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THE

JOHANNEAN PROBLEM
GEORGE W.GILMORE, A.M.

YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

THE LIBRARY OF THE
DIVINITY SCHOOL

The Johannean Problem

A RESUME FOR ENGLISH
READERS

BY REV. GEORGE W. GILMORE, A.M.
t ' !
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH BIBLICAL EXEGESIS AND CRITICISM
IN BANGOR THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

Philadelphia '
Presbyterian Board of Publication
and Sabbath -school Work
1895

Copyright, 1895, by
THE TRUSTEES OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD
OF PUBLICATION AND SABBATH-
SCHOOL WORK.

TO THE
REV. J. D. WELLS, D.D.,
PASTOR OF THE
SOUTH THIRD STREET PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH,
BROOKLYN, N. Y.,
WISE COUNSELOR, FAITHFUL PASTOR, DEVOTED FRIEND,
THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Page.
Chap. I. Introduction  9
Chap. II. Adverse Criticism  r4
Chap. III. The Antiquity of the Fourth Gospel. External
Testimony, 180-200 A.D  18
Chap. IV. Antiquity (continued). External Testimony, mostly
prior to 180 A.D  26
Chap. V. Antiquity (continued). Justin Martyr  36
Chap. VI. Antiquity (continued). Heretical Sects  45
Chap. VII. Antiquity (continued). The Alogi and the Ap
pendix to the Gospel  57
Chap. VIII. The Author. External Evidence  62
Chap. IX. Antiquity. Internal Evidence  69
Chap. X. The Author. Internal Evidence  73
Chap. XI. Objections Answered  98
Bibliography  1Q8
Index  1 1 7

PREFACE.

This little book is not an Introduction to the Fourth
Gospel. It deals exclusively with the antiquity and
authorship of that book, and from an affirmative stand
point. Even this it does not profess to treat exhaustively.
Such a course was impossible if the author's aim was fol
lowed. What that aim was will appear a little later.
The book grew out of the author's investigations made
with the object of satisfying himself what conclusion the
evidence for and against the Tohannean authorship of the last
gospel warranted and demanded. As soon as study of the
subject began, the author was almost appalled at the vol
ume of literature treating the "Tohannean Problem."
In English, French, and especially German, the treatises
ran into scores, while articles almost innumerable, bearing
on particular phases of the question, were found in the
pages of the various journals and reviews.
The writer read nearly everything of importance that
could assist him in reaching a conclusion concerning the
evidence. He gave prolonged study to the Gospel itself.
And as he read and studied, as he noted the abandon
ment of position after position held by adverse critics,
the conclusion grew that no hypothesis which excluded
the apostle John from the authorship satisfied the condi
tions and accorded with the testimony.
But to reach this conclusion intelligently, to get the
7

8 PREFACE.
testimony before him, the writer had gone through a
mass of material. He had taken voluminous notes, had
arranged the evidence, culled from many authors, gath
ered from numerous sources. When his mind was made
up, it occurred to him that a presentation of the weightiest
evidence, the most decisive indications, might be of ser
vice to many who have not time to wade through the
flood of literature on the subject ; and that this might be
done in a little book which could be bought by many who
could not afford, say, the single volume even of Watkins'
Bampton Lectures.
In acknowledgment of indebtedness the author is at
loss where to begin, where to end. He read and re-read so
frequently, that perhaps what was really another's seemed
his own. Wtierever he has consciously taken from an
author, he has attempted to give credit in the body of the
book. The writings of Godet, Luthardt, Schiirer, West-
cott, Sanday, Lightfoot, Ezra Abbot, E. A. Abbott,
James Drummond, Matthew Arnold, Renan, Strauss, De
Wette, Weizsacker, Salmon, Weiss, Beyschlag, Harnack,
Zahn and others, have been made tributary. The chapter
on Justin Martyr is, of course, drawn from Dr. Ezra
Abbot's masterly examination of that father. Next to
Dr. Abbot, Dr. Sanday and Bishop Lightfoot have been
most helpful. To all who have helped the author, he is
most grateful.
Special thanks are tendered the Rev. E. R. Craven
D.D., and the Rev. J. R. Miller, D.D., of the Presby
terian Board of Publication.
Bangor, Me., September, 1895.

New Testament
Critical Problems.

CHAPTER I.
Introduction. If we except the Pentateuch, no
books of the Bible have been more
the object of study and the subject of
controversy than the four gospels. This discussion of the
gospels has resolved itself into two lines of investigation,
with mutual relations, and yet really distinct each from
the other. The first is the so-called
. _ ., "Synoptic Problem" concerning
Synoptic Problem. i r a
itself with the first three gospels, de
bating their common relationship and their origin. Curi
ously enough, the fight over the synoptic problem has not
centred in the authorship of these books, and compara
tively little has been said concerning their antiquity, al
though some skirmishes have been fought on that issue
also. The second critical inquiry concerning the gospels,
which is at present the central ob-
_ . _ . , ject of attack and defense, is the
Johannean Problem. J '
"Johannean Problem." There is
a " Johannean Problem " in a wider sense than the one
usually signified by that phrase, which includes the com
mon relationship of the Apocalypse, the three epistles of
John, and the fourth gospel. But the Johannean problem
proper has to do with the antiquity and authorship of the

IO THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
fourth gospel only. It is the Johannean problem in this
limited sense with which we are concerned. We shall
find, as we proceed, that there are certain subsidiary ques
tions which have to be considered and answered, but the
central question is as to the authorship of the gospel com
monly called "According to St. John."
From the time of the composition
of the c s °^ t^ie 80SPel until the last quarter of
the eighteenth century, the all but
universal declaration of the Church credited the composi
tion of this gospel to John, the brother of James, most
likely the youngest of the Lord's disciples. The solitary
exception to this ascription comes
The Alogi. from a party in the early Church
which existed probably in the time of Irenaeus (c. 130-
202 A.D.). We have a reference to almost certainly the
same party in a writing of Epiphanius (c. 320-403 A.D.),
in which he calls them "Alogi" [from "a" and "Lo
gos "], meaning that they rejected the " Logos " doctrine
of the fourth gospel. Because that party found this gos
pel opposed to their own theories, they denied its apostol-
icity. This is the sole exception to the otherwise univer
sal testimony to the Johannean authorship of our gospel.
Lest this exception should at the outset, because of its
antiquity, cause a prejudice against the gospel, three
things should be said: (1) while we have called those
who maintained that opinion "a party," we have really
in so doing misrepresented them, as the probability is
that those who so held were simply scattering individuals
in various churches, the number of whom never reached
the dignity of a sect or a party; (2) these persons had a

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. II
motive for holding such opinions in their desire to dis
credit a book which, if received as apostolic, would leave
them no ground for their own heretical notions; (3)
parallels to their course can be found in the present
times, e. g., a commentator on the epistle to the Romans,
who was for many years professor in theological semina
ries and the author of a system of dogmatic theology, has
" for dogmatic reasons,''' deliberately rejected the reading
of the best manuscripts in favor of a text not so well sub
stantiated. It is our purpose to summarize the
re immary evidence for the genuineness of the
Observations. °
fourth gospel so far as ascertained at
the present time. We must understand, however, that as
all the gospels are anonymous, and as we owe to tradition
all that we know of their authorship,
Mathematical mathematical proof is not to be ob-
Proof not .,,,,,
Obtainable. tained, and that the best we can do
is to show that the testimony points,
with a very high degree of probability, to John the apostle
as the author. It will be shown that the date. of its com
position can be pushed so far back that it is unlikely, if
not impossible, that the gospel could have been written
by any other than the beloved disciple.
A principle to be applied in investigations of the sort
we are making is that a well-supported tradition in favor
of a certain book's authenticity and genuineness stands un
til it is disproved. To suggest doubts
Favora e which rest upon conjecture is not suf-
Presumption. r , . , ...
ficient to invalidate that tradition ;
proven facts not consonant with it alone can make it a just

12 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
object of suspicion. "The presumption is in favor of
that which exists."
Another principle we are to remember is that negative
evidence is always to be received with caution. It is not
enough to allege against the existence
Negative Evidence . ' . . , , . .. ., ,
Inconclusive. of a CertalIS book at a Slven tlme that
an author or a number of authors did
not quote it, unless it be proved that he or they (i) were
in the habit of quoting other books of like tenor, and (2)
needed to cite the book under discussion in order to treat
the subject he was or they were dealing with. In like
manner scantiness of evidence in a certain period must be
put alongside of the scantiness of the literary remains
which have come down to us. Many of the most volu
minous Christian and heretical writings, which were writ
ten between 100 and 180 A.D., have been lost. We have,
however, to note that what literature we have is in particu
larly close relationship with the Apostle John. Besides
this, the negative argument is a most precarious one,
as Dr. Sanday has clearly shown that Justin Martyr uses
at most one Pauline epistle at the time when Marcion con
cedes ten. On the other hand, we must point out that
citations used to prove quotations from the fourth gospel
must be such as cannot be referred to the other three.
Yet one remark remains to be made.
sagreemen Were the opponents of the genuine
ness of our gospel agreed in their
conclusions, if there were even a substantial concord in
their results, the case would be a most difficult one to
defend. But we find that some deny both the genuine
ness and the historicity of the gospel ; others defend the

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 13
genuineness but deny the historicity and vice versa ; still
others hold the discourses to be genuine but the narra
tive fabricated, and some are found who defend the narra
tive while affirming that the discourses are imaginary and
invented. A like disagreement of the critics is shown in
their theories of the partition of the gospel, some hold
ing that the discourses are Johannine, and the narrative
by a later hand ; others declaring that parts of the dis
courses are by John, though by no means agreeing among
themselves in the location of the joinings.
The conclusion evidently to be reached from this lack
of a consensus among the opponents is that the marks on
which critics rely as a basis for their theories are either
imaginary, or so faint that they cannot be detected even
after being pointed out. May we not also infer that any
theory which excludes the apostle John from the author
ship of the gospel is so beset with difficulties that the
hypothesis of his authorship alone satisfies the conditions
and gives rest ?

CHAPTER II.
Adverse Criticism.
We have said that until the end of the eighteenth cen
tury there was only one protest to the
Modern Criticism. .. . . . ... ...
otherwise universal ascription of the
fourth gospel to John. The modern period of criti
cism upon that gospel dates from the end of the last
century among the Deists of England and the rep
resentatives of the Illumination in Germany. But from
this attack no disquiet, no effect worth noting, resulted.
In 18/0, Bretschneider published, in
Germany, a book on the Probabilities
Concerning the Genius and Origin of the Gospel and
Epistles of fohn, which attracted considerable atten
tion. At that time Schleiermacher was at the height
of his fame, and as he threw the whole weight of his
influence against the critical hypothesis, a cohort of
lesser lights meeting Bretschneider with a deluge of op
position, Bretschneider himself was staggered, and "sub
sequently withdrew his opinion." The attack was re-
newed twenty-four years later, when the founder
of the so-called "Tubingen School," Ferdi
nand Christian Baur, in a German publication, and, in
1847, in his Critical Investigations Concerning the Can
onical Gospels, published his conclusions concerning the
14

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 15
object of the writing, from which the inference was imme
diate, that our gospel could not have been written by an
apostle. Indeed he affirmed that it " could not have
arisen earlier than the second half of the ¦first century."
According to him all deviations from the synoptic narra
tive were the product of the imagination, subordinated to
the polemic plan of the writer. The apostolicity and his
toricity was from that time up to 1867 defended with more
or less thoroughness by a host of writers, many of them,
however, making substantial concessions to the critical
or adverse school concerning the subjectivity or ideal
character of the discourses. The next work of note,
marking a retreat in the date claimed for the compo
sition, yet still denying the Johannean authorship, was
by Keim, The History of fesus of Nazareth, 1867-72.
In England the only opponents of prom
inence, who assail the genuineness of the gos
pel, are Tayler, the author of Supernatural Religion, and
Samuel Davidson, in his Introduction to the Study of the
New Testament. The earlier method of assault Was
Basis of Adverse , tl . ^ c .,
_ ... . an endeavor to prove that the fourth
Criticism. r
gospel was what the Germans call a
"tendency writing," that it was composed to combat
certain unhappy trends of doctrine and incipient here
sies existing in the form which the gospel combats not
until the second century, and that therefore the date
of the gospel has to be put so far into the second cen
tury that its composition by an apostle is an impossibility.
There are thus two lines of attack ; first, the authen
ticity or historicity ; second, and as a result of the^ first/

1 6 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
the genuineness or authorship. The later basis of adverse
criticism is found, first, in a comparison of the fourth gos
pel with the other three. The synoptic gospels are so
named because they present the same view of the person
and character of Christ, represent him as moving chiefly
in Galilee, accord quite closely in the discourses attributed
to him, and hence present, on ihe whole, a concordant and
harmonious picture of himself and his ministry. Now, it
is claimed, that the fourth gospel differs from the first
three in several important respects, i . The scene of our
Lord's activity is different; in the synoptics he moves
principally in Galilee ; in John the scene of his activity is
Judea. 2. The time-marks are different : the synoptics
imply a ministry lasting only one year; John notes at
least three passovers, hence a ministry of nearly three
years. 3. The events, miracles, etc., are different. 4.
The discourses of Christ, as given by the synoptists and
John, are entirely dissimilar, varying in (a) substance and
(b) style. Really included in the above summary of
differences, but so important as to demand special atten
tion, are four items of special interest. (1) There is a dis
crepancy between the first three gospels and the fourth
regarding the day of our Lord's death. (2) Another
difference is found in the hours of that day. (3) The
Johannean narrative lacks a progression of historical nar
rative particularly as to the affirmation of the Messiah-
ship of Jesus. (4) Along with this last " goes a general
heightening of his claims."
It will be noticed that these assaults proceed from an
examination of the gospel itself. There is still another
basis of attack which is found in an affirmed lack of early

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 17
testimony from writers of the second century. We have
here, then, two general lines of assault, internal and
external ; the testimony of the gospel to itself is im
pugned, and the testimony of others is said to be defi
cient. These two lines are met by the defenders of the
gospel in exactly the same way. The
Lines of Defense. ., , . . , , ,
evidence for the gospel is marshaled,
first, to prove the antiquity of the gospel by external wit
ness; second, to show that external testimony abounds,
which indicates John as the author ; and third, that the
gospel itself strongly corroborates this testimony, and,
indeed, excludes any other person from its authorship.
We shall pursue this method in presenting the evidence
so far as at present known.
Let it be remembered that Baur placed the composition
of the gospel at 160-170 A.D.; that Keim pushed it back
to c. no A.D., afterwards withdrawing this admission,
when he saw that such a date was inconsistent with his
other positions which could not then be maintained, and
placing it at about 130 A.D.
CXCt-rTwC- cM LsLa*. ly ^=9 l+tU^- Yh . J^^» ir-^cA. '

CHAPTER III.
The Antiquity of the Fourth Gospel
External Testimony, 180-200 A.D.
From the time of Irenaeus, bishop
External Evidence. of LyonSj we are on thoroughly firm
174-189 A d footing so far as external testimony
to our gospel is concerned. This
bishop, in the third book of his treatise, Against Heresies,
quotes abundantly from the fourth gospel. He shows, by
quotations which are exact in their agreement with the
gospel text, that he had that text before him, and in about
the shape, so far as his quotations go, in which we now
have it. For instance, in Chap, xi, he says: "John the
disciple of the Lord .... thus commenced his teaching
in the gospel : ' In the beginning was the Word, and the
Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same
was in the beginning with God. All things were made
by him, and without him was nothing made. What was
made was life in him, and the life was the light of men.
And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness com
prehended it not.' "
This is a clear and unmistakable quotation from the pro
logue of John's gospel. Again, in Chap, xiv, we find :
"And again, the Lord replied to Philip, who wished to
18

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. IQ
behold the Father, 'Have I been so long a time with
you, and yet thou hast not known me, Philip ? He that
sees me, sees also the Father; and how sayest thou then,
Show us the Father? For I am in the Father and the
Father in me ; and henceforth ye know him and have
seen him. ' ' ' This is clearly a quotation, with a change
of tense, from John xiv. 7, 9, 10. Not to multiply quo
tations, we need mention only that Tischendorf says that
Irenasus quotes John's gospel eighty times. But not only
does Irenasus show by quoting that he
Irenseias' four c ... ... , , .
Gospels was famlllar Wlt;h our gospel; he also
goes on to give certain mystic reasons
why there should be just four gospels, no more and no
less. After a most exacting criticism, scrutinizing all that he
has said on this topic, no other conclusion is possible than
that his four gospels are those which we now have. He so
characterizes the gospels, giving the salient features of
each and calling them by the names they now bear, that
no other identification is possible. So that so far as the
gospels were concerned, in his time, the canon was closed.
If our gospel had made its appearance only in 160-170
A.D. (Baur), could it have become so firmly estab
lished by 180 A.D. as to merit the place it has in Irenaeus?
From another quarter of the world, only a very little
later than Irenaeus, we have unequivocal testimony, evinc
ing the catholicity of the acceptance
of our gospel at the end of the sec-
Alexandria, ° r
fl. 190-203 A.D. ond century. Clement of Alexandria
adds his confirmation to the existence
of the fourth gospel. He tells the order in which the gos-

20 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
pels were composed, deriving his information from " the
oldest Presbyters." The gospels which contain the gene
alogies were written first, then Mark; "But John, last of
all, perceiving that what had reference to the body in the
gospel of our Saviour, was sufficiently detailed, and being
encouraged by his familiar friends, and urged by the
Spirit, wrote a spiritual gospel " (see Eusebius, Hist.
Eccl., vi, 14). His employment of the Johannean gospel
is undisputed, while it is noticeable that John i. 3 runs
through his works almost like a refrain in a Hebrew
psalm. We need cite only a few passages to show his use
of our book. In Stromata, iii, 12, he quotes John vi. 27 :
"Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that
which abideth unto life eternal." In Stromata, v, 3, he re
marks : "Now the word of God says, 'I am the truth'
(John xiv. 6)," and he constantly refers to our Lord as
"the Word." Again in the same work he has undoubt
edly John iii. 30 before him, for he writes: " 'I must
decrease,' said the prophet John [the Baptist], and the
Word of the Lord alone, in which the law terminates,
' increase.' " These are but a few of the scores of quota
tions this father furnishes from the Johannean gospel.
Our next witness is earlier than
Theophilus of those we haye mentioned, and it will be
Antioch, , . ,
115-188 A D noticed that our testimony may be de
scribed as coming from points on the
arc of a circle, the centre of which is Rome. This
writer furnishes a very suggestive example of the pe
culiar difficulties which the defenders of the genuine
ness of the fourth gospel have to meet, which will be
illustrated still further as we proceed in our discussion.

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 21
Theophilus of Antioch, in Syria, is supposed to have
been born about 115 A.D. The date of his death is vari
ously placed at 181 and 188 A.D. The undisputed book
of his, which we have, is a treatise called To Autolycus,
written not much later than 177 A.D., perhaps about 180.
Another work supposed to be by him, a Commentary on
the Gospels, is still under discussion, and as the matter is
not yet settled, we are not entitled to quote it. If it be
by Theophilus, it is probably earlier than the Ad Autoly-
cum. In the unquestioned work by this writer there are
several references which look as though they were from
our gospel, but as they have affinities with other passages
in the New Testament and other writings, the opponents
have strenuously denied that they show any dependence
on John. We are in this matter brought face to
„ face with that fact which, as we have
Passages. said, is exceedingly embarrassing to those
who defend Johannean authorship, viz., that early writers
are often inexact in their quotations, frequently giv
ing the idea but not the very words of the sacred
text. Thus Bk. i, 13, "A seed of wheat, for example,
or of the other grains, when it is cast into the earth,
first dies and rots away, then is raised, and becomes a
stalk of corn," reminds us of John xii. 24, and also of
1 Cor. xv. 36, with both of which it has affinity, though
it comes closer to the passage from the gospel. "The
next chapter opens," says Watkins (Bampton Lectures,
p. 30), "with the words, 'Be not therefore without
faith, but have faith,' which at once remind us of, though
they are not quite identical with, our Lord's words to

22 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
S.Thomas: 'Be not faithless, but believing.'" Other
passages might be adduced in which
u^mThiad the unPreJudiced reader would see at
once the reference to the last of the
gospels, but they are disputed by the opponents. Fortu
nately we have in Bk. ii, Chap. 22, so clear a quotation
that it cannot be explained away. The passage is as
follows: "And hence the holy writings teach us, and
all the Spirit-bearing men, one of whom, John, says,
' In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God,' showing that at first God was alone and the
Word in him. Then he says, ' The word was God ;
all things came into existence through him; and apart
from him not one thing came into existence.' " Were
it not for this quotation so decisive of the use of the
fourth gospel by Theophilus, all knowledge of that book
would have been denied him by the assailants of its
genuineness. This brings us to a principle that should
be enunciated here, viz., that when once in a given com
position a clear quotation from a disputed book has
been found, there is an increase in the probability that
many other passages in that writing seeming to refer to
that book really do so refer, and hence a gain in evi
dential value results; and the more there are of these
passages, the more strongly corroborative and cumula
tive do they become. We shall have occasion to speak
of this again when we come to deal with the Clementine
Homilies, to which it especially applies. Meanwhile
in the case of Theophilus the application of the principle
is of no little value.

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 23
The Clementine Homilies, to
Clementine ... j-
„ ... . . „ which we next direct our attention,
Homilies ; date ? '
is a case in point. The story of the
array of the Clementines against the assailants of our
gospel is an interesting and instructive one. During the
heyday of the Tubingen School it was strongly main
tained that in this work there was no sign of dependence
upon the fourth gospel. In fact, in 1853, Zeller asserted
that one would seek in vain in the Clementines for indi
cations of that book. It happened that the manuscripts
on which the printed editions were based were defective,
breaking off in the middle of Chap, xiv of Bk. xix. Thus
one whole book and part of another were missing. In the
part then known were several references which were
claimed by the defenders of the Johannean authorship,
but their opponents refused to allow the claim. The late
Prof. Lagarde cited fifteen instances of quotation from or
reference to St. John. Others might be given. In 1837,
Dr. Dressel found in the Ottobonian Library at Rome a
manuscript of the fourteenth century which contained the
conclusion to the Homilies. Owing to Dr. Dressel's
illness this was not published till 1853. Then it was
discovered that seven chapters from the place where the
break occurred, or in Chap, xxii, we have the following
passage : " Whence our Teacher, when we inquired of
him in regard to the man who was blind from his birth,
and recovered his sight, if this man sinned, or his parents,
that he should be born blind, answered, ' Neither did he
sin at all, nor his parents, but that the power of God
might be made manifest through him in healing the sins
of ignorance.' " Here is an incontrovertible quotation

24 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
from John ix. 2, 3, for not only is the agreement unusu
ally close, but the incident of the healing of the man blind
from his birth is told only by the author of the fourth
gospel. This is the more pertinent to our discussion in
view of the fact noted above, that in the very year of the
publication of the missing chapters so sweeping and con
fident an assertion had been made as that of Zeller. Of
course, when one unmistakable quotation had been dis
covered, the possibility that other traces of the gospel
might be found became not merely a probability but
almost a certainty. We must not, however, overesti-
Doubt as to Date , ,, , r ., . .. r .,
. .. „,, . . mate the value of the testimony of the
of the Clementines. J
Clementines, looked at from the
standpoint of antiquity. There is a wider range of date
given to them than to any other really ancient Christian
document of which we know. They have been placed all
the way along from 160 A.D. to 250. It is certain that
part of the Homilies were written before 211 A.D.
Probably they were not all published at one time. The
real value of the testimony lies in this : It is a fresh proof
that almost every discovery of early Christian literature
brings to light some corroboration of older evidence or
some new witness to the Johannean authorship of the last
gospel. It is significant that no new support arises to
help the cause of those who refuse to credit that evangel
to the disciple who leaned on Jesus' breast. The only
notable exceptions to the former of these statements (they
are not exceptions to the latter) are the Apology of Arts-
tides and The Teaching of the Apostles in which there is
probably no quotation from the fourth gospel.

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 25
The theorem with which we set out has, we
Theory. believe, been established, viz., that subsequent
to 180 A.D. the testimony to the fourth gospel
is incontrovertible. Not a tithe of the evidence that can
be marshaled has been given. We have, for instance,
not touched on Tertullian in North Africa. All we have
attempted, all we can attempt to do, is simply to indicate
from what different quarters, and with what decisiveness,
the evidence compels the conclusion of the universal re
ception of the fourth gospel as a sacred writing at least as
early as the date mentioned.

CHAPTER IV.
External Evidences, Mostly Prior to 180 A.D.
We have now, taking c. 180 A.D. as
ources o starting point, to trace the influence
Authorities. & r '
of the gospel we are studying backward
as far as we can. There are a number of statements
made by prominent writers, whose works have for the
most part been lost, the only remains of which are
quotations in later writers. It must be premised that in
relying on these quotations we are on perfectly safe
ground, since we are able to test the accuracy of many of
the quotations by comparing those which are taken from
works now extant with the originals. The Ecclesiastical
History of Eusebius, written subsequently to 324 A. D., is
the source of most of these. Indeed the principal value of
this work consists of its "mostly literal extracts from
foreign, and in some cases now extinct, sources ' '
(Schaff's History of the Christian Church, Vol. iii,
p. 877)- The first of this army of witnesses
EpSsrus,ec°i90 a.d. is t0 be found in the evidence of
Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, re
ferred to by Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., iii, 31, and quoted in
v. 24. The occasion was the controversy respecting the
day of the Easter celebration. In a letter to Victor,
26

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 27
bishop of Rome, he says : " We .... observe the gen
uine day, neither adding thereto nor taking therefrom.
For in Asia great lights have fallen asleep, .... Philip,
.... and his two aged virgin daughters, .... more
over, John, who rested upon the bosom of the Lord (see
John xiii. 25, 'the Lord' being substituted for 'Jesus,'
otherwise the words exactly correspond), .... is buried
at Ephesus; also Polycarp of Smyrna, .... Thraseas,
.... Sagaris, .... Papirius; and Melito .... all
these observed the fourteenth day of the Passover accord
ing to the gospel, deviating in no respect, but following
the rule of faith. Moreover, I, Polycrates, who am the
least of all of you, according to the tradition of my rela
tives, some of whom I have followed. For there were
seven, my relatives, bishops, and I am the eighth ; and
my relatives always observed the day when the people
threw away the leaven. ' ' There were two parties in the
early church, one of which considered the Christian Pass
over as a movable festival, and celebrated it on the first
day of the week, or Sunday. The other party appealed to
the authority of John and Philip, and, like Polycrates in
the extract above, to the fourth gospel, in support of the
14th Nisan as the day of celebration. The fourth
gospel stands alone in seeming to make the 14th Nisan
the day of suffering of our Lord. Apart from the ques
tion of the paschal controversy, the verbal coincidence
with John xiii. 25 in the description of John is too close
to be fortuitous. But still more significant than this is
the appeal to the practice of the "great lights" prior to
himself who observed the day indicated not by the synop
tists but by the author of the fourth gospel.

28 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
Claudius Apollinarius, or Apolli-
ClaudiusApollinarius nar- ^ Qf Hierapolis in Phry.
or Apollinaris, ' r . .
fl. c. 166-171 A.D. g'a> was a oishop whose writings
were widely known, highly esteemed,
and generally received. In fragments, preserved in the
Chronicon Paschale, and generally allowed to Apolli
narius, he refers to the difference between the synoptic
gospels and the last one. He also says : "The same [the
Son of God] was pierced in his holy side ; the same that
poured forth again the two purifying elements, water and
blood." Here the reference can be only to John xix. 34,
or as some claim, but with small probability, to an oral
tradition. The synoptic gospels say nothing of the
piercing of the side and the issue of water and blood.
Another bishop whose literary ac-
Melito of Sardis, .. . . , , . .^
_ i«o ion tivity was very great, but whose writ
ings have almost entirely perished,
was Melito, bishop of Sardis. This early writer, in a frag
ment which is supposed to date from about the year 165,
A.D., shows a knowledge of John's gospel by alluding, in
an argument for the divinity of Jesus, to his works and
miracles which were wrought for three years. His words
are as follows: "For being God, and at the same time
perfect man, he himself displayed to us his two natures —
his deity by the signs during the three years after the bap
tism, and his humanity during the thirty years preceding
his baptism." This is in opposition to what the synop
tics, apart from the fourth gospel, seem to indicate. With
out the "spiritual gospel," we should be left to infer a
ministry extending over only one year.
An epistle to the churches of Asia from the churches

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 29
of Vienne and Lyons, dated about 177 A.D. (probably),
has, ' ' Then was fulfilled the declar-
Epistle of Vienne . . c T , ., . ., ,
„ ^ T ,»« a ^ ation of our Lord, that the day
and Lyons, 177 A.D. ' '
would come when every one that
slayeth you will think that he doeth God a service."
Compare John xvii. 2. From the citadel of Greek culture,
Athenagoras of . iT
Athens 177 A d Athens, comes our next witness.
This is Athenagoras, an Athenian
philosopher, who embraced Christianity and presented to
the Emperors Aurelius Antoninus and Aurelius Commodus
a Plea for the Christians. The tenth chapter of this
writing is based upon the prologue to the fourth gospel,
although there are not more than four or five consecutive
words quoted. Thus he says: "We acknowledge one
God, .... by whom the universe has been created
through his Logos, and set in order, and is kept in being,
.... But the Son of God is the Logos of the Father
. . . . ; for after the pattern of him and by him were all
things made . . . ." The dependence on our gospel
here is not to be denied.
The testimony now to be brought under inspection is
the fragment on the resurrection, to
Resurrection^ *"* ^^ tllS datC '' IS° AD" iS &S"
c 150 A D ' signed and generally conceded. This
speaks of "The Logos of God who
became his Son came to us clothed in flesh, revealing both
himself and the Father, giving to us in himself the resur
rection from the dead and the eternal life which follows."
In this passage there are references to John i. 1, 14, xiv.
9, and xi. 25, 26. Nowhere but in the fourth gospel at

3° THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
that time was the idea of the Logos brought into connec
tion with the incarnation. The foregoing testimonies taken
lio-m a°d ynan' individually are perhaps not of such
great weight. But one characteristic
of the argument for the genuineness of the fourth gospel
is that there are so many minor indices, all of which point
in the same direction. These testimonies are cumula
tive. The deponent whom we next introduce is Tatian
the Syrian, one whose affirmation belongs among the most
decisive of the witnesses to be given for the gospel. The
dates we have given are those agreed on by Zahn and Har-
nack, who do not generally stand on the same ground.
Funk puts the first date ten years later. Tatian was a.
pupil, perhaps a convert, of Justin Martyr, and this rela
tionship to Justin is one on which much stress will be
laid when we come to treat of the latter's testimony to our
gospel. This father is of great value to the defenders of
the Johannean authorship for two reasons. He wrote,
about 153 A.D., an Address to the
" Address to the _ . ,
„ . „ Greeks in which he quotes, with an
implication that they are well-known
words, "The darkness comprehendeth not the light"
(John i. 5). He has also the following from the gospel,
" God is a Spirit " (John iv. 24) ; "All things were made
by him, and without him not one thing was made " (John
i. 3). In these quotations he agrees very closely with
the ancient Curetonian Syriac version. If he had left us
no more than this, he would have deserved our thanks.
But we are principally indebted to him for a work the
story of the recovery of which is fascinating. We knew

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 3 1
from notices in the writings of Eusebius, Epiphanius, and
Theodoret, that Tatian had compiled
Tatian'a Harmony. , c c , , . , ,
a harmony of four gospels which he
called "The [Gospel] by Four," but no copy was known
to have survived, and the general opinion was that it was
irretrievably lost. It became known also that Ephraem
Syrus wrote a commentary on this Diatessaron or Har
mony, but that too had disappeared. It was discovered,
however, in an Armenian version, on two manuscripts
about seven hundred years old. This Armenian text was
published in 1836, a Latin translation was made and given
out in 1 841, and a revised translation was published in
1876. From these sources the indefatigable Dr. Zahn un
dertook to reconstruct the Diatessaron with results that
have subsequently been proved excellent. This achieve
ment in itself was wonderful, but still greater things were
to follow. It became known that in the Vatican Library
was an Arabic manuscript which was
Its Discovery. . , , , . , . ,,
in some way closely related to the
Diatessaron. After some time, still another manuscript
was found in Egypt, and in 1888 both were edited by
Ciasca, the two manuscripts admirably supplementing
each other, and furnishing a complete text, the Egyptian
manuscript particularly professing to be a translation of
the Syriac of the Harmony. Ciasca furnished a Latin
rendering, and a comparison of the Latin, the Armenian,
and the Arabic versions shows beyond doubt that we have
the long lost Diatessaron of the Syrian.
When attention was drawn to the Diatessaron, the ques
tion was asked, Which are the four gospels used ? Are
they our four? If this were so, the inference was imme-

32 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
diate that at the time of the compilation of the Harmony
those four and those only were received as canonical in
the region where Tatian was at home. We had heard
that it began with a quotation from St. John's gospel.
We have now ascertained this to be the case, and that the
gospels used were our gospels and those only. Further
more, Dr. Harman has calculated that
ses our our ^ j);atessaron has used about seventy-
seven per cent, of Matthew, fifty per
cent, of Mark, seventy-five per cent, of Luke, and ninety
per cent, of John !
It has been shown, also, that the Arabic versions show
a very much closer agreement with the Curetonian Syriac
than with the Greek of the gospels. We have, then, a
Harmony of our four gospels, constructed at any rate by
170 A.D., and perhaps by 160. And this Harmony begins
and ends with passages from the fourth gospel ! In all
probability Tatian used an existing Syriac translation and
did not translate for himself. The original gospels must
therefore have existed for some time prior to Tatian's use
of them. Dr. Harnack's conclusion is as follows : " We
learn from the Diatessaron that about 160 A.D. our four
gospels had already taken a place of prominence in the
Church and that no others had done so ; that in particular
the fourth gospel had taken a fixed place alongside of
the three 'synoptics.' Add to this the fact that in his
(Tatian's) Address written c. 153 A.D., the words, 'The
darkness comprehendeth not the light,' are quoted as
though well known, we get at once the impression that
the gospel with which we are concerned had already been
long in use."

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 33
Mention of the two early versions
The Old Latin and should be made right h for twQ
Svriflc '^©rsions
150-170 AD reasons, viz. : the proximity in time,
and the similarity in value of evidence,
to that we derive from Tatian's Diatessaron. The versions
of which we speak are the "Old Latin " (not the Vulgate,
which is much later), and the "Old Syriac" or " Cure-
tonian" (not the Peshito, which is also later). Drs. Lid-
don and Westcott are agreed that the former was written
prior to 170 A.D., and the agreement remarked on above
between Tatian's Harmony and the Curetonian Syriac im
plies for the latter a date prior to 160 A.D., probably
150-160 A.D., though Dr. Westcott puts it within the first
half of the second century, i. <?., before 150 A.D. Both
of these versions are known to have contained the fourth
gospel. Yet another valuable piece of evi-
Muratorian Prag- , . , , , , _, . .
.... dence must be placed here. This is
ment, date? c
the celebrated Muratorian fragment,
without title, defective at the beginning and the end, dis
covered by Muratori in Milan, published by him in 1740,
and professing to be by a contemporary of Pius, bishop of
Rome, 139-156 (outside dates are given). This fragment
is written in very corrupt Latin, which is generally allowed
to be a translation from an original in Greek verse. The
authorship has been assigned to Caius of Rome and to
Hegesippus, but this is nothing more than conjecture.
The date of the fragment is generally, in fact all but uni
versally, placed A. D. 1 70 or earlier. But lately there is a
disposition to accept a later date nearer the beginning of
the third century. The fragment has been considered the

34 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
earliest list of the books considered canonical by the
Christians. But no matter what the date, we shall see
that its testimony is most weighty. In this we find the
following: "The fourth gospel is that of John, one
of the disciples. When his fellowrdisciples and bishops
entreated him, he said, ' fast ye now with me for the space
of three days, and let us recount to each other whatever
may be revealed to each of us.' In the same night it was
revealed to Andrew, one of the apostles, that John should
narrate all things in his own name, they revising them.
.... Thus [John] professed himself to be not only the
eye-witness but also the hearer ; and besides that, the his
torian of all the wondrous facts concerning the Lord in
their order."
The first thing noticeable about this excerpt is the order
of the gospels. The fourth of the fragment is our fourth.
Next, the authorship is ascribed to John. If we except
the statement by Theophilus, possibly not excepting even
that, this may be the earliest mention of
_, .. John as the author. We must not neglect
to call attention to what, curiously enough,
has not been given its full force in the argument,
namely, the legendary character of the story of the
origin. There are two possible explanations of this: it
may denote that the origin of the fragment was later than
170 A.D., or it may indicate that the gospel had been
composed so much earlier than 170 A.D. that sufficient
time had elapsed to allow the growth of the legend.
Even supposing a late date for the fragment, the legend
must have taken years to assume the form in which we
have it. If the second explanation, to which we incline,

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 35
be correct, how far back must the composition of the
gospel necessarily be put ! But not less significant than
even this is the fact that the writer mentions John "ex
actly as he mentions Luke or Paul, so as to leave the reader
under the impression that he is speaking of things univer
sally acknowledged " (Luthardt, Comm. on fohn, Engl.
transl., i, 203).

CHAPTER V.
Justin Martyr.
" Justin Martyr is perhaps the most
± iai A D y ' important authority among the fathers
for the genuineness of John's gospel,
both on account of his proximity in time to the apostle,
and, notwithstanding the assertion of some critics, the
distinctness of his references." So says Gloag in his
Introduction to the Johannine Writings, p. 102. It is to
this father's testimony that we now turn. We are again
slightly embarrassed by a doubt as to the dates to be
assigned. The most general consensus is upon the death
date, which nearly all scholars place in 166 A.D. The
limits of his literary activity are by good authorities con
sidered to have been narrowed from 130-166 A.D. to
140-150 A.D. Dr. Hoyt places the first Apology in
145-146 A.D., and the second in the following year.
Another date for the first Apology, accepted by tlie high
authorities, Drs. Caspari and Harnack, is 138-139 A.D.
We are, if the earlier date be correct, getting perilously
near the times of the Apostle John.
Justin's extant writings are quite numerous and are
exceedingly important looked at from every standpoint.
Especially precious for our purpose are his two Apologies
and the Dialogue with Trypho. 3°

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 37
In weighing the evidence of Justin, one must ever keep
in mind the purpose of his writing. His first Apology is
addressed to the Emperor, Senate and people of Rome,
who did not accept the Christian writings, to which,
therefore, Justin could not refer as authoritative. If then
in this writing there are citations from our gospel, they
will not be formal quotations, but will be likely to appear
as indirect allusions. A similar conclusion holds with
reference to the Dialogue with Trypho, a Jew, for whom
New Testament writings had no authority.
No one can read Justin without noticing tlie frequency
of the occurrence of the term " Memoirs."
The ,,M . Sometimes it is simply the "Memoirs,"
as when he says, "I have learned from
the Memoirs" (Trypho, cv). Sometimes the phrase is
expanded and we have "Memoirs of the Apostles" as
in First Apology, lxvii, "the Memoirs of the Apostles
or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as
time permits." Again the phrase becomes "The Me
moirs of His [Christ's] Apostles," as in the Dialogue,
ci. These "Memoirs" are in one place closely iden
tified by the words, "The Apostles in the Memoirs
composed by them which are called gospels" (First
Apology, lxvi). The part they played in Christian wor
ship is indicated in the First Apology, Chap, lxvii : " On
the day called Sunday all who live in cities or in the
country gather together to one place, and the Memoirs of
the Apostles or the writings of the Prophets are read as
long as time permits." The subject and the authors are
treated in other extracts (i Apol., xxxiii) : "Memoirs
of all things which relate to our Lord Jesus Christ,"

38 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
and (Dialogue, ciii), ". . . . The Memoirs which I say
were composed by His Apostles and those who followed
them." Concerning these Memoirs it is fitting
Their Position .. . ,. ., ... .,
T that we notice the position they occu-
pied before we determine exactly what
they were. We have noted the use to which they were
put in the Christian assemblies. They were read along
side of "the Prophets," and had we quoted further, we
should have found they were commented upon in the
same way. The " Memoirs " and " the Prophets " stood
on equal footing apparently ; we know that " the Proph
ets " were regarded as sacred books by the Christians,
hence the "Memoirs" were also sacred books. We are
likewise told of their contents: they were " Memoirs of
all things which relate to Jesus Christ," that is, were his
tories which centred in Jesus. Furthermore they were
written by the "Apostles and those who followed them."
Now but one thing is lacking to make the identification
of these "Memoirs" with our gospels in the highest
degree probable before proceeding to trace their contents
as revealed in this or that saying. Had Justin ever said
that there were four of these memoirs, from data no more
definite than we have already before us, we should have
concluded at once that they were our gospels. But this
he did not say. We have been compelled, therefore, to
compare, page by page and line by line, what Justin says
of the memoirs with the contents of our gospels. The
result is that we find he had used our four gospels.
Of course we are not concerned to prove here his use of
the synoptics ; we wish however to point out one thing,

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 39
viz., the close connection between Irenaeus and Justin,
that they were contemporaries, were probably in Rome
together, that Irenaeus looks on Justin as his master, and
quotes him often, and that Irenaeus holds to four gospels
and those four the very ones which we possess. What
other conclusion could we draw a priori, than that Jus
tin's "Memoirs" are Irenaeus' gospels and therefore
ours? As to the first three gospels no doubt has been
entertained. The question has always been, did he know
our fourth gospel? That question has been answered in
the affirmative so fully and decisively that no other pos
sibility now remains. The late Dr. Ezra Abbot is the
man who more than any other has contributed to this
result. jfk*. ft-b-e-csL- f-Lrm. <y~i /3-i~c "^/tJ /^/_
?Ke~fbUawjng are the passages which de-
. ° a. ,x monstrate JustTr?s~~Ti9e-^Qf the fourth gospel.
in Justin. J ^^-— ^. ° r
In the First Apology, Chap"T~~rxy^we read,
" For Christ also said, ' Except ye be born again, ye shall
not enter into the kingdom of heaven. ' Now that it is
impossible for those who have once been born to enter
into their mothers' wombs, is evident to all." Of course
this is derived at once from John iii. 5. In the sixth
chapter of the Second Apology we have the following,
which, while not strictly a quotation, shows its depend
ence on the prologue of the John gospel : "And his Son,
who alone is properly called Son, the Logos, who was also
with him and was begotten before the works, when at
first he created and arranged all things by him, is called
Christ, in reference to his being anointed and God's
ordering all things through him." In the Dialogue with
Trypho, Chap, lxxxviii, we have the following reference to

4°K THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
John 1*0-23 : " For when John [the Baptist] sat by the
Jordan, . ^\. men supposed him to be Christ ; but he
cried to them/\I am not the Christ, but the voice of one
"crying;'  " This saying of the Baptist is found in
the fourth gospel and nowhere else. In Chap, xci of the
same writing is found a somewhat far-fetched exegesis of
John iii. 14; and in Chap, cv we find, " For I have already
proved that he was the only-begotten of the Father of all
L things, being begotten in a peculiar manner, word and
.power by him, and having become man through the Vir
gin as we have learned through the memoirs." The itali
cized words are from John i. 14. Notice the source from
whence he learns this — the Memoirs; but only our
gospel teaches explicitly the preexistence of Jesus.
Dr. Ezra Abbot marks, as among his conclusions, that
Justin's references to the Logos as incarnated point in
dubitably to John's prologue, and Dr. Westcott points out
that the synoptists do not anywhere de-
_. ' , .'" clare Jesus' preexistence. Another very
Conclusions. j r j
strong indication of the use of the fourth
gospel by Justin is tlie allusion to the cure of congen
ital diseases, mentioned only by John. Justin also
says that "the apostles [notice the plural] have written "
^concerning the descent of the Spirit as a dove at the bap
tism of Jesus. Only Matthew and John, the two apostolic
'.writers of gospels, speak of this — an incidental but very
weighty allusion. We have also seen that Justin affirms
the Memoirs to have been written by "the apostles and
those who followed them." This allows for gospels
written by, at least, two apostles and two apostolic fol
lowers, just what we learn from other sources is the case

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 41
with our gospels. This may be a mere coincidence ; but,
if so, it is a very remarkable one.
Dr. Abbot sums up as follows: "The positive reasons
for believing that Justin derived his quotations from [the
fourth gospel] are : (i) The fact that in no other report of
the teaching of Christ, except of John, do we find the
figure of the new birth ; (2) the insistence in both Justin
and John on the necessity of the new birth to the entrance
into the kingdom of heaven; (3) its mention in both in
connection with baptism ; (4) and last and most impor
tant of all, the fact that Justin's remark on the impossi
bility of a second natural birth is such a platitude, in the
form in which he presents it, that we cannot regard it as
original." Several protests have been entered
Objections against the inference from the above pas-
to Dr. Abbot's 8 _ . , T , _ , \
Inferences. sages that Justin used John. One objec
tion is that the passages show variations
from the Johannean text as we have them, that they are
not sufficiently close to be quotations. The answer to
this is : first, that alongside of the quotation from John is
one from Isaiah, which is just as loosely made ; secondly,
several of the variations found in Justin are found in other
fathers, and just as the first passage is blended in Justin
with a reminiscence of Matt, xviii. 3, so is it in Clement
of Alexandria ; thirdly, it was the habit of the fathers to
quote loosely, to abridge, transpose, combine and translate ;
fourthly, not a single variation in Justin from the text but
has its numerous parallels in ancient and modern writers.
Another objection that has been raised is that the
author of the fourth gospel borrowed from Justin. The

k#2 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
only answer possible to this is that the eye which can dis
cern such a relationship, which can see in a work so origi
nal as the gospel a dependence upon an author so differ
ent in that particular as Justin, is certainly in need of treat
ment. Even the most unrelenting of the opponents of the
genuineness of our gospel have not thought this argument
worth repeating.
Thep^myia^^e^^r^ed^that^ J^stmjiejjyedJvisJ^ogos
/doctrine not from the gospel but from Philo. To this the
decisive reply is that Philo never treats of*the Logos as
incarnated. Remember that this is the centre of John's
L doctrine, that he treats not only of "the Word" but of
" the Word made flesh," and that in this Justin follows
him throughout, and the objection falls at once.
Of the scantiness of Justin's employment of the gospel
much has also been made. Why did he not use it more
to support his exposition of the Logos ? To this the an
swer is: (i) Albrecht Thoma has investigated the Literary
Relation of Justin to Paul and to John's Gospel, and
reaches the conclusion that Justin uses almost every chap
ter of the Logos gospel, and some chapters very fully ; (2)
the argument from scantiness of quotation would bear
almost as heavily upon the Mark gospel, which is used
only a few times, yet the antiquity of which is conceded
on all sides ; (3) at most this proves that gospel history
was current in synoptic form.
In line with this last objection is the question, Why has
, Justin not used John as he has the synoptists for the his
tory? The reply is that we cannot tell. But we must
point to the precariousness of a negative argument as
^illustrated above in the case of Mark, , ,

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 43
An objection resembling the foregoing is interposed in
the statement that John is quoted in the Dialogue as the
author of the Apocalypse ; why not then of the fourth gos
pel ? To this, perhaps, the best, and certainly a sufficient
answer, is that in the dialogue, John, though one of the
best known apostles, is introduced as a stranger to the
Jew. In the apologies, Justin addressed heathen who
did not know the apostles, and to whom the names would
be meaningless. And, besides, Justin was followed in
this practice by the apologists down to the time of Eu
sebius. An d priori difficulty has been urged, that John con
tradicted the synoptics and therefore could not have been
used by Justin. But all four gospels were certainly cur
rent side by side toward the close of the century, when
the objection would be as good as in Justin's time.
A brief review may be advantageous
fhTETridence. here" We have sPoken of the universal
reception within the church of the Johan
nine gospel from A.D. 180 on. We have illustrated
its unquestioned use by Irenaeus of Lyons and Clement
of Alexandria, have hinted at the corroborative testimony
of Tertullian at Carthage, and have called Theophilus of
Antioch, Polycrates of Ephesus, Melito of Sardis, and
Athenagoras of Athens, as witnesses from the East. We
have shown the currency of the gospel in the Syrian
church by the abundant use Tatian has made of it, and
this currency in ancient times has been made more sure by
the evidence of the Old Latin and Old Syriac versions.
We have traced its existence backward step by step to
the beginning of the second third of the second century,

44 ' THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
all the time, we must remember, not as a new gospel, but
as in current use among Christians.
We have found citations from it in Justin at a date
which is variously put from A.D. 138 to 145. This early
. father cited it as one of the " Memoirs " which he identi
fied with the ' ' Gospels. ' ' If his First Apology was written
even so late as 145 A.D., we can hardly allow less than a
"generation for the gospel to take the place it has with
him, on the supposition that another than the apostle wrote
it. If the apostle were known to have written it, it would,
of course, have gone at once into circulation. But even
were it a new composition issued just prior to his Apology
(a supposition which is not tenable because of the manner
L of Justin's employment of it), if it had then been put forth
falsely as a composition of the apostle, there were those
"living who had known John, who would have recognized
the spuriousness of the composition and would at once have
denounced the effort to palm on the world a fictitious
Johannean gospel. We cannot resist the conclusion that
if we had no earlier testimony, the witness of Justin
places our gospel so far back that it would have been im-
'possible for it to gain currency as a pseudonymous produc
tion. Our testimony thus far, let us remember, comes
.with one exception, the Clementines, from the orthodox
' Christians of the whole church, East and West.

CHAPTER VI.
Testimony of Heretical Sects.
We have had occasion to speak
e ospe o e er , q^ ^ re{jiscovery 0f Christian
literature supposed to be irretriev
ably lost. We have once again to call attention to a
discovery of this sort. Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., vi, 12) has
preserved an extract from a letter or work on a " Gospel
of Peter ' ' which letter was written by Serapion, bishop of
Antioch, A.D. 190-203, to the church of Rhossus. In
this letter he interdicts the use of that gospel as being of
a docetic character, although he had formerly and without
sufficient examination granted permission to read it.
Eusebius himself refers to it in several places, and says
that it is heretical. We have mention of it also in the
works of Jerome, Theodoret, and Origen. The earliest
reference to it is the first we have given, which we may
place, say, A.D. 192. Several Apocryphal books went
under Peter's name, such as the Gospel, an Apocalypse,
the Acts of Peter, and the Preaching and Travels of Peter,
etc. All of these had disappeared, though it is supposed
that we have the Preaching embodied in the Clementines.
Less than seven years ago there was
1 1 < very, ^^ u^ ^ Akhmim, in Upper Egypt, a
manuscript which lay for six years in Cairo, attracting no
45

46 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
attention. It was not published till late in 1892, and then
was found to contain a fragment of the Gospel of Peter,
of the Apocalypse of Peter, and of the Book of Enoch.
These three documents were all instantly recognized, and
their value for critical questions now under discussion
was pointed out. We are concerned here only with the
Gospel of Peter. The date of this document
'""' u is not settled. It must be much earlier than
A.D. 190, for Serapion either before, or soon after, enter
ing his bishopric, found it in use in a church, and clearly
not as a new book. Its composite character, derived as it
is from the other gospels (as we shall see), would indicate
a date later than some Harmony, say Tatian's, therefore
A.D. 160. Yet, on the other hand, it agrees so fully
with Luke's gospel as to suggest an earlier origin. It
uses also 1 Peter iii. 19. Dr. Martineau is very positive
that Justin Martyr has used it in the first Apology, c. xxxv
and elsewhere, and if that is the case then c. 130 A.D.
must be assigned as the latest date. Other indications
tend to strengthen such a conclusion. The tendency is,
therefore, to push the composition far back towards the
first quarter of the second century. We do not lay stress
on this earliest date, though it does not seem unlikely.
Now this newly recovered fragment bears very closely
on our problem. We have incidentally called attention
to its composite character. It used all
Fourth Gospel. the S0SPels> Lulle m0St °f all> then '
Matthew, John, and Mark in the order
named. In some of these cases the Greek text of Peter
and John is very close. In other cases the idea is bor
rowed but put into other words. Again there is a very

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 47
evident mingling of the text of two or more of our gospels.
For example, at the end of the fragment the author has
an evident allusion to John xx. 10, xxi. 3 (and Mark ii.
14). Again, the Peter gospel says that the Jews, in re
venge on the malefactor who is represented as pleading for
Jesus, demand that the one malefactor's legs be broken,
evidently having in mind, "And they brake the legs of the
first" (John xix. 32). So when the fragment has to do
with the burial of Jesus, it locates the tomb in "Joseph's
garden." Only the fourth gospel mentions the garden.
It also makes the women in coming to the sepulchre stoop
down to look in, probably borrowing this from John xxv,
where Peter stoops down. This language is found in the
common text of Luke, into which it has probably crept
from a marginal reference to John. So too the fragment
says they crucified Jesus "in the midst," that they clad
him with purple (here from John xix. 2). More import
ant is the fact that the false Peter misunderstood John xix.
13, understanding the verb in a transitive sense, viz., that
" Pilate brought Jesus forth and set him on the judgment
seat." These are by no means all of the coincidences with the
fourth gospel. Others quite as remarkable can be traced.
Probably enough has been said to make the use of our
gospel evident. For those who wish to pursue this line
of investigation nothing has yet appeared so useful as Dr.
H. Von Schubert's Das Petrusevangelium, Berlin, July,
1893. What we are principally concerned with is that, what
ever be the final conclusion regarding the date of the
Petrine fragment, there is no doubt that it is based partly

48 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
upon the Johannean gospel. We must also note that the
gospel of Peter was condemned by Serapion on the
ground that it favored the heresy of docetism, distinct
traces of which the fragment is considered to show, though
Dr. McGiffert strenuously denies that taint in the frag
ment so lately recovered.
We are now to deal with a class of citations, the aggre
gated weight of which is very great in
Usedb G°SPel suggestinS the antiquity of the fourth
Heretical Sects, gospel. We find our authority for these
largely, though not solely, in Irenaeus
and Hippolytus. The former wrote his Against Heresies
sometime prior to 189. In that he cites the published
works of heresiarchs and their disciples. Time must be
allowed for the circulation of these works for them to have
become sufficiently prominent to attract his notice, situ
ated as he was, at an outpost of the church. These cited
works themselves quote the fourth gospel, especially on
the Logos, quote it as well known. What then is the
necessary inference regarding the age of that gospel?
The other authority mentioned above, Hippolytus, is
no less important for our purpose than Irenaeus himself.
In fact, the former was a disciple of the latter. Let us
remember the nexus we have here, binding Hippolytus
with the apostle John. It will add somewhat to the value
of the former's testimony. Hippolytus was a disciple of
Irenasus, Irenaeus of Polycarp, and Polycarp of John.
Hippolytus wrote, among other works, a Commentary on
the Apocalypse and Gospel of John, and, which is our im
mediate concern, a Refutation of all Heresies. This lat
ter is of especial value, because of its quotations of leaders

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 49
of heretical sects, who based their systems upon the John
gospel. The class of citations to which we refer, then, is taken
frc heretical writers. These may be divided into three
types, agreeing with the schools of gnosticism. We shall
study the school of Marcion, of Valentinus, and of Basi-
lides. The founder of the first of these, Mar-
fl ^¦n'^ao-ie'i ci°n) a contemporary of Polycarp, flour
ished A.D. 130-165, founding in Rome
a sect which thrived for a century and left its traces in
church life as late as the tenth century. He formed a
canon of his own, a mutilated gospel of Luke and ten
Pauline epistles. The other gospels and the rest of the
New Testament writings he rejected, not because of any
doubt as to their apostolicity, but because they were
thought by him to lean too strongly toward Judaism, to
which he was opposed, or because he considered that the
writers were imperfectly enlightened. Both Tertullian
and Irenaeus assume that he knew and
GoseCeied P°Urtl1 reJected the fourth S°sPel amonS the
rest, and not a single word has come
down to us intimating that this assumption was ever chal
lenged. Tertullian declares in plain words, though the
passage is too long to be quoted here, that the "evangeli
cal instrument" has "apostles" and "apostolic men"
as its authors, whom he afterward identifies (and notice
the pairing) as John and Matthew, Luke and Mark. He
goes on to say: "Now of the authors whom we possess,
Marcion seemes to have singled out Luke for his mutila
ting process" (Against Marcion, iv, 3). In his work on

5° THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
The Flesh of Christ, Chap, iii, Tertullian returns to the
charge in the words: "If you [Marcion] had not pur
posely rejected in some instances and corrupted in
others, the Scriptures opposed to your opinion, you would
have been confuted by the gospel of John." But a man
cannot "reject" that of which he knows nothing, nor
be confuted by what does not exist, therefore Marcion,
according to Tertullian, knew our gospel.
Again in the work Against Marcion, iv,
On Basis of Tertullian remarks: "Marcion, finding
Gal. ii. 11-14. °' °
the epistle to the Galatians, in which Paul
accuses the apostles themselves of not walking in the
truth of the gospel .... strives by means of that to
destroy confidence in the gospels which are published
in the name of the apostles, and also of apostolical
men . . . . " Nothing clearer can be deducted from
this than that Marcion discredited our gospel, especially
when it is remembered whom Tertullian means by "apos
tles and apostolical men." And this argues the existence
of John's gospel in Marcion's time, for Tertullian's
Evangelical Instrument is his name for the four gospels. '
We come next to the Valentinians, in.
Vaientini s eluding the founder Valentinus (was ac
tive 138-160 A.D.), and his personal dis
ciples, Heracleon and Ptolemaeus (fl. 170-180 A.D.).
In our study of this period we have to be continually on
. _ .. our guard in one particular. Our authori
ties (Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Clement) are
expounding the system of the Valentinians and Basilid-
ians. We need to watch, lest we mistake a quotation
from the system as worked out for a personal quotation,

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 51
or citation of the founder of the school. There are, how
ever, sufficiently clear cases of personal citation, so that
we need feel no doubt whatever as to the individual
knowledge of our gospel.
Irenaeus gives us, in his writing Against Heresies, i, 8,
5, an exposition by the Valentinians of part of the pro
logue of John's gospel. The Latin of the passage ends
with the words, " and so says Ptole-
Ptolemseus, , , . , . .
fl 170-180AD niaeus, intimating that the exegesis is
his. In the same chapter is a quotation
of a clause of John xii. 27: "And what shall I say?"
with the exegetical addition: "I know not." Epipha
nius (Heresies, xxxiii, 3-7) has preserved a letter by
Ptolemaeus to Flora, in which occurs the quotation : " All
things were made by him, and without him was not any
thing made," with the formula, "The apostle says."
Here is a personal acceptance of the gospel by Ptolemaeus.
Heracleon, another disciple of Valen-
Heracleon, .. . , .
fl 150-160 A D tmus> 1S known to have written a com
mentary on the fourth gospel — in fact
the first one known — portions of which have been pre
served for us by Origen. The nature of the exegesis
proves that the commentator looked on the text as
authoritative and inspired. Quotations here, with this
undisputed fact before us, would be a waste of space and
time. One important fact needs to be recalled, viz., that
for a religious book to become the text of a commentary
requires that it should be considered authoritative and of
established use in church. But at the time of Heracleon,
the fourth gospel occupied so eminent a position as to
induce him to comment on it, and yet necessitated his so

52 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
wresting its text and meaning as to suggest to Origen the
task of refuting him. Valentinus (flourished c. 140 A.D.), the
a en uius, founder of this school, also supplies us with
fl. c. 140 A.D. ' rr
evidence. Tertullian says of him (On Pre
scription Against Heretics, cxxxviii) : " For although Val
entinus seems to use the entire instrument, he has none
the less laid violent hands on the truth, only with more
cunning mind and skill than Marcion. Marcion expressly
.... used the knife, not the pen .... Valentinus,
however, abstained from such excision, because he did not
invent Scriptures to square with his own subject matter,
but adapted his matter to the Scriptures : yet he took away
more, and added more, by removing the proper meaning
.... and adding fantastic arrangement of things . . . ."
We are to remember that Tertullian uses the phrase
"Evangelical Instrument" as a synonym of our word
"gospels." So Valentinus used these entire, did not mu
tilate them as did Marcion. That Valentinus used the gos
pel of John is clear from Hippolytus (Refutation of all Her
esies, vi, 30), who tells us, in a personal reference to Valen
tinus: "He says the Saviour observes 'all that came before
Me are thieves and robbers ' " (compare John x. 8). In
the preceding chapter Hippolytus says that Valentinus calls
the devil "The ruler of this world " (see John xii. 31,
xvi. 2, and compare xiv. 30). In these passages no one
who had not a theory to maintain would see anything but
quotation of Valentinus himself. But those who deny the
apostolicity of our gospel affirm that Hippolytus refers to
the school of Valentinians and not to the master. The
sentence before the one containing the words "the ruler

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 53
of this world" begins, "The quaternion advocated by
Valentinus," and no mention of his school intervenes.
G. Heinrici, in Germany, has in-
toevaienttnians. vestiSated the Valentinian Gnosticism
in relation to our gospel and says :
" The use that the Valentinians made of Scripture proves
that the gospel of John and [certain] epistles .... were
acknowledged writings, and already employed as apostolic
writings in the first half of the second century."
Our last representative of Gnosticism is
a tv o= 10= „ Basilides, who is reckoned to have lived
A.D. 65-135? A.D. 65-135, and to have written c. 125
A.D. a commentary on "the Gospel" which may or may
not mean the same as Tertullian's "Evangelical Instru
ment." Exactly what this commentary was critics do not
agree in defining. Hippolytus informs us that Basilides
claimed to be a disciple of Matthias, who was chosen in
the place of Judas Iscariot, and Epiphanius gives us infor
mation that tends to corroborate this when he says that
Basilides taught at Antioch (one supposed scene of Mat
thias' activity) before he went to Alexandria.
Here again the adverse critics attempt to discount Hip
polytus by saying that he confuses the master with his
school. But so careful a critic as Mat-
Matthew Arnold .. . ,, , , . _ _,
_ .... thew Arnold, endorsed by Dr. Ezra
on Basilides. ' '
Abbot, has said, "It is not true that
he [Hippolytus] wields the subjectless ' he says ' in the
random manner alleged [confusing master and school],
with no other formula for quotation both from the master
and from the followers. In general, he uses the formula
' according to them ' when he quotes from the school, and

54 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
the formula ' he says ' when he gives the dicta of the
master. And in this particular case [referring to the quo
tations we shall adduce] he manifestly quotes the dicta of
Basilides, and no one who had not a theory to serve would
ever dream of doubting it. Basilides, therefore, about the
year 1 25 of our era, had before him the
PourS^spel. fourth gospel." Matthew Arnold, there,
is referring to two passages from Hippo
lytus' Refutation of all Heresies, vii, 10: "and this, he
says, is that which has been stated in the Gospels : ' He
was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh
into the world:'" The other passage is chapter fifteen
of the same book, where we find, "And that each thing,
he says, has its own particular times, the Saviour is a suffi
cient (witness) when he observes, ' Mine hour is not yet
come'" (see John ii. 4). (The reader is referred to an
able discussion, on the quotation of Basilides in Hippo
lytus' work, by Dr. James Drummond, published in the
Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. xi, Part ii, 1892.)
Dr. Ezra Abbot, known as a most
Dr. Abbot on fair stu(jent concludes his investiga-
Gnostic Use of . °
Fourth Gospel. tl0ns as Allows: "In view of all the
evidence, then, I think we have good
reason for believing that the gospel of John was one of a
collection of gospels, probably embracing our four, which
Basilides and his followers received as authoritative about
the year 125."
Concerning the use of our gospel by the Gnostics no
better statement has been formulated than Dr. Ezra Ab
bot's. " The use of the gospel of John by the Gnostic
sects, in the second century, affords a strong, it may seem

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 55
decisive, argument for its genuineness. However ingeni
ously they might pervert its meaning, it is obvious ....
that this gospel is ... . diametrically opposed to the
essential principles of Gnosticism. The Christian Fathers,
in their contests with the Gnostics,
Gospel could not r , .. r „ ,
have been forged. found ll an armory of weaPons. Such
being the case, let us suppose it to
have been forged about the middle of the second century,
in the heat of the Gnostic controversy. It was thus a
book which the founders of the Gnostic sects, who flour
ished ten, twenty, or thirty years before, had never heard
of. How . . . . , then, explain the fact that their fol
lowers should not only have received it, but have received
it, so far as appears, without question or discussion ? It
must have been received by the founders of these sects
from the beginning .... But if received by the
founders of these sects, it must have been received at the
same time by the Catholic Christians. They would not at
a later period have taken the spurious work from the here
tics with whom they were in controversy. It was then
generally received both by Gnostics and their opponents,
between the years 120 and 130. What follows? It fol
lows that the Gnostics of that date received it because
they could not help it. They would not have admitted the
authority of a book which could be reconciled with their
doctrines only by the most forced interpretation, if they
could have destroyed its authority by denying its genuine
ness, [and] its genuineness could then be
Its Genuineness yagcertained  The fact of the
Conclusive. J . ,
reception of the fourth gospel as [John s]
work at so early a date, by parties so violently opposed to

56 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM,
each other [as the Gnostics and Catholic Christians],
proves that the evidence of its genuineness was conclu

sive.

The citations by Hippolytus of quotations of John by
the Ophites and Peratae are not so decisive as to require
their production here.

CHAPTER VII.
The Alogi and the Appendix to the Gospel.
There remain yet two witnesses to the an-
The Alogi. tiquity of the fourth gospel. We have already
referred (Chap, i) to a party in the early
church who denied the apostolicity of the fourth gospel.
Irenaeus tells us of "vain, unlearned and audacious " men
"who represent the aspects of the gospel as
Mentioned , . ... . , ,, r
. T being either more in number than as afore-
by IrenEeus, °
said, or, on the other hand, fewer . . . .,
others . . . ., that they may set at naught the gift of the
Spirit . . . ., do not admit that aspect presented by
John's gospel, in which the Lord promised that he would
send the Paraclete ; but set aside at once both the gospel
and the prophetic spirit ' ' (Against Here-
_ . . . sies, iii, ii, 9). It is believed that Epiph-
Epiphanms. ' ' ' JJ r r
anius refers to the same party in his
Hmresies, li, 3, where he nicknames them Alogi (that is,
" those who deny the Logos," or " those without reason,"
for he intends a pun), and says, "For they hold that so-
called heresy which rejects the books of John. Since
then they do not receive the Logos which was preached
by John, they shall be called 'Alogi.' " That is they are
represented as rejecting the doctrine of the Logos and the
writings of St. John. According to Irenaeus they rejected
57

58 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
the doctrine of the Paraclete and of the accompanying
gift of prophecy. These two allusions are all we have to
this obscure party in the church, though we are sure that
Epiphanius gets his information from a lost work of
Hippolytus. It might seem at first sight
This Testimony that tWs denjal of the genuineness of our
Adverse. gospel by a party in the early church
would militate against our contention.
But we must not forget that all we are attempting now
is to show the antiquity of the fourth
Really not so. ,
gospel.
There are therefore two points of interest in this denial
by the Alogi : i . That they were actuated by dogmatic
motives, that they rejected the authorship of John in
order to get rid of the gospel which made untenable their
own views; 2. Though they denied the genuineness of
the gospel, they attributed its composition to Cerinthus, a
heretic of the first century and a contemporary of the Apos
tle John. These very people then, instead of contributing
something of value to those who deny the genuineness of
our gospel, become witnesses for its antiquity. And bear
ing in mind what has already been said regarding the
acceptance of the fourth gospel by heretics and orthodox,
and also the further fact that the position of the Alogi was
almost instantly assailed, their testimony is particularly
weighty. Probably the earliest testimony we have to the antiquity
of the gospel is found in the gospel itself. We must not
be misunderstood here as referring to internal testimony.
It can with no more correctness be called internal evi
dence than can the story of Moses' death and burial be

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 59
called internal evidence of Moses' authorship of the
Pentateuch. This evidence is found in
i^°n^ US °? ° the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth verses
the Gospel an J J
Attestation. of the last chapter of John's gospel
and reads: "This is that disciple
which beareth witness of these things, and wrote these
things : and we know that his witness is true. And there
are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if
they should be written every one, I suppose that even the
world itself would not contain the books that should be
written." Concerning this we notice first, that
Characteristics. the style of writinS is changed, all that
precedes has been told in the third per
son; here we find the first person "we" and "I";
second, the twenty-fourth verse is an identification of the
author of the book with the disciple of whom Jesus said,
" If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? "
We shall see that later generations believed this to be said
of John, and believed it so persistently that a story got
abroad that John did not die but simply went to sleep in
his grave, and that the earth over him was disturbed by
his breathing. The self-evident conclusion is that these
its Source. verses were not written by the author of the
gospel, and that we have here an attesta
tion either real or forged. If it is real the likeliest
hypothesis is that it is by those to whom the gospel was
first given, i.e., the church of Ephesus. Then the seal of
approval would be given by the church, and particularly
by the elder in charge after John's death in the name of the

60 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
church. This is Mr. Norton's suggestion, and it has met
the approval of all but negative critics. If this be the
case, we have a contemporary endorsal of the book and
its writer. On the supposition that the attestation is a
forgery, Dr. Ezra Abbot has the following:
" Suppose the gospel written by an anonymous
forger of the middle of the second century. What possi
ble credit could he suppose would be given to it by an
anonymous attestation like this? A forger with such a
purpose would have named his pretended authority, and
have represented the attestation as formally and solemnly
given. The attestation as it stands, clearly presupposes
that the author .... was known to those who first
received the copy of the gospel containing it." Dr.
Abbot makes the suggestion, the probability of which is
evident at once to every student of New Testament manu
scripts, that the endorsement was probably at first written
separate from the text or on the margin, and afterwards
incorporated with the text — a process exceedingly com
mon in the manuscripts which have come down to us.
We have now summarized the external evi
dence for the antiquity of the fourth gospel.
We have traced its employment from the last third of the
second century, when it was in use alongside of the other
gospels, East, West and South, back to the first quarter of
the century. We have found it used as
Fourth Gospel apostoiic by orthodox and heterodox, by
not Later than _,,._,,.. , ' J
First Century. Catholic Christians and by Gnostics, by
Montanists and Docetists, and appealed to
by all parties in support of their peculiar doctrines. By no

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 61
means all of the testimony possible has been adduced. We
have not even touched on the possible testimony of Papias
and Polycarp, as that testimony is yet most strenuously
disputed. But when we find that within^fchifty years of
the time of John's death this gospeHs-lised by Gnostics,
during the lifetime of Papiasj^ana of Polycarp, and of
hundreds of others who lmew^John, and within a few years
of this by Justin Martyr, who belonged to the orthodox,
we see how impossible becomes the hypothesis that it could
have begn-^written much, if at all, subsequent to the first
cen&rfy, that is, it must have appeared at least as early as
- /^j~Kne time at which tradition tells us John died.
yi<3^C^ccj en. £l*^~j cr&h_x*- csLi^-c^-fz^ljt~> s~? /t-«4-c_ aCn^cCy */ <c*_
TU^c^fUx. iff £JU_ c&n_j£_ ^yAx. sloCz^ /? J>L<- ^T.^^-^e, ^ 7^
x£4jl- . . fcAje. <TL^t^_ gj id-*, h^di 3 &^#U*^j y /fl&
<1 — 9ufi^~/ 1 'j-f £>-£/* 3> ms&^-oL C*^^?*^-^ Z^^t^tlL/L^*-,
jC-C^rpfT^t-i^CuX. -2- ^-9fnsn-» irtrC>Lf7 A^U-U^r-rT~^ -^-c-C-i-c Cttsa-o
f C&JL- <Z-TT.CX- '

i~fc^7

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'in

<rC^^* * .CHAPTER VIII.
.^^C-^, ^e^rvu^-ofcHE Author. ^0 ^*^ **y***™*
If in the preceding chapters our facts are
&¦*'»*"' f'ry^s n sure and our reasoning good, the gospel is
^ j<Jl^t*>vvXv^C ' shown to have been in circulation at a time
gUSjdt^fV^Y close to what tradition assigns as the date of the death
^_L-V of John. We have seen it to be improbable, if not impos-
^-¦^sible, that a forgery could have gained currency at so early
A^VV/Ja date ; that Gnostics would not have received a book
0. which ran counter to their theories if its apostolicity had
* , not been known, and that the orthodox would not have
J***.*** accepted one which their opponents used unless it were be-
c-t/lAJt % lieved genuine. The argument thus far, then, implies the

5*.

authorship of John, but only upon the supposition that
Ayirfrfif '&rr«A*0 John lived till near the close of the first
" Jwhn's Residence ' , ... .. . ,. . . ,
&*r*~ at Ephesus century, and with the implication that
«-*? his home was in Ephesus. Since both
these facts have "for dogmatic reasons" been denied,
it will be necessary to see what the evidence is for (i)
[.Tt^A^john's survival, (2) in Ephesus, (3) till near the beginning
^5ue. of the second century. We are to bear in mind that the
reason for denying the Ephesian residence of John is that it
would be impossible to account for the re-
* cognized currency of a gospel composed by
turn in proconsular Asia so early as has been proved on
xtfrn* dLwoe. <£-**** *-*v&.e.e*c*ji-E*_ **>*. ~6&*

X^c*L , questioned

AJtlsLA+A^n*-

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 63
grounds other than its genuineness if John lived in Ephesus.
People would at once have declared it spurious, or, at
least, would have questioned its genuineness, a thing of
which we have no trace till we meet the Alogi, whose
contention was at once challenged and afterwards ridiculed.
Now Irenaeus (Against Heresies, iii, 3, 4), in speaking of
the preservation of ecclesiastical tradi-
Evidence of tion as giyen by the apostleS) has the foi .
fl 174-189 A D lowing : " The church in Ephesus,
founded by Paul, and having John re
maining among them permanently until the times of
Trajan [98-117 A.D.], is a true witness of the tradition
of the apostles." In the same chapter he relates that
"John, the disciple of the Lord, rushed out of the bath
house without bathing, exclaiming, ' Let us fly, lest even
the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of
the truth, is within.' " And this story is given on the
authority of Polycarp. So in the same work, iii, 1, 1,
Irenaeus says, "Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord,
who also leaned upon his breast, did himself publish a
gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia." Quota
tions from Irenaeus to this purport might be multiplied
almost indefinitely. According to Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., v,
^P20ooaUd l8)' AP°llonius relates that "a dead man
was raised by the divine power, through
the same John [as wrote the Apocalypse] at Ephesus."
The same writer tells us (Hist. Eccl., v,
PolvcrEttesc 190 ad' 24) t*iat Polycrates of Ephesus wrote in a
letter to Victor of Rome that "John, who
rested on the bosom of the Lord . . . ., is buried in

64 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
Ephesus," and we may naturally deduce from this that
John lived in Ephesus. Clement of Alexandria, in chapter
Clement of forty-two of his Salvation of the Rich
fl 190-203 A D Man, implies the residence of the apostle
John at Ephesus, using such expressions
as, " For when, on the tyrant's death, he [John] returned
to Ephesus from the isle of Patmos," "and he set out for
Ephesus," showing knowledge of a tradition that the city
of Diana was the home of the apostle.
Justin Martyr, who held in Ephesus a
t lee* A D*1" yr' discussion with Trypho, a Jew, says in the
course of the debate, " A man among us,
one of the apostles of Christ, has prophesied in the Reve
lation which was given to him." The most natural inter
pretation of this passage is that the words " among us "
mark the place as Ephesus.
Certainly it is John the Apostle who is referred to here,
for we know that the Apocalypse was generally attributed
to him by the early church, as witness the reference in
Irenaeus (Against Heresies, v, 30, 1), " That number
[666] being found in all accurate copies [of the Apoc
alypse], and those men who saw John face to face bear
ing testimony to it  "
The Martyr Polycarp bears testimony to
70-155^' D the Presence °f Jorin in Asia Minor.
Irenaeus refers to this (see Eusebius, Hist.
Eccl., v, 24) when he writes to Florinus, "And I could
still show thee the place where he sat when he taught, and
gave an account of his relations with John and with the
others who had seen the Lord." So later, when Polycarp

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 65
visited Rome he had a discussion with the Roman bishop
Anicetus concerning the observation of the Christian pass-
over on 14th Nisan, and Polycarp refused to give way,
" seeing that he had always observed it with John the dis
ciple of the Lord, and the rest of the disciples, with whom
he associated " (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., v, 24). The
weight of this testimony seems the greater if we remember
that Polycarp was bishop of the church at Smyrna, only
forty miles away from Ephesus.
Ignatius, thought to have been a dis-
30?-l08 'a d ciple of John, may refer to this when in
his letter to the Ephesians (Chap, xi),
he writes of " the Christians who have always had inter
course with the apostles . . . . , with Paul, and John, and
Timothy." This last piece of evidence may have to be
qualified, as the words "with Paul, and John, etc.," be
long to the longer recension of the Ignatian epistles.
Confirmatory evidence of John's resi-
T .. .. dence in Asia Minor is found in his well-
Indications. known solicitude for the churches there as
shown in the messages to the seven churches. The
legends which grew up in after-years also imply an Ephe-
sian residence, notably that of the young men of Ephesus
who sold their goods and gave away the proceeds, under
John's direction. They then regretted their action, when
John told them to gather sticks and stones, which he then
turned into gold and gems, reproaching the young men
for their apostasy. They soon repented, when the gold
and precious stones reverted to their original form.
In fact, whatever mention we have of John invariably
finds its easiest and most natural interpretation on the sup-

66 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
position that he lived in Ephesus. Any other explanation
plunges us at once into difficulties.
The evidence as to the death of John
t -l. , ^ ^ agrees in placing it near the close of the first
John's Death. ° r b
century. Jerome says that he died sixty-
eight years after the Passion, /. e., about ioo A.D. Irenaeus
says that he lived till Trajan's accession (98 A.D.), and
Suidas makes him live to the age of 120. The only way
to get rid of this testimony is to deny it absolutely or to
" explain it away." We see no reason for either process,
and so prefer to accept the evidence.
We have therefore brought the apostle
the "Author. John and the gosPel of John into close re
lationship. Is there any direct testimony
connecting him with the gospel which goes by his
name? Undoubtedly there is. And here again we fall
back on Irenaeus, who is, in all matters concerning the
external testimony for the fourth gospel, the mark be
tween flood and ebb. We have already quoted in this
chapter one passage in which this fa-
Asserted by ther stateg that john wrote a gospel
fl. 174-189 A.D. wl"le m Asia- Another passage is
found in the same work, Against Her
esies, iii, n, 8, "For that [gospel] according to John
relates [Christ's] original, effectual, and glorious genera
tion from the Father, thus declaring, ' In the beginning
was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God.'" We shall not adduce the testimony of
fathers later than Irenaeus, as a glance at the indices of
good editions of their works will show how numerous are
the ascriptions of our gospel to John from Irenaeus on.

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 67
For our next witness we need only refer
L^foo1^^ our readers to the third chapter of this
115-188 A.D. r
book, where we have cited a quotation by
Theophilus of Antioch in his To Autolycus, "And hence
the holy writings teach us, and all the spirit-bearing men,
one of whom, John, says, ' In the beginning,' etc."
The Muratorian fragment, the date
Muratorian Frag- , , . , , , ,
.... of which, as we have seen, has been
ment, date? ' '
usually put about 170 A.D., is explicit
in its statement : " The fourth gospel is that of John, one
of the disciples." The question as to the date of this
fragment may have to be reexamined, but there is no
weighty reason to militate against the accepted date.
Another piece of evidence is found in the title of our
gospel "According to John." This title
The Title is evidently of very ancient origin, for it is
found in every Greek manuscript and version. It is uni
form with the titles of the other gospels, and points to the
time when the "Evangelical Instrument" was first put
into canonical use. It expresses the sense of the church
at some time prior to Justin Martyr, who uses the expres
sion, "the memoirs which are called gospels," /'. <?., some
time prior at least to 145 A.D., perhaps prior to 138.
Irenaeus, in his work, Against Here-
Valentinians, . . „ ., . ,, ,T , ,. .
7 sies, 1, 8, 5, says that the Valentinians
"teach that John, the disciple of the
Lord, indicated the first Ogdoad, expressing themselves in
these words : ' John, the disciple of the Lord, wishing to
set forth the origin of all things,' etc."
Heracleon, who wrote the first commentary on our gos
pel, certainly attributed it to John, as Origen's refutation

68 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
of his exegesis undoubtedly implies, and Ptolemaeus quoted
the gospel with the introduction, "The apostle declares."
But the fourth gospel was attributed to no other of the
apostles than John.
The foregoing are the explicit, external witnesses to the
Johannean authorship of our gospel. Other implicit tes
timony is available, but on that given above we are con
tent to rest our case, yet it must be acknowledged that
the earliest explicit ascription of the gospel to John is late
in the second century.
Having now examined the witnesses outside the gospel
itself, it behooves us to see whether the indications which
we find within the gospel agree with and support what is
unmistakably the tenor of the external testimony.

CHAPTER IX.
Internal Evidence to the Date.
We have seen that our witnesses re-
FourthGospel. (luire an early date for the fourth gosPel-
Also that Irenaeus states that it was com
posed after the Synoptic gospels. We have passed in review
the tradition of the church, uniform and consonant, to the
effect that John lived his last years, in Ephesus, to a great
age. Now if that be the case, we may look for traces of
these things in the gospel itself, if it be written by John.
If the gospel were not composed at the
. .. close of the first century, let us suppose a
date about 140 A.D. for its composition.
There were then, as burning questions, several subjects of
debate on which a writer of that period could hardly have
refrained from touching. These were, first, the episco
pate, so strongly brought out in the Ignatian epistles, and
for which John xx. 22, 23 is an inadequate
basis. Second, the Gnostic theory of eman
ations : the Gnostics did not see that the prologue to the
gospel met this. As Bishop Lightfoot says : "It is only
by abstruse reasoning that we reach this." Third, the
Paschal controversy. Lightfoot's remark on this is as fol
lows : " Any adventurer who dared to forge a whole gos
pel would not be deterred by any scruple from setting the
69

7° THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
controversy at rest with a few strokes of his pen." Now
it is significant that our gospel is silent as to these points,
or, if not silent, whatever it has to say on them is indirect,
inferential, has to be deduced by a process of ratiocination.
The fact that the gospel so early went under John's name
is an indication that it was first published with his impri
matur. If he did not write it, then it was forged. But a
forger could hardly have resisted the temptation to decide
these questions under cover of apostolic authority. That
nothing of this appears in the gospel is, so far, an indica
tion of its great age. Its omissions mark its antiquity.
Again, Irenaeus (Against Heresies, iii, ir,
Cerinthus x) te^s us t^lat J0*111 aimed by his gospel to
refute Cerinthus and the Nicolaitans who
taught that God the Father and God the Creator were
two, the latter inferior to the former. Now Cerinthus was
probably an Alexandrian proselyte, who
*ut"ot' , . had gotten hold of the "Alexandrian
Explicitly, later b .
Gnosticism. tvPe of L°gos doctrine." A cursory
reading of the prologue shows how com
pletely John has met this form of heresy by identifying
the Logos and God.
And the story of John's meeting Cerinthus at the bath
indicates (i) the abhorrence of John for that heretic; (2)
the existence of both at the same time in Ephesus, and
(3) the probability that John would combat the form of
error which Cerinthus was preaching. But the teaching
of John does not, as before said, explicitly deal with the
Gnostic emanations, therefore the type of Gnosticism
which it contests is incipient, not developed. How well
all this fits in with the hypothesis of an early date !

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 71
While the fourth gospel is declared to
Early Date Sug- have been written subsequently to the
gestedbyType J
of its Teaching synoptics, and to this declaration all
criticism gives assent, it must be affirmed
that it could not have been very long after them. For it
still moves, professedly and evidentially, in the apostolic
circle. There is in John not an iota of the silly legendary
stuff which so abounds in the Apocryphal gospels. And
when we note in the fragment of the Peter gospel, which
may date as early as 130 A.D., evident traces of the
legendary and absurd, and compare the sober realm in
which our gospel lives, containing as it does not a single
event. which might not equally well, so far as consonance
of ideas and of character goes, be found
and Miracles. in the three synoptic gospels, we see at
once how this proclaims a high antiquity
for the John gospel. Its agreement with the synop
tic gospels and differences from the Apocryphal gos
pels, in the type of its teachings and particularly of
its miracles, evinces a similarity in origin (and, there
fore, of date) with the former, and a disparity with the
latter. Another testimony to the gospel's great
s 1 erary a^e ^g ^ vjg0r ancj fresnness 0f its style.
The apostolic and subapostolic literature is
feeble in style and is pietistic, has not an independent
ring. One of the writers on our topic has said that we
should have to come down to the fourth century before we
could find a man able to construct the discourses of John.
If there had been in the second century a man capable of
such writing, he could not have been lost. " No man

72 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
could have written thus unless he were consciously the re
porter of one immeasurably his superior."
The book claims to be written by an eyewitness of the
facts related. We have not here to bring
^y alV forward the proofs in the gospel that this
Eyewitness. r . ...
claim is true. They belong in a little
lower place in our array of evidence. If the events de
scribed, the discourses retold, were seen and heard by an
eyewitness, then, in truth, the date of the book is in the
first century. And to this conclusion all the indications
we have mentioned point, and, indeed, seem to admit no
other.

CHAPTER X.
The Author. Internal Evidence.
There are certain indications, evidently not inserted
with the purpose of guiding to any conclu-
T sion, indications which, like the flashing of
a Jew. ' ' °
an eye, are involuntary, and which lead us
to conclude that the author was a Jew. This is inferred
from the style of the language. The Greek is well known
as a language especially rich in (i) inflec-
Shownbyhis ,. , -. ¦ , , , .
_. , tions, (2) in synonyms and (3) in connect
ing and relative particles. It is, therefore,
especially favorable to the formation of sonorous periods.
The Hebrew is the reverse of this, except in the matter of
synonyms of words other than conjunctions. Any scholar
familiar with both Greek and Hebrew will see at once in
the fourth gospel the manner of one accustomed to think
in the Hebrew (or Aramaic) tongue. The rounded Greek
period is absent. There is present instead the Hebrew
parallelism. In place of the richness of diction, which a
Greek seeks to display by using synonyms, there is a
repetition of the same word in succeeding clauses. And
this Hebrew habit of thought is especially seen in the
paucity of the conjunctions used. Unfortunately this fea
ture is somewhat obscured in our English translation, in
asmuch as the same word is rendered differently. Thus
73

74 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
the same word is translated "and," "but," "then,"
"moreover," etc. Now where a native Greek would have
used different particles to indicate the relations of coor
dination and opposition, the author of our gospel often
makes use of one word to express these different relations.
Thus (John v. 43, 44) : " I am come in my Father's name,
and [yet] ye receive me not : . . . . How can ye believe
which receive glory one of another, and [yet] the glory
that [cometh] from the only God ye seek not." Here
although the relation is clearly adversative, the author
uses the coordinate "and," the same which he employs in
other sentences to coordinate. This fact receives its only
adequate explanation when we remember that the Hebrew
word means both "but" or "and yet," and "and."
Not less indicative of the Jewish mode of thought is the
doubling of the "amen " (twenty-five times in the gospel)
at the beginning of declaration. This is peculiar to the
fourth gospel and goes back to the Hebrew principle of
doubling a word to produce emphasis.
On these stylistic peculiarities so eminent an authority
as Bishop Lightfoot has said (Expositor, 1890, i, 17):
"There is hardly a sentence which might not be trans
lated, literally into Hebrew or Aramaic, without any vio
lence to the language or the sense."
Corroborating this evidence of the
And Explanations . , c ., , . , ,
of Names. style of the languaSe ls the interpreta
tion of individual words given here and
there in the gospel. Such words as Cephas, Messias, Gol
gotha, Thomas, Rabboni, Gabbatha, are explained, their
meaning given. Of course this does not of itself imply an
intimate knowledge of Aramaic, but, added to the Jewish

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 75
cast of thought mentioned above, is significant. Espe
cially interesting in this connection are the words " Isca-
riot " and "Simon son of Joannes." The synoptic
gospels refer the name "Iscariot" to Judas alone, but the
fourth gospel applies it not only to Judas but to his father.
This shows that the appellation was not a proper name, but
belonged to the place of origin or of residence. It
means "the man of Kerioth," and so could be applied not
only to Judas but to his father. So, too, the oldest manu
scripts give us not "Simon son of Jona " (with the syn
optics), but "Simon son of Joannes," Joannes being the
equivalent of Johanan or John, of which Jona or Jonas
was the contract form. In other words, the fourth gospel
incidentally explains, makes clear, what we should not
have understood, or might have misunderstood, in the
synoptics, that the name of Simon Peter's father was not
Jonah (signifying "a dove"), but John (signifying "the
grace of God "). An equally clear token of Jewish ori-
Prtrtital^Jew. Sin is found in the fact that the author
of the gospel quoted not only the Greek
version of the Old Testament, but the Hebrew itself, even
reintroducing difficulties which the Septuagint had tried
to avoid. This enables us still further to
He uses the . , , , , , . , .
TT ,. „¦,_¦, narrow our circle, and to declare that
Hebrew Bible. '
the author was not only a Jew, but a
Palestinian Jew. Three passages particularly have been
adduced: St. John xix. 37 (Zech. xii. 10), "They shall
look on him whom they pierced" (Greek: "They shall
gaze on me because they insulted"); St. John xii. 40
(Isa. vi. 10), "Because that Esaias said again, he hath

7$ THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart ' ' (The Sep
tuagint has the sentence in a passive form); and St.
John xiii. 18 (Ps. xii. 9), "He ... . hath lifted up his
heel against me (Greek: "He . . . . hath multiplied
tripping with the heel)". In the first of these cases it has
been shown that possibly the author of our gospel was
dependent on a translation of the Hebrew other than the
Septuagint. But in other cases the Johannean rendering
stands alone, and no other version can be found on which
it could depend. We are therefore driven to the conclu
sion that the author translated directly from the Hebrew.
This makes our gospel impossible of Gentile authorship.
The only person other than John to whom it was attrib
uted in early times was Cerinthus, a proselyte, an Alexan
drian proselyte, who would therefore have employed the
Septuagint and not the Hebrew.
This conclusion is necessitated when we
Corroborative .. , .
Evidence. fand ln the SosPel fullness of detail (a) con
cerning the Messianic hopes of the Jews ;
(b) concerning the mutual relations of Jewish sects, and
concerning the prejudices, beliefs and customs of each ;
and (c) concerning the contemporary history of the Jewish
hierarchy and Herodian sovereignty.
The Messianic , We haVC ^^ had OCCasion t0 note
Idea. that Justin Martyr follows our gospel in
his emphasis on the Logos as incarnated.
About the presentation of the character of the Logos
is hung the drapery of the Messianic person. Throughout
the Logos as the Messiah is the topic of discourse and
narrative, ruling the motive and furnishing the theme.
The agreement of the character of Jesus with the prophe-

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 11
cies and expectations concerning the Coming One are
constantly in the foreground. In connection with the
development of this idea our author presents certain
phases which show that he was intimately acquainted with
the expectations of the Palestinians concerning the
Anointed One. And these touches are
of Manna merely incidental, not studied. They need
an acquaintance with Talmudic exegesis and
rabbinic gloss to make them intelligible. For instance,
in John vi. 31 is the statement put to Jesus evidently as a
test of his Messianic claims, " Our fathers did eat manna
in the wilderness," and we note that Jesus appears to
understand the statement as referring to himself as he goes
on to declare that he is the " bread .... which cometh
down from heaven." Here the author gives us a glimpse
which we get nowhere else in the New Testament of the
expectation of the .rabbis, a tradition current among the
people and found in rabbinical writings, that Messias
would perform a miracle analogous to the giving of the
manna. So after the feeding of the five thousand the
people say (John vi. 14) : " This is of a truth that
prophet that should come." But the prophet, as we shall
see, was to be like Moses, who fed the Israelites in the
wilderness on manna. The miracle was so like the early
miraculous feeding of the fugitives from Egypt as to sug
gest the possibility that the worker of the wonder was the
" prophet " foretold. The explanation is not given by the
author, and it is only by delving among the rolls of rab
binical parchment that we get the elucidation which opens
up so clearly the reference in the passage to the expecta
tions concerning the prophet.

78 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
We have four allusions in John to
" The Prophet." "the prophet," going back on Deut.
xviii. 15, and if we compare the passages
where this phrase occurs (John i. 21-25, yi' I4» vii. 40)
we shall see that the Jews looked on " the prophet "as a
different person from " the Christ." Christians identified
the prophet with the Christ, so that the idea here pre
sented is a contemporary Jewish idea, not a later Chris
tian conception. We notice next the minute and exact
^Knowledge understanding which the author had of the
of the Sects, °
interrelations of the sects of the Jews.
The synoptists use the phrase, " The Pharisees and Sad
ducees " over against "the chief priests and the
Pharisees" of the fourth gospel. One not intimately
acquainted with the situation of affairs at the time spoken
of would not know that at that period the chief priests
were of the sect of the Sadducees. We know now that the
latter were comparatively few in number, and that, though
they were in the chief places, they had yet to cater to the
desires of the Pharisees. The consequence is that in
John, with but one exception, the Pharisees lead in the
persecution of Jesus, the chief priests simply acting as their
executive. The one exception is notable. It is when the
chief priests, without taking their cue from
dd cees t^le Pharisees, propose to put Lazarus to
death. On this Bishop Lightfoot (whom we
follow here) remarks (Expositor, 1890, i, 87): "This
(the matter of Lazarus' restoration to life) was essentially
a Sadducees' question. It was necessary that a living wit
ness to the great truth [the resurrection from the dead],

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 79
which the high-priestly party denied, should be got rid
of at all hazards." And we are to note how such action
tallies with that recorded in the Acts when Paul so astutely
arrays the Pharisees, the numerically greater party, on his
side by introducing the question of the resurrection. And
this intimate acquaintance with the sects is made more evi
dent by a graphic touch which becomes striking only on
comparison with a passage in Josephus ( Wars of the fews,
ii, viii, 14). We find there that one characteristic of this
ruling sect was their brusque rudeness. Notice, then, in
the light of what we have seen, how (John xi. 49)
Caiaphas, the high priest, coarsely and unceremoniously
remarks to the Pharisees, "Ye know nothing at all."
Evidently only one who was thoroughly conversant with
the Sadducaic manners would have painted in this emi
nently characteristic remark. Bishop Lightfoot remarks
(Expositor, 1890, i, 87) that the key which unlocks the
meaning of these various incidents is not given by the
author — to him they were so familiar that it does not
occur but that others will understand them — but by Jose
phus or the rabbis. Also in matters other than those relating
and of to sectarian differences the author is thor-
Jewish Social oughly informed . He knows the dishar-
and Political ° . , , . . . ,
Life mony of feeling existing between the
Jews and the Samaritans. He lets us know
that under the Romans the Jews had not the power of
capital punishment, and that while blasphemy
&n. ° ' under the Jewish law was a capital offense the
History. Jews were powerless to inflict the penalty and
must needs trump up another charge to secure the death

80 The johannean problem.
of Jesus. All the details of life among the Jews before the
fall of Jerusalem are matters upon which he is thoroughly
and accurately informed.
While the evangelist has been proved exact
. in the statements he has made concerning the
Accuracy. , °
matters summed up above, his historical state
ments will be found equally trustworthy. We have a
point of time given in the second chapter (vss. 19, 20)
which shows an exact knowledge to be gained, in all like
lihood, only by one on the spot at the time, by
T , one who knew the history of the temple then
building. " Forty and six years," say the Jews,
" has this temple been building, and wilt thou raise it
again in three days?" It is discoverable by comparing
several passages in Josephus that Herod's temple was com
menced about B.C. 18. Add forty-six years to this date
and we are brought down to A.D. 28, 29. This calcula
tion seems an easy one, but Bishop Lightfoot calls atten
tion to the fact that the calculation is the result of a com
plicated exercise of historical criticism. Another equally
complicated calculation is required to fix the dates of our
Lord. It requires a comparison of dates dependent on
both Luke and John, neither alone being sufficient. But
these two independent lines of research bring us to the
same date, A.D. 28, 29. The bearing of this
Lightfoot let us t from Bishop Lightfoot's own words
on the . . 7
Temple. (Expositor, 1890, 1, 91, 92) : "Let us suppose
the gospel to have been written in the middle
of the second century, and ask ourselves what strong im
probabilities the hypothesis involves. The writer must
have first made himself acquainted with a number of facts

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 81
connected with the temple of Herod. He must not only
have known that the temple was commenced in a particular
year, but also that it was incomplete at the time of our
Lord's ministry. So far as we know he could have got
these facts only from Josephus. Even Josephus however
does not state the actual date of the commencement of the
temple. It requires some patient research to arrive at this
date by a comparison of several passages. We have there
fore to suppose, first, that the forger of the fourth gospel
went through an elaborate critical investigation for the
sake of ascertaining the date. But, secondly, he must
have made himself acquainted with the chronology of the
gospel history. At all events, he must have ascertained
the date of the commencement of our Lord's ministry.
The most favorable supposition is, that he had before him
the gospel of St. Luke, though he nowhere else betrays the
slightest acquaintance with the gospel. Here he would find
the date he wanted, reckoned by the years of the Roman
governors. Thirdly, after arriving at these two results by
separate processes, he must combine them ; thus con
necting the chronology of the Jewish kings with the
chronology of the Roman emperors, the chronology of
the temple erections with the chronology of our Lord's
life. " When he has taken all these pains, and worked up the
subject so elaborately, he drops in the notice which has
given him so much trouble in an incidental and inobtrusive
way. It has no bearing on his history ; it does not sub
serve the purpose of his theology. It leads to nothing,
proves nothing. Certainly the art of concealing art was
never exercised in a more masterly way than here. And

82 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
yet this was an age which perpetrated the most crude and
bungling forgeries, and is denounced by modern criticism
for its utter incapacity of criticism." To this we add,
how naturally such a sentence would occur to a Palestinian
Jew who had no need of such elaborate calculations and
delicate combinations to give him the date — to one who
knew the fact by residence on the spot, and who heard the
words fall from the lips of the speakers !
Yet more decisive of the nativity of
The Gospel's the author 0f tiie g0Spel are the topo-
Accuracy graphical details of the scenes of Christ's
ministry. The investigations made by
Dr. Robinson and others, and those carried on under the
care of the Palestine Exploration Fund, have furnished
many proofs of the exactness of our author's knowledge of
the geography of the Holy Land. It is interesting to
note what a change has come over the spirit of criticism
with respect to the fidelity of the writer of
Critics. the fourth gospel to truth in matters of
geography. In the days of Baur, topograph
ical inaccuracies innumerable were pointed out. The claim
was made that on the score of errors in the names and lo
cation of places alone it was impossible that the author
could ever have visited Palestine. Such a claim is now
given up. Dr. Schiirer says on this, " The geographical
errors and ignorance of things Jewish have shrunk to a
mere minimum. And the opposition no longer lays stress
on them." The opposition long dwelt
Specifications. .. . , , , °
on the fact that the author named places
not elsewhere named in Scripture. But places bearing
similar names are now found in the localities indicated by

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 83
the evangelist, and this is strong confirmatory evidence
when taken in connection with the well-known persistence
of local names in the Arabic language. The names which
gave so much trouble to the critical school years ago —
such names as Cana of Galilee, Bethany beyond Jordan,
Ephraim near the wilderness, ^Enorj near to Salim, Sychar
— are now conceded to present not difficulties but evi
dences of the writer's minute knowledge of the country.
Besides these names, showing exact acquaintance with the
country at large, the description of places in and about
Jerusalem is no less suggestive. Bethesda, Siloam, the
brook Kidron, Golgotha with its garden, the judgment
seat called " The Pavement " or " Gabbatha," the treas
ury, Solomon's Porch, and other places are well known to
him. So, too, there are verifications of his otherwise well-
attested knowledge in the notes we find as to distances — for
instance, Bethany fifteen furlongs from Jerusalem. But
we are not even yet done with objections, for Mr. Cross
(Westminster Review, August, 1890, and Critical Review,
February, 1891) thinks that such knowledge as the author
displays might have been gained from geographies or geo
graphical notices extant when he wrote. Dr. Sanday has
effectually disposed of this argument in the Expositor for
March, 1892, in a discussion too long to be quoted here.
Suffice it to say that he there concludes that the author
was either a Palestinian Jew or one who had made a long
sojourn in the country. Other considerations are exam
ined which show the former of these conclusions almost,
if not quite, binding.
To use Dr. Sanday's words (Expositor, April, 1892):
" The author of the fourth gospel shows his Jewish origin

84 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
not only by his knowledge of Palestinian topography, by
the cast of his style, by his interpretation
Dr. Sanday's of Tewjsh names, .... by the frequency
Conclusion „ , . . , , „, . „ .
of his quotations from the Old Testament,
and by the probability that in some of them he has
been influenced by his acquaintance either with the origi
nal text or with the current Aramaic paraphrases — but that
more than this, his mind is really steeped in the Old Tes
tament, and that his leading ideas stand as much in direct
line with the Old Testament as those of St. Paul and St.
Peter." And Dr. Sanday quotes from a careful investi
gator, Thoma, a passage which concedes all that has been
claimed thus far, a passage which we can do no better
than to quote as Dr. Sanday has given it,
and Thoma's. . . , . „ ,. . i, „
expressing so clearly in English the Ger
man's conclusion : " This friendliness towards the Gentiles
which the evangelist shares with the apostle [of the Gen
tiles] serves as little as his dislike of the Jews to prove his
Gentile origin. On the contrary, his whole culture, the
circle of ideas in which he is at home, the language which
is familiar to him, point to a Jewish or Jewish- Christian
origin. True, the Samaritan Justin has also a very good
knowledge of Scripture. But the way in which he applies
it shows that this knowledge has been acquired for learned
and literary use in polemics and apologetics ; it is rather
an importation from without of foreign material which he
has built into his walls. With the evangelist, on the other
hand, one sees that he has sucked in a Jewish way of
thinking with his mother's milk, that from a child he has
been fed upon the living bread of the Word of God, that
from his youth up he has read the Holy Scriptures and

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 85
steeped himself in their ideas, figures of speech, and
words of expression, so that the reminiscences of them
come out as if they were something of his own, rather an
unconscious and spontaneous manner of thinking and
speaking than as quotation and interpretation.
"Along with this he is acquainted with Jewish customs
and usages, and that such as are not to be got from the
Old Testament, or such as might impress themselves
vividly and familiarly upon a spectator from observing the
religious ceremonies of an alien society. He alludes im
partially and with no great effort to such Jewish traditions
and ideas as would only be possible to one who had him
self been accustomed to move amongst Jews; indeed
this perhaps is the reason which makes him forget here
and there to put in explanations which, to a non-Jewish
reader, would be quite indispensable to make him under
stand what was said (see John vii. 37f., 22f., xviii. 32,
xix. 31 ; contrasted with xix. 41). On the other hand, his
explanatory notes on the manners and customs of the Jews
may be accounted for by reference to Gentile readers on
.whom the author had to reckon, and probably did imme
diately reckon.
" But what tells more especially for Jewish origin is the
knowledge of Hebrew which the author displays. This
knowledge is considerably greater than Justin's, who
undertakes to give the meaning of a name here and there,
badly enough ; it is better than Philo' s, who may perhaps
have taken his interpretations from an Onomasticon. Be
cause from the current version, to which both the Jewish
and the Christian philosopher keep as a rule, there are
found in the gospel considerable divergences which appear

86 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
to rest not upon a special improved translation of the Old
Testament Scriptures, but upon a knowledge of the He
brew text. What most directly points to a knowledge of
Hebrew is the fact that the author not only is able to give
a meaning and interpretation to names which he finds to
his hand, or else (as in the case of Nathaniel) to express
themselves by synonyms, but he even forms Aramaic
words of his own, like Bethesda. "
If all the indications mentioned point to the Jewish ori
gin of the writer of our gospel, they also, with other indices,
suggest that he was also an eyewitness.
e u or These indices are found in graphic and mi-
Proved an or
Eyewitness, nute details relating to character, and to the
times and theatres of events, and in details
of number. Of course we cannot lay weight here on the
claim of the writer to be an eyewitness — any forger might
have asserted such a claim. But we are concerned with
the casual pointers, the unmistakably undesigned and natur
ally inserted evidence that the writer had before him as he
wrote a mental picture based not on the imagination but
on experience. We find, for instance, that the persona
dramatis are vividly before him. Thus there occurs sen
tence upon sentence opening with,
by his Character ..r™ „ ., . _, .
Sketches i he ^cnDes and Pharisees say unto
him," "Jesus answered and said,"
"The Jews say unto him," "The officers answered"—
clearly the actors in the scene were in a lively sense in the
writer's mind's eye. Not less drawn from the life are the
characters presented. Pilate, indifferent to truth as an
abstraction and cynically scornful ; Nathaniel, the true
Israelite, in whom there was no guile ; Peter, impulsive,

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 87
zealous, eager, yet falling short of his professions;
Thomas, who is no more than mentioned in the synoptics,
but whose character is sketched in bold outline in the
fourth gospel — Thomas, who was called Didymus, the
twin, whose presence and absence with the other disciples
with the consequences thereof to himself are so clearly
noted ; Nicodemus, known as a Pharisee, one of the
rulers of the Jews, yet timid and irresolute ; all these
are portraits which by their circumstantiality and their
directness manifest the closest familiarity with the charac
ter traits of their originals.
Especially interesting in this connection is the develop
ment of the difference in character of Martha and Mary.
Bishop Lightfoot remarks that Luke draws the picture of
these two women in a definite incident and in bold con
trast. Though in John the same difference in disposition
appears, it is rather by the patient sketching of minute de
tails in the course of a continuous narrative that we are led
to apprehend the contrast in the natures of the two sisters.
If acquaintance with the persons pre-
ofTime ° sented is manifested by the liveliness of
the portrayal, not less does the minuteness
with which points of time are noted indicate the personal
presence of the author. These relate (1) to the hour of
the day : the tenth hour (i. 40), the sixth hour (iv. 6), the
seventh hour (iv. 52), the sixth hour (xix. 14) ; (2) to the
period of the day : it was night (xiii. 30), in the morning
while it was yet dark (xx. 1), the evening (vi. 16, xx. 19);
(3) to periods of time: eight days (xx. 11), the morrow
(i. 29, 43), again on the morrow (i. 35), the third day
(ii. 1), six days before the passover (xii. 1).

88 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.

Further corroboration is found in the notes
of Place, 0f the place of events : Thus John baptized
at Bethany and ^Enon (the synoptics tell
us only that John baptized " about Jordan," " in Jordan,"
etc.); the nobleman's son was sick at Capernaum
while Jesus was at Cana (iv. 46) ; he spent a portion of
time in a city called Ephraim (xi. 54) ; Christ preached
or spoke in Solomon's Porch (x. 23); in a gathering at
Capernaum (vi. 59) ; in the treasury (vii. 20); the mar
riage was in Cana of Galilee (ii. 1).
Just as significant are the memoranda of
of Number, numbers in the gospel : There were two dis
ciples of John (i. 35), six waterpots (ii. 6),
five loaves and two fishes (vi. 9), twenty-five furlongs
(vi. 19), four soldiers (xix. 23), two hundred cubits
(xxi. 8), one hundred and fifty-three fishes (xxi. n).
We may not pass over what is
and by Picturesque especially difficult to summarize, that
Detail in . '
Describing Events. ls the recollection and setting forth
of the details which have no bearing
on the purpose of the book, but which have the appearance
of flowing spontaneously from the memory of the narrator.
Let us take (as an example of this only, for the gospel is so
replete with this kind of detail that we may hot take space
to exhaust it), the visit of the two disciples to the tomb.
We notice that Mary Magdalene came running with the
news to Peter and the anonymous disciple whom Jesus
loved. These two go toward the tomb, but their pace is
a run, and (at first, apparently) they keep on equal terms,
though at the end "the other disciple" outruns Peter and
comes first to the tomb, and stoops and looks in, but does

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 89
not enter. Then Peter arrives and enters the tomb, and
we have immediately a description of the contents and
their position. Peter is followed by the other disciple,
who comes, sees and believes, after which each goes to his
own home. There are countless other details of this char
acter which reveal the eyewitness, e.g. , the loaves which
a boy had were barley loaves (vi. 9) ; when Jesus was
entertained at Bethany, Martha served, Lazarus sat at
meat, Mary anointed his feet, and " the house was filled
with the odour of ointment" (xii. 2, 3); the remarks
which the bystanders make with reference to the cured
blind man are noted (ix. 9).
Long as we have dwelt on this phase of
Argument ^ie narrative °f 'he last gospel, we have
only hinted at the many circumstances
which point to an eyewitness as its author. And the
force of the argument lies not merely nor chiefly in the
details themselves nor in their number, but in the fact
that they have all the appearance of being spontaneous.
They are not lugged in to give verisimilitude to the story,
they are a part of the story, take their places so naturally
as to preclude a conscious effort to recall them, a striving
to make a complete narrative. Many things which would
be much clearer, if explained, receive no explication,
simply because the writer did not perceive, so intimate
was he with them, that they needed explanation. And
yet he does not hesitate to elucidate when it occurs to him
that elucidation is necessary. Instances of this are seen
in the interpretation of Hebrew names, in the reason for
the setting of the waterpots at the marriage, etc., etc.
An extension of the same line of reasoning as that in

9° THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
which we have just indulged may be used to narrow still
further the circle of possible authorship.
The Author Th writer was nof. Qnl & j a palest;lle
an Apostle i i_
Jew, an eyewitness ; he must have been
an apostle. The character of many of the scenes de
scribed, and so described as to warrant the assumption
that the writer was present, could have been known only
to an apostle. To this the objection is made that such
information as the author gives might conceivably be at
second hand. There is the possibility of this, but the
tests we have applied above, when employed here, pre
clude such an explanation. The scale is so large and the
minutiae so clearly given as to necessitate the conclusion
that the sum of knowledge was gained by experience and
observation, not by hearsay. Of course, the claim we
make, rests upon no one event or set of
Proved by His . ,
Knowledge of events. It is that all through the gospel
the Disciples' the events in which the disciples were
Acts, Thoughts particularly concerned, the discourses
and Feelings, directed to them, the hopes and aspira
tions and fears which arose in their breasts, are known to
him. He is acquainted with their opinions at crises in
the life of Christ ; he remembers that they murmured at
the Saviour's hard sayings (vi. 60, 61), that they were sur
prised that he should talk with a woman (iv. 27), that they
feared at the sight of Jesus walking on the sea (vi. 19),
that at later times they recalled prophecies concerning
him which had been fulfilled (ii. 17, xii. 16), and that they
were mystified by the Master's sayings (vi. 60, xiii. 22,
28). He rehearses their discussions and recounts their
sayings ; he knows their places of resort and tells us of

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 91
mistaken notions entertained by them and afterward set
right. In short, he appears to have lived among them an
intimate and an associate, a sharer in their joys, a par
ticipant in their sorrows, partaking of their hopes, receiv
ing instruction with them, reverencing their Master and
remaining with him in trial and in death, and meeting
him after his resurrection.
Contributing fully as much as the preceding to the con
clusion that the author was an apostle is
Mmd°of Jesus. his insight into the workings of our Lord's
mind. He knows the troubled spirit of
the Master (xi. 33, xiii. 21), the reasons for his actions
(ii. 24, v. 6, vi. 15, vii. 1), the sources of his ques
tioning and discourses (vi. 6, 61, 64, xiii. 1, 3, 11).
As Bishop Westcott has said ( Commentary, p. xxi) :
" He speaks as one to whom the mind of the Lord was
laid open." Surely to no one outside the little band of
intimates was possible so confidential association with the
Master as the foregoing implies.
But if what precedes implies an apostle as the author,
we are shut up to the apostle John as the only apostle to
whom the authorship of the fourth gospel
t ?° e was possible. Now we find in the epilogue
was John, r r o
of the gospel the declaration that the disci
ple who "bore witness" of the things told in that gos
pel, or, in other words, who wrote it, was the disciple of
whom Jesus said : " If I will that he tarry
the Disciple till j come; what is that to t^ee?" and
Loved" *hat he was the disciple "whom Jesus
loved." (An incidental confirmation
of this is found in the scene at the institution of the

92 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
Lord's Supper. After the Saviour had declared that one
of the disciples was to betray him, Peter signaled the dis
ciple "whom Jesus loved" to ask who the traitor was.
This he did, and Christ evidently an
swered him alone, for the disciples did
not understand what the Lord meant when he said to
Judas: "That thou doest, do quickly." But evidently
that disciple understood, as we learn from the fact that his
is the only narrative of the incident, the synoptists know
ing nothing of the application of Jesus' remark to Judas.
And one thing more adds probability to this identifica
tion. Our Saviour on the cross committed his mother to
the care of this same disciple. This does not appear in
the record of the other evangelists. It would be strange
if such a story was invented in the second century, or, sup
posing it to be true, were rediscovered. But how natural
that the disciple himself should remember it, or rather,
how unlikely that he should not !) From the synoptics
we learn that the inner circle of disciples, those who were
in a special sense near to Jesus, consisted of Peter, James
and John. Of these we know that James suffered martyr
dom in the early days of the church, that Peter also
suffered death probably in A.D. 66 or 67, and all indica
tions point to a somewhat later date for our gospel. So
that by a process of elimination, only John is left as the
possible author of the book which goes by his name.
Are there any indications in the gospel it-
The Baptist's sejf that Qur SUpp0Siti0n is true ? Undoubt-
Appellative „ T ,
Omitted ediy there are. In the first place the evan
gelist John is never named in the fourth
gospel. Once, indeed, we have mention of the "sons of

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 93
Zebedee," but the only other references to John, if the gos-
pelcontains any, can be found only in the phrase, "the
disciple whom Jesus loved. ' ' An examination of the syn
optics will show that the sons of Zebedee are always
named in the front rank of the apostles, they occupy a
prominent position among the apostles. Unless we iden
tify this especially favored disciple of our gospel with
John, we have the anomaly, most difficult of explanation,
that so central a figure as one of the favored three does
not figure at all in the last of the gospels. Secondly, we
notice that the evangelist is very exact in defining names
in his gospel. Simon Peter has either his full name or
the new name Peter. Thomas is nearly always called
Didymus, contrary to the custom of the synoptists. The
two Judases are carefully distinguished. Caiaphas is
named as the high priest. But when we come to John
the Baptist, whom the synoptists always distinguished
carefully from John, the Lord's disciple, we find him
spoken of simply as John. On this, Bishop Westcott re
marks (Commentary, p. xxii): "If the writer of the gos
pel were himself the other John of the gospel history, it is
perfectly natural that he should think of the Baptist, apart
from himself, as John only." Godet offers another expla
nation (not so good, we think) of this omission to desig
nate the forerunner as "the Baptist," viz., that it is the
omission of one who knew the son of Zacharias "before
history attached that epithet to his name, which, becom
ing technical, became at a later period inseparable
from it."
Bearing in mind the process of elimination in the pre
ceding lines, we may find further corroboration of the

94 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
conclusion we have reached in the fact that after the res
urrection the unnamed disciple is closely associated with
Peter in just the manner that John is represented to have
been in the other gospels.
When we accept John as the author, to which conclu
sion all considerations conduct us ; when we see how all
events square themselves with the rec-
The Conclusion ord how difficulties vanish (barring
Fits the Case. ' v 6
those we shall deal with in another
chapter), and how easy becomes the explanation of
things otherwise inexplicable, the extreme probability of
that conclusion becomes so apparent that we cannot but
rest assured that the tradition which has
Negative Criti- obtained, through nineteen centuries, is
cism Destruc- . , , , . , , T ,
fcive_ the only solution of the Johannean
problem. On the other hand, one
fatal result of all negative criticism, concerning the
fourth gospel, is that no author can be found who will
fit the needs of the case. The marvelous coherence of
the book, its perfect self-consistency, the
No Author but r ' . ,. , J'
John possible. Powerfm presentation of a phase of the
Saviour's life — be that phase real or im
aginary, the character of the miracles, the unexampled
loftiness of the discourses, the submergence of the author
in a subtle and unobtrusive indication of personality — all
this would require a mind of the finest grain, a mentality
of such commanding force, that we cannot conceive of the
possibility of its being hidden even during the first half
of the second century. Assume, however, that John wrote
the book, that he was therefore reporting the utterances
and doings of a mind vastly more subtle and comprehen-

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 95
sive than his own, difficulties vanish, mysteries are cleared
up, the riddle finds its solution.
But there are one or two things more within the gospel
which agree with external testimony. There are certain
indications that it was written toward
H" old. a *he cl°se °f John's life. Dr. Peabody
has referred to what he calls ' ' the marks
of senility," " the backsetting of an old man's memory,"
in the details which come out in the narrative portion of
the gospel. Such is, for example, the note concerning the
supper when John (we assume that his authorship is made
probable) was about to ask Jesus the name of the traitor,
he remembered (as though he had often dwelt on the rec
ollection) the " leaning back, as he was, on Jesus' breast."
Dr. Peabody has instanced the episode of the blind beg
gar. The picture is clearly drawn as though now recol
lected as it is told for the first time. There is the caution
of the parents, the reference to the ability of the son to
speak for himself; that confidence proved not to have
been misplaced, as the one-time blind man, who, like a
gamin, is no respecter of persons, at first answers the ques
tion soberly; then, as the repeated questioning takes on
the form of a cross-examination, grows saucy, and at last
lets his keen wit flash out to the discomfiture of his exami
ners, who take revenge for their defeat by excommunica
ting their conqueror. Details, which at the time of the
action do not force themselves sensibly upon the con
sciousness, come out one by one under reflection, like the
features of a landscape on the film under the developer.
So the gospel teems with just the sort of minutiae which,
while unessential to the treatment of the theme, yet prove

96 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
that the theme itself has been so long dwelt on, that even
the minor accessory and attendant circumstances have
become familiar and endeared features of the subject.
We have seen that the external testimony pointed to
Ephesus as the place of composition. We cannot defin
itely locate the author from internal tes-
The Gospel not timony. But the gospel does show that
Written in ' -n , <-¦ a *i * 1
Palestine nor e was not in Palestine, and that he was
to Jews. speaking to other than Jews. For in
stance, if he had been writing to the
Jews he would not have explained the use which the six
waterpots usually served, nor would he have used the
phrase, "after the Jew's manner of purifying." Indeed
we find indications of the Gentile character of the audi
ence in the constant reiteration of^the words, " the Jews."
So, too, a Jew would hardly have needed to be told that
John baptized in ./Enon, " because there was much water
there." Had he been writing to Jews we could not have
imagined him writing, "Now there is in Jerusalem by the
sheep gate a pool," nor would he have said, " After these
things there was a feast of ihe Jews. ' ' Still less would
it have been necessary to insert translations of Hebrew or
Aramaic words, such as we have had occasion to mention
in another connection. A hint that the apostle was
removed from Palestine may possibly be seen in the
almost uniform past tense in which locations are named,
such as (xviii. i, xix. 41) " there was a garden."
If our reading of the testimony is correct,
therefore, we find a singular correspondence
between testimony from without and testimony
from within the gospel as to the time and place of its

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 97
origin, and its author. In the case of the external testi
mony, there is a marked unanimity, an agreement which
cannot be accounted for on grounds other than its truth.
While none the less does the testimony
onvergence from witnin give the impression of being
of Testimony. ..,,,.,, , °
incidental, undesigned, the natural deposit
of a mind surcharged with verity. Both lines of witness
converge toward the same point of time and place, and
point to one individual. The tradition is uniform with
but a single break, which, nevertheless, can be accounted
for. And in view of the fact mentioned above that adverse
criticism substitutes no name in the place of John, nay,
even is not agreed as to the nationality of the author, and,
further, while calling it a " Tendency- writing," is not
altogether a unit in defining that " tendency," we submit
that the explanation which explains, the hypothesis (if it
can be called such) which accounts for the phenomena, is
the only one which on grounds purely scientific, apart from
sentiment, should obtain.
fAjL <=f &T^^eJfcjLs^^~tr^ £> LxdU eX. C^*~ a^t- tA^u^,
v, tAjt. PfoAuzo^**^ CAt^cA Utuj-a^U £AA -e^.ef v"
U-£cUJ fl tAA >^C^t-A, 3*-^ ^ X^*" K*Al ly -'-sO

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CHAPTER XI.
Objections Answered
Even though we have established what we
Objections. ° , , , ,
set out to make probable (we did not propose
to demonstrate the authorship of John), there are certain
objections which will rise again and again and produce
more or less disquiet. It may be well to con-
Johannean s^er tbese very briefly. One of the most
D iso ours© s
Differ from weighty of them is that the character of the
Synoptics', discourses in the fourth gospel differs so radi
cally in substance and in style from that of the
discourses in the synoptics that they could not have been
spoken by the same person. The statement some objectors
make is that if the Johannean discourses were
real, there would be found stronger traces in
the synoptic gospels. That a difference exists between
the two sets of discourses is admitted on all
1 erences sides, but the defenders of the genuineness
of our gospel claim that this difference has
been exaggerated. That there are strong points of con
nection pointing from Johannean to synoptic, and from
synoptic to Johannean accounts, has come to be recog
nized. But all this being granted, a difference, and a great
difference, still remains. How account for it ?
A partial answer (though not entirely satisfactory) is
98

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 99
that the audience differed. The synoptic discourses were
delivered mainly before Galilean and there-
Differed. ^ore theologically untrained audiences, and
were on that account less mystic, more imme
diately practical, than the Johannean discourses delivered
to principally Judean assemblages. The frequent inter
polation in the Johannean discourses of objection and
answer shows a substantial accuracy in the reports of the
conversations, or else, a sense of dramatic vividness truly
wonderful. We have also to note that when the geo
graphical and historical accuracy has been proved, there is
created a very strong presumption that the addresses are
substantially historical. Then, too, in the
tivitv Greater Galilean discourses much that the other
writers would pass over might catch John's
ear because of his livelier spiritual receptivity. If our
identification of him with the beloved disciple is correct,
and remembering that he was probably a cousin of the
Lord, a plausible supposition is that he talked over many
things in private with the Master, and so gained a deeper
insight into his mind. Doubtless, too, John
He was an exercised the function of an editor as well as
as well a chronicler. The last verse of the book im
plies that the contents of the gospel were only
a selection. Doubtless John was in a position of compara
tive affluence. It is not unreasonable to conjecture that his
education was superior to that of the majority of the dis
ciples, and that therefore sayings of deeper import clung to
his mind and are reproduced in his gospel.
Another suggestion which is entitled to respectful con
sideration is that the synoptists seem to have been bound

IOO THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
by an oral tradition which circumscribed
Oral Tradition their record. John was further removed
Svnontics fr°m ^S tra-dition both in time and place,
he therefore saw more and more clearly that
the "letter killeth but the spirit giveth life," and so his
statement is a freer transcript than theirs. No less important
for our purpose is it to recall that John was clearly supple
menting the other gospels. For this we have the testimony
of Clement of Alexandria, of Eusebius,
our o p an(j oj jerome_ AjjcI even if no such
Supplementary. J
tradition were extant, we should not,
a priori, expect him to write a narrative on the same lines
as those of three already existing gospels. If there were
material existing outside of the synoptic tradition, we
should look for him to use it. Bearing this in mind, per
haps the most complete answer is that John was answering
an incipient gnosticism, which made the Logos an inferior
being. He aimed to refute this form of
Polemic Aim , . . , ... ,
of Gospel. error' and hence, in identifying the Logos
with God, made his whole argument tend in
that direction, choosing narrative and discourse with that
end in view. With this object it was only natural that
discourses of the Saviour which bore on this subject, and
which, apart from this special bearing, had not been re
membered, that isolated remarks which had for the time
being sunk out of sight, should rise to the surface when the
occasion recalled and the subject sug-
Bett of John's Sested them. And this suggestion finds
Mind, confirmation in the indication that John's
mind was naturally of the bent to notice
sayings, to store away discourses, of a philosophic character.

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 101
The use of "Logos" in the Revelation prefigures its de
velopment later in life (assuming, of course, an early date
and identity of authorship for the Apocalypse). It would
naturally happen, then, that addresses and speeches and
chance remarks which would have no lodgment in minds
not metaphysically inclined would find a home and an
abiding place in John's heart, thence to be recalled when
time and occasion served.
Just one thing more seems necessary here, and that
is to suggest that in the process of editing undoubtedly
John exercised his prerogative of choosing the discourses
or sayings, of giving prominence to the teachings of
Christ, which bore most directly on the polemic pur
pose which he had in view. From this there may ap
pear throughout the Gospel a tint which does not come
prominently to the surface of the synoptic discourses, but
which a careful examination will reveal to have been har
moniously blended throughout the texture.
But when all possible allowance has
Still a Subjective been made on the scores suggested
Element Must , A, ... lM1
be Allowed above, there will still remain an im
pression of a subjective element above
that which these considerations require. We have also to
take into account what Archdeacon Watkins (Bampton
Lectures, p. 426) calls "translation, or, if this term has
acquired too narrow a meaning, transmutation." This
writer refers to a threefold "translation: " of language,
from Aramaic into Greek ; of time, from the first third of
the century to its end — from youth to mature old age ;
and in place, from Palestine to Ephesus. Indeed, it is
hardly conceivable that the discourses appear word for

102 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
word as Jesus delivered them, even after making due al
lowance for the receptivity of a memory cultivated after
the manner of Eastern people. That we have in very
many cases the very words of Jesus we cannot doubt. But
that the discourses are verbatim reports is incredible. The
question therefore comes, What can
What Element is be anowed to John ? Dr. Gloag has
Johannine and ,, .... . „
what Christie? no hesitation in allowing a certain
degree of subjectivity on the part of
John. The thoughts .... were those of Jesus, but
John clothed them in his own language," perhaps adding
at times his own reflections on them. Godet follows Wat-
kins in allowing for translation in language, and adds mod
ification on the score of compression and of the action of
memory. But he denies the admission of anything not
essentially and really Christie.
Doubtless a careful study of the Johannean discourses in
comparison with those of the synoptic gospels, and of the
indications of genuineness in the interpolation of question
and answer, as well as notice of the pertinence to the inci
dents which are represented as giving rise to the dis
courses, will lead to the concession
Substantial Histor- of SUDstantiai historicity to the To-
icity of Johannine , . , . „, , .
Discourses. hannine discourses. Though the
form be new, the thought is not
John's but his Teacher's.
As Dr, Sanday has put it (Expositor, April, 1892), "A
mind like St. John's was not a sheet of white paper, on
which impressions once made remained as they were : it
must needs impart to them some infusion of its own sub
stance ; and if there is something of masterfulness in the

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. I03
process, who had a better right, or who was more likely to
exercise this freedom, than the last surviving apostle, who
had himself lain upon the bosom of the Lord ? " Yet one
suggestion more will be of weight to some : the Spirit's in
fluence in recalling to John's mind what otherwise might
have been forgotten. The two most important objections
.. . now urged against the fourth gospel are,
to quote Dr. Sanday (Expositor, Janu
ary, 1892), (1) "That there is a deep-seated difference
respecting the whole course of the ministry of Christ,"
and (2) "That the fourth gospel gives us a portrait of
Christ which is all divinity." The first point is that while
in Mark and the other synoptists Christ did not come for
ward with his claim to be the Messiah till somewhat late in
his ministry, in the fourth gospel his claim to the Messiah-
ship marks one of his first acts. The two pictures, it is
claimed, are mutually exclusive. If the synoptic version
is true, the Johannean is not, and therefore could not have
been told by an apostle. The answer to this is that even if the
Answer: . ,, , . ,
. .. premises are true, the conclusion does
A non sequitur. r '
not follow. The phenomena presented
in John, were they as asserted, can easily be accounted for
on the hypothesis of what Dr. Sanday calls the "fore
shortening ' ' of memory, the difficulty of maintaining
after the lapse of years an exact sense of the temporal con
secution of events and their results or causes. There is a
tendency to displace happenings and deductions from
them, to write with anticipation of events because of the
insight ex post facto into the consequences of those events.

I°4 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
There need be nothing essentially unhistorical in this, so
that the conclusion that John did not write the gospel as
cribed to him does not follow. But it is possible to go back of this
Premises not True. , , ,. , ^. , .
and show that the facts are not as
represented. The statement of the opponents is, that
while Christ in the synoptics appeared certain of his mis
sion from the beginning, he only urged his Messiahship at
a later period ; that the disciples are represented as acting
in accordance with this course of events, Peter's con
fession marking the first breaking of the light upon the
disciples' minds ; that even John the Baptist does not
know Jesus as the Messiah, but from prison sends to ask
whether Jesus were the Christ. Against this it is asserted
that in John the cleansing of the temple implies a claim
on the part of Jesus, and the recognition of that claim on
the part of the people, to be the Messiah ; that from the
first the disciples acknowledged him as such; and that
John the Baptist from the beginning declared to the world
the Messiahship of Jesus. On this we have to remark that
it is difficult to detach one's self from the
Ex post facto ... . , .
Reasoning. significance of things and names as we
know them at the present. We are apt,
for instance, to read into the word "Messiah" all that
Paul and John and nineteen centuries have taught us is
wrapped up in that word. But the Jews did not see in it
what we do. Dr. Sanday calls attention to the fact that
there were a score of Messiahs between the death of Herod
and the Jewish war.
Hence it does not follow that when Andrew said, " We
have found the Messiah," that he perceived in that title all

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. I05
that John knew to be contained therein at the time that he
wrote. Again, even in inspired persons it is necessary to
make allowances for fluctuations in faith (remember Eli
jah !), hence there is nothing ^beyond reasbn in the Bap
tist's sending to know Jesus' claims to the Messiahship after
John himself had proclaimed him. And in the Johannean
representation of the Baptist's preaching, the additional
feature, " Behold the Lamb of God," adds nothing essen
tial to what he says in the synoptists. Likewise the Johan
nean gospel makes it evident that our Lord quite late in his
ministry had not clearly revealed himself, at least to the
understanding of the people, as the Christ, since (John x.
24) the people ask, "How long dost thou hold us in sus
pense ? If thou art the Christ, tell us plainly. ' ' So that the
Johannean gospel in reality presents Jesus as the Messiah
with " as unequivocal signs of reserve " (Dr. Sanday) as do
the synoptics. Indeed, to urge to its full the objection of
a progressive development of this Messianic idea in the first
three gospels requires us to drop out as unhistorical the first
two chapters of Matthew and Luke, which contradict " the
progressive and developing claims " of Jesus to be the Mes
siah. It is only by ignoring the " signs of reserve " in the
fourth gospel and by emphasizi ng such notes as Andrew's
remark to his brother, and by following the reverse opera
tion in the synoptics, that we get a delusive contrariety
which disappears when submitted to unbiased examination.
The other principal objection of
Second Objection. wnich we have made mention deals with
Preexistence of . . . . , c ^
Christ the prominence given in the fourth gos
pel to the preexistence of Christ as the
Logos and his consequent divinity for which, it is asserted,

106 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM,
there is almost nothing in the other three. But in the
synoptics Christ forgives sins, which
Answer Implied in fa Jgws acknowled is an attribute
the Synoptics. ¦ ' b
of God alone; his second coming as
judge is no less clearly taught ; he " there legislates for
his Church, there claims the devotion of his disciples; ....
there too the Son is also Lord, there too he promises to
dwell like the Shekinah among his people . . . . " (Dr.
Sanday). The idea is by no means so prominent in the
synoptics, for it was an immediate consequence of the
Logos doctrine in John, and to develop it was a part of
the polemic plan of his book. But as a ground idea, it is
sufficiently clear in the first three gospels to those " that
have eyes to see. " The synoptists presuppose the Lord's
divinity. The preceding are the principal objections which are
now urged against the John gospel. If they are answered,
but little further can be laid against its historicity or
genuineness. Some minor alleged inconsistencies or omissions may be
mentioned here. For instance, that the scene of the
activity of Jesus and the events described differ in the two
accounts. To which it is a sufficient answer to refer to
the supplementary character of John's gospel, to remem
ber that both the synoptic accounts and the' Johannine are
but selections, and that the synoptic accounts admit of
being dove-tailed with the Johannine, while the Johannine
representation assumes certain events definitely described
by the synoptists. Thus while John gives no account of
the baptism, he yet says, "I saw the Spirit descend like a
dove," etc., which evidently presupposes the baptism. If

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 107
an argument is raised against the historic verity of the
gospel because the account of the raising of Lazarus is not
given by the other three evangelists, what must be said of
the story of the raising of the son of the widow of Nain,
which is told only by Luke ?
The argument from the apparent difference of one day
in placing our Lord's eating of the Passover and suffering
death is now no longer pressed, as the arguments on both
sides are quite evenly balanced. The same may be said
regarding the difference in reckoning the hours of the day
of our Lord's crucifixion.
We have then as the result of our studies the establish
ment of the all but universal tradition of the Church that
the apostle John was the author of the last of our gospels.
That this will be immediately and universally accepted is
too much to expect. But that the flank of the negative
position has been turned is too evident to need even state
ment. From date to date the critics have been forced
back only to take new positions, until about all that they
have contended for has been proved impossible. That we
shall soon have a practical consensus seems most probable.
The new finds in apostolic literature strengthen the
defenders and bring no new material to the assailants.
The inevitable result of a reinforcement of one side only is
¦the ultimate victory of that side. We believe that victory
is not far distant. Meanwhile "the fourth gospel
continues and will continue to shine, like the sun in
heaven, its own best evidence, and will shine all the
brighter when the clouds, great and small, shall have
passed away " (Schaff, Hist. Chr. Church, i, 724).

Selected Bibliography of the Johan
nean Problem.

Bibliographies.

Generally, at the end of the articles in the Cyclopaedias. Best is in
Smith's Bible Dictionary, article John, Gospel of.
Ellicott, C. J. In his New Testament Commentary for English
Readers, i, 381.
Gregory, Caspar Rene. In Luthardt's St. John the Author of the
Fourth Gospel. Edinb., 1875, pp. 283-360.
Hurst, John F. Literature of Theology. N.Y., 1895. (See " Johan
nean Problem " in Index.)
Reuss, E. W. E. History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Tes
tament. Bost, 1884, i, 233-236.
Schaff, P. Church History. N. V., 1882, i, 408-410.
Sonnenschein, W. S. The Best Books. Lond. and Bost., 1891.
Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literature. Lond. and N.Y.,
1895.
Vincent, M. R. Students' New-Testament Handbook. N.Y., 1893,
pp. 61-68. Very useful. 108

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 109
Dictionaries.
Smith, William, and Fuller, J. M. Dictionary of the Bible.
Second Ed., Lond., 1893. Articles Basilides, Gospels, and
John, Gospel of. (Evangelical and apologetic.)
Encyclopaedia Britannica. Ninth Ed., Lond., 1879. Article Gospels.
(By Dr. E. A. Abbott, negative, acute and antagonistic to tradi
tional authorship.)
McClintock and Strong. N. Y. Articles Gospels and John, Gos
pel of. (Able, defend Johannine authorship.)
Schaff-Heszog. New Ed., N. Y., 1890. Articles Gospels and
John the Apostle. In Works on the Canon.
Charteris, A. H. Canonicity. Edinb., 1880, pp. 167-195.
Reuss, E. W. E. History of the Sacred Scriptures of the New Tes
tament. Bost., 1884, i, 226-236.
Westcott, B. F. Canon of the New Testament. Second Ed.,
Lond., 1866. (See particularly Chap, iv.)
In Introductions.
Bleek, F. An Introduction to the New Testament. Edinb., 1869, i,
316-333. (Necessarily behind the times.)
Davidson, Samuel. Introduction to the New Testament. Third
Ed., Lond., 1894. In Second Ed., see Vol. ii, pp. 326-423.
(Davidson is the foremost English exponent of the negative
school.)
Gloag, P. J. Introduction to the Johannine Writings. Lond., 1891,
pp. 94-214.
Salmon, George. Historical Introduction to the New Testament.
Second Ed., Lond., 1886, pp. 249-365.

HO THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
Weiss, B. Manual of Introduction to the New Testament. N. Y.,
1889, ii, 386-401.
Westcott, B. F. An Introduction to the Study of the Gospels. New
Ed., Lond., 1875, pp. 249-272. (Scholarly, most valuable.)
Treatises.
Abbot, Ezra. Authorship of the Fourth Gospel. Unitarian Re
view, Feb., Mar., June, 1880.
Peabody, A. P. Internal Tokens of the Authorship of the Fourth
Gospel.
Lightfoot, J. B. Internal Evidence for the Authenticity of St.
John's Gospel. Expositor, Jan., Feb., Mar., 1890.
These three essays of Abbot, Peabody, and Lightfoot were
reprinted in one volume, N. Y., 1891.
Arnold, Matthew. God and the Bible. Lond., 1875. (Several
chapters deal with the Fourth Gospel.)
Cone, O. Gospel Criticism and Historical Christianity. (Prof. Cone
¦/iZ-t^m^My^^is a Unitarian. 'His standpoint is adverse to the Johannine
authorship.)
Evanson, E. Dissonance of the Four Generally Received Evange-
lists. Ipswich, 1792. (The first work in English to attack seri
ously the Johannine authorship.)
Fisher, G. P. Supernatural Origin of Christianity. New Ed., N. Y.,
1870, pp. 33-152. The Beginnings of Christianity. N. Y., 1877,
pp. 320-362.
Gloag, P. Introduction to the Johannine Writings. Lond. and
NY., 1891.
Griffith, T. The Gospel of the Divine Life : A Study of the Fourth
Evangelist. Lond., 1881.

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. Ill
Hutton, R. H. The Historical Problems of the Fourth Gospel. In
Essays, Theological and Literary. Lond., 187 1, i, 144-226.
Ladd, G. T. The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture. N. Y., 1883, ;. 55°-
573-
LeAthes, S. Witness of John to Christ. Lond., 1870. Appendix
on Authenticity.
Luthardt, C. E. St. John the Author of the Fourth Gospel.
Edinb., 1875. New Ed., 1885.
McClellan, J. B. The Four Gospels. Lond., 1875.
Mackay, R. W. The Tubingen School and Its Antecedents. Lond.,
1863, pp. 258-311.
Mansel, H. L. The Gnostic Heresies of the First and Second Cen
turies. Lond., 1875, pp. 64-78, 1 10-138.
Martineau, James. The Seat of Authority in Religion. Lond.,
1890, pp. 189-243. (Negative in its conclusions.)
Norton, A. Genuineness of the Gospels. Cambridge, Mass. Sec
ond Ed., 1846.
Orr, James. The Authenticity of St. John's Gospel. Lond., 1870.
Pressense, E. de. Early Years of Christianity. The Apostolic Era.
N. Y., 1870, pp. 509-512.
Priestley, Joseph. Letters to a Young Man, Part II. Lond., 1793.
(Written as an answer to E. Evanson's " Dissonance.")
Row, C. A. Jesus of the Evangelists : His Historical Character Vin
dicated. Lond., 1868, pp. 223ff, 39iff.
Rowland, D. The Evidence from Tradition and from the Fathers
Applied in Support of the Apostolic Origin of the Fourth Gospel.
Lond., 1869.

112 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
Sanday, William. Authorship and Historical Character of the
Fourth Gospel. Lond., 1872. (Still very useful.) The Gos
pels in the Second Century. Lond., 1876. An Inaugural Lec
ture : The Study of the New Testament. Oxf., 1883.
Schaff, P. Church History. N. Y., 1882, i, 701-724.
Sears, E. H. The Fourth Gospel, the Heart of Christ. Bost., 1872.
Supernatural Religion. Sixth Ed., Lond., 1875, ii, 251 ff. (A sharp
attack on the Fourth Gospel.)
Tayler, J. J. An Attempt to Ascertain the Character of the Fourth
Gospel, especially in its Relation to the Three First. Second
Ed., Lond., 1871.
Tischendorf, C. Origin of the Four Gospels. Bost., 1867, pp.
166-200.
Wace, H. The Gospel and Its Witnesses. Lond., 1883.
Was John the Author of the Fourth Gospel ? Lond., 1868. (Anony
mous.)
Watkins, H. W. Modern Criticism Considered in Its Relation to
the Fourth Gospel. Lond. and N. Y., 1890. (Exhaustive sur
vey of the entire controversy.) In Commentaries.
The Introductions found in the commentaries are often very valu
able. The following are, perhaps, the best.
Alford, Henry. Greek Testament. Fifth Ed., Lond., 1863, i,
5°-73-
Ellicott, C. J. New Testament Commentary for English Readers.
Lond. and N. Y., 1863, i, 369-381. (Very conservative.)
Godet, F. Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. Edinb., 1883
(Valuable.)

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 1 13
Maurice, F. D. Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. Lond.,
'857.
Meyer, H. A. W. Commentary on the Gospel of St. John. Edinb.,
1874, i, 1-55.
Milligan and Moulton in SchafFs Popular Commentary. St. John.
Lond. and N. Y., 1880, pp. i-xxxvi.
Plummer, A. Cambridge Greek Testament. St. John. Lond.,
1882. (A good piece of work.)
Reynolds, in Pulpit Commentary, Gospel According to St. John.
Lond., 1888. (Excellent.)
Sadler, M. F. Gospel of St. John, with Notes, etc. Lond., 1883.
Westcott, B. F. In the Speaker's Commentary, St. John. Lond.,
1879 ; N. Y., 1880. (Perhaps the best of all, )
Woudsworth, Chr. The New Testament .... in the Original
Greek. Lond., 1856-60, i, 256-269.
Review Articles of Importance.
Abbott, E. A. (In Encyclopaedia Britannica, article Gospels, and
in) Modern Review, 1892, pp 559-588, 716-756, on Justin's
Use of the Fourth Gospel. (Abbott belongs to negative school.)
Arnold, Matthew. Review of Objections to Literature and Dogma,
IV. Contemporary Review, Mar., 1875.
Clarke, J. F. The Fourth Gospel and Its Author, in Christian
Examiner , Jan., 1868.
Davidson, S. Irenaeus, Polycarp, and the Testaments of the Twelve
Patriarchs in Relation to the Fourth Gospel. Theological Review,
July, 1870.

Ir4 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
Drummond, James. Is Basilides Quoted in the Philosophoumena?
in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. xi, Pt. ii, 1892. (An:
swers in affirmative.).
F. R. C. The Literary Character of the Fourth Gospel. Frazer's
Magazine, Mar., 1875.
Fisher, G. P. In the Princeton Review, July, 1881, pp. 51-84.
Higginson, Edward. On the Authorship of the Fourth Gospel.
Theological Review, Apr., 1868.
Lewis, Tayler. The Regula Fidei, or the Gospel of John. Am.
Presb. and Theol. Rev., ii, 46-63 (1864).
Lightfoot, J. B. (On Supernatural Religion) in the Contemporary
Review, Jan., Aug., Oct., 1875. (On the Fourth Gospel) in the
Expositor, 1890, pp. 1-21, 81-92, 176-188.
Martineau, James. In Old and New, Bost., July, Aug., 1874, pp.
47-58, 201-222.
Milligan, William. The Easter Controversies of the Second
Century in Their Relation to the Gospel of St. John. Contem
porary Review, Sept., 1867. The Last Supper of the Lord,
Aug., Nov., 1868. The Gospel of St. John and the Apocalypse,
Aug., Sept., 187 1. John the Presbyter. Journal of Sac. Lit
erature, Oct., 1867.
Modern Criticism on St. John's Gospel. Lond. Quarterly Review,
July, 1865.
Mombert, J. I. Origin of the Gospels, in Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct.,
1866.
Neale, E. V. The Doctrine of the Logos. Theological Review,
Oct., 1867.
Niemeyer, Baur and others on the Fourth Gospel, in the National
Review, July, 1857.

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. "5
On the Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, with .... Reference to
.... Objections against .... its Johannine Origin. Brit.
Quart. Rev., Oct., 1872.
Recent Literature on the Gospels. Br. and For. Evang. Rev., Jan.,
1864.
Reply to Professor Lightfoot's Article on "Supernatural Religion.1'
(By author of "Supernatural Religion.") Fortnightly Review,
Jan. I, 1875.
Robinson, Edward. The Alleged Discrepancy between John and
the Other Evangelists Respecting Our Lord's Last Passover,
Bibliotheca Sacra, ii, 405-435 (1845).
Row, C. A. Historical Character of the Gospels, in Journal of
Sacred Literature, Oct., 1865; July, 1866.
S. T. B. The Gospel Question. I. The Fourth Gospel. Theological
Review, Apr., 1866.
Sanday, William. The Fourth Gospel, in Expositor, Nov., Dec,
1891 ; Jan., Mar., Apr., May, 1892.
Stowe, C. E. The Four Gospels as We Now Have Them in the
New Testament, and the Hegelian Assaults Upon Them. Biblio-
theca Sacra, viii, 503-524; ix, 77-108 (1851-52).
The Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel. Br. and For. Evang. Rev.,
Apr., 1864.

INDEX.

Abbot, Ezra, 39, 40, 41, 54, 55, 60
Adverse criticism of Fourth Gospel, 14
Alogi, 10, 57, 58, 63
not a party, 10
not impartial, 1 1
Anicetus, 65
Antiquity of Fourth Gospel, 18
Apollonius, 63
Apologies of Justin, 36-44
Apostleship of evangelist, 90
Appendix to Gospel, 58-60
Arabic versions of Tatian's Harmony, 31, 32
Argument from silence, 12
Arnold, Matthew, 53, 54
Athenagoras of Athens, 29
Attack on Gospel, lines of, 15, 16
Audiences of the discourses, 99
Authenticity of Gospel, 15 B.
Basilides, 53, 54
Basis of adverse criticism, 15, 16
Baur, 14, 15, 17, 19, 82 116

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 117

Bretschneider, 14
Brusqueness of Sadducees, 79

Caiaphas, 93
Canon of gospels, when closed, 19
Caspari, 36
Cerinthus, 58, 63, 70, 76
Character sketches, 86, 87
Characteristics of author, 94
Chronicon Paschale, 28
Chronological exactness of Gospel, 80
Ciasca, 31
Claudius Apollinarius, 28
Cleansing of temple, 104
Clement of Alexandria, 19, 20, 41, 64, 100
Clementine Homilies, 23, 24
Conjecture, relation of, to tradition, 1 1
Convergence of testimony, 96, 97
Critical problems, 9
Criticism of Fourth Gospel, modern, 14
Cross, Mr., 83
Curetonian Syriac, 33
Customs, Jewish, 85 D
Date of Clementines, 24
Petrine Gospel, 46
Dates assigned to Fourth Gospel, 15, 17, 69
Death of Christ, date of, 16
Defense of Gospel, lines of, 17
Deists and the Gospel, 14
Detail in Gospel, 88
Dialogue with Trypho, 37, 39
Diatessaron of Tatian, 31, 32
Differences among the Gospels, 16, 98

Il8 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
Disagreement of critics, 12
Disciples, inner circle of, 92
Discourses of Jesus, 16, 98, 99, 101
Discovery of Diatessaron, 31
Divinity of Jesus, 103
Docetism, 45, 60
Dogmatic prepossessions, 10
Dramatic vividness, 99
Dressel, 23
Drummond, James, 54 E.
Easter, date of, 26
Emanations, gnostic, not in Gospel, 69
Ephesus, residence of John in, 62, 63, 64, 69, 70, 96
Ephraem the Syrian, 31
Epilogue of Gospel, 91, 99
Epiphanius, cited, 10, 53, 57, 58
Episcopate not debated by Gospel, 69
Epistle of Vienne and Lyons, 29
Eusebius, 20, 26, 45, 63, 64, 65, 100
Evangelical instrument, 52, 53
Eyewitness wrote Gospel, 86

Fathers' use of Gospel, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 34,39, 40,
51, 52,54,63, 64, 66
Forgery unlikely, 44, 55, 60, 62, 80, 81
Foreshortening of memory, 103
Four gospels of Irenseus, 19
Fourteenth Nisan, 27
Fourth Gospel and synoptics 16 G.
Gentile character of audience, 96
Geography of Gospel, 82, 83, 88

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. HO

Gloag, 36, 102
Gnosticism, 48 ff., 60, 62, 69, 70, 100
Godet, 93, 102
Gospel criticism, I
Gospel of Peter, 45, 46, 47
Graphic writing, 86
Greek language vs. Hebrew, 73 H.
Harman, 32
Harmony of Tatian, 31,32
Harnack, 30, 32, 36
Hebrew movement of Gospel, 73
use of, in Gospel, 75
Heinrici, G., 53
Heracleon, 50, 5 1 , 67
Herod's temple, 80
Hippolytus, 48, 52, 53, 54, 58
Historical accuracy of Gospel, 80
Historicity of Gospel, 15
Hoyt, 36

Ignatius, 65
' Illuminationists," 14

Inexact quotations by the Fathers, 21, 41
Irenasus, 18, 19, 39, 48, 49, 51, 57, 63, 64, 66, 67, 70

Iscariot, 75 J-
James one of inner circle, 92
Jerome, 66, 100
Jesus, date of death of, 16
discourses of, 16, 98, 99, 101
scene of activity of, 16
understood by author, 91

!20 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
Jewish origin of Gospel, 73
sects known to evangelist, 78
Jews and Samaritans, 79
Johannean problem proper, 9
Johannean problem, the wider, 9
John, Apostle, belongs to inner circle, 92
date of death of, 66
only possible author, 91, 94
residence of in Ephesus, 62, 63, 64, 69, 70, 96
unnamed in Gospel, 92
wrote in old age, 95
John Baptist, in the Gospel, 93
Josephus, 79, 80, 81
Judas, designation of as traitor, 92
Judases, the two, 93
Justin Martyr, 30, 36-44, 64, 67, 84, 85
Justin's gospels ours, 38, 39 K.
Keim, 15, 17

Lagarde, 23
Lazarus, raising of, 78, 107
Legends concerning John, 59, 63, 65, 70
Liddon, Canon, 33
Lightfoot, Bishop, 69, 74, 78, 79, 8o, 87
Literary style of Gospel, 7 1
Logos identified with God, 100
incarnated, 29, 30, 40, 105, 106
Lord's Supper, institution of, 91
Luthardt, 35
Lyons and Vienne, epistle of, 29

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.
M.

McGiffert on Gospel of Peter, 48
Manna, giving of, 77
Marcion, 49, 50, 52
Martha and Mary, 87, 89
Martineau, 46
Martyrdom of James, 92
Mary Magdalene, 88
Matthias, 53
Melito of Sardis, 28
" Memoirs of the Apostles," 37, 38, 39
Messianic idea among Jews, 104, 105
in Gospel, 76, 77, 103, 104
Montanists, 60
Muratorian fragment, 33, 34, 67

N.
Names explained, 74
Negative criticism destructive, 94
evidence, value of, 12
Nicodemus, 87
Nicolaitans, 70
Numbers, use of, in Gospel, 88

O.
Old Latin version, 33
Old Syriac version, 33
Old Testament known to evangelist, 84
Omission to mention heresies, 69
Ophites, 56
Oral tradition, 99, 100
Origen, 51
Origin of Logos doctrine, 42

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.

Palestinian origin of Gospel, 75, 96
topography, 82
Papias, 61
Particles, paucity of, in Gospel, 74
Paschal controversy, 26, 27, 69
Peabody, 95, 96
Peratae, 56
Peter, at the supper, 92
belongs to inner circle, 92
Gospel of, 45", 46, 47
Petrine apocrypha, 45
Pharisees and Sadducees, 78
Philo, 42, 84, 85
Philosophy natural to author, 100
Polycarp, 48, 49, 61, 63, 64, 65
Polycrates of Ephesus, 26, 27, 63
Preexistence of Christ, 105
Priests and Sadducees, 78, 79
Principles of criticism, 22
Problems of New Testament, 9
Prophet, the, of John, 78
Ptolemaeus, 50, 51, 68

Quotations of Fathers, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29, 30, 34, 39, 40,
51. 52.54, 63,64, 66
inexact, 21

R.

Reception of the Gospel 180 A.D., 25
Receptivity of the author, 99
Robinson's researches, 82

THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM. 123

Sadducees, 78
Samaritans and Jews, 79
Sanday, Dr., 83, 84, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106
Scarcity of extant second-century literature, 12
Schaff, 26, 107
Schleiermacher, 14
Schiirer, 82
Sects of Jews, known to evangelist, 78
Serapion of Antioch, 45, 46, 48
Simon, son of Joannes, 75
Spontaneity of detail, 89
Subjective element in the Gospel, 101
Suidas, 66
Supplementary character of Gospel, 100, 106
Synoptic gospels, 16,43, 92> 93, 9%> ID2> io3" io4, IO&
problem, 9
Syriac version, 33

Tatian, 30-32
Tayler, J. J., 15
Temple, cleansing of, 104
"Tendency " in Fourth Gospel, 15
Tertullian, 43, 49, 50, 51
Testimony for Gospel deficient, 16, 17
convergence of, 96, 97
Theophilus of Antioch, 20, 21, 22, 67
Thoma, A., 42, 84
Thomas Didymus, 93
Time-marks in the Gospel, 16, 87
Tischendorf, 19
Topography of gospels, 82, 88
Tradition, force of, 11
nearly continuous, 10, 94, 107

124 THE JOHANNEAN PROBLEM.'
Tubingen school, 14, 23
Type of teaching of Gospel, 7 1 V.
Valentinians, 51, 52, 53, 67
Valentinus, 50, 51,52, 53
Variation in quotations, 21, 41
Versions, testimony of, to Gospel, 33
Vienne and Lyons, epistle of, 29

W.

Watkins, 101, 102
Westcott, Bishop, 33, 40, 91, 93

Z.

Zahn, to, 31
Zebedee. sons of, 92, 93
Zeller on the Clementines, 23, 24

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