been
the manifestation of the Divine glory in human
flesh. The prologue, or opening section of the Gospel,
shows us that St. John's interest is more than
historical, in the narrower sense of the word ;
it belongs rather to the philosophy of history.

St. John's Gospel 19
It goes back for its starting-point behind hu
man birth and lines of ancestry. It begins, like
the first page of the Old Testament, "In the
beginning". It connects the Christ with the
eternal purpose of God. He is the creative
Word, which God spake, and by which all things
were made. He is the Life, and He is the Light
of men. He became flesh, to declare to men
the invisible God. The destiny of each man
depends on his acceptance or rejection of the
Light and Life thus offered to him. These first
words place us at the point of view from which
the evangelist writes. His Gospel is the story
of the great rejection, written for the warning
and the encouragement of such as have received
and welcomed the Divine gift.
The mission of the Baptist is assumed to be
familiar, and is commented on rather than
narrated : " He came to bear witness of the
Light, that through him all men might believe ".
But some new points are given us. In a figure
which gathers up the lessons of the law and
the prophets, the Baptist speaks of Jesus as
the sin-bearing " Lamb of God ". A few eager
souls are thus prepared at the outset to recog
nize the Messiah, the Son of God, the King of
Israel. But the meaning with which they used
these current titles then was but the narrow
national conception, which had to be painfully
2 *

20 The Historical Character of
unlearned. For it was not as the Jewish Mes
siah, but as the Light and Life of men that
He would be known and received.
The incidents which close the first chapter
recall the brightness and simplicity of the Gah
lean story of St. Mark; and the figures that
meet us are mainly Galilean. The second
chapter actually takes us to Gahlee. Hitherto
the Lord has given no special sign of power or
grace. His personality is itself gracious and
convincing : it wins and retains the true-hearted
disciples of John. The first sign, when it comes,
is like no other miracle. It breathes the ex
quisite fragrance of the spring-time ; it has all
the geniality of the early Galilean ministry of
the primitive Gospel. It supplies human de
ficiency and it sanctifies human joy. At the
same time it offers a deeper lesson : it is a par
able of the highest optimism — the enrichment
of human life by an infusion of the Divine, man's
water changing into God's wine.
In sharp contrast with this gentle Gahlean
scene stands the first visit to Jerusalem. At
the time of its most sacred feast we see the
temple crowded with greedy traffickers. The
swift severity with which He avenges the insult
to His Father's house reveals a new side of His
character and of His power.
The reader of St. Mark's Gospel is surprised

St. John's Gospel 21
to come so soon in the Fourth Gospel upon the
cleansing of the temple, which he has learned
to place in the last week of our Lord's life. But
on reflection he observes that, whatever the exact
date may have been, the relative position of
the incident is the same in St. John as in St.
Mark. In either Gospel it forms the first public
act of the ministry in Jerusalem. If it does
not find an earlier place in St. Mark, it is because
that Gospel records but one visit to Jerusalem.
And we may further note that in both Gospels
this startling action is followed by a challenge
to declare by what authority our Lord so acts ;
so that in Jerusalem the ultimate issue — His
relation to God — is raised at the outset.
This marks the essential difference between
the ministry in Gahlee and that in Jerusalem,
and it confirms us in thinking that St. John gives
its rightful place to this incident. This violent
scene is followed by the secret visit of a leading
Pharisee. The same uncompromising sternness
demands from the very representative of religious
Judaism the completest change — a new birth.
It is the sequel of the message of the Baptist —
the axe is laid at the root of the tree. It is
John's baptism raised to a higher power — water
and spirit, as he had foretold. Eeform is not
enough ; reconstitution only will avail.
Nothing could accord more closely with his-

22 The Historical Character of
toric probability than the opening part of this
conversation : " Except a man be born again he
cannot see the kingdom of God ". " The king
dom of God" is not a Johannine phrase. The
short, sharp, parabolic utterance reminds us of
sayings found in the Synoptic Gospels. Its very
repetition is characteristic also. Compare, e.g., St.
Mark's, " How hardly shall they that have riches
enter into the kingdom of God," foUowed up at
once, when objected to, by " It is easier for a
camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a
rich man to enter into the kingdom of God ".
But in the closing words of this interview St.
John passes imperceptibly from recording the
language of the speaker into comment of his
own. He marks the crisis which necessarily fol
lows the manifestation of the new hght : men
are judged already by their attitude towards
it. When this beginning was made in Jerusalem
the Baptist was still at his work. When Jesus
retired into the country, men came to Him to
be baptized, till He found Himself placed in a
position of rivalry with John. John, indeed, re
cognized that his own work was closing ; but
Jesus withdrew from Judea altogether, and jour
neyed northwards. We cannot now pursue the
history further, but this small section of it pre
sents us with all the elements of contrast that

St. John's Gospel 23
mark off the Fourth Gospel from the Synop
tists. I wish, before concluding, to develop one point
a little further. In considering thehistoric pro
bability of the position which St. John assigns
to the cleansing of the temple, we must recog
nize more fully than we are accustomed to recog
nize the influence of the Baptist's mission upon
the opening of Christ's ministry.
In St. Mark the Baptist forms the starting-
point of the Gospel ; but we are expressly told
that he was cast into prison before our Lord's
Galilean work began. Yet even so, the brief
summary of the message of Christ, with which
the Galilean ministry opens (i. 15), includes the
Baptist's demand of repentance as preparatory
to the reception of a new manifestation of
Divine power. This germ of connection is de
veloped by St. Matthew, who makes the first
preaching of Christ identical with the preaching
of the Baptist — altering St. Mark at both points
so as to give twice over the phrase, " Eepent,
for the kingdom of heaven is at hand " (iii. 2 ;
iv. 17). Still, there is a deep meaning in the
note that the Gahlean ministry was not com
menced till John's work was closed ; and men
marked the contrast between the sternness of
the Baptist and our Lord's familiar intercourse
v/ith all classes.

24 The Historical Character of
Now for the first three chapters of the Fourth
Gospel the historical position is different : the
Baptist's mission is still in full career. We are
especially reminded that " John was not yet cast
into prison " (iii. 24). Jesus is even found at
this period adopting John's method, and baptiz
ing even more disciples than he — though the
evangelist presently corrects himself by saying
that Jesus did not Himself perform the rite.
The whole question of purification by baptism
was under discussion. The baptizer with water
had already pointed to the baptizer with spirit
(i. 34). He now declares, " He must increase,
I must decrease". But Jesus will not allow of
the invidious contrast, and when He hears of it
departs altogether from the scene. Samaria is
visited on the way to Galilee, and when the
Lord returns to Jerusalem John's mission is
spoken of in the past tense (v. 35) : "Ye were
willing for a season to rejoice in his light ".
But that former visit to Jerusalem had as its
background the great religious fact of the moment
which was impressing all men's imagination —
John's baptism of repentance in the wilderness.
When Nicodemus was told, " Except a man be
born of water and spirit he cannot enter the
kingdom of God," he would necessarily be re
minded of the Baptist's work and words : the
whole of John's mission lies behind the say-

^S"^. John's Gospel 25
ing. And so in the light of the Baptist's pre
dictions of the axe laid at the root of the tree,
and of the cleansing of the threshing-floor and
burning of the chaff, the scene in the temple
courts appears to match with the character of
the time. It is as though the Lord were carry
ing into the city the work of John in the desert.
We are familiar with the application of the
prophecy of Malachi to the preparatory mission
of the Baptist. May we not believe that the
whole context of the words was in our Lord's
mind that day? "Behold, I will send My
messenger, and he shall prepare the way before
Me, and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly
come to His temple . . . but who may abide the
day of His coming ? . . . He is like a refiner's
fire. . . . He shall purify the sons of Levi, and
purge them as gold and silver ". (Mai. iii. \jf.)
It might well have happened that the fourth
evangelist writing long afterwards, when greater
events had thrown the Baptist's mission into the
shade, might have done no more than recognize
his early testimony to Christ. But it is not so.
It feU to his lot to record a portion of our Lord's
ministry which ran concurrently with the Bap
tist's career; and, both upon the surface and
when we pierce beneath it, we find the signs of
this concurrence, as on reflection we feel that
we ought to expect them. Our sense of the

26 The Historical Character of
historic character of his Gospel is enhanced by
this consideration.
My task this afternoon has necessarily been
an apologetic one, for the historical character of
the Fourth Gospel has been very widely denied
in recent times. I have said nothing of the
question of its authorship, for I have had occa
sion previously to state my reasons for thinking
that the traditional assignment of it to the
apostle St. John is more likely to be true than
any of the alternatives that have been proposed.
The question of its general faithfulness to historic
fact is more important than the question of its
authorship. That it presents grave historical
difficulties I recognize, but I plead for patience
and for sympathy in deahng with them. Every
one who has experience in studying history from
original documents knows that he almost always
finds irreconcilable differences between his best
authorities. Life is large and many-sided, and
we have but the impressions of limited observers
to describe it to us, and their restricted views
result in paradox and seeming contradiction.
Why should we expect it to be otherwise with
the Life of lives, which, view it as we may, passes
our comprehension ?
But after all the Gospel of St. John is the
one bqok in the Bible which stands in least need
of the apologist. It commends itself by its aston-

St. John's Gospel 27
ishing power to our intellects and to our hearts.
Some of you may have known the experience
of passing through the darkest gloom of almost
universal doubt, when all that you had trusted
in the past seemed reeling and unsteady ; and
then, it may be, the only part of the Bible that
still seemed to speak to you was the fourteenth,
fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth chapters
of St. John. There at least, however it came
to be there, was something Divine ; and the best
that was in you took courage and responded to
recognised truth.
In Archbishop Temple's Life there are some
letters to his son at Oxford, in which he enters
sympathetically into his various philosophic
difficulties. From one of these I will quote a
few sentences in conclusion. " I am obliged to
confess," he says, "that from seventeen to
five and twenty I indulged largely in such
speculations. But I felt all along like a swim
mer who sees no shore before him after long
swimming, and at last allows himself to be
picked up by a ship that seems to be going
his way." And then, after a few more words,
he adds : " My passing ship was St. John ".

28 The Historical Character of

II.
Wb are so much accustomed to mark the con
trast between the language attributed to our
Lord in the Fourth Gospel and that attributed
to Him in the Synoptic Gospels, and to recog
nize the likeness of the former to St. John's own
phraseology in his First Epistle, that we hardly
do justice to the close correspondence both in
idea and in expression to the Synoptic type
which is exhibited by many of the great sayings
which St. John has recorded. One example
came before us incidentally at the close of the
former lecture. It is worth while to dweU upon
it a little more in detail. Our Lord's words to
Nicodemus, "Except a man be born again he
cannot see the kingdom of God," were met by
the objection, "How can a man be born when
he is old?" Instead of withdrawing or soften
ing the expression, Christ repeats it with a fresh
emphasis ; " Except a man be born of water and
spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God."
" The kingdom of God," as we have before

^S"^. John's Gospel 29
noticed, is not a Johannine phrase ; it never
occurs again in St. John's Gospel or Epistles.
The phrases "to see," and "to enter into the
kingdom of God," are both found in St. Mark.
The emphatic repetition of the condition of entry
into the kingdom of God has a striking parallel
in St. Mark's Gospel (x. 23-25), "How hardly
shall they that have riches enter into the king
dom of God. And the disciples marvelled at
His words, but Jesus answered and said again
to them, Children, how hard it is to enter into
the kingdom of God ; it is easier for a camel to
go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to
enter into the kingdom of God."
If the rich man must become poor, so the old
must become young. The incident immediately
preceding is the blessing of the httle children.
" Of such as these," He says, "is the kingdom
of God. Verily I say unto you, whosoever shall
not receive the kingdom of God as a little child,
shall not enter therein" (x. 14, 15). Com
pare St. Matthew xviii. 3, "Except ye turn
and become as the little children, ye shall not
enter into the kingdom of heaven ".
The fundamental change, "impossible with
men, but not impossible with God," is no less
inexorably demanded in the short, sharp sayings
of the Fourth Gospel; though the figure is
shghtly modified, and words are introduced

30 The Historical Character of
which become intelligible and appropriate when
we remember that the baptism of John was the
great outstanding religious event of the time.
The difficult discourse which follows bears
many traces of the characteristic language of
the evangelist himself, and towards the close
of it most commentators agree that he is prac
tically addressing his readers in his own person.
Yet in the early portion of it we must note the
phrase " the Son of Man " — occurring only, as
in the Synoptists, on our Lord's own lips : and
the hardly veiled reference to His death is in
harmony with the stress and peril of the Jeru
salem ministry. It is natural that the fatal crisis
should be nearer to His thoughts here than in
Galilee: "for it cannot be," so He said, "that
a prophet perish out of Jerusalem ".
We may now pass on to the next visit to
Jerusalem, which is described in the fifth
chapter. As in Galilee, so in Jerusalem issue
is joined with the Eabbinic party on the ques
tion of the sabbath day. It could not have
been otherwise. Power and sympathy 'and
liberty, as we have seen on a former occasion,
are the keynotes of the self-manifestation of
Christ in the early chapters of St. Mark's
Gospel. It was because He would not allow
His power and His sympathy to be hindered
and hampered by rehgious conventions, how-

St. John's Gospel 31
ever sacred they might be held to be, that He
touched the leper in spite of the prohibiting re
gulation and healed the man with the withered
hand in the synagogue on the sabbath. It
was this second manifestation of His freedom
from conventional restraints that stirred up the
Pharisees even in Gahlee to plot against His
life. At Jerusalem such action was yet more
immediately dangerous. After the cure of the
impotent man we read, "The Jews perse
cuted Jesus because He had done these things
on the sabbath". They even sought to kill
Him, and He soon retired to Galilee again.
It is instructive to observe the nature of the
reply which the Lord made when first He was
challenged for this action. We have several
examples in the Synoptic Gospels of the various
methods by which our Lord justified His relation
to the sabbath. Once He appealed to the Old
Testament story of David giving the sacred
shewbread to his hungry men, contravening
the regulation in the interest of a reasonable
mercy. Then He took higher ground, and pro
claimed the principle that the sabbath was
made for man's good ; it was to be his servant,
not his master ; and He added the profound
saying, " The Son of Man is Lord of the sab
bath " (St. Mark ii. 24-28). Before He cured the
man with the withered hand He asked those who

32 The Historical Character of
were watching Him with suspicion, " Is it lawful
to do good to a man on the sabbath, or to do
him evil? to save a life, or to kill?" (iii. 4).
Other sayings are familiar: "If ye had known
what that meaneth, I will have mercy and not
sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guilt
less " (St. Matt. xii. 7) ; " What man is there of
you who shall have one sheep, and if it faU into
a pit on the sabbath, will he not take hold of it
and lift it out ? How much, then, is a man
better than a sheep ? " (xii. 11, 12). And once
again : " Hypocrites, doth not each of you on
the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall
and lead it away to watering? And ought not
this woman, being a daughter of Abraham,
whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen
years, to be loosed from this bond on the day
of the sabbath " (St. Luke xiii. 15, 16).
In these replies we have sometimes the pre
sentation of a parallel case, and a direct argu
mentum ad 'hominem, as we say ; and sometimes
the enunciation of a profound principle, which
tends to modify the whole character of the
institution in question. The reply to the Jews
in St. John's Gospel belongs to the latter class.
It is brief, pregnant, mysterious : " My Father
worketh even until now, and I work" (v. 17).
The problem suggested by the scripture, "God
rested on the seventh day," in face of the fact

St. John's Gospel 33
that God's work in upholding the material
creation knew no interruption, was no new
problem in the Jewish schools. What was
new and startling was the claim of Christ to
identify His action with the Divine. He lifted
the issue on to a higher level, and once again in
Jerusalem His relation to God was the point on
which all was made to turn. " For this cause,
therefore, the Jews sought the more to kill Him,
because He had not only broken the sabbath, but
had said also that God was His own Father, mak
ing Himself equal to God " (v. 18). So the sab
bath question falls into the background, and the
discourse which follows concerns the relation of
the Son to the Father. It is, however, worthy
to be noted that on a subsequent occasion,
when this same miracle was again under dis
cussion, our Lord made a reply of the kind of
which we have so many examples in the other
Gospels : " I have done one work, and ye all
marvel. Moses gave you circumcision . . . and
on the sabbath day ye circumcise a man. If
a man receive circumcision on the sabbath,
that the law of Moses may not be broken, are
ye angry with Me that I made a man every whit
whole on the sabbath day ? Judge not according
to appearance, but judge righteous judgment"
(vii. 21-25).
We may now proceed to consider the his-
3

34 The Historical Character of
torical character of the story of the raising of
Lazarus. I confess that I am not able to under
stand why this particular narrative should be
regarded as pecuharly difficult to reconcile with
historical probability. It does not appear to me
to differ in any essential point from the stories
of the raising of the dead which are contained
in the Synoptic Gospels. The somewhat longer
period which elapsed between the moment of
death and the moment of revival only implies
that the ordinary processes of decay were sus
pended by the Divine providence which intended
the return to life. Indeed our Lord first spoke
of this temporary death as a sleep from which
Lazarus should be awakened ; only when His
disciples misunderstood Him to mean a natural
sleep, from which there would be a natural
awakening without the need of any intervention
on His part, did He say plainly, "Lazarus is
dead ". Vital action was suspended, only to be
restored by His personal intervention ; but the
process of decay was also suspended with a view
to that intervention. The language of our Lord
is closely parallel to that which He used in
reference to the daughter of Jairus, "The
maiden is not dead, but sleepeth ".
I do not now address myself to those who are
unable to admit that any of the narratives of
the raising of the dead can possibly be histori-

St. John's Gospel 35
cally true. I am only saying that to those who
do admit the possibility of such a Divine inter
vention the circumstances of the revival of
Lazarus need not appear to present peculiar
difficulties. And with this preface I go on to
consider what are the grounds on which, even
for such persons, the story of the raising of
Lazarus has been said to be wanting in historical
probability. The chief objections to it appear
to be three : 1. There is no place for it in the
framework of St. Mark's Gospel ; 2. It is
directly inconsistent with St. Mark's account of
the events which led to the crucifixion ; 3. If it
had happened, St. Mark must have known of it
and mentioned it.
1. With regard to the first objection, our
former study has shown us that it is not reason
able to regard the brief and rapid sketch which
St. Mark has given us as completely covering
even the main activities of our Lord's life. We
have already had to refuse to rule out the oc
casional visits to Jerusalem, and the ministry
which was carried on intermittently at the great
feasts, on the ground that St. Mark makes no
reference to them. We have admitted that his
framework is too narrow for what appear to be
the probable facts. In regard to the particular
period which we are now concerned with, I
would have you observe the account which St.
3 *

36 The Historical Character of
Mark gives of our Lords' journey from Galilee to
Jerusalem. In x. 1 we find Him leaving Galilee
for "the regions of Judea and beyond the
Jordan " : in xi. 1 He is preparing to make the
triumphal entry into Jerusalem. The whole
of the intervening period contains but five dis
tinct incidents, and occupies only fifty-two verses.
We turn to St. Luke's Gospel and find that this
period occupies no less than 400 verses. With
a mass of further material at his disposal he has
enlarged the record of the journey to Jerusalem,
as the best method of finding room for incidents
as to which St. Mark is silent. It is plain,
therefore, that St. Mark's framework was too
narrow; but St. Luke seems not to have
had the means of rectifying it with definite
certainty, and so he fitted in his materials as
best he could without seriously disturbing it.
2. The second objection is much more serious,
if it can be sustained. It appears to me to shape
itself as follows. The Fourth Gospel repre
sents the raising of Lazarus as the immediate
cause which led to the arrest and condemnation
and crucifixion of our Lord. The sensation
which it produced was immense. Terrified and
exasperated by the popular emotion which it
aroused, the two leading parties of Jewish
political and religious life — the Pharisees and the
Sadducaic high-priestly party — combined their

St. John's Gospel 37
forces for the moment to rid themselves of a
dangerous antagonist. The interest which Laz
arus himself aroused was so great that a design
was entertained of putting him also to death as
a disturbance to the public peace. It was on
account of the fame of this miracle that the
multitude went out from Jerusalem carrying
palm-branches to meet the Lord and conduct
Him with triumph into the Holy City. The
Pharisees said to each other in despair, " Ye
see that ye avail nothing ; behold, the world is
gone after Him ". There is no more parleying
after this ; the weapon of force is employed, with
the issue that we know.
Side by side with this we set the Synoptic
account. The general trend of opposition is
traceable in St. Mark's Gospel. Jews from
Jerusalem appear as murmurers and objectors
in the course of the Galilean ministry. The
Galilean popularity slips silently away. It is
never organized into an effective movement.
There is, on the other hand, a highly organized
religious system, which feels itself endangered. It
is preparing to strike when an occasion may pre
sent itself. Our Lord Himself is fully conscious
that the visit to Jerusalem which He is about to
undertake will end in His death. His forecast,
which He repeatedly makes to His disciples,
proves to be true. After a few days of public

38 The Historical Character of
teaching in the temple He is betrayed, arrested,
and put to death. But no distinct incidents are
emphasised as specially hastening on the crisis.
Much is left quite unexplained ; as, for example,
the sudden enthusiasm of the entry into Jeru
salem. The impression conveyed by this part
of the narrative in particular is very different
from that conveyed by the author of the Fourth
Gospel. Our Lord seems to come rapidly from
Galilee, pausing briefly at Jericho, where a blind
man receives his sight, and then passing on vTith-
out interruption to Jerusalem. "And when
they draw nigh to Jerusalem, at Bethphage and
Bethany by the Mount of Olives " — so the some
what vague description runs — the Lord sends
to a neighbouring village for the ass, on which
the disciples put their garments, and He sits
thereon : " and many strewed their garments in
the way, and others branches which they cut from
the fields ; " and so with shouts of " Hosanna "
they conducted Him to Jerusalem. We are left
with the idea that our Lord came direct from
Jericho to Jerusalem, a distance of about fifteen
miles, and that the enthusiasm of His entry was
generated in the body of disciples who accom
panied Him from Galilee.
To return for a moment at this point to St.
John, we find him relating that after the raising
of Lazarus Jesus had retired from the neigh-

St. John's Gospel 39
bourhood of Jerusalem. But presently the pass-
over was approaching, and a week in advance
He came back to Bethany, and was present at
a supper, at which Mary anointed His feet. It
became known that He was there, and people
came from the city to see both Him and Lazarus.
The next day it was generally known that Jesus
was coming to Jerusalem, and, as we have
already said, people took palm-branches and
came out to meet Him, crying "Hosanna".
Then Jesus found an ass and sat thereon, in
accordance, as His disciples afterwards remem
bered, with the ancient prophecy of the King
coming to Sion sitting on the foal of an ass.
Next follows the incident of the Greeks who
sought to see Jesus ; and then the general state
ment of the rejection of the Lord in accordance
with the prophecies of Isaiah. After this we
have only conversations in private with His
disciples until the time of the betrayal and
arrest. I have tried to bring out in strong rehef the
contrast between the two narratives. Minor
inconsistencies there are many; but I cannot
feel that, broadly considered, the two accounts
are mutually exclusive the one of the other.
The essential difference appears to be a differ
ence of standpoint in telling the story. The one
narrator stands in Galilee, so to speak, and

40 The Historical Character of
watches the fatal progress from Gahlee to Jeru
salem ; the other narrator stands in Jerusalem,
or its immediate vicinity, and watches the
reception there, and describes the particular
circumstances which made it what it was. I
am not in the least concerned to maintain that
the details of each picture can be so interpreted
as to remove what seem to be obvious contra
dictions. I think that sometimes the historian
has to choose between a detail in St. Mark and
a detail which conflicts with it in St. John,
and that in default of other evidence he must
cautiously apply the test of intrinsic probabihty.
I think, for example, that we get from St. John
an explanation of the enthusiasm of our Lord's
reception which is missing in St. Mark and can
not quite satisfactorily be harmonized with his
narrative. But, when we come to the broad issue, it
appears to me to be altogether an exaggeration
to say that St. John represents the raising of
Lazarus as the immediate cause which led to
our Lord's arrest and death. St. John does
indeed emphasize in this connection the ex
asperation and the plotting of His enemies.
But he has done this again and again. Let me
recall some of the passages. In v. 16, " The Jews
persecuted Him, because He had done these
things on the sabbath day ; " v. 18, " They

St. John's Gospel 41
sought the more to kill Him, because He had not
only broken the sabbath, but had said also that
God was His own Father, making Himself equal
to God ; " vh. 1, " He would not walk in Judea
because the Jews were seeking to kill Him;"
vii. 32, " They sent to take Him ; " vii. 44,
"Some wished to take Him;" viii. 20, "No
man took Him, because His hour was not yet
come ; " viii. 59, ¦ ' They took up stones to cast at
Him, but Jesus hid Himself and went out of the
t-emple;'' x. 39, "They sought again to take
Him ; " xi. 8, " Rabbi, the Jews were seeking but
now to stone Thee, and goest Thou thither
again ? . . . Thomas said. Let us also go, that
we may die with Him." All this is before the
raising of Lazarus.
I grant you, if you isolate this section of St.
John's narrative, you do get the impression
that the raising of Lazarus led to the plots
against our Lord's hfe. But if you come to this
incident in its place in St. John's whole story,
then you are already supphed with a corrective to
such an idea. In proportion as it roused pubhc
interest and enthusiasm, it would doubtless whet
the edge of hostihty ; but the intention to de
stroy Him was akeady long formed, and already
several attempts had been made to carry it out.
3. But, lastly, it is said that if so great a
miracle, creating so great a sensation in Jeru-

42 The Historical Character of
salem, had actually taken place, St. Mark must
have known of it and mentioned it. Now, this
is the well-known argument from silence, an
argument which historians have again and again
found to be misleading. That a writer omits
to mention a matter which he might reasonably
be expected to mention may admit of various
explanations. One explanation, of course, is
that no such thing occurred, and therefore he
makes no mention of it. But we must be sure
that we have exhausted all other alternative
explanations before we can adopt this with any
sort of security. It has proved a pitfall again
and again.
In this particular instance, the argument that
St. Mark must have known and referred to the
raising of Lazarus, if it really took place, loses
half its force when we no longer believe that
it was the immediate cause which led to the
crucifixion. If all would have gone smoothly
but for this, if this was the palpably obvious
reason why the attack was then made, it would
be difficult to suppose that St. Mark could have
omitted to mention it. But if it be true, as all
the Gospels indicate, that for some time Jesus
had known that His life was in danger, and that
Jerusalem would certainly be the place of His
death, then the incident loses its special signifi
cance in this respect in the general story.

St. John's Gospel 43
And the force of the argument from. silence
is still further weakened, if we allow that much,
very much, happened in and near Jerusalem
which St. Mark does not record. Moreover the
whole period now in question is, as we have
seen, but briefly treated in his Gospel. His story
is hastening to the final scenes ; he has aheady
told of one instance of the raising of the dead ;
he need not tarry to tell another, even if it has
reached his ears. He has enough from his
Galilean point of view to explain the fatal issue :
he has no need to explain, if indeed he knew,
that the issue was hastened by the public sensa
tion which this miracle produced.
These, at any rate, are considerations which
must be weighed, if we are to do ordinary
justice to St. John's narrative. There are
others of a more positive kind which, as it seems
to me, go to support the credibility of the whole
account. Thus, from quite a different source
— neither St. Mark nor St. John — comes a brief
incident, which throws incidental light on the
question, and gives us more than one clue.
St. Luke, long before he brings the Lord to
Jerusalem for the closing scenes, tells a story
about Mary and Martha, two sisters with whom
Jesus stayed as a guest. He does not say —
perhaps he did not know — where their home
was. If it was at Bethany (and there is no

44 The Historical Character of
reason at all to doubt it), then we have incidental
knowledge that our Lord was within two miles
of Jerusalem some time, as it would seem, before
His final visit. In other words, we have a fresh
reason for stretching St. Mark's framework,
and for recognizing that he has omitted much
that actually occurred.
But what is more important, this brief incident
depicts by a few clear strokes the characters of
the two sisters : so strikingly, indeed, that their
names have become proverbial, the one for
impetuous bustle, the other for quiet devo
tion. Now St. John's story shows us the same
two women in a wholly changed situation,
plunged in inconsolable grief. The Master's
arrival is announced. Mary seems to hear
nothing ; Martha leaps up and runs to meet
Him. Soon she is hurrying back to say, " The
Master is come, and is calling for thee ". Then
Mary comes, and throws herself at His feet.
The most minute study of the one incident
could hardly have suggested these details of the
other. The circumstances are quite different,
but we feel that the characters are the same.
If we found such a parallel anywhere in histori
cal literature, we should say that it enhanced
our confidence in both vnriters. We should say
that the stories were true to life.
The identity of the characters which meet

>S'^. John's Gospel 45
us in the Synoptic Gospels and then again, in
changed situations, in the Fourth Gospel is a
subject worthy of careful study. See, for an
other example, the sudden and overwhelming
emotion of St. Peter in St. Luke's story of the
miraculous draught of fishes (v. 8). "When
Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees,
saying. Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 0
Lord ". See the same sudden emotion, and the
like outburst of exaggerated language, in the
totally different scene of the washing of the
disciples' feet. " Thou shalt never wash my feet.
... If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with
Me. . . . Lord, not my feet only, but also my
hands and my head."
And what shall we say of the central Figure
of the Gospels ? Is He essentially the same in
new situations and confronting different pro
blems? There is, indeed, a great contrast
between the language which He holds about
Himself ; a great contrast, too, between the brief
utterances of the Synoptic records and the ex
tended discourses and prolonged disputations of
St. John's Gospel. We can do something by
consideration of difference of time and place,
and something by making allowance for St.
John's own strong personality and long inter
vening experience, to soften and explain the
contrast. Yet it remains a difficulty. But when

46 The Histoi'ical Character of
we turn from the speeches to the speaker Him
self, we find Him always under the most diver
gent conditions the same : the same in power
to supply all human needs, the same in sympathy
for every human misfortune or sorrow, the same
in the large liberty which breaks down every
conventional barrier that would hamper the full
play of His sympathy and His helpfulness. He
is as truly man in the Fourth Gospel as in the
other three — subject to weariness, hunger, dis
appointment, sorrow, and pain. He is as plainly
more than man in the first three Gospels as in
the Fourth, offering to men what no mere man
ever offered, claiming from men that absolute
surrender to Himself which God alone can
rightly claim. Such as He was to the first
writers, such He was to St. John : the friend,
even the servant, of His disciples ; and yet
ever and unmistakably their Master and their
Lord.

St. John's Gospel 47

in.
It is not possible within the narrow compass of
three lectures to do justice to so large a subject
of inquiry as the historical character of the
Fourth Gospel. An adequate treatment would
require a volume of critical studies. What has
seemed possible, and what I have attempted, is
the humbler task of a general survey of the
problem in the light of modern investigations.
My object has been to indicate broadly the
difficulties which present themselves when St.
John's narrative is compared with the Synoptic
narratives, and then to offer some considerations
which help to explain the diversity and which
certainly ought to be borne in mind before an
adverse verdict is recorded. The last thing
which a sober historian will do is to abandon
a document which has strong external evidence
of authenticity. He will try every resource of
explanation before he pronounces its narrative
of events fictitious. He will be very slow to
dispose of what professes to be the account of

48 The Historical Character of
an eye-witness by the hypothesis that it is an
allegorical composition written to inculcate spe
cial doctrines. Not that such a form of litera
ture would necessarily be inappropriate as a
vehicle of spiritual instruction, or inconsistent
with a high view of Biblical inspiration. That
is not the point in question. What I say is that
the historian must refuse, as long as he reason
ably can, to give away one of his principal docu
ments on any such hypothesis. And I cannot
think that in the present instance he is reduced
to such a policy of despair. The abandonment
of even fairly well-attested documents is a
perilous path, and the criticism which advances
upon it generally has to retrace its steps.
Though I used just now the metaphor of an
adverse verdict, it should be remembered that
the investigations of history are not really like
the proceedings of a court of law. There an
issue must be reached and recorded once for
all. A witness is examined, cross-examined,
and dismissed. The jury decide upon the facts,
judgment is given, and the matter is ended.
But here we never reach finahty. Our verdict
is provisional, and the case is tried again and
again. The witness with the honest face and
the puzzling evidence is always with you, and
cannot be dismissed. You may reject his
evidence and write your history vsdthout him;

St. John's Gospel 49
but there he is, perpetually protesting against
its incompleteness. We have not to win a case
which must be decided for practical purposes
one way or the other in a brief space of time.
We can afford to suspend judgment, if need be,
for the sake of fuller investigation. The forged
Decretals and the fictitious chronicle of Ingul-
phus are finally discredited, and will not trouble
historians again. But I am confident that we
cannot reject half our available evidence, and
write a Life of Christ as if the Gospel of St.
John had no existence.
The interest of such a question as this is not
confined to the circle of critics and historians.
Every thoughtful man is concerned to know
whether in reading the narratives of the Fourth
Gospel he is reading facts or fiction. And there
fore it has seemed to me important to offer in
plain and untechnical language some serious
considerations, which in my judgment make it
impossible to dismiss this Gospel as a devout
allegory and to proceed to write history with
out it.
Our limited inquiry can deal with but a few
specimens of the difficulties which are urged.
Some matters of high interest we must leave
aside, such as the omission of any account of
the institution of the Lord's Supper, although
the spiritual truths which underlie it are ex-
4

50 The Historical Character of
pounded and enforced in the conversation which
follows St. John's narrative of the feeding of
the five thousand ; such again as the discrepancy
regarding the date of the crucifixion, which St.
John appears to place on the day on which the
passover lamb was killed, while the Synoptists
appear to place it on the following day, thus
making the Last Supper coincide with the
paschal meal. I mention these examples lest
I should be thought to minimize the extent of
diversity. On the contrary, I recognise that of
these and other difficulties no satisfactory solu
tion has been offered which can be said to meet
with general consent.
We shall conclude our brief survey by some
remarks on a subject of yet greater interest —
the historical value of the narratives which St.
John gives us of the appearances of our Lord
after His resurrection. We may begin by ob
serving that in the accounts of the four Evange
lists at this point we find at once discrepancy in
detail and agreement as to the central facts.
But why, it may be asked, should discrepancies
have been allowed at all at so vital a point of
the history ? Surely if anything needed to be
recorded with precision it was this, which was
to be adduced for ever afterwards as testimony
to fact.
In answer I would remind you, first of all,

St. John's Gospel 61
that the early Christians were not dependent
in any way on these written narratives for their
evidence of the Eesurrection. They had seen
the Lord — that was enough. Nay, that would
of itself throw the first incidents into the shade
for the time, only to be reproduced later for the
instruction of others. Nor even then would
they be offered as proofs : the proof to the new
converts would be the living testimony of those
who had seen the Lord.
Secondly, the various narratives were set down
for instruction as each writer was in a position
to tell them. There was no idea that it was
important to harmonize them in detail. The
Church which accepted the Four Gospels could
not have been blind to the obvious superficial
discrepancy ; it meets every reader at once ; it
was as plain then as it is now. But the Church
accepted them and bound them into one volume,
so to speak, as furnishing together a true general
picture of the events of that stirring time. This
was, indeed, the greatest service that could be
rendered to the future ; for instead of having
four guaranteed accounts, manipulated by an
early criticism and shorn of their distinctive
features, we have four voices speaking to us out
of the past, and reproducing much of the con-
fusedness which history again and again dis
covers in the earliest accounts of very starthng
4 *

52 The Historical Character of
and overwhelming events. We sometimes hear
it alleged against the early Christian writers
that they were not critical in their methods. It
is this very fact which has left us simple narra
tives which we can set side by side and compare.
It has made criticism possible for us. If we
cannot reconstruct the whole series of events
and fit everything into place, we can do what is
most important — get behind the variations and
discern the more confidently the points of com
mon agreement.
The most striking of all the divergences re
lates to the localities in which our Lord showed
Himself to His disciples. St. Mark's narrative
clearly points to Galilee as the meeting-place.
It represents the Lord as saying before His
crucifixion, " After that I am risen, I will go
before you into GaUlee ". When Mary Magdalen
and the other women come to the tomb, they
find the stone rolled away, and a young man in
a white robe sitting inside, who says, " He is
risen, He is not here : behold the place where they
laid Him : but go and say to His disciples and
Peter, He goeth before you into Galilee : there
ye shall see Him as He said unto you ". St.
Mark's Gospel breaks off abruptly almost im
mediately after this, in the middle of a sentence,
the last leaf having been lost at an early period.
But no one can reasonably doubt that it went

;S'^. John's Gospel 53
on to describe the fulfilment of the twice-repeated
promise of an appearance to the disciples in
Galilee. Thus we have a feature of St. Mark
which is wholly characteristic — the restriction
of interest to Galilee. Gahlee to him had been
the centre of the Lord's activity ; Jerusalem
was the scene of suffering, visited that He might
die there ; Galilee was again to be the scene of
renewed activity. What limited his interest
thus we may never fully know, but the fact is
there. St. Matthew's Gospel, the writer of which
was using St. Mark and possibly had the last
leaf which now is missing, goes on to narrate an
appearance of the Lord to these same women,
and then subsequently the promised appearance
in Galilee. St. Luke, on the other hand, has
no special interest in Galilee, and he has other
sources of information which tell him of appear
ances in Jerusalem. He therefore does not give
the promise that there will be an appearance in
Galilee, though he has St. Mark before him at
this point. It is possible that he had not the
last leaf, and did not know of any Galilean
incident to relate. However this may be, he
passes on to tell the story of two who went to
Emmaus, to whom the Lord revealed Himself,
and then he tells of the appearance to the
disciples the same night in Jerusalem. But

54 The Historical Character of
his narrative never brings our Lord to Galilee
again. When we turn to St. John we find a number
of incidents told in his own peculiar way, with
many details that are fresh to us, and some
which we cannot quite harmonize with the par
allel accounts. But we find that he bears out
St. Mark by recording an appearance in Galilee
— that he bears out St. Matthew both in this
respect and also in so far as he records a first
appearance to one at least of the women, St.
Mary Magdalen — and that he bears out St. Luke
by recording an appearance to the disciples on
the first night in Jerusalem. So that from the
point of view of locality we find St. John giving
a general confirmation to the sum of the other
narratives. Let us now glance at some other agreements.
1. All the narratives agree that on the morning
of the first day of the week the stone was found
rolled away from the tomb, and the body of
Jesus was not there.
2. All the narratives agree in giving no de
scription at all of the act of resurrection, or of
the emerging of the Lord from the tomb. This
restrained truthfulness may be contrasted with
the fanciful description contained in the apocry
phal Gospel of Peter.
3, All agree in representing the Resurrection

*S'^. John's Gospel 55
as a complete surprise, though all agree in re
cording that OUT Lord had foretold it more than
once to His disciples.
4. All agree in recording no appearance of
any kind to His adversaries. There was no
attempt to force conviction upon the unwilling
and the hostile. The revelation of the Lord
was made only to loving and devoted disciples.
5. Once more, St. John agrees with St. Luke,
whose account is the next to his in fulness of
detail, in making it plain that the Eesurrection
was no mere revival, no return to the old con
ditions and limitations of our ordinary life. In
St. Luke the Lord is not recognised by the two
disciples on the way to Emmaus, although He
holds much converse with them, until He chooses
to make Himself known ; and then He suddenly
vanishes out of their sight. When they have
hurriedly returned to Jerusalem, they are met
with the news that the Lord has been seen by
St. Peter ; and, while they are telling their tale,
suddenly the Lord, who had left them at
Emmaus, is seen standing in their midst. In
St. John we gain the impression that the sacred
body was withdrawn from the wrappings of the
grave-clothes without seriously disturbing them.
We find that Mary Magdalen fails to recognise
the Lord until He addresses her by name ; that
He suddenly appears to His disciples when the

56 The Historical Character of
doors are shut and barred for fear of the Jews ;
and that as He stands upon the shore of the
Lake of Galilee the disciples do not recognise
Him until the beloved disciple whispers to Peter,
"It is the Lord". Both of these evangelists
incidentally suggest to us that the Eesurrection
of Christ was an act belonging to the spiritual
order, transcending and controlling the material.
It was thus a pledge and a promise of the re
surrection of Christians, when, according to the
great saying of St. Paul, this corruptible shall
have put on incorruptibility, and this mortal
immortality. Yet no such interpretation is
definitely offered by either evangelist : only the
acts are recorded from which such an inference
may be drawn.
From this comparative analysis we may pass
on to consider what it is that St. John actuaUy
records for us. To begin with his narrative of
the burial, he says in agreement with St. Mark
that the sacred body was asked from Pilate by
Joseph of Arimathea. He describes him as " a
disciple of Jesus, but in secret for fear of the
Jews ''. St. Mark says that he was a " counsellor
of repute" (i.e., a member of the Jewish San
hedrin), but he adds " who himself also was
looking for the kingdom of God ". The two
descriptions supplement each other, and are
equally applicable to Nicodemus, who, as St.

St. John's Gospel 57
John tells us, accompanied Joseph, bringing a
rich gift of spices for the hasty burial. If we
suppose that the little company of women
watched their proceedings from some distance,
we need find no inconsistency here with the
statements of St. Mark that " they beheld where
He was laid," and yet themselves bought spices
for His anointing as soon as the Sabbath was
past. Early on the first day of the week, St. John
tells us, Mary Magdalen came in the darkness
to the garden, and saw that the stone was taken
away from the tomb. The tomb, according to
St. Mark, must have been of considerable size,
for he not only speaks of the women as entering
and coming out, but he also speaks of the door
or doorway of the tomb. St. John's language
in the original may be compared with that which
he uses at the raising of Lazarus, " Take away
the stone " ; and it presents no difficulty if we
conceive of the great stone as having been at
least partially thrust into the doorway. I men
tion this detail, because a point of discrepancy
has been suggested, without, I think, sufficient
reason. Mary Magdalen sees nothing more than that
the stone is out of its place. She concludes
that some one has come and taken the body
away; and she runs at once to St. Peter and

58 The Historical Character of
the other disciple, whom we are accustomed to
identify with St. John, and tells them, " They
have taken the Lord out of the sepulchre, and
we know not where they have laid Him ". It is
interesting to note in passing the plural, "we
know not," which suggests what St. John has
not mentioned — that there were others who
shared her anxiety. Peter and John run to the
tomb ; John, the younger man, is the first to
arrive ; he looks in and sees the linen cloths in
their place (the words in the original are curiously
emphatic — ySXeVet Keijieva rd 666via). Peter,
when he comes, enters the sepulchre; he too
observes the linen cloths in place, and he sees
also that the napkin which had been bound
round the head was not in place ; it was stiU
roUed up, but fallen aside. This strange descrip
tion would be accounted for if we suppose a
change to have passed over the body, releasing
it from material limitations, so that it could be
withdrawn without unwinding its wrappings.
But no such interpretation is offered by the
evangelist, who simply tells that he also entered,
and saw and believed. It was the first dawn of
his faith ; for none of them, he tells us, had as
yet understood from the Scriptures that the
Eesurrection must necessarily take place.
Next, with no definite note of time, we find
Mary Magdalen standing by the sepulchre out-

>S'^. John's Gospel 59
side and weeping. Then she looks in and sees
two angels, " one at the head and the other at
the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain ".
Presently turning back she sees, but does not
recognise, the Lord Himself. He reveals Him
self to her by calling her by her name. Late
in the evening of the same day Jesus stands in
the midst of the disciples when the doors were
shut, and charges them with a mission like His
own, and endows them with a gift of the Holy
Spirit for its fulfilment. Thomas was absent,
and he refused to believe until he should have
the assurance of his own sight and touch. A
week later the Lord appeared again in their
midst, and offered Thomas the very evidence
which he had demanded. The sight of the
Lord was enough, and Thomas exclaimed, " My
Lord and my God ". With this climax of faith
the evangelist brings his Gospel to a formal
close. " Many more signs indeed Jesus did in
the presence of His disciples which are not
written in this book. These have been written
that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ,
the Son of God, and that believing ye may have
life in His name."
What is there here that raises any fresh diffi
culty from the historical point of view ? Is there
anything which should suggest to us that St.
John's narrative has less historical probabihty

60 The Historical Character qf
than that of St. Luke ? It is true that St. John
speaks of Mary Magdalen alone, while St. Mark
speaks of two other women as coming with her
to the tomb ; and, further, St. John says nothing
of the appearance of the young man in a white
robe who gives a message for the disciples to
the women. When carefully compared the two
accounts are not necessarily inconsistent, but
we need not stay to prove this. If so be that
they cannot be quite made to fit into each other,
it does not foUow that either one or the other
is untrue ; and there is no ground for specially
rejecting that which is given by St. John.
But there is one assumption which, if it is
justified, entirely discredits St. John's narrative.
I mean the assumption that there were no ap
pearances of the Lord in Jerusalem at aU, or, at
any rate, none until after the disciples had been
to Galilee and returned again. But it is hard
to treat this assumption seriously, for it directly
contradicts the evidence of each of the four
Gospels. St. Mark does not relate any appear
ance of the Lord at aU, because his Gospel
breaks off suddenly, as we have seen. He
points to a forthcoming appearance in Gahlee,
but his language plainly imphes that the dis
ciples were still at Jerusalem, whereas the as
sumption to which we have referred rests on
the belief that the disciples fled in terror at

St. John's Gospel 61
once from Jerusalem to Galilee. St. Matthew
— continuing St. Mark's broken account, it
would seem — relates that our Lord met the
women on their way from the sepulchre. St.
Luke gives a full account of two appearances
on the first day of the week — the one in the
vicinity of Jerusalem, the other in the city itself.
Unless we reject the testimony, direct or in
direct, of all our earliest documents, we cannot
suppose that the appearances of our Lord were
confined to Galilee.
We have seen that St. John formally closes
his Gospel with the supreme instance of the
faith of St. Thomas. He returns to his task,
however, to narrate one more incident. The
old apostle had liugered when all who had
known the Lord on earth were gone. It was
thought that he would tarry till the Lord re
turned ; it was even believed that the Lord had
so declared. To the group of his faithful disciples
he explained the facts ; and so we have gained,
by way of an appendix, one of the most beautiful
of all the Gospel stories, the appearance of the
Lord by the Sea of Galilee, and the restoration
of St. Peter. Its conclusion gives the motive
of the narrative, and then those who have drawn
the story from him add their own witness to the
truthfulness of what he has written : " Jesus
said not to him that he should not die, but, If

62 The Historical Character of
I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to
thee ? This is the disciple that beareth witness
concerning these things, and hath vsritten these
things; and we know that his witness is true."
It was their personal knowledge of the writer
that drew from these his disciples their spon
taneous witness to his truthfulness. The lack
of such personal knowledge is supplied for us
to some extent by the character of the writer
as it reveals itself in his writings. With this
thought I must conclude what I feel to be a
very imperfect survey of a difficult and much
controverted subject. I would not claim to
have done more than show that some grave
difficulties are much diminished when we attend
carefully to the evangehst's own indications of
his purpose and method, and that some facts
which we owe to him alone supply a gap in our
knowledge with a very high degree of historical
probability. My chief aim has been to remove
the preliminary distrust with which the student
of the synoptic records is apt to approach the
Fourth Gospel, and to suggest to him that the
historical character of its narrative wiU stand out
more and more convincingly as it is reverently
and patiently investigated. In other words, St.
John will justify himself to us, if we wiU be
come his disciples. The more closely we study
his book, and the more sympathetically we

St. John's Gospel 63
yield ourselves to his instruction, the more shall
we appreciate both the simplicity of his narra
tive and the profundity of his interpretation of
the life of the Lord, and the more readily shall
we echo the na'ive words of that early confirma
tion of his narrative, " We know that his witness
is true".

64 The Historical Character of

NOTE.— ON THE ALLEGED MARTYRDOM OF
ST. JOHN THE APOSTLE.
In the foregoing lectures I have not dealt
with the problem of the authorship of the Fourth
Gospel, as I had nothing to add to what I said
in an earlier lecture, now published in The Stvdy
of the Gospels (Longmans, 1902). On one point
of detail which bears on this problem, however, a
good deal of discussion has recently taken place
— namely, the manner of the Apostle's death.
In the lecture referred to I said (p. 151) :
The prevailing tradition of the Church is that which
is preserved by Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp of Smyrna,
who in turn had been acquainted with St. John. It is to
the effect that the Apostle lived to a great age, and died
at Ephesus in the closing years of the century. A single
voice is raised in contradiction of this tradition. It is a
supposed statement of Papias in his second book of
Expositions, preserved in two late chroniclers, to the effect
that "John the Divine and James his brother were put
to death by the Jews ". Papias himself of course could
not have used the epithet "the Divine" (6 deoXoyos). If
he merely said "John and James'' it is probable that he
referred to the Baptist, and that a false identification

St. John's Gospel 65
with the Apostle was made in later times. This is Dr.
Zahn's explanation. Lightfoot and Harnack offer a less
simple solution, but agree in dismissing the notice as of
no historical value. Irenaeus and Eusebius knew the
work of Papias, and yet maintained with no shadow of a
doubt the universal tradition of St. John's peaceful death
in old age. It may further be noted that, whoever may
be regarded as the author of the last chapter of the Fourth
Gospel, it is clear that he believed that St. John "tarried "
after the rest of the apostolic band had passed away.
I take this opportunity of dealing with the
problem more fully, especially as a fresh con
tribution to the subject has been made by Dr.
J. H. Bernard, the Dean of St. Patrick's, in
the first number of the Irish Church Quarterly
(January, 1908). Dr. Bernard discusses the
language of the alleged statement of Papias, and
also the significance of the position of St. John's
Day in the ecclesiastical calendars. In regard
to the second of these points in particular I shall
follow him, with some slight modifications and
amplifications of his argument.
1. The alleged statement of Papias. The author
ity for this statement is an Oxford MS. (Bodl.,
Baroccianus, 142), which probably represents an
eighth or ninth century Epitome of the History
of Philippus Sidetes (cent. v.). The statement
is as follows :
Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, who was a hearer of John
the Divine and a companion of Polycarp, wrote five books
5

66 The Historical Character of
of Oracles of the Lord, in which, etc. . . . Papias in
the second book says that John the Divine and James
his brother were killed by the Jews.^
We may note, first of all, that the writer of
this passage betrays carelessness in speaking
of Papias as having written " Oracles of the
Lord," the well-known title of his book being
Expositions of the Oracles of the Lord. We shall
not therefore be surprised if we find that he
has misquoted or misinterpreted Papias's words
at this point, whatever they may have been.
^Yiairias ^lepanoXeas eiria-KOTTOs, dKovaTrjs rov SeoXoyov
'ladvvov yevofievos, HoXvKdpirov Se iraipos, irivre Xoyovs
KvpioKav Xoyiav eypa^^ev, iv ols k.t.X. . . . Hairias iv ra
SevTepa \oya Xe'yet on 'ladwrfs 6 BeoXoyos Koi 'laKOjjSos 6
dSeXcjyos avroO vtto lovSaiav dvrjpi6r)(Tav (De Boor, Texte
u. Unters., v, 2, 170). Into one of the MSS. of the
Chronicon of Georgius Monachus an interpolator has
inserted a similar statement, which however contradicts
the whole of the original context of Georgius : \^ladvvqs)
paprvpiov Karrj^iarai (instead of ev elprjvrj dveirava'aro).
Hairias ydp 6 lepairoXeas iiricTKOiros, avroirnjs tovtov
yev6p.evos, ev ra Sevripa Xoya rav KvpiaKav Xoyiav <j>do-Kei
on viro 'lovSaiav dvrjpidr] ¦ k.t.X. That this is taken from
the epitomiser of Philippus Sidetes, and not directly from
Papias, is in itself probable, and is almost conclusively
proved by (1) the careless description of Papias's work as
KvpiaKa Xi!ryia, instead of KvpiaRav Xoyiav i^rjyrjO'eis, and
(2) the unusual reference ev ra Sevripa Xdyw, instead of
iv ra Sevripa j3i/3Xim, which is the regular use in quoting
from Papias. This second statement is accordingly of no
independent value.

St. John's Gospel 67
Secondly, in giving to St. John the title of
" the Divine," he shows that he cannot be quot
ing Papias verbatim. He has added the epithet
himself, to define which "John" he considers
Papias to mean. It is possible that the defini
tion " his brother " may also be a supplement
added to define which " James " is meant.
Papias may have simply said, "John and
James were killed by the Jews ". If we found
such a statement in an early writer, we should
probably interpret it either of John the Baptist
and James the son of Zebedee, who were put to
death by the two Herods; or of John the
Baptist and James the Lord's brother, the
latter of whom notoriously was killed by the
Jews.^ Whether the explanation here suggested be
the true one or not, is of no very great import
ance. What is important is the question
whether the statement that St. John the
Apostle was killed by the Jews can reasonably
1 Dr. Bernard points out that the very expression viro
'lovSaiav dvjipidr] was almost certainly employed by Euse
bius in recording the death of James the Lord's brother
in his Ghronicle, the Greek of which has to be reconstructed
from the Latin and Armenian versions. The fact of his
murder by the Jews is of course well known from Josephus
and Hegesippus, and it was commonly regarded as one of
the special crimes which led to the Divine vengeance upon
Jerusalem. 5 *¦

68 The Historical Character of
be attributed to Papias, who if he had not
actually been a hearer of the Apostle, as Irenaeus
tells us he was, yet certainly was the friend
of Polycarp who was St. John's disciple. On
this point Harnack says {Ghronologie, i, 665 f.) :
How are we to believe that such a statement can come
from the second century, and can have stood in a work
which was read by Irenaeus, Eusebius and many others ?
Could they all alike have passed it over in silence ? And,
besides, must John xxi count for nothing, a passage which
plainly presupposes the death of John, but —in contrast
with that of Peter — not his death by martyrdom ?
Harnack accordingly rejects the statement
as unhistorical, and he offers a somewhat elab
orate theory to account for the mistake made
in attributing it to Papias. Without committing
ourselves to this or any other theory of explana
tion, we may accept his verdict that the general
tradition of the second century, which assigns
to St. John the Apostle a peaceful end, cannot
be set aside by this slender evidence for a
martyr's death.
2. Supposed corroboration from ecclesiastical calen
dars. The position which St. John the Apostle
holds in our own calendar is remarkable. On
the three days after Christmas we commemorate
in turn St. Stephen, St. John, and the Holy
Innocents. We are familiar with the popular
explanation : the first was a martyr in will and

St. John's Gospel 69
in deed; the second in will, but not in deed;
the last were martyrs in deed, but not in will.
This fanciful interpretation illustrates the diffi
culty which has been felt as to the position held
by the festival of the Apostle. Now though the
festival of Holy Innocents does not appear till
the fifth century, and then only in the West,
St. Stephen and St. John have held their re
spective positions in both East and West from
the latter part of the fourth century at least. May
we accept the suggestion, which appears to have
been made independently by more than one
writer, that St. John's position next to the first
martyr, St. Stephen, corroborates the otherwise
isolated statement that he died a martyr's death ?
Let us look into the evidence.
A very ancient Syriac martyrology, contained
in a MS. which bears the date a.d. 411-412,
gives us the following :
The names of our lords the martyrs and victors, and
their days on which they gained (their) crowns . . .
In the month Kanun the first,
Dec. 26. On the xxvith according to the Greeks,
the first martyr at Jerusalem, Stephen
the apostle, the head of the martyrs.
27. and on the xxviith, John and James the
apostles at Jerusalem.
28. and on the xxviiith, in the first Kanun,
in the town of Rome Paul the apostle and
Simon Cephas the head of the apostles
of our Lord.

70 The Historical Character of
About a hundred years later we have a Cartha
ginian martyrology,^ which contains the follow
ing: Dec. 25. viii Kal. Jan. Domini nostri Jesu Christi,
filii Dei.
26. vii Kal. Jan. sancti Stefani primi martyris.
27. vi Kal. Jan. sancti Johannis Baptistae,
et Jacobi Apostoli, quern Herodes occidit.
28. V Kal. Jan. Sanctorum Infantum, quos
Herodes occidit.
The writer of this MS. has changed John the
Apostle into John the Baptist, perhaps because
he held the common view of the Apostle's peace
ful death; but he betrays himself by the fact
that he also gives John the Baptist on June 24.
There can be no doubt that St. John the Apostle
originally stood in this place.
The question then is, Did St. John the Apostle
acquire this place in the calendar on the ground
that he was beheved to have been a martyr?
If the question be answered in the affirmative,
we may still point to the wider use of the word
"martyr," current in the first and second cen
turies, which included those who had faithfully
endured persecution and had survived their
sufferings : we may also recall the statement
in the Apocalypse that St. John was an exile at
^This and the previous martyrology are conveniently
accessible in The Three Oldest Martyrologies, edited by Lietz-
mann (Cambridge : Deighton and Bell, 1904, price 6d.).

St. John's Gospel 71
Patmos " for the witness (the word in the Greek
is the same as that used for ' martyrdom ') of
Jesus " ; and also our Lord's prediction that
both John and James should " drink of His cup
and be baptized with His baptism".
But Dr. Bernard has been able to answer the
question in the negative, by going back to yet
earlier evidence.
In the first place Dr. Bernard sets side by
side with the Syriac martyrology a passage
from a Syriac homily On Persecution written by
Aphrahat in A. D. 344. Aphrahat deals at great
length with the sufferings of Old Testament
saints, and towards the close he sums up thus :
Hear, my beloved, these names of martyrs, of confes
sors and of the persecuted. [Abel, Moses, David, Daniel,
etc., are again summarily referred to, and he con
tinues,] Great and excellent is the martyrdom of Jesus.
He surpassed in affliction and in confession all who were
before or after. And after Him was the faithful martyr
Stephen whom the Jews stoned. Simon (Peter) also and
Paul were perfect martyrs. And James and John walked
in the footsteps of their Master Christ. Also (others) of
the Apostles thereafter in divers places confessed and
proved true martyrs. And also concerning our brethren
who are in the West, in the days of Diocletian there came
great aflBiction and persecution to the whole Church of
God, which was in all their region. . . . '
' Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, xiii, 401
(Dr. Gwynn's translation). Attention has already been
called to this passage by Bousset (see H. L. Jackson, The
Fourth Gospel, 1906, p. 211).

72 The Historical Character of
Here we observe that the same five notable
saints are mentioned as in the Syriac martyr
ology, St. Stephen holding here as there the first
place. The coincidence is the more striking in
view of the fact that no other New Testament
name occurs in the Syriac martyrology, which
for the rest consists of local commemorations.
It is plain that Stephen, Peter and Paul, and
John and James were held in exceptional honour
as representative names of the apostolic Church.
But does Aphrahat select them on the ground
of martyrdom in the strict sense of the word ?
Plainly not : for in his Old Testament list the
majority of those whom he mentions were not
persecuted to the death ; he speaks of a voider
class — "of martyrs, of confessors, and of the
persecuted ". Moreover, whereas he describes
Stephen, Peter and Paul as "martyrs," he is
careful to use another phrase in regard to John
and James, doubtless because, though James
was a "martyr," John in the strict sense was not.
The pre-eminence of these five great names,
as the representative saints of the New Testa
ment, receives a remarkable illustration from a
passage of Gregory of Nazianzus, to which Dr.
Bernard has called my attention since his arti
cle was written. Gregory's famous panegyric
on St. Basil the Great (f 1 Jan. 379) was deliv
ered not long after his return from Constanti-

*S'^. John's Gospel 73
nople in June 381. Possibly it was spoken
on the anniversary of his death in 382. To
wards the close of his discourse he says : ^
Come then, there have been many men of old days
illustrious for piety, as lawgivers, generals, prophets,
teachers, and men brave to the shedding of blood. Let
us compare our prelate with them, and thus recognise
his merit. [Adam, Enos, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, Joseph, Job, Moses, Aaron, Joshua, Samuel, David,
Solomon, Elijah, Blisha, the Three Children, Jonah,
Daniel, the seven Maccabees, are passed in review, and
the orator continues,] I now turn to the New Testament,
and comparing his life with those who are here illustrious,
I shall find in the teachers a source of honour for their
disciple. Who was the forerunner of Jesus ? John, the
voice of the Word, . . . [Then he proceeds,] he emu
lated the zeal of Peter, the intensity of Paul, . . . the
lofty utterance of the sons of Zebedee, the frugality and
simplicity of all the disciples. . . . He was prevented from
becoming a Stephen, eager though he was, since reverence
stayed the hands of those who would have stoned him. ^
There is here a close parallel with the discourse
of Aphrahat, both in the long list of Old Testa
ment saints, and in the absence of any names
of Christian saints except the five great leaders.
^ § 70, I quote the translation given in the Library of
Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vii, 419.
^''Eiiip.rja'aTO Hirpov tov ^fjXov, IlavXou rov tovov, tSv
6vop,a(rrav KOi p.eravop.ao'p.ivav ap.(l)0Tipav rrjv iriariv ' rav
viav Ze^eSaiov to fieydX6(f)avov • irdvrav rav padrfTav to
eireXes Kal diripirrov . . . 2Te(f>avos p.ev yap iKaXvQr] yevi-
O'Sai, el Kal irpoOvfios rjv, imo'xav aidoi rovs Xidd^ovras.

74 The Histoi'ical Character of
Basil was not a martyr : therefore Stephen, who
cannot be left out, comes in at the end with a
word of explanation. It is clear that Peter,
Paul, James and John do not owe their pre
eminence to death by martyrdom.
The next source of evidence to which Dr.
Bernard has pointed is the Sermons of Gregory
of Nyssa. Following the lead of Duchesne, he
refers to an oration in which Gregory com
memorates his brother Basil. It is not, I think,
right to say with Duchesne that this oration
was a funeral oration delivered on the occasion
of Basil's death in 379. The passage with
which it opens shows that it was spoken on
some anniversary of his death, after his com
memoration had become a fixed event ; and the
detachment with which he can speak of the
great master would lead us to assign a consider
ably later date : Gregory did not die before A.D.
395. The Oration opens thus :
An excellent order hath God appointed for these our
annual festivals, which during these days we have been
and still are celebrating in a duly constituted sequence.
The order I of these our spiritual commemorations is that
which we are taught also by St. Paul, whose wisdom in
these matters came from above. For he says that in the
first place are set the apostles and the prophets, and after
them the pastors and teachers. With this sequence of
the apostle the order of the year's commemorations

St. John's Gospel 75
coincides. The first, I do not reckon with the others : for
the grace of the theophany of the only-begotten Son,
which is manifested to the world through the Virgin-birth,
is not simply a holy festival, but the holy of holies, and
the festival of festivals. Let us reckon then those which
follow this. First of all, apostles and prophets lead the
spiritual procession : for the two kinds of gifts belong
to the same persons, the apostolic spirit, to wit, and the
spirit of prophecy. And the persons are these ; Stephen,
Peter, James, John, Paul. Then after these, observing
his own order, the pastor and teacher introduces our
present festivity. And who is he ? Shall I tell his
name? etc.
He goes onto say that "the pastor and
teacher" is Basil, a man worthy to come next
after Paul, though so far removed in point of
time. It is clear from this passage that im
mediately after Christmas came the commemor
ations of Stephen, Peter, James, John and Paul ;
and then soon afterwards {i.e. on 1 January)
foUowed the commemoration of Basil, who had
died on 1 January 379. It is clear, too, that
to Gregory's mind the first group were thus
honoured not as martyrs, but as leaders of the
prophetic and apostohc order of the earliest days.
Basil, he says, may rightly be commemorated
after them ; as " the pastor and teacher " properly
follows after " the apostles and the prophets ".
This is rhetoric, of course ; and if the passage
stood alone it would not be possible to lay much

76 The Historical Character of
stress on Gregory's opinion, though the facts he
alludes to are in any case important.
Dr. Bernard has, however, called attention
to another sermon of Gregory of Nyssa, preached
on the day after St. Stephen's Day ; and from
this we may quote some sentences. It begins
thus :
Christ came into the world unto salvation ; and after
Him sprang up the fruits of the Church. The Witness
of the truth shone forth, and there shone forth with Him
the witnesses of the great dispensation.^ The disciples
followed the Master, treading in the steps of the Lord.
After Christ the Christ-bearers ; after the Sun of righteous
ness the lights of the world. And first we have Stephen^
flowering forth. [A praise of St. Stephen follows, and
the preacher continues,] For it is needful that we should
thus in passing pay the protomartyr his due (which yes
terday the weakness of the flesh forbade us to render), and
then go on to-day to fulfil the appropriate commemora
tion of the holy Apostles. [He then justifies the linking
of these commemorations by saying :] Neither are martyrs
without apostles, nor apostles without martyrs ; for
apostles are the teachers of martyrs, and martyrs the re
flections of apostles.
This passage makes it evident that Gregory
does not regard the commemoration of the
Apostles at this point in the calendar as grounded
^ In the Greek the same word signifies " witness " and
" martyr". ^A play on crri^avos "a garland" or "crown of
flowers ".

St. John's Gospel 77
on their death by martyrdom. Later he says,
in the words quoted by Dr. Bernard :
To this Stephen all the precious stones (sc. of the
spiritual temple) were immediately joined together — the
most divine heralds of the Gospels ; after them the
martyrs ; and after them again those who have shone with
saving virtue — principally those commemorated at this
present season, who flash forth the beauty of piety far and
brightly, I mean Peter and James and John, the leaders
of the apostolic harmony and the crowns of the Church's
glory. These " crowns," he adds, fitly follow Stephen
(" the crown "). They have obtained in various
ways the honour of martyrdom : Peter crucified
head downwards, James beheaded, John suffer
ing divers trials and so being reckoned with
the martyrs; "for to those who judge aright
martyrdom is determined not by the issue of
the suffering, but by the will and desire". It
is thus abundantly clear that in St. Gregory's
view the Apostles are commemorated at this
point as " the divine heralds of the Gospels ".
That they were also aU of them in some sense
"martyrs" is added as a further justification of
their being linked with St. Stephen.
There is yet another sermon of St. Gregory of
Nyssa, which refers to this same collocation
of festivals. It was preached on St. Stephen's
Day, and begins thus :

78 The Historical Character of
How excellent is the sequence of good things, how
sweet the succession of gladness ! Feast after feast, and
grace for grace do we receive. Yesterday we were feasted
by the Lord of all, to-day by the imitator of the Lord.
In telling the story of St. Stephen he says
that, when the Church grew in numbers,
Stephen was summoned to the aid of the Apostles. And
let no man suppose from the name of ministry (or " diacon-
ate ") that he held a second rank as compared with the
apostolic dignity ; for Paul too regards himself as a min
ister (or "deacon") of the mysteries of Christ; and the
Lord of all . . . was as one that ministereth.
He goes on to indicate vnth admirable dis
cernment the importance of St. Stephen's work
as opemng a wider door to the message of the
Apostles. In the light of the other discourses
we may understand him to be justifying, though
he does not expressly say so, the position of St.
Stephen's festival in relation to the festivals of
Apostles which foUowed.
In view of this evidence from the fourth
century — derived from Aphrahat and the two
Gregories — as to the collocation of Stephen,
Peter and Paul, James and John, it can hardly
be maintained that the position of their com
memorations in the early calendars is due to a
belief that they all suffered martyrdom. Martyrs
they were, without exception, in the widest and
earliest sense, as Jesus Christ was Himself " the

St. John's Gospel 79
faithful Witness " ; and so their inclusion in a
martyrology, as indeed the inclusion of the
Christmas festival, was capable of justification.
But we can no more argue that St. John was
a " martyr " in the restricted sense from his
inclusion in this group of five which is led by
St. Stephen, than we can argue that St. Stephen
was an "Apostle" in the restricted sense from
his being called an Apostle in the early Syriac
martyrology which thus lifts him to the level of
the other four.
Our conclusion then is this. There is no
sufficient evidence to cast a serious doubt on the
universal tradition of the Church that St. John
the Apostle died peacefully at Ephesus in ex
treme old age. The attribution to Papias of
the statement that John and his brother James
were killed by the Jews rests on very slender
authority. It is almost inconceivable that, if
Papias reaUy said this, Irenaeus, Eusebius and
others who had read Papias should not have
referred to it. And it is not difficult to explain
the attribution of such a statement to Papias
as a mistake due to a careless interpretation.
Nor can this isolated contradiction of the
general tradition find any support either in the
occasional description of the Apostle as a
martyr, or in the position of his commemoration

80 The Character of St. John's Gospel
in the calendars of the Church. The word
"martyr," which is the common Greek word
for a " witness," was not at first restricted to
those who had sealed their testimony with their
blood. And the collocation of Stephen, Peter,
James, John and Paul, as the representative
leaders of primitive Christianity, worthy beyond
all others to be added to the glorious roll of Old
Testament heroes — " the great cloud of wit
nesses" of the Epistle to the Hebrews — is at
tested by Christian orators of the fourth century
before the date of the earliest extant calendars.
Their names par excellence represented the Chris
tianity of the New Testament period, and their
commemorations followed that of the Lord Him
self at the beginning of the Christian year.

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