Part 15 (2/2)
Some, no doubt, may say that the discrepancies are so great that the Synoptic Gospels cannot be accepted as historical records; while others will say, as does a devout commentator on the Acts, that ”such is the naturalness of Holy Scripture that it seems as though it were indifferent about a superficial consistency. So it ever is with truth: its harmony is often veiled and hidden; while falsehood sometimes betrays itself, to a practised ear, by a studied and ostentatious uniformity.”[289] Others again will appeal to the writers on historical method, such as Langlois and Seign.o.bos: ”The natural tendency is to think that the closer the agreement is, the greater is its demonstrative power; we ought, on the contrary, to adopt as a rule the paradox that an agreement proves more when it is confined to a small number of circ.u.mstances. It is at such points of coincidence between diverging statements that we are to look for scientifically established historical facts.”[290] The inter-Synoptic differences are certainly, in general, no greater than those which a single author allowed himself in the accounts of the same incident, as is shown in Luke's threefold account of the conversion of the Apostle Paul.
289: C. J. Vaughan: ”The Church of the First Days,” p. 547.
290: ”Introduction to the Study of History,” pp. 201, 202.
IV. THE JOHANNINE PROBLEM
It is scarcely surprising that the mystery which surrounds the most mysterious Personality in history should communicate itself to the records which tell of His life, and even to the authors of these records. If the Synoptic problem is a ”well,” as Goethe said, the problem presented by the ”spiritual Gospel” usually a.s.signed to the Apostle John is equally fascinating and difficult. The mystery of the Master has in part enveloped the disciple whom Jesus loved.
The questions of the authors.h.i.+p and the historicity of the Fourth Gospel are closely bound together. If the Gospel is a theological romance intended to give currency to the conceptions of the Alexandrian philosophy, it is clear that its authors.h.i.+p cannot be ascribed to one of the disciples of Jesus. On the other hand, if it was written by one of the Apostolic band, it must certainly, whether reliable or not in its details, contain a wealth of historical reminiscence which will enrich our knowledge of the personality, the words and the deeds of Christ.
It is an interesting fact that a strong defense of the Apostolic authors.h.i.+p of the Gospel has been made, in the present generation and in the one which preceded it, by writers whose theological position would incline them to an opposite conclusion.[291] The strength of the evidence for Johannine authors.h.i.+p lies in the testimony which it receives from all parts of the early church, whether divisions be made on geographical or theological lines, and in the links of connection which bind the witnesses to the alleged scene of John's labours and to the Apostle himself.
291: Ezra Abbot, 1880 (see ”The Fourth Gospel,” by Abbot, Peabody and Lightfoot, 1891) and James Drummond: ”Character and Authors.h.i.+p of the Fourth Gospel,” 1904.
If it be objected that John, as a Galilean fisherman and an unlettered man, could not have produced a work so profound in thought and so polished in Greek composition, the objection may be compared with that which is raised against the authors.h.i.+p of the plays which go under the name of Shakespeare. Andrew Lang remarks with irony upon the surprising belief that ”a young man from a little country town, and later an actor, could possibly possess Shakespeare's vast treasures of general information, or Latin enough to have read the Roman cla.s.sics.”[292]
292: ”A New Theory of Shakespeare,” _Independent_, December 22, 1910, p. 1373.
The external evidence for Johannine authors.h.i.+p is strong and, with the exception of the obscure sect of the ”Alogi,”[293] is uniform. It is ”sufficient,” and there can be little doubt that it would be efficient in producing general belief except for the theological interests involved. Objections to the Apostolic authors.h.i.+p from the side of the external evidence are based (1) upon supposed indications that John was martyred with James at Jerusalem and never lived in Ephesus at all, and (2) upon the statement of Papias, interpreted to mean that two men by the name of John lived in Ephesus. (1) The evidence upon the first point is confessedly late and confused. It is contained in the statements of Georgios Hamartolos, a ninth-century writer, and in the so-called ”De Boor Fragment,” purporting to contain an extract from a fifth-century writer, Philip of Side. The former says that Nerva, ”having recalled John from the island, dismissed him to live in Ephesus. Then, being the only survivor of the twelve disciples, and having composed the Gospel according to him, he has been deemed worthy of martyrdom. For Papias, the Bishop of Hierapolis, having been an eye-witness of him, says in the second book of the 'Oracles of the Lord,' that he was slain by the Jews, having, as is clear, with his brother James, fulfilled the prediction of Christ concerning him, and his own confession and a.s.sent in regard to this.” He adds that the learned Origen, in his commentary on Matthew, ”affirms that John ea?t????e? [memartyreken] (has borne witness, or suffered martyrdom), intimating that he had learned this from the successors of the Apostles.”[294] But Origen, in his comment on Matthew xx. 23, says that ”the king of the Romans, as tradition teaches, condemned John, witnessing for the truth, to the island of Patmos.” If Georgios Hamartolos thus incorrectly refers to Origen as a witness to the martyrdom of John, less weight attaches to his professed reproduction of the statement of Papias.
293: Epiphanius: ”Haer.,” li.
294: See F. W. Worsley: ”The Fourth Gospel and the Synoptists,” 1909, pp. 174 f.
The ”De Boor Fragment” contains the statement that ”Papias, in the second book, says that John the Divine and James his brother were slain by the Jews.”[295] This supports the statement of the ninth-century writer in regard to the second book of Papias, but the evidence, whether for the martyrdom of John by the Jews, or for the fact that John was put to death at the same time with his brother James, as is sometimes inferred, is exceedingly slight. Paul (Gal. ii. 9) speaks of John at a time usually identified with the Council at Jerusalem (Acts xv.), although Ramsay would identify it with Acts xi. 30, thus placing it immediately before the death of James (Acts xii. 2). The statement of Georgios that John lived in Ephesus at the time of Nerva also negatives this supposition. Of the slightly attested view that John was martyred at an early date, Dr. Dawson Walker remarks: ”It is difficult to think that this latter hypothesis would have met with so great favour if it had not been such an effective instrument in excluding St. John from any possibility of being the writer of the Fourth Gospel.”[296] The statements that John was put to death by the Jews may possibly be an inference from the prophecy, ”The cup that I drink ye shall drink, etc.”
(Mark x. 39).
295: ”Texte und Untersuchungen,” v. 2, p. 170.
296: ”Present Day Criticism,” _Expositor_, March, 1912, p. 251. For the statement of a Syriac calendar (411 A.D.) commemorating ”John and James the Apostles at Jerusalem” as martyrs on 27th December, see Allen and Grensted: ”Introduction to the Books of the New Testament,” 1913, p. 94.
(2) A mediating theory, based upon the well-known statement of Papias[297] in which a ”presbyter” John may, with much probability, be distinguished from the Apostle of that name, does not deny the influence of the Apostle upon the construction of the Fourth Gospel, while its ultimate authors.h.i.+p is a.s.signed to the ”presbyter” John. The hypothesis of the two Johns rests upon the statement of Papias' fragment as interpreted by Eusebius; but Eusebius, while suggesting that the ”presbyter” might have written the Apocalypse, indicates no doubt of the Apostolic authors.h.i.+p of the Gospel and the First Epistle. The possibility that there were two Johns, who were both in some sense disciples of the Lord (as Papias describes the ”presbyter”), who both lived in Asia Minor, and who were both more or less concerned in the writing of the Fourth Gospel, cannot be denied. But it is also possible that Papias has been misinterpreted, and that, when he described the ”presbyter” John, the disciple of the Lord, he had only the Apostle John in mind. In this case we should be freed from the necessity, involved in the theory of authors.h.i.+p we are considering, of supposing that the Apostle had a mysterious _alter ego_ of the same name, who was with him alike in Palestine and in Asia Minor, shared in a degree his authority and published the substance of his teaching, and so completely merged his personality in that of the Apostle that in the Gospel record no trace of a separate ”presbyter” can be found, and there is no mention of the name of either John.
297: Eusebius: ”Hist. Eccl.,” iii. 39. ”What was said ... by John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples, and what Aristion and the Presbyter John, the disciples of the Lord, say.” The argument for two Johns is based upon the fact that the name is mentioned twice and that different tenses are used.
The First Epistle, supposed to be a sort of supplement to the Gospel, is of importance in its bearing upon the question of authors.h.i.+p. As a recent writer says: ”The persistent note of authority which is overheard, rather than heard, in the Epistles is the more impressive because it is only implied. St. John a.s.sumes that his authority is unquestioned and unquestionable by those Asians who are loyal to the Christian tradition. When we compare his letters with those of his younger contemporaries, we conclude that it was unquestionably because he was an Apostle.”[298]
298: Rev. H. J. Bardsley: ”The Testimony of Ignatius and Polycarp to the Authors.h.i.+p of 'St. John,'” _Journal of Theological Studies_, Vol. XIV, No. 56, July, 1913, p. 491.
Another mediating position, adopted by those who do not accept the full Apostolic authors.h.i.+p, is found in a theory of part.i.tion, which a.s.signs a portion of the Gospel to the Apostle. The artistic unity of the Gospel and the qualities of style which distinguish it from other writings present a grave difficulty to any theory of part.i.tion. As a sort of half-way house it will scarcely be permanently tenable. Of Spitta's a.n.a.lysis, which a.s.signs a part of the Gospel to the Apostle, it has been objected by a critic of more radical sympathies that such an admission places him outside the limits of scientific criticism.[299]
299: C. A. Bernoulli, in appendix to Overbeck's ”Johannesevangelium,”
1911, pp. 504, 505.
The stronghold of the evidence alike for and against the Johannine authors.h.i.+p is to be found in the facts of the Gospel itself. On the one hand a powerful argument, such as that which has been developed by Lightfoot and Westcott, can be drawn to show that the author of the Gospel must have been a Jew, a Jew of Palestine, a disciple of Jesus, one of the inner circle of disciples, and in fact none other than the ”beloved disciple” himself. The internal facts of the Gospel are used in a different way by others to show that the Fourth Gospel differs so radically in scene, in the style of its discourses, and indeed in its entire portrait of Jesus, that it cannot be accepted as historical, or as the work of one of the disciples.
The difference in scene between the Galilean Gospels and the Jerusalem Gospel presents no great difficulty, but the crux of the problem is in the difference in style and subject matter. The Jesus of the Synoptics cannot, it is said, have spoken in the style of the discourses in John.
Before this judgment can be accepted without qualification, several points deserve to be noticed. The difference in style is in part accounted for by the difference in subject matter and in the character of the audience. There are out-croppings of the Johannine style in the Synoptics, especially where the subject of discourse is similar. The pa.s.sage, Matthew xi. 25-30, which, as we have seen, contains the essential teachings found in John xiv., is a notable ill.u.s.tration. The Jerusalem audience again was different from the Galilean audience. If it be said that when the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel speaks in Galilee (John vi.) He uses the same mystical style as when He speaks in Jerusalem, it should at least be considered that the discourse in Capernaum is not given as a sample of the usual synagogue preaching of Jesus. The scene clearly marks a crisis in the ministry, a crisis indicated in the other Gospels by the northern journey for retirement which immediately followed, but made more intelligible by the supposition that the Capernaum discourse was practically a clearer revelation to the Galilean audience of the consciousness of Jesus and the spiritual character of His work. When we recall that such expressions, familiar to John, as _Logos_, Lamb of G.o.d, propitiation for sin, are never placed by John in the mouth of Jesus, we have strong negative evidence that the discourses of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel are not the free composition of the author himself.
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