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COMMENTARY 


ON THE 


CO stati Ob) OisN 


WITH AN 


HISTORICAL AND CRITICAL INTRODUCTION 


BY 


HE GoOpnT 


DOCTOR IN THEOLOGY AND PROFESSOR IN THE FACULTY OF THE 


INDEPENDENT CHURCH OF NEUCHATEL. 





VOT: 





TRANSLATED FROM THE THIRD FRENCH EDITION 
WITH A 


PREFACE, INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS, 


AND ADDITIONAL NOTES 


BY 


eM OP EY Dw Gee, 


PROFESSOR OF SACRED LITERATURE IN YALE COLLEGE, 


NEW YORK: 
FUNK & WAGNALLS, PvuBLIsHERs, 
10 and 12 Dery SrrReEeET, 


1886. 


[All Rights Reserved.] 
> 
ARY, WINDSoP 





HOLY REDEEM 





Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, 
By FUNK & WAGNALLS, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 


PREFACE 


TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 





THE Commentary on the Gospel of John which is now presented, in 
its third edition, to American readers, has been well known to New 
Testament scholars for twenty years. It was originally published in 
1864-5, and immediately commanded attention. Ten or eleven years 
later an enlarged and greatly improved edition was issued, which was 
soon afterwards translated into English. The first volume of the third 
edition was given to the public in 1881; the second and third volumes 
have appeared during the present year (1885). Unlike most of the 
German commentators of recent days, Godet has, with each new edi- 
tion, not simply revised what he had written at an earlier date, but, in 
large measure, prepared a new work. This is very strikingly true of 
the introductory volume of this latest edition of the original, which 
covers the first two hundred and nineteen pages of this translation. It 
is also true, as the reader who compares the two with minute study will 
perceive, that in the commentary properly so called every paragraph 
has been subjected to careful examination, and even where the matter 
is not altogether new, sentences have been very largely re-written, with 
changes sometimes of importance to the thought and sometimes appar- 
ently only for purposes of style. That the work has been greatly im- 
proved by these new labors of the author will be admitted by all who 
read the second and third editions in connection with each other. It 
may be almost said, that as great a service has been rendered by the 
additions and revisions since the book was first issued as was rendered 
by its original publication. Among the commentaries on this Gospel, 


this may be ranked as one of the best—a book which every student and 





minister may well examine, both for the light which it throws upon this 
waren i 


iv PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. 


most deeply interesting portion of the New Testament and for its sug- 
gestiveness to Christian thought. 

When the proposal was first made to publish a new translation in 
this country, it was supposed that it would be ready for publication at 
a considerably earlier date. But soon after the work was undertaken, 

it was ascertained that the second and third volumes of the third edition 

would appear in Switzerland in 1885, and it was accordingly deemed 
best to await their issue. Advance sheets were kindly forwarded by 
the author as soon as they were printed—the preparation of this Ameri- 
can edition being the result of consultation with him and having his 
approval. The present volume-contains one half of the book, including 
the General Introduction (Vol. I.) of the original, and the Commentary 
as far as the end of the fifth chapter of the Gospel, or about four-fifths 
of Vol. If. The remainder of the translation, it is expected, will be 
published about the first of July, 1886. 

Of the work of the American editor a few words may be said. With 
reference to the translation I may be allowed to state two things: 1. 
That my endeavor has been rather to place before the reader the exact- 
ness of the author’s thought, than to make prominent the matter of 
English style. In this sense, I have sought to give a literal, rather than 
an elegant rendering of the original. I have, however, as I trust, not 
altogether failed in making a readable book, which may represent 
faithfully in all respects what Godet gave to his French readers. 2. A 
translation of the first volume of the third edition of the French work 
(pp. 1-219 of this vol.) was published in connection with the Edinburgh 
translation of the second edition about two years ago. It was not in my 
hands, however, until my own translation was finished. In the final 
revision of my work, as the volume was about to be printed, I compared 
it with this translation, and in a few instances, of no special significance, 
I allowed myself to be affected by it in the choice of a word. For any- 
thing of this kind as connected with the English work in its second or 
third edition, or with the German translation of the second edition 
which was in my hands, but which being not altogether on the plan of 
my own, I used very little, I would make whatever acknowledgment 
may be due. The statement already made, however, will show that my 
work was done independently, and that if correspondences in phrase- 


PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION. av 


ology with the English translation occur, they are due to the fact thata ~ 
substantially literal conformity to the French has been attempted both 
by the English translator and myself. 

In the limited number of pages allowed me for additions to Godet’s 
work, I have, at the end of the volume, inserted some introductory re- 
marks on a certain part of the internal argument for the genuineness 
of the fourth Gospel, and also some additional annotations on the first 
five chapters. I would ask the reader’s considerate attention to all the 
suggestions contained in these additional pages. 

To the students and graduates of the Divinity School of Yale College 
I dedicate my part of this volume and the one which is to follow it, 
bearing with me always a most kindly feeling toward them and a most 
pleasant remembrance of their friendship for me. 


TIMOTHY DWIGHT. 


New Haven. Dec. 25th, 1885. 


PREFACE 


TO THE THIRD FRENCH EDITION. 





I am permitted for the third time to present to the Church this 
Commentary on the book which seems to me to be its most precious 
jewel, on the narrative of the life of Jesus in which His most intimate 
friend has included his most glorious and most sacred recollections. I 
feel all the responsibility of this office, but I know also the beauty of 
it; and I at once humble myself and rejoice. 

God has blessed the publication of this Commentary beyond all that 
I was able to imagine when I wrote it for the first time. To do some- 
thing, in my weakness, for the Church of France—the noblest branch, 
perhaps, which the tree that came from the grain of mustard-seed has 
put forth, but whose position seems to me more serious at this hour than 
in the days of bloody persecution—this was all my ambition; it ap- 
peared to me even to border upon presumption. And now I receive 
from many quarters testimonies of affectionate sympathy and intimate 
communion of spirit, and I see this work translated into German, Eng- 
lish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, and exerting its influence far beyond the 
circle which I had proposed to myself to reach. God has done, accord- 
ing to the expression of the apostle, more than all that I was able to 
ask or even to think. 

In the preceding edition, I had completely remodelled the treatment 
of the critical questions, by uniting all the discussions relative to the 
origin of the fourth Gospel in a special volume. This arrangement has 
been maintained; nevertheless, there is scarcely a page, scarcely a 
phrase of the preceding edition which has not been recast, and, as it 
were, composed anew. ‘The reason of this fact is found, not only in the 
profound sense which I had of the imperfections of the previous work, 


vil 


Vill PREFACE TO THE THIRD FRENCH EDITION. 


but also in the appearance of recent works which I was obliged to take 
into the most special consideration. I allude particularly to the The- 
ologie johannique of M. Reuss, in his great work on La Bible (1879), to 
the essay of M. Sabatier in the Encyclopedie des sciences religieuses, t. 
vii. pp. 173-195 (1879), to the sixth volume of M. Renan’s book on the 
Origines du christianisme (1879), and to the last edition of Hase’s work, 
Geschichte Jesu (1876). 

The result of this renewed study has been in my case the ever more 
firm scientific conviction of the authenticity of the writing which the 
Church has handed down to us under the name of John. There is a 
conviction of a different nature which forms itself in the heart on the 
simple reading of such a book. This conviction does not grow up; it 
is immediate, and consequently, complete, from the first moment. It 
resembles confidence and love at first sight, that decisive impression to 
the integrity of which thirty years of common life and mutual devotion 
add nothing. 

Scientific study cannot form a bond like this; what it can do is only 
to remove the hostile pressure which threatens to loosen or to break it. 
Truly, I can say that I have never felt this scientific assurance so con- 
firmed as after this new examination of the proofs on which it rests and 
the reasons recently alleged against it. 

The reader will judge whether this is an amiable illusion ; whether 
the conclusion formulated at the end of this volume is indeed the result 
of a profound and impartial study of the facts, or whether it has only 
been reached because it was desired in advance. It seems to me that I 
can, with yet more confidence than before, submit my book to this test. 

May all that which passed from the heart of Jesus into the heart and 
the writing of John communicate itself abundantly to my readers, so 
that the wish of the Holy Apostle may be accomplished in them: “We 
write these things unto you, that your joy may be full.” 


Neuchdtel, June 29th, 1881. 


TABLE OF CONTENTS. 





PREFACE TO THE AMERICAN EDITION, 
PREFACE TO THE THIRD FRENCH EDITION, . 


PRELIMINARIES, 


Chap. I. The Evangelical ee 


Chap. II. History of the Johannean Discussion, 


The Adversaries, 

The Defenders, 

The Intermediate Ponticne 
Conclusion, 


Boox I. Tuer ApostieE St. JOHN, 


In his father’s house, 

As a follower of Jesus, 4 

At the head of the Judzo- Sees Choc 
In Asia Minor, 

His Death, 


Book II. Ture Fourts GosPEt, 
Chap. I. Analysis, 


Chap. II. Characteristics, 


21. The narrative, 
I. The governing idea, . 
Il. The facts, 
III. The discourses, . : : : 
A. Relation of the idea of he ee to the fcc and 
the narrative, 
B. Objections against the historical character of the dis- 
courses, 
Internal difficulties, 
Relation of the discourses to the Peolceis ed I J Ae 
Differences from the Synoptics, 
C. The Person of Jesus, 
Conclusion, 
@ 2. Relation to the Old joes 
¢3. The style, : , 
Conclusion, 
ix 


104 
108 
123 
127 
127 
134 
138 


< TABLE OF CONTENTS. 


Book III. THE Orictn, 


Chap. I. The Time, 
From 160-170, 
From 130-155, 
From 110-125, . 
Result, 


Chap. II. The Author, 
21. Testimonies, . 
2 2. Objections, 
2 3. Internal Proof, 
24. Contrary Hypotheses, 


Chap. III. The Place, 
Chap. IV. The Occasion and Aim, 


Summary and Conclusion, . 
Commentary.—Chapters I.—V., : 
Introductory Suggestions by ine American Editor, 
Additional Notes by the American Editor, 


PAGE 
139 
140 
141 
147 
157 
Keys 


167 


168 
Lp 
197 
204 


208 
209 


216 
220 
493 
5138 


[The Authorized English Version and the Revised Version are designated in 


the Additional Notes by the letters A. V. and R. V.] 


PRELIMINARIES. 





+. 


VERY book is a mystery of which the author alone has the 
secret. The preface may, no doubt, lift a corner of the veil; 
but there are books without a preface, and the writer may not 
tell the whole truth. It belongs to literary criticism, as it is 

understood at the present day,! to solve the problem offered to the world 

by every work which is worthy of attention. For a book is not fully intel- 
ligible except so far as the obscurity of its origin is dissipated. 

The science which is commonly called Sacred Criticism or Introduction 
to the Old and the New Testament was instituted by the Church, to fulfill this 
task with regard to the books which contain the object of its faith and the 
standards of its development. By placing in a clear light the origin of 
each one of these writings and thus revealing its primal thought, it has 
as its office to shed upon their whole contents the ray of light which 








illumines their minutest details. 

According to Schleiermacher, the ideal of Sacred Criticism consists in 
putting the present reader in the place of the original reader,’ by procur- 
ing for him through the artifice of science, the preliminary knowledge 
which the latter, as a matter of course, possessed. However valuable a 
result like this may be, it seems to me that criticism should propose to 
itself a yet more elevated aim. Its true mission is to transport the reader 
into the very mind of the author, at the time when he conceived or elab- 
orated his work, and to cause him to be present at the composition of the 
book almost after the manner of the spectator who is present at the cast- 
ing of a bell, and who, after having beheld the metal in a state of fusion 
in the furnace, sees the torrent of fire flow into the mold in which it is 
to receive its permanent form. This ideal includes that of Schleier- 
macher. For one of the essential elements present to the mind of the 
author at the time when he prepares his work, is certainly the idea which 


1 By Sainte-Beuve, for example. 2 Kinleitung ins N. T., herausg. von Wolde, p. 7. 


1 


2 PRELIMINARIES. 


he forms of his readers, and of their condition and wants. To identify one- 
self with him is, therefore, at the same time to identify oneself with them. 

To attain this object, or, at least, to approach it as nearly as possible, 
Criticism makes use of two sorts of means: 1. Those which it borrows 
from the history, and especially from the literary history, of the time 
which witnessed the publication of the sacred writings, or which followed 
it; 2. Those which it derives from the book itself. 

Among the former we rank, first of all, the positive statements which 
Jewish or Christian antiquity has transmitted to us respecting the com- 
position of one or another of our Biblical writings; then, the quotations 
or reminiscences of any passages of these books, which are met with in 
subsequent writers, and which prove their existence and influence at a 
certain date; finally, the historical facts to which these writings have 
stood in the relation of cause or effect. These are the ezternal data. 

To the second class belong all the indications, contained in the book 
itself, respecting the person of its author, and respecting the circumstances 
in which he labored and the motive which impelled him to write. These 
are the internal data. 

To combine these two classes of data, for the purpose of drawing from 
them, if possible, a harmonious result—such is the work of Criticism. 

This is the task which we undertake with regard to one of the most im- 
portant books of the New Testament and of the whole Bible. Luther is 
reported to have said that if a tyrant succeeded in destroying the Holy 
Scriptures and only a single copy of the Epistle to the Romans and of 
the Gospel of John escaped him, Christianity would be saved. He spoke 
truly; for the fourth Gospel presents the object of the Christian faith in 
its most perfect splendor, and the Epistle to the Romans describes the 
way of faith which leads to this object, with an incomparable clearness. 
What need of more to preserve Christ to the world and to give birth ever 
anew to the Church ? 

The following will be the course of our study. After having cast a gen- 
eral glance at the formation of our Gospel literature, we shall trace the 
course of the discussions relative to the composition of the fourth Gospel. 
These will be the subjects of two preliminary chapters. 

Then, we shall enter upon the study itself, which will include the fol- 
lowing subjects : . 

1. The life of the apostle to whom the fourth Gospel is generally 
ascribed. 

2. The analysis and distinctive characteristics of this writing. 


GOSPEL LITERATURE. : 3 


8. The circumstances of its composition : 
Its date; 
The place of its origin ; 
Its author ; 
The aim which the author pursued in composing it. 

After having studied each of these points, as separately as possible from 
one another, we shall bring together the particular results thus obtained 
in a general view, which, if we have not taken a wrong path, will offer the 
solution of the problem. 

Jesus has promised to His Church the Spirit of truth to lead it into all 
the truth. It is under the direction of this guide that we place ourselves. 





CHAPTER FIRST. 
A GLANCE AT THE FORMATION OF THE GOSPEL LITERATURE. 


Our first three Gospels certainly have a common origin, not only in 
that all three relate one and the same history, but also by reason of the 
fact that an elaboration of this history, of some sort, was already in exist- 
ence at the time of their composition, and has stamped with a common 
impress the three narratives. Indeed, the striking agreement between 
them which is easily observed both in the general plan and in certain 
series of identical accounts, and finally in numerous clauses which are 
found exactly the same in two of these writings, or in all the three—this 
general and particular agreement renders it impossible to question that, 
before being thus recorded, the history of Jesus had already been cast in a 
mold where it had received the more or less fixed form in which we find 
it in our three narratives. Many think that this primitive gospel type 
consisted of a written document—either one of our three Gospels, of which 
the other two were only a free reproduction, or one or even two writings, 
now lost, from which our evangelists, all three of them, drew. This hypo- 
thesis of written sources has been, and is still presented under the most 
varied forms. We do not think that in any form it can be accepted; for 
it always leads to the adoption of the view, that the later writer sometimes 
willfully altered his model by introducing changes of real gravity, at other 
times adopted the course of copying with the utmost literalness, and that 
while frequently applying these two opposite methods in one and the 
same verse; and, finally, at still other times, that he made the text which 
he used undergo a multitude of modifications which are ridiculous by 


4 PRELIMINARIES. 


reason of being insignificant. Let any one consult a Synopsis, and the 
thing will be obvious. Is it psychologically conceivable that serious, 
believing writers, conyinced of the supreme importance of the subject of 
which they were treating, adopted such methods with regard to it; and, 
above all, that they applied them to the reproduction of the very teach- 
ings of the Lord Jesus ?—Common as, even at the present day, this manner 
of explaining the relation between our three Gospels is, we are convinced 
that Criticism will finally renounce it as a moral impossibility. 

The simple and natural solution of the problem appears to us to be 
indicated by the book of Acts, in the passage where it speaks to us of the 
teaching of the apostles,? as one of the foundations on which the Church of 
Jerusalem was built (ii. 42). In this primitive apostolic teaching, the 
accounts of the life and death of Jesus surely occupied the first place. 
These narratives, daily repeated by the apostles, and by the evangelists 
instructed in their school, must speedily have taken a form more or less 
fixed and settled, not only as to the tenor of each account, but also as to 
the joining together of several accounts in one group, which formed ordi- 
narily the subject-matter of a single teaching. What we here affirm is 
not a pure hypothesis. St. Luke tells us, in the preface of his Gospel (the 
most ancient document respecting this subject which we possess), of the 
first written accounts of the evangelic facts as composed “according to the 
story which they transmitted to us who were witnesses of them from the 
beginning, and who became ministers of the Word.” These witnesses and 
first ministers can only have been the apostles. Their accounts conveyed 
to the Church by oral teaching had passed, therefore, just as they were, 
into the writings of those who first wrote them out. The pronoun us ~ 
employed by Luke, shows that he ranked himself among the writers who 
were instructed by the oral testimony of the apostles. 

The primitive apostolic tradition is thus the type, at once fixed, and yet 
within certain limits malleable, which has stamped with its ineffaceable 
imprint our first three Gospels. In this way a satisfactory explanation is - 
afforded, on the one side, of the general and particular resemblances 
which make these three writings, as it were, one and the same narrative; 
and, on the other, of the differences which we observe among them, from 
those which are most considerable to those which are most insignificant. 

These three works are, thus, three workings-over—wrought independently 
of one another—of the primitive tradition formulated in the midst of the 
Palestinian churches, and ere long repeated in all the countries of the 


1 An edition presenting the three texts in three parallel columns. 2Acédaxy tov arogrtddwv. 


GOSPEL LITERATURE. 5 


world. They are three branches proceeding from the same trunk, but 
branches which have grown out under different conditions and in different 
directions; and herein lies the explanation of the peculiar physiognomy 
of each of the three books. 

In the first, the Gospel of St. Matthew, we find the matter of the preach- 
ing of the Twelve at Jerusalem preserved in the form which approaches 
nearest to the primitive type. This fact will appear quite simple, if we 
hold that this writing was designed for the Jewish people, and therefore 
precisely for the circle of readers with a view to which the oral preaching 
had been originally formulated. The dominant idea in the Palestinian 
preaching must have been that of the Messianic dignity of Jesus. This is 
also the thought which forms the unity of the first Gospel. It is inscribed 
at the beginning of the book as its programme.’ The formula: that it 
might be fulfilled, which recurs, like a refrain, throughout the entire narra- 
tive, recalls this primal idea at every moment; finally it breaks forth into 
the full light of day in the conclusion, which brings us to contemplate the 
full realization of the Messianic destiny of the Lord.22, With what purpose 
was this redaction of the primitive apostolic testimony published? Evi- 
dently the author desired to address a last appeal to that people, whom 
their own unbelief was leading to ruin. This book was composed, there- 
fore, at the time when the final catastrophe was preparing. A word of 
Jesus (Matt. xxiv. 15) in which He enjoins upon His disciples to flee to 
the other side of the Jordan as soon as the war should break out, is 
reported by the author with a significant nota bene,’ which confirms the 
date that we have just indicated. 

Already twenty years before this, the preaching of the Gospel had 
passed beyond the boundaries of Palestine and penetrated the Gentile 
world. Numerous churches, almost all of them composed of a small 
nucleus of Jews, and a multitude of Gentiles grouped around them, had 
arisen at the preaching of the Apostle Paul and his fellow-laborers. This 
immense work could not in the end dispense with the solid foundation 
which had been laid at the beginning by the Twelve and the evangelists 
in Palestine and Syria: the connected narrative of the acts, the teachings, 
the death and the resurrection of Jesus. In this fact lay the imperative 
want which gave birth to our third Gospel, drawn up by one of the most 


1Matt. i. 1: “Genealogy of Jesus Christ 3“ When ye shall see the abomination of des- 
(Messiah).” olation . .. standing in the holy place—.er 

2xxviii. 18: “All power hath been given HIM THAT READETH UNDERSTAND! then let them 
unto me in heaven and on earth.” that are in Judea flee unto the mountains.” 


6 PRELIMINARIES. 


eminent companions of the apostle of the Gentiles, St. Luke. The 
Messianic dignity of Jesus, and the argument drawn from the prophecies, 
had no more, in the estimation of the Gentiles, the same importance as 
with the Jews: all this is omitted in the third Gospel. It was as the 
Saviour of humanity that Jesus needed especially be presented to them ; 
with this purpose, Luke, after having gathered the most exact informa- 
tion, sets in relief, in his representation of our Lord’s earthly ministry, 
everything that had marked the salvation which He introduced as a 
gratuitous and universal salvation. Hence the agreement, which is so pro- 
found, between this Gospel and the writings of St. Paul. What the 
former traces out historically, the latter expounds theoretically. But, 
notwithstanding these differences as compared with the work of Matthew, 
the Gospel of Luke rests always, as the author himself declares in his 
preface, on the apostolic tradition formulated at the beginning by the 
Twelve. Only he has sought to complete it and to give it a more strict 
arrangement! with a view to cultivated Gentiles, such as Theophilus, 
who demanded a more consecutive and profound teaching. 

Was a third form possible? ‘Yes; this traditional type, preserved in its 
rigid and potent originality by the first evangelist with a view to the 
Jewish people, enriched and completed by the third with a view to the 
churches of the Gentile nations, might be published anew in its primitive 
form, as in the first Gospel, but this time with a view to Gentile readers, 
as in the third,—and such, in fact, is the Gospel of Mark. This work does 
not have any of the precious supplements which that of Luke had added 
to the Palestinian preaching; in this point it is allied to the first Gospel. 
But, on the other hand, it omits the numerous references to the prophe- 
cies and most of the long discourses of Jesus addressed to the people and 
their rulers, which give to the Gospel of Matthew its so decidedly Jewish 
character; besides, it adds detailed explanations respecting the Jewish 
customs which are not found in Matthew, and which are evidently 
intended for Gentile readers. Thus allied, therefore, to Luke by its 
destination and to Matthew by its contents, it is, as it were, the connect- 
ing link between the two preceding forms. This intermediate position is 
made clear by the first word of the work : “Gospel of Jesus, the Christ 
(Messiah), Son of God.” The title of Christ recalls the special relation of 
Jesus to the Jewish people; that of Son ef God, which marks the myste- 


14.3: “I have thought it fit, after having _ know the certainty of the instructions which 
accurately traced the course of all things, to thou hast received.” 
write unto thee in order, that thou mightest 


GOSPEL LITERATURE, 7 


rious relation between God and this unique man, raises this being to such 
a height that His appearance and His work must necessarily have for 
their object the entire human race. To this first word of the book 
answers also the last, which shows us Jesus continuing from heaven to 
discharge throughout the whole world that function of celestial mes- 
senger, of divine evangelist, which He had begun to exercise on the 
earth. Let us notice also a distinctive characteristic of this narrative: in 
each picture, so to speak, there are found strokes of the pencil which 
belong to it peculiarly and which betray an eye-witness. They are 
always, at the foundation, the traditional accounts, but evidently trans- 
mitted by a witness who had himself taken part in the scenes related, and 
who, when recounting them by word of mouth, quite naturally mingled in 
them points of detail suggested by the vividness of his own recollections. 
As such do our first three Gospels present themselves to attentive 
readers—being called Synoptic because the three narratives may without 
much difficulty be placed, with a view to a comparison with one another, 
in three parallel columns. The date of their composition must have 
been nearly the same (between the years 60 and 70). Indeed, the first is, 
as it were, the last apostolic summons addressed to the people of Israel 
before their destruction; the third is designed to give to the preaching of 
St. Paul in the Gentile world its historical basis; and the second is the 
reproduction of the preachings of a witness carrying to the Gentile world 
the primitive Palestinian Gospel proclamation. If the composition of 
these three writings really took place at nearly the same time and in 
different countries, this fact accords with the opinion expressed above, that 
the writings were composed each one independently of the two others. 
Did the Church possess in these three monuments of the primitive 
popular preaching of the Gospel that by which it could fully answer the 
wants of believers who had not known the Lord? Must there not have 
been in the ministry of Jesus a large number of elements which the 
apostles had not been able to introduce into their missionary preaching? 
Had they not, by reason of the elementary, and in some sort catecheti- 
cal nature of that teaching of the earliest times, been led to eliminate 
many of the sayings of Jesus which reached beyond such a level and 
rose to a height where only the most advanced minds could follow Him? 
This is, in itself, very probable. We have already seen that a mass of 
picturesque details, which are wanting in Matthew, more vividly color 
the ancient popular tradition in Mark. The important additions in Luke 
prove still more eloquently how the richness of the ministry of Jesus 


8 PRELIMINARIES, 


passed beyond the measure of the primitive oral tradition. Why may 
not an immediate witness of Jesus’ ministry have felt himself called to 
rise once above all these traditional accounts, to draw directly from the 
source of his own recollections, and, while omitting all the scenes already 
sufficiently known, which had passed into the ordinary narrative, to trace, 
at a single stroke, the picture of the moments which were most marked, 
most impressive to his own heart, in the ministry of his Master? There 
was not in this, as we can well understand, any deliberate selection, any 
artificial distribution. The division of the evangelic matter was the 
natural result of the historical circumstances in which the founding of 
the Church was accomplished. 

This course of things is so simple that it is, in some sort, its own justi- 
fication. The apostolic origin of the fourth Gospel may be disputed, but 
it cannot be denied by any one that the situation indicated is probable, 
and the part assigned to the author of such a writing natural. It remains 
to be discovered whether in this case the probable is real, and the natural 
true. This is precisely the question which we have to elucidate. 





CHAPTER SECOND. 


THE DISCUSSIONS RELATING TO THE AUTHENTICITY OF 
THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 


In the rapid review which is to follow, we might unite in a single series 
arranged chronologically all the writings, to whatever tendency they 
belong, in which the subject which occupies us has been treated. But 
it seems preferable to us, with a view to clearness, to divide the authors 
whom we have to enumerate into three distinct series: 1. The partisans 
of the entire spuriousness of our Gospel; 2. The defenders of its absolute 
authenticity ; 3. The advocates of some intermediate position. 


I. 


Until the end of the seventeenth century, the question had not even been 
raised. It was known that, in the primitive Church, a small sect, of 
which Irenzeus and Epiphanius make mention, ascribed the fourth Gospel 
to Cerinthus, the adversary of the Apostle John at Ephesus. But the 


1Tt is evident that this division cannot be this list we have, in this new edition, taken 
fixed with absolute strictness, so varied are advantage of the excellent work of Mr. Cas- 
the different ways of viewing the subject.— par René Gregory (Leipsic, 1875), published 
In order to the revision and completion of asa supplement to Luthardt’s Commentary. 


THE DISCUSSION—THE ADVERSARIES. 9 


science of theologians, as well as the feeling of the Church, confirmed 
the conviction of the first Christian communities and their leaders, who 
saw in it unanimously the work of that apostle. 

Some attacks of little importance, proceeding from the English Deistic 
party, which flourished two centuries ago, opened the conflict. But it 
did not break out seriously until a century later. In 1792, the English 
theologian, Hvanson, raised note-worthy objections, for the first time, 
against the general conviction.' He rested especially on the differences 
between our Gospel and the Apocalypse. He ascribed the composition 
of the former of these books to some Platonic philosopher of the second 
century. 

The discussion was not long in being transplanted to Germany. Four 
years after Evanson, Eckermann? contended against the authenticity, while 
yet agreeing that certain Johannean redactions must have formed the 
first foundation of our Gospel. These notes had been amalgamated with 
the historical traditions which the author had gathered from the lips of 
John.—Eckermann retracted in 1807.3 

Several German theologians continued the conflict which was entered 
upon at this time. The contradictions between this Gospel and the 
other three were alleged, also the exaggerated character of the miracles, 
the metaphysical tone of the discourses, the evident affinities between the 
theology of the author and that of Philo, the scarcity of traces in litera- 
ture proving the existence of this writing in the second century.4. From 
1801, the cause of the authenticity seemed already so far compromised 
that a German superintendent, Vogel, believed himself able to summon 
the evangelist John and his interpreters to the bar of the last judgment.° 
However, it was yet only the first phase of the discussion, the time of 
the skirmishes which form the prelude of great pitched battles. 

It was also a German superintendent who opened the second period of 
the discussion. In a work which became celebrated and was published in 
1820, Bretschneider brought together all the objections previously raised and 
added to them new ones.° He especially developed with force the objection 
drawn from the contradictions in our Gospel as compared with the three pre- 
ceding ones, both with reference to the form of the discourses and in respect 
to the very substance of the Christological teaching. The fourth Gospel 


1 The dissonance of the four generally re- (1812), ete. 


ceived evangelists, etc.” 5 Der Evangelist Johannes und seine Ausleger 
2 Theologische Beitrdge, vol. v. 1796. von dem jiingsten Gericht. 
8 Erkldrung aller dunkeln Stellen des. N. T. 6 Probabilia de evangelii et epistolarum Jo- 


* Horst (1803), Cludius (1808), Ballenstaidt  hannis apostoli indole et origine. 


10 . PRELIMINARIES. 


must, according to his view, have been the work of a presbyter of Gentile, 
probably of Alexandrian origin, who lived in the first half of the second 
century. This learned and vigorous attack of Bretschneider called forth 
numerous replies, of which we shall speak later, and following upon 
which this theologian declared (in 1824) that the replies which had been 
made to his book were “ more than sufficient,” ! and (in 1828) that he had 
attained the end which he had proposed to himself: that of calling out a 
more searching demonstration of the authenticity of the fourth Gospel.? 

But the seeds sown by such a work could not be uprooted by these 
rather equivocal retractions, which had a purely personal value. From 
1824, the cause of the unauthenticity was pleaded anew by Rettig.2 The 
author of the Gospel is a disciple of John. The apostle himself cer- 
tainly was not so far wanting in modesty as to designate himself as “the 
disciple whom Jesus loved.” De Wette in his Introduction published for 
the first time in 1826, without positively taking sides against the authen- 
ticity, confessed the impossibility of demonstrating it by unanswerable 
proofs. In the same year, Reuterdahl, following the footsteps of Vogel, 
assailed the tradition of John’s sojourn in Asia Minor as fictitious. 

The publication of Strauss’ Life of Jesus, in 1835, had, at first, a much 
more decisive influence upon the criticism of the history of Jesus than 
upon that of the documents in which this history has been transmitted to 
us. Evidently Strauss had not devoted himself to a special study of the 
origin of these latter. He started, as concerning the Synoptics, from the 
two theories of Gieseler and Griesbach, according to which our Gospels 
are the redaction of the apostolic tradition, which, after having for a long 
time circulated in a purely oral form, at length slowly established itself 
in our Synoptics (Gieseler); and this, first, in the redactions of Matthew 
and Luke, then, in that of Mark, which is only a compilation of the two 
others (Griesbach). As to John, he allowed as valid the reasons alleged 
by Bretschneider: insufficient attestation in the primitive Church, con- 
tents contradictory of those of the first three gospels, ete. And if, in his 
third edition, in 1838, he acknowledged that the authenticity was less in- 
defensible to his view, he was not slow in retracting this concession in the 
following edition (1840). Indeed, the least evasion in regard to this point 
shook his entire hypothesis of mythical legends. The axiom which lies 
at its foundation: The ideal does not exhaust itself in one individual, 


1In Tzschirner’s Magazin fur christliche 3 Ephemerides exegetico-theologicee, I., p. 62 ff. 





Prediger. 4In his work de Fontibus historie Eusebi- 
2 Handbuch der Dogmatik, pp. viii. and 268. ane. 


THE DISCUSSION—THE ADVERSARIES. 11 


would be proved false, provided that the fourth Gospel contained, in how- 
ever small a measure, the narrative of an eye-witness. Nevertheless, 
the immense commotion produced in the learned world by Strauss’ work 
soon reacted upon the criticism of the Gospels. 

Christian Hermann Weisse drew attention especially to the close connec- 
tion between the criticism of the history of Jesus and that of the writings 
in which it has been preserved.’ He contended against the authenticity 
of our Gospel, but not without recognizing in it a true apostolic founda- 
tion. The Apostle John, with the design of fixing the image of his Mas- 
ter, which, in proportion as the reality was farther removed from him, 
came to be more and more indefinite in his mind, and in order to give 
himself a distinct account of the impression which he had preserved of 
the person of Jesus, had drawn up certain “studies”’ which, when ampli- 
fied, became the discourses of the fourth Gospel. To these more or less 
authentic parts, a historical framework which was completely fictitious 
was afterwards adapted. We can understand how, from this point of 
view, Weisse was able to defend the authenticity of the first Epistle of 
John. 

At this juncture there occurred in the criticism of the fourth Gospel a 
revolution like to that which was wrought at the same time in the mode 
of looking at the first three. Wilke then endeavored to prove that the 
differences which distinguish the Synoptical narratives from one another 
were not, as had been always believed, simple involuntary accidents, but 
that it was necessary to recognize in them modifications introduced by 
each author, in a deliberate and intentional way, into the narrative of his 
predecessor or predecessors.?, Bruno Bauer extended this mode of explain- 
ing the matter to the fourth Gospel. He claimed that the Johannean 
narrative was not by any means, as the treatise of Strauss supposed, the 
depository of a simple legendary tradition, but that this story was the 
product of an individual conception, the reflective work of a Christian 
thinker and poet, who was perfectly conscious of his procedure. The 
history of Jesus was thus reduced, according to Ebrard’s witty expression, 
to a single line: “At that time it came to pass .. . that nothing came to 
pass.” 

In the same year, Liitzelberger attacked, in a more thoroughly searching 
way than Reuterdahl, the tradition as to the residence of John in Asia 


1 Die evangelische Geschichte kritisch und 2 Der Urevangelist, 1838. 
philosophisch bearbeitet, 1838. Die Evangelien- 3 Kritik der evangel. Geschichte des Johannes, 
Frage, 1856. 1840. 


12 PRELIMINARIES. 


Minor.’ The author of our Gospel was, in his view, a Samaritan, whose 
parents had emigrated to Mesopotamia, between 180 and 135, at the 
epoch of the new revolt of the Jews against the Romans, and he com- 
posed this Gospel at Edessa. The “disciple whom Jesus loved” was not 
John, but Andrew.—In a celebrated article, Fischer tried to prove, from 
the use of the term oi ‘Iovdaio. in our Gospel, that its author could not be 
of Jewish origin.? 

We arrive here at the third and last period of this prolonged conflict. 
It dates from 1844 and has as its starting-point the famous work published 
at that time by Ferdinand Christian Baur’ The first phase had lasted 
twenty and odd years, from Evanson to Bretschneider (1792-1820); the 
second, also twenty and odd years, from Bretschneider, to Baur; the third 
has now continued more than thirty years. It is that of mortal combat. 
The dissertation which was the signal of it is certainly one of the most 
ingenious and brilliant compositions which theological science has ever 
produced. The purely negative results of Strauss’ criticism demanded as 
a complement a positive construction; on the other hand, the arbitrary 
and subjective character of that of Bruno Bauer did not answer the wants 
of an era eager for positive facts. The discussion was, therefore, as it 
were, involved in inextricable difficulties, 

Baur understood that his task was to withdraw it from that position, 
and that the only efficacious means was to discover in the progress of the 
Church of the second century a distinctly marked historical situation, 
which might be, as it were, the ground whereon was raised the imposing 
edifice of the fourth Gospel. He believed that he had discovered the 
situation which he sought in the last third of the second century? Then, 
indeed, Gnosis was flourishing, the borders of which the narrative of our 
Gospel touches throughout all its contents. At that time thinkers were 
pre-occupied with the idea of the Logos, which is precisely the theme of 
our work. The need was felt more and more of uniting in one great and 
single Catholic Church the two rival parties which, until then, had divided 
the Church, and which a series of compromises had already gradually 
brought near together; the fourth Gospel was adapted to serve them as 
a treaty of peace. An energetic spiritual reaction against the episcopate 
was rising: Montanism; our Gospel furnished strength to this tendency, 


1 Die Kirchliche Tradition tiber den Apostel 3,4; reproduced and completed in the later 


Johannes und seine Schriften in ihrer Grund- writings of the same author: Kritische Unter- 
losigkeit nachgewiesen, 1840. suchungen tiber die canonischen Evangelien, 1847; 
2 Tiibinger Zeitschrift fiir Theol. II. 1840. and Das Christenthum und die christliche Kirche 


3 In Zeller’s Theologische Jahrbiicher Hefte1, der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, 1853. 


THE DISCUSSION—THE ADVERSARIES, 13 


by borrowing from Montanism the truth which it contained. Then, 
finally, the famous dispute between the churches of Asia Minor and those 
of the West on the subject of the Paschal rite burst forth. Now, our Gos- 
pel modified the chronology of the Passion in just such a way as to decide 
the minds of men in favor of the occidental rite. Here, then, was the 
situation fully discovered for the composition of our Gospel. At the same 
time, Baur, following the footsteps of Bruno Bauer, shows with a marvel- 
ous skill the well-considered and systematic unity of this work ; he explains 
its logical progress and practical applications, and thus overthrows at one 
blow the hypothesis of unreflective myths, on which the work of Strauss 
rested, and every attempt at selection in our Gospel between certain 
authentic parts and other unauthentic ones. In accordance with all this, 
Baur fixes, as the epoch of the composition, about the year 170—at the 
earliest, 160; for then it was that all the circumstances indicated meet 
together. Only he has not attempted to designate the “great unknown” 
to whose pen was due this master-piece of high mystical philosophy and 
skillful ecclesiastical policy, which has exercised such a decisive influence 
on the destinies of Christianity. 

All the forces of the school co-operated in supporting the work of the 
master in its various parts. From 1841, Schwegler had prepared the way 
for it by his treatise on Montanism.! In his work on the period which fol- 
lowed that of the apostles, the same author assigned to each one of the 
writings of the New Testament its place in the development of the con- 
flict between the apostolic Judeo-Christianity and Paulinism, and set 
forth the fourth Gospel as the crowning point of this long elaboration.? 
Zeller completed the work of his master by the study of the ecclesiastical 
testimonies,—a study whose aim was to sweep away from history every 
trace of the existence of the fourth Gospel before the period indicated by 
Baur. Koestlin, in a celebrated work on pseudonymous literature in the 
primitive Church, endeavored to prove that the pseudepigraphical pro- 
cedure to which Baur ascribed the composition of four-fifths of the New 
Testament was in conformity with literary precedents and the ideas of the 
epoch. Volkmar labored to ward off the blows by which the system of 
his master was unceasingly threatened by reason of the less and less con- 
trovertible citations of the fourth Gospel in the writings of the second 


1 Der Montanismus und die christliche Kirche den Ursprung des vierten Evangeliums, in the 
des IIten Jahrhunderts. Theologische Jahrbiicher, 1845 and 1847. 

2 Das nachapostolische Zeitalter, 1846. 4 Ueber die pseudonymische Litteratur in der 

8 Die aiisseren Zeugnisse tiber das Dasein und _diltesten Kirche, in the Theol. Jahrbicher, 1851. 


14 PRELIMINARIES. 


century—in those of Marcion and Justin, for example, and in the Clemen- 
tine Homilies... Finally, Hilgenfeld treated, in a more profound way than 
Baur had done, the dispute concerning the Passover and its relation to 
the authenticity of our Gospel.? 

Thus learnedly supported by this Pleiad of distinguished critics, devoted 
to the common work, although not without marked shades of difference, 
Baur’s opinion might seem, for a moment, to have obtained a complete 
and decisive triumph. 

Nevertheless, in the midst of the school itself a divergence became 
manifest which, in many respects, was detrimental to the hypothesis so 
skillfully contrived by the master. Hilgenfeld abandoned the date fixed 
by Baur, and consequently a part of the advantages of the situation chosen 
by him. He carried back the composition of the Johannean Gospel 
thirty or forty years. According to him, this work was connected espe- 
cially with the appearance of the Valentinian heresy, about 140. The 
author of the Gospel proposed to himself to introduce this Gnostic teach- 
ing into the Church in a mitigated form. And as already about 150 “the 
existence of our Gospel could scarcely be any longer questioned,” he put 
back its date even to the period from 180 to 140.8 

In 1860, J. R. Tobler, discovering, side by side with the ideal character 
of the narrative, a mass of geographical notices or of narratives truly his- 
torical, conceived the idea of ascribing our Gospel to Apollos (according 
to him, the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews) who compiled it about 
the end of the first century from information obtained from John.4 

Michel Nicolas advanced, in 1862, the following hypothesis: A Christian 
of Ephesus related in our Gospel the ministry of Jesus according to the 
accounts of the Apostle John; and this personage is the one who, in the 
two small Epistles, designates himself as the Elder (the presbyter), and the 
one whom history makes known to us under the name of John the Presby- 
ter5—D’Hichthal accepted Hilgenfeld’s idea of a relationship between our 
Gospel and Gnosis.6 The work which Stap published in the same year, in 
his collection of Critical Studies, is only a reproduction, without originality, 
of all the ideas of the Tiibingen school.’ 


1Comp., in particular, Ursprung unserer the Zeitschrift fiir wissensch. Theol., 1860. 


Evangelien, 1866. 5 Etudes critiques sur la Bible: Nouveau Tes- 
2 Der Passahstreit der alten Kirche, 1860. tament. 
3 Das Evangelium wnd die Briefe Johannis 6 Les Evangiles, 1863; t.1., pp. 25 ff.,and else- 
nach ihrem Lehrbegriffe dargestellt, 1849; die where. 
Evangelien, 1854; das Urchristenthum, 1855. | 7 Etudes historiques et critiques sur les ori- 


4 Ueber den Ursprung des vierten Evang.,in — gines du christianisme, 1863. 


THE DISCUSSION—THE ADVERSARIES. 15 


In 1864 two important books appeared. Weizstcker, in his work on the 
Gospels,! sought to bring out from our Gospel itself the proof of the 
distinction between the editor of this writing and the Apostle John, who 
served as a voucher for him. The former wished only to reproduce in a 
free way the impressions ‘which he had experienced when hearing the 
apostolic witness describe the life of the Lord. 

The second book takes a more decided position : it is that of Scholten 
The author of the fourth Gospel is a Christian of Gentile origin, initiated 
in Gnosticism and desirous of rendering that tendency profitable to the 
Church. He seeks, also, to restrain within just limits the Marcionite 
antinomianism and the Montanist exaltation. As to the Paschal dispute, 
the evangelist does not decide in favor of the Western rite, as Baur 
thinks ; he seeks rather to secure the triumph of Pauline spiritualism, 
which abolishes feast days in the Church altogether. According to 
these indications, the author wrote about 150. He succeeded in pre- 
senting to the world, under the figure of the mysterious personage 
designated as “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” the ideal believer—the 
truly spiritual Christianity which was capable of becoming the universal 
religion.—Réville has set forth and developed Scholten’s point of view in 
the Revue des Deux-Mondes.* 

Let us also remind the reader here of the work of Volkmar‘ (page 19), 
directed against Tischendorf personally, as much as against his book, 
When were our Gospels written? However deplorable is its tone, this work 
exhibits with learning and precision the point of view of Baur’s school. 
The author fixes the date of our Gospel between 150 and 160. 

In 1867, appeared the History of Jesus, by Keim. This scholar ener- 
getically opposes, in the Introduction, the authenticity of our Gospel. 
He lays especial stress upon the philosophical character of this writing ; 
then upon the inconsistencies of the narrative with the nature of things, 
with the data furnished by the writings of St. Paul, and with the 
Synoptic narratives. But, on the other hand, he proves the traces of its 
existence as far back as the earliest times of the second century. . ‘The 
testimonies,” he says, “go back as far as to the year 120, so that the com- 
position dates from the beginning of the second century, in the reign of 
_ Trajan, between 100 and 117.”® The author was a Christian of Jewish 


1 Untersuchungen tiber die evangelische Ges- 3 La question des évangiles, May, 1866. 
chichte. 4 Der Ursprung unserer Evangelien, 1866. 
2 Das Evangelium nach Johannes (1864), trans- 5 Geschichte Jesu von Nazara. 


lated into German, by H. Lang, 1867. 6 Vol. I., p. 146. 


16 PRELIMINARIES. 


origin, belonging to the Diaspora of Asia Minor, in full sympathy with 
the Gentiles and thoroughly acquainted with everything relating to 
Palestine. In a more recent writing, a popular reproduction of his 
great work, Keim has withdrawn from this early date, stating as the 
ground of this changes reasons which, we may say, have no serious 
importance. He now, with Hilgenfeld, fixes the composition about the 
year 130.) Of what consequence here is a period of ten years? It would 
follow from the one of these last mentioned dates as well as from the 
other, that, twenty or thirty years after the death of John at Ephesus, the 
fourth Gospel was ascribed to this apostle by the very presbyters of the 
country where he had spent the closing portion of his life and where he 
had died. How can we explain the success of a forgery under such 
circumstances? Keim felt this difficulty and made an effort to remove 
it. To this end he found no other means except to attach himself to the 
idea put forth by Reuterdahl and Liitzelberger, and to rate the sojourn of 
John in Asia Minor as a pure fiction. By this course, he goes beyond 
even the Tiibingen school. For Baur and Hilgenfeld did not call in 
question the truth of that tradition. Their criticism even rests essentially 
on the reality of John’s sojourn in Asia, first, because the Apocalypse, 
the Johannean composition of which serves them as the point of support 
for their onset upon that of the Gospel, implies this sojourn, and, then, 
because the argument which they both draw from the Paschal contro- 
versy falls to the ground as soon as the sojourn of the Apostle John in 
that country is no longer admitted. Now, on the contrary, when the 
criticism hostile to our Gospel feels itself embarrassed by this sojourn, it 
rejects it unceremoniously. According to Keim, that tradition is only 
the result of a half-voluntary misunderstanding of Irenzeus, who applied 
to John the apostle what Polycarp had related in his presence of another 
personage of the same name. Scholten reaches the same result by 
different means2 This error in the tradition is explained, according to 
him, by the confounding of the author of the Apocalypse, who was not 
the apostle, but who had taken advantage of his name, with the apostle 
himself; in this way the sojourn of John in Asia, where the Apocalypse 
appears to have been composed, was imagined. However this may be, and 
whatever may be the explanation of the traditional misunderstanding, the 
discovery of this error “removes,” says Keim, “the last point of support 
for the idea of the composition of the Gospel by the son of Zebedee.” ® 

1 Geschichte Jesu, nach den Ergebnissen heuti- 2 Der Apostel Johannes in Klein- Asien, trans- 


ger Wissenschaft, fiir weitere Kreise, 3d ed., lated into German by Spiegel, 1872. 
1873. SP. 167. 


THE DISCUSSION—THE ADVERSARIES. 17 


We see that two of the foundations of Baur’s criticism, the authenticity 
of the Apocalypse and John’s sojourn in Asia, are undermined at this 
hour by the men who have continued his work—this denial appearing to 
them the only means of making an end of the authenticity of our 
Gospel. 

In 1868, the English writer, Davidson, took his position among the oppo- 
nents of the authenticity! Holtzmann, like Keim, sees in our Gospel an 
ideal composition, but one which is not entirely fictitious. This book 
dates from the same epoch as the Epistle of Barnabas (the first third of 
the second century); it can be proved that the Church has given it a 
favorable reception since the year 150.2 Krenkel, in 1871, defended the 
sojourn of John in Asia; he ascribes to this apostle the composition of 
the Apocalypse, but not that of the Gospel.’ 

The anonymous English work, Supernatural Religion, which has in a few 
years reached a very large number of editions, contends against the 
authenticity with the ordinary arguments.‘ 

The year 1875 witnessed the appearance of two works of considerable 
importance. These are two Introductions to the New Testament—that 
of Hilgenfeld® and the third edition of Bleek’s work, published with 
original notes by Mangold® Hilgenfeld gives a summary, in his book, of 
the whole critical work of past times and of the present epoch. With 
regard to John, he continues in certain respects to defend the cause to 
which he had consecrated the first fruits of his pen :—the non-authenticity 
of the fourth Gospel, which was composed, according to him under the 
influence of the Valentinian Gnosticism. Mangold accompanies the para- 
graphs in which Bleek defends the apostolic origin of our Gospel with very 
instructive critical notes, in which in most cases he seeks to refute that 
scholar. The external proofs would seem to him sufficient to confirm the 
authenticity. But it has not been possible, in his opinion, at least up to 
the present time, to surmount the internal difficulties. 

In 1876, a jurist, d’ Uechtritz, published a book? in which he ascribes our 
Gospel to a Jerusalemite disciple of Jesus—probably John the Presbyter 
—who assumed the mask of the disciple whom Jesus loved and composed 
this work under his name. This critic does not find the opinion justified, 


1 Introduction to the Study of the N. T. Vol. 5 Historisch-Kritische Einleitung in das N. T. 
II. 6 Hinleitung in das N. T., von Fr. Bleek, 3 
2 Schenkel’s Bibellexicon; Vol. II., art. Ev. Aufl., von W. Mangold. 
nach Joh., 1869. 7 Studien eines Laien iiber den Ursprung, die 
3 Der Apostel Johannes, 1871. Beschaffenheit und die Bedentung des Evang. 
4 Supernatural Religion, 1874. nach Johannes. 


2 


18 PRELIMINARIES, 


which is so widely spread, that the representation of Jesus traced in the 
Synoptics is less exalted than the idea which is given us of Him in &t. 
John. 

Four writers remain to be mentioned here—three French and one Ger- 
man, who, in our preceding edition, figured in the list of the defenders of 
the absolute or partial authenticity, and who have passed over into the 
opposite camp, Renan, Reuss, Sabatier and Hase. 

The first from the outset manifested a marked antipathy to the dis- 
courses ascribed to Jesus by the fourth Gospel. Nevertheless, he always 
set forth prominently the remarkable signs of authenticity connected with 
the narrative parts of this same writing. He showed himself disposed, 
accordingly, in the first editions of his Life of Jesus, to recognize as the 
foundation of the historical parts not only traditions proceeding from the 
Apostle John, but even “ precise notes drawn up by him.” In the truly 
admirable dissertation which closes the thirteenth edition, and in which he 
thoroughly discusses the question, analyzing the Gospel—one narrative 
after another—from this point of view, he shows that the contradictory 
appearances almost exactly balance each other, and ends by positively 
affirming nothing but this alternative : either the author is John or he has 
desired to pass himself off as John. Finally, in his last book, entitled 
I’ Eglise chrétienne} he arrives at the result which might have been fore- 
seen. The author was perhaps a Christian depositary of the traditions of 
the apostle, or, at least, of those of two other disciples of Jesus, John the 
Presbyter and Aristion, who lived at Ephesus about the end of the first 
century. We might even go so far, according to Renan, as to suppose that 
this writer is no other than Cerinthus, the adversary of John at Ephesus, 
at the same period. 

Reuss and Sabatier have likewise just finished their evolution in the 
same direction. In all his previous works,’ Reuss had maintained two 
scarcely reconcilable theses : the almost completely artificial and fictitious 
character of the discourses of Jesus in our Gospel and the apostolic origin 
of the work. It was not difficult to foresee two things: 1. That one of 
these theses would end in excluding the other; 2. That it would be the 
first which would prevail over the second. This is what has just hap- 
pened. In his ThéologieJohannique,> Reuss declares his final judgment on 


11879. toire de la théologie chrétrenne au siecle apostol. 
2 Ideen zur Einleitung in das Ev. Joh. (Denk- ique, 1852. 
schr. der theol. Gesellsch. zu Strasb.), 1840; 3 La Bible: Nouveau Testament, Vie partie, 


Geschichte der N. Tchen Schriften, 1842; His- 1879. 


THE DISCUSSION—-THE ADVERSARIES. 19 


this subject : The fourth Gospel is not by the Apostle John. Nevertheless, 
Reuss is reluctant to allow that this work is by a forger. And it is not 
necessary to admit this, since the author expressly distinguishes himself 
from the Apostle John in more than one passage, and limits himself to 
tracing back to him the origin of the narratives contained in his book. 
We thus find again, point for point, the opinion of Weizsicker mentioned 
above. 

Sabatier, in his excellent little work on the sources of the life of Jesus, 
had also maintained the authenticity of our Gospel. But, having once 
entered into the views of Reuss, with respect to the estimation of the dis- 
courses of Jesus, he was by a fatality obliged to follow him even to the 
end. He has just distinctly declared himself against the authenticity, in 
his article on the Apostle John, in the Encyclopédie des sciences religieuses :? 
An author whose constant inclination is to exalt the Apostle John cannot 
be John himself. It is one of his disciples who, believing that he was able 
to identify himself with him, has drawn up the Gospel history in the 
form which it had assumed in Asia Minor; he thus gives to the Church 
the apocalypse of the Spirit, a counterpart of the Apocalypse, properly 
so called, written by the apostle. 

Since 1829, in the different editions of his Manual on the Life of Jesus,’ 
Hase had supported the Johannean origin of the fourth Gospel. In 
1866, he published a discourse in which he represented this work as the 
last product of the apostle’s mind when it had reached its full maturity.‘ 
But this scholar has yielded to the same fatal law as the three preceding 
writers. In his History of Jesus,> published in 1876, he gives up the 
authenticity, though not without painful hesitation. “Let us cast a 
glance,” he says in closing the discussion, “at the eight reasons alleged 
against the Johannean origin: they have not proved to be decisive ;°® 
nevertheless, it has not been possible to refute them all completely... . 
I thus see science driven to a conception fitted to reconcile the opposite 
reasons. A tradition different from that of the other Gospels, and already 
containing the notion of the Logos, had taken form in Asia Minor under 
the influence of the accounts given by John. It had remained in the 
purely oral state, so long as John lived.”’ After his death (ten years after- 
wards, or perhaps more), this tradition was recorded by a highly gifted 


1 Essai sur les sources de la vie de Jésus, 4 Das Evangelium des Johannes. Eine Rede 
1866. ‘ an die Gemeinde. 

2Vol. vii., 1879, pp. 181-193. 5 Geschichte Jesu. 

3 Das Leben Jesu. Ein Lehrbuch fir Acade- 6“Sie haben sich nicht als entscheidend 


mische Vorlesungen; 5th ed., 1865. erwiesen.” 


20 PRELIMINARIES. 


disciple of the apostle. He wrote as if the latter himself were writing. 
In this way it is, that the evangelist is able to appeal at once to the testi- 
mony of his own eyes (i. 14) and to that of another, different from himself. 
“Who was the writer? The Presbyter John? This is possible. But it 
may be also an unknown person. The first Epistle may have proceeded 
from the same author, writing under the mask of John; but it may also 
have been from John himself and have served as a model for the style of 
the Gospel.” This hypothesis is, according to this author, a compromise 
between the facts which are contradictory to each other. “Ihave not 
without a heavy heart,” he adds, “broken away from the belief in the 
entire authenticity of the Johannean writing.” Finally, a little further 
on, he also says: “The time is come in German theology when he who 
even ventures to recognize in the fourth Gospel a source possessing an 
historical value compromises his scientific honor.’ {t has not always 
been thus, even among those who are lacking neither in vigor nor in 
freedom of mind. But it may also change again:? the spirit of the 
times exercises a power even in science.” What reflections do not these 
sad avowals of the veteran of Jena suggest ! 


if, 

This persevering contest against the authenticity of the Johannean 
Gospel resembles the siege of a fortress, and things have reached the 
point where already many think they see the standard of the besieger 
floating victoriously over the ramparts of the place. Nevertheless, the 
defenders have not remained inactive, and the incessant transformations 
which the onsets have undergone, as the preceding exposition proves, 
leave no room for questioning the relative success of their efforts. Let 
us rapidly enumerate the works devoted to the defence of the authen- 
ticity. 

The oldest attack, that of the sectaries of the second century, called 
Alogi, did not remain unanswered; for it seems certain that the writing 
of Hippolytus (at the beginning of the third century), whose title appears 
in the catalogue of his works * as 'Yrép tod xara 'Twavvov evayyediov Kat aro- 
karirpewc, “In behalf of the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse,’ was directed 
against them. 

The attacks of the English deists were repulsed in Germany and Hol- 


1 The author here quotes an expression of men... .” (p. 52). 
Keim. 3 Catalogue engraved on the pedestal of his 
2“ Es kann aber auch anders kom- statue, discovered at Rome in 1561. 


THE DISCUSSION—THE DEFENDERS. 21 


land by Le Clerc! and Lampe; by the latter, in his celebrated Commen- 
tary on the Gospel of John.? 

Two Englishmen, Priestley * and Simpson,‘ immediately answered Evan- 
son. Storr and Siiskind resolved the objections raised soon afterwards in 
Germany,’ and this with such success that Eckermann and Schmidt de- 
clared that they retracted their doubts. 

Following upon this first phase of the struggle, Hichhorn (1810), Hug 
(1808), and Bertholdt (18138), in their well-known Introductions to the New 
Testament, Wegscheider in a special work,’ and others also, unanimously 
declared themselves on the side of the authenticity ; so that at the begin- 
ning of this century the storm seemed to be calmed and the question 
settled in favor of the traditional opinion. The historian Gieseler, in his 
admirable little work on the origin of the gospels (1818), pronounced his 
decision in the same way, and expressed the idea that John had composed 
his book for the instruction of Gentiles who had already made progress 
in the Christian religion.” 

The work of Bretschneider, which all at once broke this apparent calm, 
called forth a multitude of replies, among which we shall cite only those 
of Olshausen,® Crome, and Hauff® The first editions of the Commentaries 
of Liucke (1820) and Tholuck (1827) appeared also at this same period. 

In consequence of the first of these publications, Bretschneider, as we 
have already said, declared his objections solved; so that once more the 
‘calm appeared to be restored, and Schleiermacher, with all his school, could 
yield himself, without encountering any opposition worthy of notice, to 
the predilection which he felt for our Gospel. From the beginning of his 
scientific career, Schleiermacher, in his Reden wher die Religion, proclaimed 
the Christ of John to be the true historic Christ, and maintained that the 
Synoptic narrative must be subordinated to our Gospel. Critics as learned 
and independent as Schott and Credner likewise maintained at that time 
the cause of the authenticity ™ in their Introductions. De Wette alone at 
that moment caused a somewhat discordant voice to be still heard. 


1 Annotationes ad Hammond. Novy. Test., 
1714. 

2 Commentarius in Evang. Johannis, 1727. 

3 Letters to a young man, 1793. 

4 An essay on the authority of the New Testa- 
ment, 1793. 

51n Flatt’s Magazine, 1798, No. 4, and 1800, 
No. 6. 

6 Versuch einer vollstandigen Einleit. in das 
Evang. des Johannes, 1806. 


7 Historisch-Krit. Versuch tiber die Entste- 
hung und die friihesten Schicksale der schrift- 
lichen Evangelien. 

8 Die Echtheit der vier canonischen Evangelien, 
1823. 

9 Probabilia hand probabilia, 1824. 

10 Die Authentie und der hohe Werth des Evang. 
Johannes, 1831. 

1 That of Schott in 1830; that of Credner 

in 1836. 


fs PRELIMINARIES. 


The appearance of Strauss’ Life of Jesus, in 1835, was thus like a thun- 
derbolt bursting forth in a serene sky. This work called forth a whole 
legion of apologetic writings; above all, that of Tholuck on the credibility 
of the evangelical history,’ and the Life of Jesus by Neander2 The con- 
cessions made to Strauss by the latter have been often wrongly interpreted. 
They had as their aim only to establish a minimum of incontrovertible 
facts, while giving up that which might be assailed. And it was this work 
which is so moderate, so impartial, and in whose every word we feel the 
incorruptible love of truth, which seems, for the moment, to have made 
upon Strauss the deepest impression, and to have drawn from him, with 
reference to the Gospel of John, the kind of retractation announced in 
his third edition.® 

Gfroerer,t although starting from quite another point of view as com- 
pared with the two preceding writers, defended the authenticity of our 
Gospel against Strauss. Fronvmann,° on his side, refuted the hypothesis 
of Weisse. From 1837 to 1844, Norton published his great work on the 
evidences of the authenticity of the Gospels,® and Guericke, in 1848, his 
Introduction to the New Testament.’ 

In the following years appeared the work of Ebrard on the evangelical 
history,® the truth of which he valiantly defended against Strauss and 
Bruno Bauer, and the third edition of Liicke’s Commentary (1848). But 
this last author made such concessions as to the credibility of the dis- 
courses and of the Christological teaching of John, that the adversaries 
did not fail soon to turn his work against the very thesis which he had 
desired to defend. 

We reach the last period,—that of the struggle maintained against Baur 
and his school. Ebrard was the first to appear in the breach. At his side 
a young scholar presented himself, who, in a work filled with rare patristic 
erudition and knowledge drawn from the primary sources, sought to bring 
back to the right path historical criticism, which, in the hands of Baur, 
seemed to have strayed from it. We mean Thiersch, whose work, modestly 
entitled an Essay, is still at the present day for beginners one of the most 
useful means of orientation in the domain of the history of the first two 


1 Die Glaubwiirdigkeit der evangel. Geschichte, 
1837. 

2 Das Leben Jesu Christi, 1837. 

8 Edition of 1840. 

4 Geschichte des Urchristenthums, 1838. 

5 Ueber die Echtheit und Integritdt des Evang. 
Joh., 1840. 


6 The Evidences of the Genuineness of the 
Gospels. ; 

7 Historisch-Kritische Einleitung in das N. T. 

8 Wissenschaftliche Kritik der Evangel. Ge- 
schichte, 1st ed., 1842; 3d ed., 1868. 

9 Das Evang. Joh. und die neueste Hypothese 
uber seine Entstehung, 1845. 


THE DISCUSSION—THE DEFENDERS. | Aes 


centuries! Baur did not brook this call to order which was addressed to 
him—to him, a veteran in science—by <0 young a writer. In an excite- 
ment of irritation, he wrote that violent pamphlet in which he accused 
his adversary of fanaticism, and which had almost the character of a de- 
nunciation.2. The reply of Thiersch was as remarkable for its propriety 
and dignity of tone as for the excellence of the general observations which 
are presented in it on the criticism of the sacred writings. The justness 
of some of Thiersch’s ideas may be called in question, but it cannot be 
denied that his two works abound in ingenious and original points of 
view. , 

A strange work appeared at this time. The author is commonly 
quoted in German criticism under the name of the Anonymous Saxon ; it 
is now known that he was a Saxon theologian, named Hasert, who was, 
at that time, one of the Thurgovian clergy. He defended the authenticity 
of our Gospels, but with the intention of showing, by this very authen- 
ticity, how the apostles of Jesus, the authors of these books, or rather of 
these pamphlets, had labored only to decry and traduce one another.‘ 

The most able and most learned reply to the works of Baur and Zeller 
was that of Bleek, in 1846.5 By the side of this work, the articles by 
Hauff deserve to be specially mentioned.® 

In the following years, Weitzel and Steitz, discussed with much care and 
erudition the argument drawn by Baur from the Paschal controversy, 
near the end of the second century.?’ Following in the footsteps of 
Bindemann (1842), Semisch demonstrated the use of our four Gospels by 
Justin Martyr.® : 

The year 1852, saw the appearance of two very interesting works: that 
of the Dutch writer, Niermeyer, designed to prove by a subtle and 
thorough study of the writings ascribed to John, that the Apocalypse and 
the Gospel could and must have, both of them, been composed by him, and 
that the differences of contents and form, which distinguish them, are to 
be explained by the profound spiritual revolution which was wrought in 


1 Versuch zur Herstellung des historischen 5 Beitrdge zur Evangelienkritik. 
Standpuncts fir die Kritik der neutest. 6 Kinige Bemerkungen ttber die Composition 
Schriften, 1845. des Johann. Evangeliums, in the Studien und 
2 Der Kritiker und der Fanattker in der rritiken, 1846. 
Person des Herrn H. W. J. Thiersch, 1846. 7 Weitzel, Die christliche Passahfeier der 
8 Einige Worte tiber die Echtheit der neutest. drei ersten Jahrhunderte, 1848; Steitz in the 
Schriften, zur Erwiderung, etc., 1847. Studien und Kritiken, 1856 and 1857. 
4 Die Evangelien, ihr Gest, thre Verfasser, 8 Die apostolischen Denkwiirdigketen des 


und ihr Verhdiltniss zu einander, 1845. Miirturers Justin, 1848. 


24 PRELIMINARIES. 


the apostle after the destruction of Jerusalem.! A similar idea was 
expressed, at the same time, by Hase.2- The second work is the Commen- 
tary of Luthardt on the fourth Gospel, the first part of which contains a 
series of characteristic portraitures of the principal actors in the evan- 
gelical drama, according to St. John, designed to render palpable the 
living reality of all these personages. 
and just observations. 

Ewald, like Hase, defends the authenticity, but does so, while according 
scarcely any historical credibility to the discourses which the apostle 
assigns to Jesus, and even to the miraculous deeds which he relates.’ 


These portraitures are full of acute 


This is an inconsistency which Baur has severely criticised in his reply to 
Hase. Such defences of a gospel are almost equivalent to sentences of 
condemnation pronounced against it, or rather they destroy themselves. 
We can say almost the same of the opinion of Bunsen,* who regards the 
Gospel of John as the only monument of the evangelical history pro- 
ceeding from an eye-witness, who declares even that otherwise “ there is 
no longer an historical Christ,” and who yet remits to the domain of 
legend so decisive a fact as that of the resurrection. Bleek, in his Intro- 
duction to the New Testament,’ and Meyer, Hengstenberg, and Lange, in 
their Commentaries, have declared themselves in favor of the authen- 
ticity, as well as Astié® (who adopts Niermeyer’s point of view), and the 
author of these lines." The Johannean question, in its relation to that of 
the Synoptic Gospels, has been treated in an instructive way by de 
Pressensé® 

The study of the patristic testimonies has recently been made the 
object of two works, one of a popular character, and the other more 
exclusively scientific: the little treatise of Tischendorf on the time of the 


composition of our Gospels,’ and the Academic programme of Riggenbach 


1 Over die echtheid der Johanneischen Schriften, 
etc., 1852. See the reviews of this work in the 
Revue de théologie, June, July and Sept., 1856. 
See also the articles Jean le prophéte and Jean 
U evangéliste, ou lacrise de la foi chez un apéotre, 
by M. Réville (Rev. de théol., 1854), 

2 Die Tiibinger-Schule. Sendscreiben an Baur, 
1855. Vom Evangelium des Johannes, 1866. 

8 Jahrbiicher der biblischen Wissenschaft, 1851, 
1853, 1860, 1865. Die Johann. Schriften, 1861. 

4In his Bibelwerk. 

5 The chapters of Bleek relating to the Gos- 
pel of John have been translated into French 


by Bruston, under the title: Etude critique 
sur U évangile de Jean, 1864. Translation of 
Bleek’s Introduction into English, in Clark’s 
For. Theol. Libr., 1869. 

6 Explication del’ évangile selon saint Jean, 1863. 

7 Commentaire sur Ul’ évangile de St. Jean, 1864; 
translated into German by Wunderlich, 1869; 
the conclusion, since 1866, by Wirz, under the 
title: Prufung der Streitfrayen uber das 4te 
Evang.—2d ed., 1876. 

8 In the first book of his Vie de Jésus. 

9 Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst ? 
1865; 4th ed., 1866. 


THE DISCUSSION—THE DEFENDERS. 25 


in 1866, on the historical and literary testimonies in favor of the Gospel 
of John.!. The solidity and impartiality of this latter work have been 
recognized by the author’s opponents. 

We may add to these two writings that in which the Groningen pro- 
fessor, Hofstede de Groot, has treated the question of the date of Basilides 
and of the Johannean quotations, especially in the Gnostic writers.’ 
The cause of the authenticity has also been maintained by the Abbé 
Déramey (1868). 

The tradition of the sojourn of John in Asia Minor has been valiantly 
defended against Keim by Steitz* and Wabnitz.2  Wittichen, taking his 
position at a point of view which is peculiar to himself, gives up the 
sojourn of the Apostle John in Asia, but does this in order so much the 
better to support the authenticity of our Gospel, while he maintains that 
it was composed by the apostle in Syria for the purpose of combating the 
Ebionites who were of Essenic tendency. This work would thus date 
from the times which immediately followed the destruction of Jeru- 
salem. As for the John of Asia Minor, he was the presbyter, the 
author of the Apocalypse. We have here the antipode of the Tubingen 
theses. 

In two works, one by Zahn, the other by Riggenbach, the question of the 
existence of John the Presbyter, as a distinct personage from the apostle, 
has been treated. After a careful study of the famous passage of Papias 
relative to this question, they come to a negative conclusion.’ Leimbach 
likewise, in a special study,’ does the same thing, and Professor Milligan, 
of Aberdeen, also, in an article in the Journal of Sacred Literature, entitled 
John the Presbyter (Oct. 1867). 

The historical credibility of the discourses of Jesus in the fourth Gospel 
has been defended against modern objections by Gess, in the first volume 
of the second edition of his work on the Person of our Lord,® and more 
especially by H. Meyer in a very remarkable licentiate-thesis.'° The English 


1 Die Zeugnisse fiir das Evang. Johanns neu 
untersucht. 

2 Basilides am Ausgang des apostolischen Zeit- 
alters ; German edition, 1868. 

3 Défense du quatriéme évangile. 

4 Studien und Kritiken, 1869. 

5In the Bulletin théologique, 1868. 

6 Der geschichtliche Charakter des Evang. 
Joh., 1868. 

7Zahn: Papias von Hierapolis, in the Studien 


und Kritiken, 1866, No. 2; Riggenbach: Jo- 
hannes der Apostel und Presbyter, in the Jahr- 
biicher fiir deutsche Theologie, 1868. 

8 Das Papias-Fragment, 1875 (reply to the 
work: Das Papias-Fragment des Eusebius, by 
Weiffenbach, 1874.) 

9 Christi Person und Werk. Neue Bear- 
beitung. Part I. Christi Zeugniss, ete., 1870. 

10 Les Discours du 4¢ év. sont-ils des discours 


historiques de Jésus? 1872. 


26 PRELIMINARIES. 


work of Sanday} dates from the year 1872, and that of the superintendent 
Leuschner*—a brave little work which especially attacks Keim and 
Scholten. 

We close this review by mentioning six recent and remarkable works, 
all of them devoted to the defense of the authenticity. Three are the 
products of German learning. The first is the critical study of Luthardt? 
forming in a special volume the introduction to the second edition of his 
Commentary on the fourth Gospel. The second is the brilliant work of 
Beyschlag in the Studien und Kritiken,* which contains perhaps the most 
able replies to the modern objections. Bernhard Weiss (in the sixth edi- 
tion of Meyer’s Commentary) has treated, in a manner at once profound 
and concise, the question of the origin of our Gospel. He vigorously 
defends the authenticity, without, however, maintaining strictly the his- 
torical character of the discourses.® 

The French work is that of Nyegaard.® It is a thesis. devoted to the 
examination of the external testimonies relating to the authenticity. This 
same subject is specially treated by one of the two English works, that of 
Ezra Abbott, professor in Harvard University.?. This work seems to me to 
exhaust the subject. A complete acquaintance with modern discussions, 
profound study of the testimonies of the second century, moderation and 
perspicuity in judgment—nothing is wanting. The other English work is 
the Commentary of Westcott, professor at Cambridge. In the introduc- 
tion all the critical questions are handled with learning and tact. 


EEE 


Pressed by the force of the reasons alleged for and against the authen- 
ticity, a certain number of theologians have sought to give satisfaction to 
both sides by having recourse to a middle position. 

Some have attempted to make a selection between the truly Johannean 
parts and those which have been added later. Thus Weisse, to whom we 
have been obliged to attribute an important part in the history of the 
struggle against the authenticity (page 19), would be disposed, neverthe- 


1 The authorship and historical character of 
the fourth Gospel. 


2 Das. Evang. Joh. und seine neuesten Wider- 


sacher. 

3 Der Johann. Ursprung des vierten Evang., 
1874. 

41874 and 1875. 

5 Kritisch-exeget. Handbuch tiber das Evang. 


des Johann., 6th ed., 1880. 

6 Essai sur les critéres externes de Vauthen- 
ticité du quatriéme évangile, 1876. 

7 The authorship of the fourth Gospel.—Ex- 
ternal evidences, Boston, 1880. 

8 The Holy Bible, commented upon by a 
company of English bishops and clergymen ; 
N. T., vol. IT., 1880. 


THE DISCUSSION—-THE DEFENDERS. 27 


less, to ascribe to John himself chap. i., 1-5 and 9-14, certain passages in 
chap. iii., and, finally, the discourses contained in chaps. xiv.-xvii. (while 
striking out the dialogue portions and narrative elements). 

Schweizer has proposed another mode of selection.’ The narratives 
which have Galilee as their theatre must, according to him, be eliminated 
from the Johannean writing; they have been added later to facilitate the 
agreement between the narrative of John and that of the Synoptics. Is 
not chap. xxi. for example, a manifest addition? Schenkel had formerly 
proposed to regard the discourses as forming the primitive work, and the 
historical parts as added subsequently.? But since the unity of the com- 
position of our Gospel has been triumphantly demonstrated, the division 
in such an external way has been given up. We are not acquainted with 
any more recent attempts of this kind. 

This long enumeration, which contains only the most noteworthy 
works, proves of itself the gravity of the question.’ Let us sum up the 
preceding exposition. We may do this by making the following scale, 
which includes all the points of view which have been mentioned. 

1. Some deny all participation, even moral and indirect, on the part of 
the Apostle John in the composition of the work which bears his name. 


1 Das Evang. Joh. nach seinem inneren Werth 
kritisch untersucht, 1841. 
since then withdrawn his hypothesis. 

2 Studien und Kritiken, 1840 (review of the 
In his later works he 


The author has 


work of Weisse). 
makes of the Gospel an ideal composition, 
dating from 110 to 120. 

3 Let us mention also various Review arti- 
cles which are not without importance. First, 
three remarkable articles of Weizsacker in 
the Jahrb. fiir deutsche Theologie: Das Selbst- 
zeugniss des Johann. Christus (1857); Beitrage 
zur Charakteristik des Joh. Ev. (1859)'; die Joh. 
Logoslehre (1862). 
Holtzmann in the Zeitschrift fiir wissensch. 
Theol.: Barnabas und Johannes 1871, in which 
the author proves that the epistle of Barna- 


Then, four studies of 


bas rests upon Matthew, but not upon John; 
Hermas und Johannes (1875), in which he 
seeks to prove, in opposition to Zahn, that 
Hermas does not depend on John, but John 
is posterior to Hermas; the Shepherd is an 
essay of a novice which the fourth Gospel 
has, at a later time, perfected (Harnack, in 


1876, refuted Holtzmann in the same journal, 
but without accepting Zahn’s thesis) ; Johan- 
nes, Ignatius und Polycarp (1877), in which he 
reduces to nothing the testimonies borrowed 
from the last two in favor of the Gospel of 
John; Papias und Johannes (1880), in which 
he seeks to show that the order of the apos- 
tles’ names in the famous list of authorities 
in Papias does not rest, as Steitz has proved, 
upon the Gospel of John. The two works of 
Van Goens: L’apétre Jean est-il Vauteur du 
IVe évangile? and of Rambert, in reply to the 
foregoing, in the Revue de théologie et de 
philosophie, Lausaune, 1876 and 1877.—The 
study of Weiffenbach on the testimony of 
Papias (p. 37) and the reply of Ludemann 
(«Zur Erklarung des Papiasfragments “yam 
the Jahrb. fiir protest. Theol., 1879. This last 
work closes with a general survey of the 
whole Johannean literature.—Finally, a criti- 
eal article of Hilgenfeld on Luthardt’s Intro- 
duction tothe fourth Gospel and on my own, 
in the Jahrb. fiir wissensch. Theol., 1880. 


28 PRELIMINARIES. 


With the exception of certain elements borrowed from the Synoptics, 
this work contains only a fictitious history (Baur, Keim). 

2. Others make our Gospel a free redaction of the Johannean traditions, 
which continued in Asia Minor after the sojourn of the apostle at 
Ephesus; the author thought that he could innocently pass himself off 
as the Apostle John himself (Renan, Hase). 

8. A third party do not admit that the author wished to pass himself 
off as John; they think, on the contrary, that he has expressly distin- 
guished himself from the apostle, whose stories served him as authorities 
(Weizsicker, Reuss). 

4. The partisans of a middle course go a little further. They discover 
in the Gospel a certain number of passages or notes which are due to the 
pen of John himself and which were amplified at a later time (Weisse, 
Schweizer). 

5. Finally, there come the defenders of the authenticity properly so 
called, who are yet divided on one point; some recognize in the text as it 
exists more or less considerable interpolations (the incident of the angel 
at Bethesda, chap. v.; the story of the woman taken in adultery, chap. 
viii.), and the important addition of chap. xxi.; others adopt as authentic 
the common text in its entirety. 

On which of the steps of this scale must we place ourselves in order to 
be with the truth? This is what the scrupulous examination of the facts 
alone can teach us. 


BOOK FIRST. 
THE APOSTLE ST. JOHN. 





L 
JOHN IN HIS FATHER’S HOUSE. 


Iv appears from all the documents that John was a native of Galilee. 
He belonged to that northern population, with whose lively, laborious, 
independent, warlike character Josephus has made us acquainted. The 
pressure exerted on the nation by the religious authorities having their 
seat at Jerusalem did not bear with equal weight upon that remote 
country. More free from prejudice, more open to the immediate impres- 
sion of the truth, Galilean hearts offered to Jesus that receptive soil 
which His work demanded. Thus all His apostles, with the exception 
of Judas Iscariot, seem to have been of that province, and it was there 
that He succeeded in laying the foundations of His Church. 

John dwelt on those shores of the lake of Gennesaret, which, in our 
day, present to the eye only a vast solitude, but which were then covered 
with towns and villages having in all, according to Josephus, many thou- 
sands of inhabitants. Did John, as is often said, have his home at Beth- 
saida? This is the conclusion drawn from Luke v. 10, where he is desig- 
nated, along with his brother James, as a partner of Simon, and from 
John i. 44, where Bethsaida is called the city of Andrew and Peter. But, 
notwithstanding this, John may have dwelt at Capernaum, which could 
not have been far removed from the hamlet of Bethsaida, since on coming 
out of the synagogue of that city Jesus enters immediately into Peter’s 
house (Mark i. 29). 

The family of John contained four persons who are known to us: his 
brother James, who seems to have been his elder brother, since he is 
ordinarily named before him; their father Zebedee, who was a fisherman 
(Mark i. 19, 20), and their mother, who must have borne the name of 
Salome, for in the two evidently parallel passages, Matt. xxvii. 56, and 
Mark xv. 40, where the women are mentioned who were present at the 
crucifixion of Jesus, the name Salome in Mark is the equivalent of the 
title: the mother of the sons of Zebedee in Matthew. Wieseler has sought 
to prove that Salome was the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus; from 
which it would follow that John was the cousin-german of our Lord.' 
We cannot regard this hypothesis as having sufficient foundation, either 


1 Studien und Kritiken, 1840. 
29 


30 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 


exegetically or historically. The enumeration in John xix. 25, in which 
Wieseler finds four persons: 1. The mother of Jesus; 2. The sister of His 
mother; 3. Mary, the wife of Clopas, and 4. Mary Magdalene, appears to 
us to include only three, the words Mary, the wife of Clopas being quite 
naturally the explanatory apposition of the words, the sister of His mother 
(see the exegesis). And how is it possible in that case that our Gospels 
should not present some trace of so near a relationship between Jesus 
and John? Wieseler asks, it is true, how two sisters could, both of them, 
have borne the name of Mary. But there is nothing to prevent the word 
sister here from being taken, as it is so frequently, in the sense of sister-in- 
law. This sense is the more probable, inasmuch as, according to a very 
ancient tradition (Hegesippus), Clopas was the brother of Joseph, and 
consequently brother-in-law of Mary, the mother of Jesus. 

John’s family enjoyed a certain competency. According to Mark 1. 20, 
Zebedee has day-laborers; Salome is ranked (Matt. xxvii. 56), in the 
number of the women who accompanied Jesus as He journeyed, and who 
(Luke viii. 8) ministered to Him and the Twelve of their substance. Accord- 
ing to our Gospel (xix. 27), John possessed a house of his own, into which 
he received the mother of our Lord. Is it necessary to reckon, as some 
have done, among these indications of competency, the relation of his 
family to the high-priest, of which mention is made in xviii. 16? This 
conclusion has the less foundation since it cannot be proved that the other 
disciple mentioned in that passage was one of the sons of Zebedee, either 
John or James. The prosperous condition of the family was undoubtedly 
due to the then very lucrative business of fishing, and to the considerable 
commerce which was connected with it.! 

Two points in the life of Salome betray a lively religious sentiment: 
the eagerness with which she consecrated herself, as we have just seen, 
to the service of Jesus, and the request which she had the boldness one 
day to present to the Lord on behalf of her two sons (Matt. xx. 20), Such 
a petition reveals an enthusiastic heart, and a piety which was ardent, yet 
imbued with the most earthly Messianic hopes. She had labored, no 
doubt, to exalt in the same direction the religious patriotism of her sons. 
So, as soon as the forerunner appeared on the scene, John hastened to his 
baptism. He even attached himself to him as his disciple (John i.); and 
it was in his presence that Jesus met him when he returned from the 
desert, whither he had betaken Himself after His baptism, with the design 
of beginning His work. 


ag 
JOHN A FOLLOWER OF JESUS. 


As John passed quietly from the paternal hearth to the baptism of the 
forerunner, he seems also to have passed without any violent crisis from 
the school of the latter to that of Jesus. In this progressive development 


1See Liicke’s Commentary, Introduction, p. 9. 
2 We refer for the justification of these data to the exegesis of John i. 


A FOLLOWER OF JESUS. 31 


there was no shock, and no rupture. He had only to follow the inward 
drawing, the Father’s teaching, according to the profound expressions 
which he himself employs, in order to rise from step to step even to the 
summit of truth. It was the royal road described in that utterance of the 
Lord to Nicodemus: “ He that doeth the truth cometh to the light, because 
his works are wrought in God” (John ii. 21). By this calm and contin- 
uous character of his development, John appears to be, in the spiritual 
world, the antipode of Paul. 

The story of his call as a believer has been preserved to us in the first 
chapter of our Gospel; for everything tends to make us believe that the 
disciple who accompanied Andrew, at that decisive hour in which the new 
society was founded, was no other than John himself. From the banks of 
the Jordan, Jesus then returned, with him and the few young Galileans in 
the company of John the Baptist, whom He had attached to Himself, 
first to Cana and then to Nazareth, which He left soon afterwards in com- 
pany with His mother and His brethren, to establish Himself with them 
at Capernaum (John ii. 12; comp. Matt. iv. 13). Jesus, as Himself still 
belonging to His family, had sent back these young men to the bosom of 
their own. But when, a few days afterwards, the moment arrived when 
He must enter upon His ministry in Judea, in the theocratic capital, He 
called them to follow Him in a permanent way and severed for them, as 
for Himself, the ties of domestic life. This new call took place on the | 
shores of the lake of Gennesaret, near Capernaum. The account of it is 
given in Matt. iv. 18 and the parallel passages. 

Subsequently, as the company of His disciples became more and more 
numerous, He chose twelve from among them, on whom He conferred 
the special title of apostles (Luke vi. 12 ff.; Mark iii. 18 ff). In the first 
rank were the two brothers, John and James, with their two friends Simon 
and Andrew, who were also brothers. And soon among these four the 
two sons of Zebedee and Simon were honored by a more especial intimacy 
with Jesus. Thus we see them alone admitted to the raising of Jairus’ 
daughter and to the two scenes of the transfiguration and Gethsemane, 
John was also, together with Peter, charged with the secret mission of 
preparing the Passover (Luke xxii. 8). It was, doubtless, this sort of 
preference of which he, as well as his brother, was the object, which 
emboldened Salome to ask for them the first places in the Messiah’s 
kingdom. 

Must we admit in favor of John a still closer degree of select friendship ? 
Must we see in him that disciple whom Jesus had made His friend in the 
most peculiar sense of the word, and who, in the fourth Gospel, is several 
times designated as the disciple whom Jesus loved (xiii. 23; xix. 26; xx. 2; 
xxi. 7, 20 f.)?. This was the unanimous opinion of the Church in the age 
which followed the time of the apostles. Irenezus says: “John, the dis- 
ciple of the Lord, who rested upon His bosom, also published the gospel 
while he lived at Ephesus in Asia.”? Polycrates, the bishop of Ephesus, 


1 Ady. Haer., iii. 1. 


32 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 


says expressly: “John who rested on the bosom of the Lord . . . is buried 
at Ephesus.”! John even bore this title: the disciple who rests on the bosom 
of the Master (uabyri¢ éxothO000¢). 

Liitzelberger was the first to call in question this application of the 
passages quoted to John, and to contend that the disciple loved by Jesus 
was Andrew, the brother of Peter. But why should this apostle, who, in 
the first part of the Gospel, is several times designated by his name (i. 41, 
45; vi. 8; xii. 22) be, all at once, mentioned in the second part in this 
anonymous way? Spith has supposed that the beloved disciple was the 
one who is called Nathanael (John i. 46 ff); and that this name, which 
signifies gift of God, designates this disciple as the normal Christian, the 
true gift of God to His Son. But why, in that case, designate him some- 
times by the name of Nathanael (i. 46; xxi. 2), and sometimes by this 
mysterious circumlocution. 

Holtzmann likewise identifies the disciple whom Jesus loved with 
Nathanael, but does so while seeing in this personage only a fictitious 
being,—the purely ideal type of Paulinism.’ 

Scholten * also regards this unnamed disciple as a fictitious personage ; 
he is, in the writer’s intention, the symbol of true Christianity, in opposi- 
tion to the Twelve and their imperfect conception of the gospel. 

Is it worth our while to refute such vagaries of the imagination? In 
chap. xix., the author certainly makes of this disciple a real being, since 
it is he to whom Jesus entrusts His mother, and who receives her into 
his house ; unless we are ready also to interpret in a symbolic sense this 
mother who was thus entrusted to him, and to see in her nothing else than 
the Church itself. This explanation of the sense would surpass in point 
of arbitrariness the master-pieces of allegorizing of which this passage. has 
sometimes been the occasion among Catholic writers. 

In reading the fourth Gospel, we cannot doubt that the disciple whom 
Jesus loved was, in the first place, one of the Twelve, and then, one of the 
three who enjoyed especial intimacy with the Saviour. Of these three, he 
cannot be Peter, for that apostle is named several-times along with the 
beloved disciple. No more can he be James, who died too early (about 
the year 44, Acts xii.) for the report to have been spread abroad in the 
Church that he would not die (John xxi.). John is, therefore, the only 
one of the three for whom this title can be suitable. We reach the same 
result, also, by another way. In John xxi. 2, seven disciples are desig- 
nated: “Simon Peter, Thomas, called Didymus, Nathanael, of Cana in 
Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two other disciples.” Among these 
seven was the one whom Jesus loved, since he plays a part in the follow- 
ing scene (ver. 20 ff.) Now he cannot be Peter or Thomas or Nathanael, 
all three of whom are designated by name in the course of the Gospel and 
in this very passage, nor again one of the two last-mentioned disciples 


1 Eusebius, v. 24 (€v Edéow kexoiuyrac). 3Schenkel’s Bibellexicon, vol. iv. art. Na- 
2 Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliche _—_ thanael. 
Theologie, 1868. ‘ 4In the brochure: Der Apostel Johannes in 


Kleinasien. 


A FOLLOWER OF JESUS. 33 


whom the author does not name, doubtless because they did not belong 
to the number of. the Twelve. It only remains, therefore, to choose 
between the two sons of Zebedee; and between these two, as we have just 
seen, no hesitation is possible. 

In the conduct of John, during the ministry of his Master, two features 
strike us; a modesty carried even to the extreme of reserve, and a vivacity 
reaching sometimes even to the point of violence. The fourth Gospel is 
fond of relating to us the striking sayings of Peter; it speaks of the con- 
versations of Andrew and Philip with Jesus, of the manifestations of devo- 
tion or of incredulity in Thomas. In the Synoptics Peter speaks at every 
moment. But in the one narrative and the other John plays only a very 
secondary and obscure part. Three sayings only are ascribed to him in 
our Gospel, and they are all very remarkable for their brevity: ‘“ Master, 
where abidest thou?” (i. 38),—‘‘ Lord, who is it?” (xii. 25),—“It is the 
Lord!” (xxi. 7).—Moreover, of these three expressions the first was prob- 
ably uttered by Andrew; and the second came from the mouth of John 
only at Peter’s suggestion. What significance, then, has this fact, which 
is apparently so little in accord with the altogether peculiar relation of 
this disciple to Jesus? That John was one of those natures which live 
more within themselves than without. While Peter occupied the fore- 
ground of the scene, John kept himself in the background, observing, con- 
templating, drinking in love and light, and satisfied with his character 
of silent personage which so well suited his receptive and profound 
nature. We can understand the charm which this character must 
have had for our Lord. He found in this relation, which remained 
their common secret, that complement which manly natures seek in 
family ties. 

Along with this feature which reveals a character naturally timid and 
contemplative, we meet certain facts in which John betrays a vivacity of 
impression capable of rising even to passion; as when, with his brother, 
he proposes to Jesus to cause fire to descend from heaven on the Samar- 
itan village which has refused to receive Him (Luke ix. 54), or when he 
is irritated at the sight of a man who, without joining himself to the dis- 
ciples, takes the liberty of casting out demons in the name of Jesus, and 
forbids him to continue acting in this way (Luke ix. 49). We may bring 
into comparison with these two features that request for the first place in 
the Messianic kingdom, by which we discover the impure alloy which was 
still mingled with his faith. 

How can we explain these two apparently so opposite traits of charac- 
ter? There exist natures which are at once tender, ardent and timid; 
which ordinarily confine their impressions within themselves, and this 
the more in proportion as these impressions are the more profound. But 
if it happens that these persons once cease to be masters of themselves, 
the long restrained emotions then break forth in sudden explosions which 
throw-all around them into astonishment. Was it not to this order of 
characters that John and his brother belonged? If it was so, could Jesus 
better describe them, than by giving them the surname of Boanerges, sons 

3 


34 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 


of thunder? (Mark iii. 17)? I cannot think, as the Fathers believed, that 
by this surname Jesus meant to mark the gift of eloquence which dis- 
tinguished them. No more am I able to admit that He wished to per- 
petuate thereby the remembrance of their passion in one of the cases 
indicated (Luke ix. 54). But, as electricity is slowly accumulated in the 
cloud, until it suddenly breaks forth in the lightning and the thunderbolt, so 
Jesus observed in these two loving and passionate beings, how the impres- 
sions were silently stored within until the moment when, as the result of 
some outward circumstance, they violently broke forth; and this is what 
He meant to describe. St. John is often represented as a nature sweet 
and tender even to effeminacy. Do not his writings before and above all 
things insist upon love? Were not the last preachings of the old man: 
“Love one another?’ ‘This is true; but we must not forget the traits of 
a different nature which, both in the earlier and later periods of his life, 
reveal in him something decided, trenchant, absolute, and even violent? 

In thus estimating the character of John we believe ourselves to be in 
accordance with the truth, rather than Sabatier, where he closes his judg- 
ment of the apostle with these words: “It is worthy of remark, that the 
name of John does not occur in the Synoptics except in connection with 
censure.” But are we to forget that, in one case, he accused himself 
(Luke ix. 49); that, in another, it was by excess of zeal for the honor of 
Jesus that he drew upon himself a reprimand (Luke ix. 54); and that, in 
the third case, the jealous indignation of his fellow-disciples sprung from 
the same cause as the ambitious petition of the two sons of Salome (Mark 
x. 41, comp. 42 ff.)? Are we, above all, to forget the place which, accord- 
ing to the Synoptics themselves, Jesus had given to John, as well as to 
Peter and James, in His most intimate friendship? Comp. also the inci- 
dent in Luke xxii. 8. The design of this manner of presenting the sub- 
ject is explained by what follows: “There is here,” continues the writer, 
“a singular contrast to the image of the beloved disciple who leans upon 
Jesus’ bosom, of that ideal disciple who conceals and reveals himself at 
the same time in the fourth Gospel.”? It was, then, a stepping-stone to 
something further! The biography was at the service of the criticism. 

If we take account of all the facts which have been pointed out, we 
shall recognize in John one of those natures passionately devoted to the 
ideal which, at the first sight, give themselves without reserve to the being 
who seems to them to realize it. But the devotion of such persons easily 
takes on somewhat of exclusiveness and intolerance. Everything which 
does not answer in sympathy completely to their enthusiasm irritates 
them and excites their indignation. They have no comprehension of 
what a dividing of the heart is, any more than they know how to have 
such a divided heart themselves. The whole for the whole! Such is their 
motto. Where the complete gift is wanting, there is no longer anything 
to their view. Such affections do not exist without containing an alloy of 
egoism. A divine work is necessary to the end that the devotion which 


1 Bené régés (3 ° 33). 2 Encyclopédie des Sciences religieuses, t. VII., p. 173. 


HEAD OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. 39 


forms their basis may at last come forth purified and may appear in all 
its sublimity. Such was John—worthy, even in his very faults, of the 
intimate friendship of the best of men. 


ELE. 
JOHN AT THE HEAD OF THE JEWISH-CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 


John’s part in the Church after the day of Pentecost was that which 
such antecedents lead us to expect. On that stage where Peter and 
James, the brother of John, the first martyr among the epostles, and 
where even mere assistants of the apostles, such as Stephen and Philip, 
and finally Paul and James, the Lord’s brother, moved and acted, John 
appears only on two occasions :—when he goes up to the temple with 
Peter (Acts iii.), and when he accompanies this same apostle to Samaria, 
in order to finish the work begun by Philip (Acts viii.). And on each of 
these two occasions Peter is the one who plays the principal part; John 
seems to be only his assistant. As we have already seen, the disciple 
whom Jesus loved was not a man of action; he did not take the initiative 
as a conqueror; his mission, like his talent, was of a more inward character. 
His hour was not to strike until a later time, after the Church was founded. 
Meanwhile, a deep work, the continuation of that which Jesus had begun . 
in him, was being wrought in his soul. That promise which he has him- 
self preserved for us—‘ The Spirit shall glorify me in you” was finding its 
realization in his case. After having given himself up, he found himself 
again in his glorified Master, and he gave himself up still more fully. 

But from this moment he had a particular task to fulfill—that which 
his dying Master had left as a legacy to him. To Peter, Jesus had en- 
trusted the direction of the Church; to John, the care of His mother. 

Where did Mary live? It is scarcely probable that she felt any attrac- 
tion towards a residence in Jerusalem. Her dearest recollections recalled 
her to Galilee. Undoubtedly, it was there also, on the shores of the lake 
of Gennesaret, that John possessed that home where he received her and 
lavished upon her the attentions of filial piety. This circumstance like- 
Wise serves to explain why, in those earliest times, he took little part in 
missionary work. Had he lived at Jerusalem, Paul would undoubtedly 
have seen him, as well as Peter and James, at the time of his first visit to 
that city after his conversion (Gal. i. 18, 19). 

Later traditions, yet traditions which nothing prevents us from regarding 
as well-founded, place the death of Mary about the year 48. After that 
time, John undoubtedly took a more considerable part in the direction of 
the Christian work. At the time of the assembly, commonly called the 
council of Jerusalem (Acts xv.), in 50 or 51, he is one of the apostles with 
whom Paul confers in the capital, and the latter ranks him (Gal. ii.) among 
those who were regarded as the pillars of the Church.!- An important and 
much discussed question with respect to John presents itself at this point. 


1Gal. ii. 9: “James, Cephas and John, who were thought to be pillars. 


36 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 


The Tiibingen school ascribes to these three personages, James, Peter 
and John, who represented the Jewish-Christian Church at that time over 
against Paul and Barnabas, an opinion opposed to that of these last as to 
the matter of maintaining legal observances in the Church. The only dif- 
ference which it recognizes between the apostles and the false brethren privily 
brought in, of whom Paul speaks (Gal. ii. 4),—and it is not to the advantage 
of the former,—is this: the false brethren, the Pharisaical intruders, held 
their ground in opposition to Paul and attempted to make him yield, while 
the apostles, intimidated by his energy and by the eclat of his successes 
among the Gentiles, abandoned in fact their convictions, and agreed, in 
spite of these men, to divide with him the missionary work. Thus would 
be reduced to insignificance the import of that sign of co-operation which 
the apostles gave to Paul and Barnabas, in extending to them the right 
hand of fellowship at the moment when they separated from each other 

(ver. 9). ; 

We can readily understand the interest which attaches to this question. 
If such was really the personal conviction of John, it is obvious that he 
could not be the author of the fourth Gospel, or that he could be so only 
on the condition of having previously passed through the crisis of a com- 
plete transformation. Schiirer himself, who is independent of the Tubingen 
point of view, says:! “The John of the second chapter of Galatians, who 
disputes with Paul respecting the law, cannot have written our fourth 
Gospel.” 

But is it true that the abrogation of the law for the converted Gentiles 
was a concession which St. Paul was obliged to wrest from the apostles, 
contrary to their inward conviction? Is it true, in general, that there was 
on the question of the lawa fundamental difference between Paul and the 
Twelve? This question has been discussed beyond measure during the 
last thirty years, and I do not think that, on the whole, the scale has turned 
in the direction of Baur’s assertions. I will only take up here one decisive 
passage—the one which that school most habitually puts forward, and 
which, to the view of Hilgenfeld, is, as it were, its impregnable fortress. It 
is Gal. ii. 3, 4: “But Titus who was with me, being a Greek, was not com- 
pelled to be circumcised, and that because of (dca dé) the false brethren 
brought in privily...” The following is the way in which Hilgenfeld 
reasons :—Paul does not say: I did not yield to the false brethren ; but, I 
did not yield because of them. To whom, then, did he make resistance? 
Evidently to others than these. These others can only be the apostles. It 
was the apostles, therefore, who demanded the circumcision of Titus. Con- 
sequently they claimed, and John with them, the right to impose circum- 
cision on the Gentiles. The observation from which Hilgenfeld starts is 
correct; but the conclusion which he draws from it is false. The apostles 
asked of Paul the circumcision of Titus, and he would not yield to them be- 
cause of the false brethren. Such, indeed, is the fact. But what does it 
prove? That the false brethren demanded this circumcision in an alto- 


1 Theol. Liter.-Zeit., 1876, No. 14. 


HEAD OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. 37 


gether different spirit from the Twelve. They demanded it as an obliga- 
tion, while the apostles asked it of Paul only as a free concession in favor 
of the Christians of Jerusalem, who were offended at the thought of inter- 
course with an uncircumcised person. This is the reason why Paul was 
able to say: Apart from the false brethren, I might have yielded to the 
Twelve with that compliance (ri ixorayg, ver. 5) which every Christian 
should exhibit towards his brethren in the things which are in themselves 
indifferent. And this is what he really did every time that he put himself 
under the law with those who were under the law (1 Cor. ix. 20); comp. the 
circumcision of Timothy. But it was impossible for him at this time to 
act thus because of the false brethren, who were prepared to make use of that 
concession in order to turn it to account in relation to the Gentiles as an 
obligatory precedent. The Twelve understood this reason, and did not in- 
sist. Ifthe case stands thus, the question is solved. As a matter of right, 
the Twelve did not impose the law upon the Gentiles. They personally 
observed it, with the Christians of Jewish origin, but not as a condition of 
salvation, since, in that case, they could not have exempted the Gentiles 
from it. They observed it until God, who had imposed this system upon 
them, should Himself put an end to it. Paul had anticipated them in 
knowledge on this point only: that to his view the cross was already for 
the Jews themselves the expected abrogation (Gal. ii. 19, 20). For those 
of the apostles who, like St. John, survived the fall of the temple, that event 
must naturally have removed the last doubt in relation to themselves and 
their nation. 

This view does not force us to establish a conflict between the epistles 
of Paul and the narrative of the Acts. It is likewise in accord with our 
Synoptic gospels, which are filled with declarations of Jesus containing 
what involves the abolition of the law. That sentence: “It is not that 
which entereth into the man which defileth the man, but that which 
cometh out of the heart of the man,”* contains in principle the total abolition 
of the Levitical system. That other saying: “The Son of man is Lord 
even of the Sabbath,”? saps the foundation of the Sabbath ordinance in its 
Mosaic form, and thereby the entire ceremonial institution of which the 
Sabbath was the centre. By comparing His new economy to a new gar- 
ment, which must be substituted as a whole for the old,? Jesus gives ex- 
pression to a view of the relation between the Gospel and the law beyond 
which the apostle of the Gentiles himself could not go. And it is the 
apostles who have transmitted all these words to the Church; and yet they 
did this, it is said, without at all comprehending their practical applica- 
tion! Independently, then, of the epistles of Paul and the Acts, we are 
obliged to affirm that what is (wrongly) called Paulinism must have ex- 
isted, as a more or less latent conviction, in the minds of the apostles from 
the time of Jesus’ ministry. The death of Christ, the day of Pentecost, and 
the work of Paul could not fail to develop these germs. 

Irenzeus has very faithfully described this state of things in these words: 


1 Matt. xv. 18-20; Mark vii. 18-20. 2 Mark ii. 28. 3 Matt. ix. 16 and the parallels. 


38 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 


“They themselves (the apostles) persevered in the old observances, con- 
ducting themselves piously with regard to the institution of the law; but, 
as for us Gentiles, they granted us liberty, committing us to the Holy 
Spirit.” } 
IV. 
JOHN IN ASIA MINOR. 


After the council of Jerusalem, we lose all trace of John until the time 
when tradition depicts him as accomplishing his apostolic ministry in the 
midst of the churches of Asia Minor. It is not probable that he repaired 
to those remote countries before the destruction of Jerusalem. He 
undoubtedly accompanied the Jewish-Christian Church when it emigrated 
to Perea at the time when the war against the Romans broke out. This 
departure took place about the year 67.2 Only at a later period, when, in 
consequence of the death of Paul, and perhaps of the death of his assist- 
ants in Asia Minor, Titus and Timothy, the churches of that region, 
which were so important, found themselves deprived of every apostolic 
leader, John removed thither. He does not seem to have been the only 
apostle or apostolic personage who made choice of this place of residence. 
History speaks of the ministry of Philip, either the apostle or the deacon, 
at Hierapolis; we find, also, some indications of a sojourn of Andrew in 
Ephesus.2 As Thiersch says, “The centre of gravity of the Church was 
no longer at Jerusalem, and it was not yet at Rome; it was at Ephesus.” 
Like the eircle of golden candlesticks, the numerous and flourishing 
ehurches founded by Paul in Ionia and Phrygia were the luminous 
point towards which the eyes of all Christendom were directed. “ From 
the fall of Jerusalem,” says Liicke, “even into the second century, 
Asia Minor was the most living portion of the Church.” What excited 
an interest on behalf of these churches was not nrerely the energy of 
their faith; it was the intensity of the struggle which they had to main- 
tain against heresy. ‘“ After my departure,” St. Paul had said to the 
pastors of Ephesus and Miletus (Acts xx. 29, 30), “ravenous wolves shall 
enter in among you not sparing the flock; and from among your own 
selves shall men arise speaking perverse things, to draw away the disci- 
ples after them.” This prophecy was fulfilled. It is not surprising, there- 
fore, that John, one of the last survivors among the apostles, should have 
gone to supply in those regions the place of the apostle of the Gentiles, 
and to water, as Apollos had formerly done in Corinth, that which Paul 
had planted. 

The accounts of this residence of John in Asia are numerous and posi- 
tive. Nevertheless, Keim and Scholten, after the example of Vogel, 
Reuterdahl, and especially Liitzelberger, have in these latter days contro- 
verted the truth of this tradition. The former thinks that the personage, 
named John, whom Polycarp had known, was not the apostle, but the 


1 Adv. Haer. iii. 12. 3 So in the so-called Fragment of Muratori. 
2 Ewald, Gesch. des Volks Israel, vol. vi., p. 642. 4 Apoc. i. 12, 20. 


IN ASIA MINOR. 39 


. presbyter of the same name, who must have lived at Ephesus about the 
end of the first century; and that Irenzeus erroneously, and even with 
some willingness, imagined that this master of his own master was the 
apostle. This was the starting-point of the error which was afterwards 
so generally disseminated. Scholten believes, rather, that as the Apoca- 
lypse was falsely ascribed to the Apostle John, and as the author of that 
book appeared to have lived in Asia (Apoc. ii., ili.), the residence of the 
Apostle John in that region was inferred from these false premises. 

Let us begin by establishing the tradition; we shall afterwards appre- 
ciate the importance of it. 

Irenzeus says: “All the presbyters who met with John, the disciple of 
the Lord, in Asia, give testimony that he conveyed to them these things; 
for he lived with them even to the time of Trajan. And some among 
them saw not only John, but also other apostles.”! This whole passage, 
but especially the last sentence, implies that the person in question is the 
apostle, and not some other John. This is still more precisely set forth in 
the following words: “ Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, he who 
leaned on His breast, published the gospel while he dwelt at Ephesus, in 
Asia.”? We read elsewhere: “The church of Ephesus, which was founded 
by Paul and in which John lived until the time of Trajan, is also a truth- 
ful witness of the tradition of the apostles.”* And further: ‘“ Polycarp 
had not only been taught by the apostles, and lived with several men who 
had seen Christ, but he had been constituted bishop in the church of 
Smyrna by the apostles who were in Asia; and we ourselves saw him in 
our early youth, since he lived a very long time and became very aged, 
and departed this life after a glorious martyrdom, haying constantly taught 
what he had heard from the apostles.”* It cannot be doubted, therefore, 
that the following words, having reference to the Apocalypse, apply to 
the apostle: “This number (666) is found in all the accurate and ancient 
manuscripts, and it is attested by all those who saw John face to face.” ® 

Thus speaks Irenzeus in his principal work. Besides this, we have two 
letters of his in which he expresses himself in the same way. One of 
them is addressed to Florinus, his old fellow-pupil under Polycarp, who 
had embraced the Gnostic doctrines. Irenzus says to him: “These are 
not the teachings which the elders who preceded us and who lived after the 
apostles handed down to thee; for I saw thee, when I was still a child, in 
lower Asia with Polycarp. . . . 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 saw the Lord, and how he spoke of what he had heard from 
them respecting the Lord, His miracles and His doctrine, and how he re- 
counted, in full accord with the Scriptures, all that which he had received 
from the eye-witnesses of the Word of life.” ® The other letter was addressed 


1As far as the word Trajan, according to 3 iii. 3. 4. (Eusebius, iii. 23. 4). 
the Greek text preserved by Eusebius, H: E., 4 iii. 3. 4. (Eusebius, iv. 14). 
ili. 23.3; the last words according to the Latin 5 v. 30. 1. (Eusebius, v. 8). 
translation: Adv. Haer., ii. 22. 5. 6 Eusebius, v. 20. 


2 Ireneus, iii. 1. 1, (Eusebius, v. 8. 4). 


40 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 


by Irenzeus to Victor, Bishop of Rome, on occasion of the controversy ° 
carried on with regard to the Passover:! ‘When the blessed Polycarp 
visited Rome in the time of Anicetus, slight differences of opinion having 
become manifest respecting certain points, peace was very soon concluded. 
And they did not even give themselves up to a dispute upon the principal 
question. For Anicetus could not dissuade Polycarp from observing [the 
14th of Nisan, as the Paschal day], inasmuch as he had always observed 
it with John, the disciple of the Lord, and the other apostles with whom he 
had lived. And, on his side, Polycarp could not persuade Anicetus to 
observe [the same day], the latter replying that he must maintain the cus- 
tom which he had received from his predecessors. This being the state 
of things, they gave each.other the communion, and in the assembly 
Anicetus yielded the office of administering the Eucharist to Polycarp, by 
way of honor; and they separated in peace.” Thus at Rome and in Gaul, 
no less than in Asia Minor, Polycarp was certainly regarded as the disciple 
of John the apostle, and the arguments of the bishops of Rome were ren- 
dered powerless twice in the second century—in 160 (or rather 155) and 
190—as they met this fact which was, to the view of all, raised above all 
controversy. 

We find in Asia Minor, about 180, another witness of the same tradi- 
tion. Apollonius, an anti-Montanist writer, related, at that time, that 
John had raised a dead man to life at Ephesus. And it is to the apostle, 
certainly, that he attributed this act. For he is speaking here of the 
author of the Apocalypse, and we know that, at this period, the churches 
of Asia had no doubt as to the composition of that book by the apostle. 

But, already before Irenzeus and Apollonius, Justin has some words 
relative to John, which imply the idea of his residence in Asia.? He says : 
“ A man among us, one of the apostles of Christ, has prophesied in the revela- 
tion which was given to him (év aroxaAtwer yevouévy adTd).” As the fact of 
the composition of the Apocalypse in Asia is not doubtful (although Schol- 
ten seems desirous of disputing it), it follows from this statement of Justin 
that he had no doubt that the apostle had resided in Asia. This declara- 
tion is the more interesting since it is found in the account of a public 
discussion which Justin had to maintain at Ephesus itself with a learned 
Jew. This work * dates from 150-160. 

We possess, finally, an official document, emanating from the bishops 
of Asia towards the close of the second century, which attests their 
unanimous conviction in regard to the matter with which we are engaged. 
It is the letter which Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, addressed to Victor 
under the same circumstances which occasioned that of Irenzeus quoted 
above (about 190). He—a man in whose family the office of bishop of 
that metropolis was, as it were, hereditary (since seven of his relatives 
had already filled it before him)—writes, with the assent of all the bishops 


1 Euseb., v. 24. and relates thata dead man had been raised 
2 Eusebius, v.28: “He uses also testimo- at Ephesus by the same John.” ‘ 
nies derived from the Apocalypse of John, 3 Against Trypho the Jew. 


IN ASIA MINOR. 41 


of the province who surround him, the following words: “We celebrate 
the true day. . . . For some great lights are extinguished in Asia and will 
rise again there at the return of the Lord. . . . Philip, one of the twelve 
apostles, . . . and John, who reclined on the Lord’s bosom, who was high 
priest and wore the plate of gold, and who was a witness and teacher, and 
who is buried at Ephesus. . . . All these celebrated the Passover on the 
fourteenth day, according to the gospel.” ? 

Such are the testimonies proceeding from Asia Minor. They are not 
the only ones. We can add to them one coming from Egypt. Clement 
of Alexandria, about 190, in the preamble to the story of the young man 
whom John reclaimed from his errors, writes these words: ‘ After the 
tyrant was dead, John returned from the island of Patmos to Ephesus, 
and there he visited the surrounding countries in order to constitute 
bishops and organize the churches.” ? 

We omit the later witnesses (Tertullian, Origen, Jerome, Eusebius), who 
naturally depend on the older accounts.® 

By what means is the attempt made to shake so ancient and widely 
established a tradition ? 

The Acts of the Apostles, says Keim, do not speak of such a residence 
of John in Asia. Is it a serious man who speaks thus? Withsuch logic, 
answers Leuschner, it might also be proved that Paul is not yet dead even 
to the present hour. As if the book of Acts were a biography of the 
apostles, and as if it did not end before the time when John lived in Asia! 

But the silence of the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, and of 
the Pastoral Epistles? adds Scholten. As if the composition of these 
writings in the second century were a fact so thoroughly demonstrated 
that it could be made the starting point for new conclusions! Can criti- 
cal presumption go further? 

With more show of probability is the silence of the epistles of Igna- 
tius and Polycarp alleged. Ignatius recalls to the Ephesians, Polycarp 
to the Philippians, the ministry of Paul in their churches; they are both 
silent with respect to that of John in Asia. As to Ignatius, these are the 
terms in which he recalls the Apostle Paul to the Ephesians: “ You are 
the place of passage (rapodoc) of those who have been taken up to God, the 
co-initiated with Paul the consecrated one . . . , in whose footsteps may 
I be found!*” The question is not of a residence of Paul in Ephesus 
in general, but quite specially of his last passage through Asia Minor, 
when, as he was repairing to Rome, he gave to the elders of those 
churches the farewell words reported in the Acts, and, in some sort, asso- 
ciated them with the consecration of his martyrdom. The analogy of 


1 Eusebius v. 24. 3 (comp. iii. 31. 3). 

2Tis 6 owduevos mAdvaotos, Cc. 42 (comp. 
Eusebius iii. 24). : 

3 We omit, with still stronger reason, the 
work of Prochorus, recently published by 
Zahn (Acta Johennis), of which a young 
scholar,—Max Bonnet, professor at Mont- 
pelier, is preparing a new edition. It is a 


book of pure imagination, without the least 
historical value, composed, according to Zahn, 
between 400 and 600. The Johannean frag- 
ments in the work of Leucius, which Zahn 
is disposed to carry back as far as 130, do not 
seem to have any greater value. See Over- 
beck in the Theol. Liter. Zeit., 1881, No. 2. 
4Ad Eph,, ec. 12. 


42, BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 


that moment with the position of Ignatius, when he wrote to the Ephe- 
sians on his way to Rome, is obvious. There was no similar comparison 
to be made with the life of John. Moreover, the eleventh chapter of this 
same letter furnishes, perhaps, an allusion to the presence of John at 
Ephesus: “The Christians of Ephesus,” says Ignatius, “have always 
lived in entire harmony (ovvyvecar) with the apostles, in the strength of Jesus 
Christ.” Finally, we must not forget that Ignatius was from Syria, and 
that he had not been acquainted with John in Asia Minor. 

Polycarp, writing to Macedonian Christians, had no particular reason 
for recalling to them John’s ministry at Ephesus. If he speaks to them 
of Paul, it is because this apostle had founded and several times visited 
their church; and if he mentions Ignatius, it is because the venerated 
martyr had just passed through Philippi, at that very moment, as he was 
going to Rome. 

The similar objection, derived from the account of the death of Poly- 
carp, in the Acts of his martyrdom, by the church of Smyrna, is no more 
serious. Sixty years had passed since John’s death, and yet that church 
could not have written a letter without making mention of him! Hilgen- 
feld, moreover, rightly notices the title of apostolic teacher given to Polycarp 
(chap. 18), which recalls his personal relations with one or with several 
of the apostles. 

Keim and Scholten find the most decisive argument in the silence of 
Papias; they even see in the words of this Father the express denial of all 
connection with the apostle. Irenzeus, it is true, did not understand 
Papias in this way. He thinks, on the contrary, that he can eal! him a 
hearer of John (Iwdvvov axovorfc). But, it is said, precisely at this point ‘is 
an error, which Eusebius has noticed and corrected by a more thorough 
study of the terms which Papias employed. The importance of the testi- 
mony of Papias in this question is manifest. Leimbach cites as many as 
forty-five writers who have treated this subject in these most recent times. 
We are compelled to study it more closely. 

First of all, what is the epoch of Papias, and what the date of his work ? 
Irenzeus adds to the title of hearer of John, which he gives to him, that of 
companion of Polycarp (MoAvkaprov éraipoc). This term denotes a contempo- 
rary. Now, the most recent investigations place the martyrdom of Poly- 
carp in 155 or 156,’ and this date appears to be generally adopted at the 
present day (Renan, Lipsius, Hilgenfeld). As Polycarp himself declares 
that he had spent eighty-six years in the service of the Lord, his birth 
must be placed, at the latest, in the year 70. If Papias was his contempo- 
rary, therefore, he lived between 70 and 160; and if John died about the 
year 100, this Father might, chronologically speaking, have been in con- 
tact with the apostle up to the age of thirty. Ireneeus, at the same time, 
calls Papias a man of Christian antiquity (4pyaio¢ avgp); Papias belonged, 
then, like Polycarp, to the generation which immediately followed the 


1 Waddington, Mémoires de Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, tome xxvi., 2° 
partie, p. 232 et suiv. 


IN ASIA MINOR. 43 


apostles. There is, finally, in the very fragment which we are about to 
study, an expression which leads us to the same conclusion. Papias says 
that he informed himself concerning “ that whichAndrew, and then Peter, 
Philip, ete., etc., said (eizev), and that which Aristion and John the Presby- 
ter, the disciples of the Lord, say (Aéyovow).” This contrast between the 
past said and the present say is too marked to be accidental. It implies, 
as at the present day Keim, Hilgenfeld and Mangold acknowledge, that 
at the time when Papias wrote the two last-named personages were still 
living;! and, since they are both designated as personal disciples of Jesus, 
they can only, at the latest, have lived until about the year 110-120. It 
was, then, at this period also—at the latest—that Papias wrote. He was 
then thirty to forty years old? 

Now the following is the fragment quoted by Eusebius.* The question 
will be whether the personal relation of Papias with John the apostle is 
affirmed, as Irenzeus thinks, or excluded, as Eusebius claims, by the terms 
employed in this much discussed passage. 

“Now I shall not fail to add to my explanations also (ovyxararaéac* raig 
épunveiacc) all that which I have formerly very well learned and very well 
remembered from the elders (xapa tév xpecBurépwv), while guaranteeing to 
thee the truth of the same. For I did not take pleasure, like the great 
mass, in those who relate many things, but in those who teach true things ; 
nor in those who spread abroad strange commandments, but in those who 
spread abroad the commandments given to faith by the Lord and that 
come* from the truth itself. And if, at times, also, one of those who 
accompanied the elders came to me (ei dé ov Kal rapakodovOnKads tic Toi¢ 
mpeoBurépore éAGor), I inquired about the words of the elders (rote trav mpec- 
Burépwv avéxptvov Adyovc): What Andrew said, or Peter (ri ’Avdpéac 7 ti Tlé- 
tpo¢ elev), or Philip, or Thomas, or James, or John,* or Matthew, or some 
other of the disciples of the Lord (7 tig érepog tév tod Kupiov pabyrav); then 
about what Aristion and the presbyter John, the diseiples of the Lord, say 


(@ te’ ’Apiotiwy kai 6 tpecBbrepoc "Iwavync, oi Tov Kupiov wabyrai, Aéyovorv) , for I 


1Zahn and Riggenbach think that this 
present say may denote merely the perma- 
nence of the testimony of these men, Leim- 
bach: that it arises from the fact that Papias 
thinks that he still hears them speak.—All 
this would be possible only in so far as the 
contrast with the past tense had said did not 
exist. 

2There must be a resolute determination 
to create a history after one’s own fancy, to 
place, as Volkmar ventures to do, the work of 
Papias in 165! 

3H. E. iii. 39. 

*This reading, (and not cvytdééac), appears 
certain; see Leimbach. 

5The ambiguity of our translation repro- 
duces the possible meaning of the two read- 
ings (mapaytvouévas and mapayrvouévors) 
according to which the words: and that come 


refer either to the commandments or to the 
individuals themselves. 

6M. Renan has proposed to reject from the 
text the words: or» John. This is absolutely 
arbitrary, and in that case the conclusion of 
Eusebius respecting the existence of asec- 
ond John would lose its foundation. 

7 Papias here substitutes for the interroga- 
tive pronoun ti (employed in the preceding 
clause) the relative pronoun a, because the 
idea of interrogation is remote This a is 
also the object of avéxpuvoy, parallel with the 
preceding object Adyovs (so also Holtzmann). 
No one, I think, will be tempted to accept 
Leimbach’s translation: “. . . or which (ris) of 
the disciples of the Lord [has related] that 
which Aristion or John says...” The 
position of the re, placed as it is after a, and 
not after ’Apioriwy, is sufficient to refute this. 


44 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 


did not suppose that that which is derived from books could be as useful 
to me as that which comes from the living and permanent word.” 

This passage is made up of two distinct paragraphs, of which the sec- 
ond begins with the words: “And if at times (now and then) also.” 
Hilgenfeld and others think that the second paragraph is only the com- 
mentary on the first, and refers to the same fact. But this interpretation 
does violence to the text, as the first words prove: And 7@f at times 
also (ei dé xov cai). This transition indicates an advance, not an identity. 
The two paragraphs, therefore, refer to different facts. 

In the former paragraph, Papias evidently speaks of what he has favor- 
ably received and remembered from the elders themselves—that is to say, by 
a communication from them to him personally. ‘This is implied by the 
use of the preposition rapa (from), the regular sense of which is that of 
direct communication; 2. By the adverb zoré (formerly), which, by plac- 
ing these communications in a past already remote, shows that such a 
relation has for a long time been no more possible, and that it, conse- 
quently, belongs to the youth of the author. 

The essential question in relation to the meaning of this first paragraph 
is the following: Who are these elders whom Papias heard in his youth? 
They cannot be, as Weiffenbach has maintained, the elders or presbylers 
appointed in the churches by the apostles. For how could Papias, the 
contemporary of Polycarp, one of the men of the older generation to the 
view of Ireneus, have been formerly (in his youth) instructed by these 
disciples of the apostles! The anachronism resulting from this explana- 
tion is a flagrant one. No more, on the other hand, can these elders be, 
as has been claimed, simply and exclusively the apostles. In that case 
Papias would have used this term, and not the term elders, The title 
elders (tpeoBirepo, seniores) has, with the Fathers, as Holtzmann has well 
remarked, a relative meaning. For Ireneus and the men of the third 
Christian generation, the elders are the men of the second, the Polycarps 
and the Papiases; for these latter, they are the men of the first—the 
apostles, first of all, and, besides them, every immediate witness and dis- 
ciple of the Lord. This clearly appears from the second paragraph in 
which Papias gives an enumeration of those whom he calls the elders; it 
includes seven apostles and two disciples of the Lord who were not apostles, 
Aristion and the presbyter John. As the Apostle John has been named 
among the seven, it appears to me impossible to identify with the apostle 
this presbyter having the same name, notwithstanding the reasons given 
by Zahn and Riggenbach. He isa second John, who lived in Asia Minor, 
and whom the special surname of elder or presbyter was intended, per- 
haps, to distinguish from the apostle, who was called either simply John, 
or the Apostle John.! 


And is it not evident that the words 4 1s €repos__ the ellipsis of the verb is inadmissible. 

are the conclusion and, as it were, the et 1See the clear and precise setting-forth of 
cetera of the preceding enumeration? More- this subject by Weiss : Commentar zum Evan- 
over, of what consequence is it which of the —_geliwm Johannis (6th ed. of Meyer’s Commen- 
disciples said such orsuchathing! Finally, tary). 


IN ASIA MINOR. 45 


It follows from this, that, in the first paragraph, Papias declares that he 
had in former years heard personally from the immediate disciples of 
Jesus (apostles or non-apostles). He does not name them; but we have 
no right to exclude from this number the Apostle J ohn, and, because of 
this statement, to declare false, as Eusebius does in his History, the words 
of Ireneeus: “ Papias, a fellow-disciple of Polycarp and hearer of John.” 
And this even more, since Ireneus, a native of Asia Minor, had probably 
been personally acquainted with Papias, and since Eusebius himself, in 
his Chronicon, affirms the personal connection of Papias, as well as that of 
Polycarp, with St. John. 

In the second paragraph, Papias passes from personal to indirect rela- 
tions. He explains how, at a later period, when he found himself pre- 
vented by distance or by the death of the elders from communicating 
with them, he set himself to the work of continuing to collect the mate- 
rials for his book. He took advantage of all the opportunities that were 
offered him by the visits which he received at Hierapolis, to question 
every one of those who had anywhere met with the elders; and it is on 
occasion of this statement, that he designates the latter by name: “ I asked 
him what Andrew, Peter . . . John, etc., said ” (when they were alive) re- 
specting such or such a circumstance in the life of the Lord, “ and what 
the two disciples of the Lord, Aristion and the presbyter John say ” (at the 
present time). And why, indeed, even after having communicated directly 
in his youth with some of these men, may not Papias have sought to 
gather some indirect information from the lips of those who had enjoyed 
such intercourse more recently or more abundantly than himself? At all 
events, as it evidently does not follow from the first paragraph that Papias 
had not been acquainted with John, so it does follow with equal clearness, 
from the second, that he was not personally instructed by John the Pres- 
byter; and thus a second error of Eusebius is to be corrected. 

What becomes, then, of the modern argument (Keim and others), 
drawn from the passage of Papias, against the residence of J ohn in Asia? 
‘“Papias himself declares,” it is said, “ that he was not acquainted with 
any one of the apostles, while he affirms that he was personally acquainted 
with John the Presbyter. Irenzeus, therefore, in speaking of him as the 
hearer of the Apostle John, has confounded the apostle with the pres- 
byter.” The fact is: 1. That Papias affirms his having been acquainted 

‘with elders (among whom might be John the Apostle) ; 2. That he denies a 
personal acquaintance with John the Presbyter ; and 3. That he expressly 
distinguishes John the Apostle from John the Presbyter. We see what is 
the value of the objection drawn from this testimony. 

But, it is said, Irenseeus may have been mistaken when alleging that the 
John known to Polycarp was the apostle, whereas this person was actually 
only the presbyter And this mistake of Irenseus may have led astray 
the whole tradition which emanates from him. Keim supports this asser- 
tion by the following expression of Irenzeus in his letter to Florinus, when 


1Comp, Zahn, Patr. apost, edition of Gebhardt, Harnack, etc. 


46 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 

he is speaking of his relations with Polycarp: “ When I was yet a child 
(raic éte Gv),” and by that other similar expression, in his great work, on 
the same occasion: “In our first youth (év tH mpérn jAcxia).” But every 
one acquainted with the Greek language knows well that such expressions, 
in particular the word translated by child (raic), often denote a young 
man;* and could the youngest Christian, who was of such an age as to 
hear Polycarp, in listening to his narratives, confound a simple presbyter 
with the Apostle John? Besides, Polycarp himself came to Rome, a 
short time before his martyrdom ; he appealed in the presence of Anicetus 
to the authority of the Apostle John, in order to support the Paschal 
observance of Asia Minor. The misapprehension, if it had existed, would 
infallibly, at that time, have been cleared up. Finally, even if the testi- 
mony of Irenzus had been founded on an error, it could not have had 
the decisive influence on the tradition which is ascribed to it. For there 
exist other statements which are contemporaneous with his, and which 
are necessarily independent of it—such as those of Clement in Egypt and 
Polycrates in Asia Minor; or even anterior to his—such as those of Apol- 
lonius in Asia, Polycarp at Rome, and Justin. It is consequently to 
attempt an impossibility, when we try to make the whole tradition on this 
point proceed from Irenzus. Ireneus wrote in Gaul about 185; how 
could he have drawn after him all those writers or witnesses who go back 
in a continuous series from 190 to 150, and that in all parts of the world !? 

Scholten has acknowledged the impossibility of explaining the error in 
Keim’s way.* He thinks that it arose from the Apocalypse, which was 
attributed to the Apostle John, and which appeared to have been composed 
in Asia.‘ 

Mangold himself has replied, with perfect justice, that it is, on the con- 
trary, only the certainty of John’s residence in Asia which could have 
brought the churches of that region to ascribe to him the composition of 
the Apocalypse® If Justin himself, while he resided at Ephesus, where he 
maintained his public dispute with Trypho, had not ascertained the cer- 
tainty of John’s residence in that country, could he have conceived the 
idea of ascribing to him so positively a book, the first chapters of which 
manifestly imply an Asiatic origin? 

Moreover, this tradition was so widely spread abroad throughout the 
churches of Asia Minor, that Irenzeus says that he had been acquainted 


in the narrative of the Acts, and who, as a 
consequence, might be confounded with the 
apostle, and a man as obscure as the presby- 
ter John. 

3 He decides in favor of Steitz, who has 
proved that the idea of John’s residence in 
Asia existed already when Apollonius and Ire- 
neeus wrote. 


1 John is called mats, by the Fathers, at the 
time when he becomes a disciple of Jesus. 

2 Against the testimony of Polyerates has 
been alleged the error contained in his letter 
to Victor, as to the deacon Philip, who, he says, 
was one of the Twelve. Steitz’s hypothesis 
which regards the words, “ who was one of the 
seven,” as interpolated in the text of Acts xxi. 


8, would overthrow the objection. But, in any 
ease, if there is an error (which cannot be 
fully proved) there remains a great difference 
between an apostolic man, such as the evan- 
gelist Philip, who had played so great a part 


4 Keim does not altogether reject this expla- 
nation. He says, “The Apocalypse came in 
also as a help.” 

5 Notes, in the 3d edition of Bleek’s Intro- 
duction, p. 168. 


IN ASIA MINOR. 47 


with several presbyters, who, by reason of their personal relations with the 
Apostle John, testified to the authenticity of the number 666 (in opposi- 
tion to the variant 616). Finally, how can we dispose of the testimony 
contained in the letter to Florinus? Scholten, it is true, has attempted to 
prove this document to be unauthentic. Hilgenfeld calls this attempt a 
desperate undertaking. We will add: and a useless one, even in case it is 
successful; for the letter of Irenseus to Victor, which no one tries to 
dispute, remains and is sufficient. Besides, there is nothing weaker than 
the arguments by which Scholten seeks to justify this act of critical 
violence. There is but one true reason—that which arises from the 
admission: If the letter were authentic, the personal relation of Poly- 
carp to John the apostle could be no longer denied. Very well! we may 
say, the authenticity of this letter remains unassailable, and, by the 
admission of Scholten himself, the personal relation of Polycarp to John 
cannot be denied. 

But it is claimed that, as the Apocalypse presupposes the death of all 
the apostles as an accomplished fact, and that in the year 68,’ the Apostle 
John could not have been still living about the year 100. And what, then, 
are the words of the Apocalypse from which the death of all the apostles 
is inferred? They are the following, according to the text which is now 
established (xviii. 20): “Rejoice thou heaven and ye saints and apostles 
and prophets (oi dyoe Kat of &téaroAo Kat oi rpodqprac), because God has taken 
upon the earth the vengeance which was due to you.” This passage 
assuredly proves that, at the date of the composition of the Apocalypse, 
there were in heaven a certain number of saints, apostles and prophets, 
who had suffered martyrdom. But these apostles are as far from being 
all the apostles as these saints are from being all the saints ! * 

Thus the objections against the unanimously authenticated historical 
fact of the residence of John in Asia,® to which critical prejudices have 
given rise, vanish away. 

Tradition does not merely attest John’s residence in Asia in a general 
way; it reports, in addition, many particular incidents which may indeed 


1 Hinleitung, p. 397. 

2Thus he asks how Eusebius procured 
that letter; how the relation of Polycarp with 
John is compatible with his death in 168 (we 
ought to say 156); why Irenzeus does not re- 
eall to Florinus his rank of presbyter of the 
Roman Church; and other arguments of like 
force. 

3 We do not here discuss this alleged date 
of the Apocalypse; we believe that we have 
elsewhere demonstrated its falsity. (Etudes 
biblique, tome ii. 5¢ étude.) 

4QOn the objection derived from the account 
of the murder of John by the Jews, in the 
Chronicle of Georgius Hamartdélos, see page 
51. 

5In no question, perhaps, is the decisive 
influence of the will on the estimate of facts 


more distinctly observed. Hilgenfeld, Baur’s 
disciple, and Baur himself have need of John’s 
residence in Asia, for it is the foundation of 
their argument against the authenticity of our 
Gospel, which is derived from the Apocalypse 
and the Paschal controversy. What happens? 
They find the testimonies which attest this 
fact perfectly convincing. Keim, on the con- 
trary, for whom that residence is a very trou- 
blesome fact (because the remote date which 
he assigns for the composition of our Gospel 
would be too near the time of that residence), 
declares these same testimonies valueless. 
What are we to think, after this, of the so 
much vaunted objectivity of historico-critical 
studies? Itis plain :--each critical judgment 
is determined by a sympathy or an antipathy 
which warps the understanding. 


48 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 

have been amplified, but which cannot have been wholly invented. In 
any case, these anecdotes imply a well-established conviction of the reality 
of this residence. 

There is, for example, the meeting of John with the heretic Cerinthus 
in a public bath, at Ephesus. “There are still living,” says Ireneeus (Adv. 
Haer. iii. 4), “people who have heard Polycarp relate that John, having 
entered a bath-house at Ephesus and having seen Cerinthus inside, sud- 
denly withdrew, without having bathed, saying: Let us go out, lest the 
house fall down because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is there.” This 
well attested incident recalls the vividness of impressions in the young 
apostle, who refused the right of healing in the name of Jesus to the be- 
liever who did not outwardly walk with the apostles, or who desired to 
bring down fire from heaven on the Samaritan village which was hostile 
to Jesus. Or, again, there is the incident, related by Clement of Alexandria, 
of the young man who was entrusted by John to a bishop of Asia Minor, 
and whom the aged apostle succeeded in bringing back from the criminal 


course upon which he had entered.! 


1 The following is the incident loaded with 
the rhetorical amplifications of Clement, as 
it is found in Quis dives salvus, c. 42: 

“Listen to that which is related (and it is 
not a tale, but a true history) of the Apostle 
John: When he was on his return from Pat- 
mos to Ephesus, after the death of the tyrant, 
he visited the surrounding countries for the 
purpose of establishing bishops and consti- 
tuting churches. One day, in a city near to 
Ephesus, after having exhorted the brethren 
and regulated the affairs, he noticed a spirited 
and beautiful young man, and, feeling him- 
self immediately attracted to him, he said to 
the bishop: ‘I place him on thy heart and 
on that of the Church.’ The bishop promised 
the apostle to take care of him. He received 
him into his house, instructed him and watch- 
ed over him until he could admit him to bap- 
tism. But, after he had received the seal of 
the Lord, the bishop relaxed in his watchful- 
ness. The young man, set free too soon, fre- 
quented bad society, gave himself up to all 
sorts of excess, and ended by stopping and 
robbing passengers on the highway. As a 
mettlesome horse, when he has once lett the 
road, dashes blindly down the precipice, so 
he, borne on by his natural character, plunged 
into the abyss of perdition. Despairing hence- 
forth of forgiveness, he yet desired at least to 
do something great in this criminal life. He 
gathers together his companions in debauch- 
ery and forms them into a band of brigands, 
of whom he becomes the chief, and soon he 
surpasses them all in the thirst for blood and 
violence. 

“After a certain lapse of time, John re- 


This incident recalls the ardor of 


turned to this same city; having finished all 
that he had to do there, he asks the bishop, 
‘Well, restore now the pledge which the Lord 
and I have entrusted to thee in the presence 
of the Church.’ The latter, dismayed, thinks 
that it isa matter of a sum of money which 
had been entrusted to him: ‘Not at all,’ 
answers John, ‘but the young man, the soul 
of thy brother!’ The old man sighs, and 
bursting into tears, answers: ‘ He is dead! ’— 
‘Dead!’ replies the Lord’s disciple ; ‘and by 
what sort of death?’ ‘Dead to God! He be- 
came ungodly and then a robber. He occu- 
pies, with his companions, the summit of this 
mountain.’ On hearing these words, the apos- 
tle rends his garments, smites his head and 
cries out: ‘Oh, to what a guardian have I 
entrusted the soul of my brother!’ He takes 
a horse and a guide, and goes directly to the 
place where the robbers are. He is seized by 
the sentinels, and, far from seeking to escape, 
he says: ‘It is for this very thing that Iam 
come; conduct me to your chief.’ The latter, 
fully armed, awaits his arrival. But as soon 
as he recognizes in the one who is approach- 
ing the Apostle John, he takes to flight. John, 
forgetting his age, runs after him, crying: 
‘Why dost thou fly from me, oh my son, from 
me thy father? Thou in arms, J an unarmed 
old man? Have pity on me! My son, fear 
not! There is still hope of life for thee! I 
am willing myself to assume the burden of 
all before Christ. If it isnecessary, I will die 
for thee, as Christ died for us. Stop! Believe! 
It is Christ who sends me!’ The young man, 
on hearing his words, stops, with downcast 
eyes. Then he throws away his arms, and 


IN ASIA MINOR. 4Y 


love in the young disciple who, at the first meeting with Jesus had given 
himself up wholly to Him, and whom Jesus had made His friend. 
Clement says that the apostle returned from Patmos to Ephesus after 
the death of the tyrant. Tertullian (De praescript. haer. c. 36) relates that 
that exile was preceded by a journey to Rome; and he adds the following 
detail: ‘After the apostle had been plunged in boiling oil and had come 
out of it safe and sound, he was banished to an island.” According to 
Irenzeus it would seem that the tyrant was Domitian.' Some scholars 
claim that a reminder of this punishment undergone by John may be 
found in the epithet witness (or martyr) which is given him by Polycrates. 
But perhaps there is in that narrative simply a fiction, to which the words 
addressed by Jesus to the two sons of Zebedee may have given rise: “Ye 
shall be baptized with the baptism that Iam baptized with,” words the 
literal realization of which is sought for in vain in the life of John. As 
to the exile in Patmos, it might also be supposed that that story is merely 
an inference drawn from Apoe. i. Nevertheless, Eusebius says: “ Tradition 
states (Adyoc Eyer); and as history proves the fact of exiles of this sort 
under Domitian, and that precisely for the crime of the Christian faith,’ 
there may well be more in it than the product of an exegetical combina- 
tion. This exile and the composition of the Apocalypse are placed by 
Epiphanius in the reign of Claudius (from the year 41 to the year 54). This 
date is positively absurd, since at that epoch the churches of Asia Minor, 
to which the Apocalypse is addressed, had no existence. Renan has 
supposed ® that the legend of the martyrdom of John might have arisen 
from the fact that this apostle had had to undergo a sentence at Rome at 
the same time as Peter and Paul. But this hypothesis is not sufficiently 
supported. Finally, according to Augustine, he drank a cup of poison 
without feeling any injury from it, and according to the anti-Montanist 
writer, Apollonius, (about 180), John raised to life a dead man at Ephesus 
(Eusebius, v. 18); two legends, which are perhaps connected with Matt. x. 
8 and Mark xvi.18. Steitz has supposed that the latter was only an alter- 
ation of the history of the young brigand rescued by John from perdition. 
Clement of Alexandria thus describes the ministry of edification and 
organization which the apostle exercised in Asia: “He visited the 
churches, instituted bishops and regulated affairs.” Rothe, Thiersch and 
Neander himself‘ attribute to the influence exerted by him the very 
stable constitution of the churches of Asia Minor in the second century, 


\ 


begins to tremble and weep bitterly. And 
when the old man comes up, he embraces his 
knees and asks him for pardon with deep 
groanings; these tears are for him asif a 
second baptism; only he refuses and still 
conceals his right hand. The apostle becom- 
ing himself surety for him before the Sa- 
viour, with an oath promises him his pardon, 
falls on his knees, prays, and finally, taking 
him by the hand, which he withdraws, leads 
him back to the Church, and there strives 


4 


so earnestly and powerfully, by fasting and 
by his discoursing, that he is at length able to 
restore him to the flock as an example of 
true regeneration.” 

1 For in Adv. Haer. v.33, he places the com- 
position of the Apocalypse under Domitian. 

2 Eusebius, H. E. iii. 18. 

8 0T° Antéchrist, p. 27 ff. 

4Geschichte der Pflanzung der christlichen 
Kirche, Vol. I1., p. 430. 


50 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 


of which we already find traces in the Apocalypse (the angel of the 
Church), and, a little later, in the epistles of Ignatius. History thus 
establishes the fact of a visit to these churches made by an eminent apos- 
tle, such as St. John was, who crowned the edifice erected by Paul. But 
the most beautiful monument of the visit of John in these regions is the 
maturity of faith and Christian life to which the churches of Asia were 
raised by his ministry. Polycrates, in his enthusiastic and symbolic lan- 
guage, represents to us St. John at this period of his life, as wearing on 
his forehead, like the Jewish high-priest, the plate of gold with the 
inscription, Holiness to the Lord. ‘“ John,” he says, “who rested on the 
bosom of the Lord, and who became a priest wearing the plate of gold, 
both witness and teacher.” The attempt has been made to find in this 
passage an absurdity, by taking it in the literal sense; but the thought of 
the aged bishop is clear: John, the last-survivor of the apostolate, had 
left in the Church of Asia the impression of a pontiff whose forehead was 
irradiated by the splendor of the holiness of Christ. It is not impossible 
that, in these three titles which he gives him, Polycrates alludes to the 
three principal books which were attributed to him: in that of priest 
wearing the sacerdotal frontlet, to the Apocalypse; in that of witness, to 
the Gospel; in that of teacher, to the Epistle. 

The hour for work had struck in the first place for Simon Peter; he had 
founded the Church in Israel and planted the standard of the new coye- 
nant on the ruins of the theocracy. Paul had followed: his work had 
been to liberate the Church from the restrictions of expiring Judaism and 
to open to the Gentiles the door of the kingdom of God. John succeeded 
them, he who had first come to Jesus, and whom his Master reserved for 
the last. He consummated the fusion of those heterogeneous elements 
of which the Church had been formed, and raised Christianity to the 
relative perfection of which it was, at that time, susceptible. 

According to all the traditions,’ John had never any other spouse than 
the Church of the Lord, nor any other family than that which he salutes 
by the nameof “ my children ” in his epistles. Hence the epithet virgi- 
nal (6 raphévioc), by which he is sometimes designated (Epiphanius and 
Augustine). 

We find in John Cassian an anecdote which well describes the memory 
which he had left behind him in Asia.? 


1Tertullian, De Monogamia, c. 17; Ambro- said the young man. Why isit not bent as 
siaster on 2 Cor. xi. 2: “All the apostles, ex- usual? In order not to take away from it, by 
cept John and Paul, were married.” bending it too constantly, the elasticity which 

2We transcribe it here from Hilgenfeld’s it should possess at the moment when I shall 
Introduction p. 405: “It is reported that the shoot the arrow. Do not be shocked then, 
blessed Evangelist John one day gently young man, at this short relief which we 
caressed a partridge, and that a young man give to our mind, which otherwise, losing its 
returning from the chase, on seeing him thus spring, could not aid us when necessity de- 
engaged, asked him, with astonishment, how mands it. This incident is, in any case,a 
so illustrious a man could give himself up to testimony to the calm and serene impression 
so trivial an occupation? What dost thou which the old age of John had left in the 
carry in thy hand? answered John. A bow, Church.” 


HIS DEATH. | 51 


V. 
THE DEATH OF ST. JOHN. 


All the statements of the Fathers relative to the end of John’s career, 
agree on this point, that his life was prolonged even to the limits of ex- 
treme old age. Jerome (Ep. to the Gal. vi. 10) relates that, having attained 
a very great age, and being too feeble to be able any longer to repair to the 
assemblies of the Church, he had himself carried thither by the young 
men, and that, having no longer strength to speak much, he contented 
himself with saying: “ My little children, love one another.” And when 
he was asked why he repeated always that single word, his reply was: 
“ Because it is the Lord’s commandment, and, if this is done, enough is 
done.” According to the same Jerome, he died, weighed down by old 
age, sixty-eight years after the Lord’s Passion—that is to say, about the 
year 100. Irenzeus says ‘‘ that he lived until the time of Trajan :” that is, 
until after the year 98. According to Suidas, he even attained the age of 
one hundred and twenty years. The letter of Polycrates proves that he 
was buried at Ephesus (oiro¢ év ’Egéow Kexoiunta). There were shown also 
in that city two tombs, each of which was said to be that of the apostle, 
(Eusebius, H. FE. vii. 25; Jerome, de vir. ill., c. 9), and it is by means of 
this fact that Eusebius tries to establish the hypothesis of a second John, 
called the presbyter, a contemporary of the apostle. The idea had also 
been conceived, that John would be exempt from the necessity of paying 
the common tribute to death. The words that Jesus had addressed to 
him (John xxi. 22) were quoted: “If I will that he tarry till I come, what 
is it to thee?” And we learn from St. Augustine that even his death did 
not cause this strange idea to pass away. In the treatise 124, on the Gos- 
pel of John, he relates that, according to some, the apostle was still living 
—peacefully sleeping in his grave, the proof of which was furnished by 
the fact that the earth was gently moved by his breathing. Isidore of 
Seville! relates that, when he felt that the day of his departure was come, 
John caused his grave to be dug; and, bidding his brethren farewell, he laid 
himself down in it as if in a bed—which, he says, leads some to allege 
that he is still alive. Some have gone even further than this, and alleged 
that he was taken up to heaven, as Enoch and Elijah were? 

A more important fact would be that which is related in a fragment of 
the chronicle by Georgius Hamartdélos (ninth century), published by Nolte.’ 
“After Domitian, Nerva reigned during one year, who, having recalled 
John from the island, permitted him to dwell at Ephesus (azéAvcev oixeiv 
év ’Egéow). Being left as the sole survivor among the twelve disciples, after 
having composed his Gospel, he was judged worthy of martyrdom; for 
Papias, bishop of Hierapolis, who was a witness of the fact (airérrn¢ robrov 
yevéuevoc), relates in the second book of the Discourses of the Lord that he 
was killed by the Jews (7c ix6 "Iovdaiwv avypé6y), thus fulfilling, like his 

1 De ortu et obitu patrum, 71. hannis in the collection of Apocryphal Acts, 


2 Hilgenfeld cites as proof pseudo-Hippo- — published by Tischendorf, 1851. 
lytus, Ephrem of Antioch and the Acta Jo- 3 Theol. Quartalschrift, 1862. 


52 BOOK I. THE APOSTLE JOHN. 

brother, the word which Christ had spoken respecting him: Ye shall 
drink the cup which I must drink. And the learned Origen, also, in his 
exposition of Matthew, affirms that John thus underwent martyrdom.” 

Keim and Holtzmann, at once regarding this event as established by 
evidence, and locating it without hesitation in Palestine because there is 
a reference to the Jews, have drawn from it an unanswerable proof as oppos- 
ing John’s residence in Asia Minor! This proceeding proves only one 
thing: the credulity of science when the matter in hand is to prove what 
it desires. And, first of all, were there not then in Ephesus also Jews 
capable of killing the apostle?? Then, does not the fragment itself place 
the scene in Asia: “Nerva permitted John to return to Ephesus.” Still 
further, it is as having been a witness of the scene that Papias is said to 
have related it. Did Papias, then, live in Palestine? Finally, supposing 
that this account were displeasing to the critics and contradicted their 
system, they would certainly ask how it is possible, if the work of Papias 
really contained that passage, that none of the Fathers who had his book 
in their hands, should have been acquainted with this alleged martyrdom 
of John, or have made mention of it? They would tell us that the quo- 
tation which Hamartélos makes from Origen is false, since that Father 
relates, indeed, the banishment to Patmos, but nothing more; etc., ete. 
And, in that case, their criticism would undoubtedly be well founded. All 
unprejudiced scholars have, in fact, admitted that the chronicler had a 
false Papias, or an interpolated Papias, in his hands. But in any case, if 
we accept this point in the account: killed by the Jews, it is only logical to 
see in the testimony given to this fact by Papias as an eye-witness, a sure 
proof of the personal relation which had existed between Papias and the 
apostle in Asia Minor. And yet Keim and Holtzmann find the means of 
seeing in it quite the opposite ! 

We conclude: If, as may be supposed, John was twenty to twenty-five 
years old, when he was called by Jesus about the year 30, he was from 
ninety to ninety-five about the year 100, three years after the accession of 
Trajan. There is nothing improbable in this. Consequently, he might 
have been in personal relations with the Polycarps and Papiases, born 
about the year 70, and with many other still younger presbyters who, as 
Trenzeus says, saw him face to face while he was living in Asia until the 
time of Trajan. 


Vi. 
THE CHARACTER OF JOHN. 


Ardor of affection, vividness of intuition,—such seem to have been, 
from the point of view of feeling and that of intelligence, the two 


dominant traits in John’s nature. 


1 Keim, Geschichte Jesu, 3d ed., Vol. I., p. 42. 
“A testimony, newly-discovered, which puts an 
end to all illusions.” 

2 Those who have visited the tomb of Poly- 
carp at Smyrna, and who have been received 


These two tendencies must have 


with a shower of stones from the hands of 
Jewish children when passing through the 
Jewish quarter, know something of the fa- 
naticism of the Jews of Asia even at the 


present time. What was it then! 


HIS CHARACTER. 53 


powerfully co-operated in bringing about the very close personal union 
which was formed between the disciple and his Master. While loving, 
John contemplated, and the more he contemplated, the more he loved. 
He was absorbed with this intuition of love and he drew from it his inner 
life. So he does not, like St. Paul, analyze faith and its object. “John 
does not discuss,” says de Pressensé, “he affirms.” It is enough for him 
to state the truth, in order that whoever loves it may receive it, as he has 
himself received it, by way of immediate intuition, rather than of rea- 
soning. We may apply to the Apostle John, in the highest degree, what 
Renan has said of the Semite: “He proceeds by intuition, not by deduc- 
tion.” At one bound, the heart of John reached the radiant height on 
which faith has its throne. Already he feels himself in absolute possession 
of the victory: “He whois born of God sinneth not.” The ideal apper- 
tains to him; realized in Him whom he loves and in whom he believes. 

Peter was distinguished by his practical originating power, scarcely com- 
patible with tender receptivity. Paul united to active energy and the 
most consummate practical ability the penetrating vigor of an unequalled 
dialectic. For, although a Semite, he had passed his earliest years in one 
of the most brilliant centres of Hellenic culture and had there appropri- 
ated the acute forms of the occidental mind. John is completely differ- 
ent from both. He could not have laid the foundations of the Christian 
work, like Peter; he could not have contended, like Paul, with dialectic 
subtlety against Jewish Rabbinism, and composed the Epistles to the Gala- 
tians and the Romans. But, in the closing period of the apostolic age, it 
was he who was charged with putting the completing work upon the 
development of the primitive Church, which St. Peter had founded and 
St. Paul had emancipated. He has bequeathed to the world three works, 
in which he has exalted to their sublime perfection those three supreme 
intuitions in the Christian life:—that of the person of Christ, in the Gos- 
pel; that of the individual believer, in the first Epistle; and that of the 
Church, in the Apocalypse. Under three aspects, the same theme :—the 
divine life realized in man, eternity filling time. One of John’s own ex- 
pressions sums up and binds together these three works :—eternal life abid- 
ing in us. That life appears in the state of full realization in the first, of 
progress and struggle in the two others. John, through his writings and 
his person, is, as it were, the earthly anticipation of the divine festival. 


BOOK SECOND. 


ANALYSIS AND CHARACTERISTICS OF THE 
FOURTH GOSPEL. 





Biedermann, in his Christian Dogmatics (p. 254), calls the fourth Gospel 
“the most wonderful of all religious books.” And headds: “From one 
end to the other of this work, the most profound religious truth and the 
most fantastic monstrosity meet not only with one another, but in one 
another.” Neither this admiration nor this disdain can surprise us. For 
the Johannean conception possesses in the highest degree these two traits, 
one of which repels pantheism and the other attracts it: the transcend- 
ency of the divine personality and the immanence of the perfect life in 
the finite being. 





CHAPTER FIRST. 
ANALYSIS. 


WE do not intend to discuss here the different plans of the Johannean 
narrative proposed by the commentators.1. We shall only indicate the 
course of the narrative as it becomes clear from an attentive study of the 
book itself. ) 

I. The narrative is preceded by a preamble which, as interpreters almost 
unanimously acknowledge,” includes the first eighteen verses of the first 
chapter. In this introduction, the author sets forth the sublime grandeur 
and vital importance of the subject which he is about to treat. This sub- 
ject is nothing less, indeed, than the appearance in Jesus of the perfect 
revealer,—the communication in His person of the life of God Himself to 
humanity. To reject this word made flesh will thus be the supreme sin 
and misfortune, as is shown by the example of the rebellious Jews ; to re- 
ceive Him will be to know and possess God, as already the experience of 
all believers, Jews and Gentiles, proves. The three aspects of the evan- 
gelical fact are, consequently, brought out in this prologue: 1. The Word 
as agent of the divine work; 2. The rejection of the Word, by the act of 


1See at the beginning of the commentary. 2 Reuss forms an exception; see at i. 1. 
g he 


54 


ANALYSIS. 55 


unbelief ; 8. The reception given to the Word by the act of faith. The first 
of these three ideas is the dominant one in vv. 1-5; the second in vv. 6-11 ; 
the third in vv. 12-18. 

But we must not regard these three aspects of the narrative which is 
to follow as being of equalimportance. The primordial and fundamental 
fact in this history, is the appearance and manifestation of the Word. On 
this permanent foundation the two secondary facts are presented to view 
alternately—unbelief and faith—the progressive manifestations of which 
determine the phases of the narrative. 

Il. The narrative opens with the story of the three days, i. 19-42, in 
which the work of the Son of God began on the earth and in the heart of 
the evangelist, if it is true, as the greater part of the interpreters admit, 
that the anonymous companion of Andrew, vy. 30 ff.,is no other than 
the author himself. 

On the first day, John the Baptist proclaims before an official deputation 
of the Sanhedrim the startling fact of the actual presence of the Messiah in 
the midst of the people: ‘There isin the midst of you one whom you know 
not” (ver. 26). The day following, he points out Jesus personally to 
two of his disciples as the one of whom he had meant to speak ; the 
third day, he lays such emphasis in speaking to them upon that declara- 
tion of the day before that the two disciples determine to follow Jesus. 
This day becomes at the same time the birthday of faith. Both recog- 
nize the Messianic dignity of Jesus. Then Andrew brings Simon, his 
brother, to Jesus; aslight indication, i. 42 (see the exegesis), seems to show 
that the other disciple likewise brings his own brother (James, the 
brother of John). The first nucleus of the society of believers is formed. 

Three days follow (i. 43-ii. 11); the first two have as their result the 
adding of two new believers, Philip and Nathanael, to the three or four 
preceding ones; the third day, that of the marriage-feast at Cana, serves 
to strengthen the nascent faith of all. Thus faith, born of the testimony 
of the forerunner and of the contact of the first disciples with Jesus Him- 
self, is extended and confirmed by the increasing spectacle of His glory 
(ii. 11). 

Jesus, on His return to Galilee and still surrounded by His family, 
abandons Nazareth and comes to take up His abode at Capernaum, a city 
much more fitted to become the centre of his work (ii. 12). 

But the Passover feast draws near. The moment has come for Jesus to 
begin the Messianic work in the theocratic capital, at Jerusalem, ii. 13- 
22, From this moment, He calls His disciples to accompany Him con- 
stantly (ver. 17). The purification of the temple is a significant appeal to 
every Israclitish conscience; the people and their rulers are invited by 
this bold act to co-operate, all of them together, for the spiritual elevation 
of the theocracy, under the direction of Jesus. If the people yielded 
themselves to this impulse, all was gained. Instead of this, they remain 
cold. This is the sign of a secret hostility. The future.victory of unbelief 
is, as it were, decided in principle. Jesus discerns and by a profound 
saying reveals the gravity of this moment (ver. 19). 


56 BOOK Il. THE GOSPEL. 

Some symptoms of faith, nevertheless, show themselves in the face of 
this rising opposition (ii. 23-iii1. 21); but a carnal alloy disturbs this good 
movement. It is as a worker of miracles that Jesus attracts attention. <A 
remarkable example of this faith which is not faith is presented in the 
person of Nicodemus, a Pharisee,a member of the Sanhedrim. Like 
several of his colleagues, and many other believers in the capital, he recog- 
nizes as belonging to Jesus a divine mission, attested by His miraculous 
works (iii. 2). Jesus endeavors to give him a purer understanding of the 
person and work of the Messiah than that which he had derived from 
Pharisaic teaching, and dismisses him with this farewell which was full 
of encouragement (ver. 21): “He that doeth the truth cometh to the 
light.” The sequel of the Gospel will show the fulfillment of this promise; 
comp. vil. 50 ff. ; xix. 39 ff. 

These few traces of faith, however, do not counterbalance the great fact 
of the national unbelief which becomes more marked. This tragic fact is 
the subject of a final testimony which John the Baptist renders to Jesus 
before he leaves the scene (iii. 22-36). They are both baptizing in Judea; 
John takes advantage of this proximity to proclaim Him yet once more as 
the Bridegroom of Israel. Then, in the face of the marked indifference of 
the people and the rulers towards the Messiah, he gives utterance to that 
threatening—the last echo of the thunders of Sinai, the final word of the Old 
Testament (ver. 36): “ He that refuseth obedience to the Son shall not see 
life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.” 

On the occasion of this momentary contemporaneousness of the two 
ministries of Jesus and John, the evangelist makes the following remark 
which surprises us (ver. 24): “For John had not yet been cast into prison.” 
Nothing in the preceding narrative could have given rise to the idea that 
John had already been arrested. Why this explanation without ground ? 
Certainly the author wishes to correct a contrary opinion which he sup- 
poses to exist in the minds of his readers. The comparison with Matt. iv. 
12 and Mark i. 141 explains for us this correction which is introduced by 
the way. 

With this general unbelief, on the one hand, and this defective faith in 
some, is joyfully contrasted the spectacle of a whole city which, without 
the aid of any miracle, welcomes Jesus with faith, as all Israel should have 
received Him. And it is Samaria which gives this example of faith (iv. 1- 
42). It is the prelude of the future lot of the Gospel in the world. 

Jesus returns to Galilee for the second time (iv. 48-54). The reception 
which He there meets from His fellow-countrymen is more favorable than 
that which He found in Judea; they feel themselves honored by the sensa- 
tion which their fellow-citizen has produced in the capital. But it is always 
the worker of miracles, the thawmaturgist, whom they salute in Him. As 
an example of this disposition, is related the healing of the son of a promi- 
nent personage who hastens from Capernaum to Cana at the first report 
of the arrival of Jesus. 


1“ Jesus, having heard that John was de- _ that John was delivered up, Jesus came into 
livered up, withdrew into Galilee.” “After Galilee.” 


ANALYSIS. 57 


We meet here also with a remark (ver. 54) intended to combat a false 
notion for which the preceding narrative could not have given occasion: 
the confusion between the two returns to Galilee which had been previ- 
ously mentioned (i. 44 and iv. 3). The author brings out the distinction 
between these two arrivals by means of the difference in the two miracles, 
both performed at Cana, which signalized them. The cause of the confu- 
sion which he labors to dispel is easily pointed out: it is found in the nar- 
rative of our Synoptics; comp. besides the passages already cited, Luke iv. 
14 (together with the entire context which precedes and follows). 

Up to this point we have seen the work of Jesus extend itself to all parts 
of the Holy Land in succession, and we have looked upon various mani- 
festations either of true faith (in the disciples and the inhabitants of Sychar), 
or of faith mingled with a carnal alloy (in the believers of Jerusalem and 
Galilee), or of indifference or entire unbelief (at Jerusalem and in Judea), 
which it called forth. We think that it is in harmony with the evangelist’s 
thought, to make here, at the end of the fourth chapter, a pause in the 
narrative. Till now we have had only a period of preparation, in which 
various moral phenomena have been announced, rather than distinctly 
emphasized. A change is made from chap. v. onward. The general move- 
ment, especially at Jerusalem, determines itself in the direction of unbe- 
lief; it goes on ever increasing as far as the end of chap. xii., where it 
reaches its provisional limit. Here the author arrests himself, to cast a 
glance backward, in order to search into the causes of this moral catastro- 
phe and to point out the irremediable gravity of it. What is related, there- 
fore, from chap. y. to the end of chap. xii., forms the third part of the book, 
the second part of the narrative properly so called. 

III. The development of the national unbelief (chap. v.-xii.). Although 
Jesus had determined to leave Judea in consequence of a malevolent re- 
port made to the Pharisees respecting His work in that region (iv. 1, 3), from 
chap. v. onward we find Him again at Jerusalem. He desired to make a 
new attempt in that capital. For this purpose He takes advantage of one 
of the national feasts, probably that of Purim, which occurred a month be- 
fore the Passover; His thought undoubtedly was to prolong His sojourn 
in the capital, if it were possible, until this latter feast. But the healing 
of the impotent man on a Sabbath caused the concealed hatred on the part 
of the rulers against Him to break forth; and when He justifies Himself 
by alleging His filial duty to labor in the work of salvation which His 
Father is accomplishing, their indignation knows no longer any limits; He 
is accused of speaking blasphemy in making Himself equal with Gad. 
Jesus defends Himself by showing that this alleged equality with God is, in 
fact, only the most profound dependence on God. Then, in support of this 
testimony which He bears to Himself, He cites not only that of John the 
Baptist, but especially that of the Father, first, in the miraculous works 
which He gives Him to perform, and then in the Scriptures—in particu- 
lar, in the writings of Moses, in whose name He is accused. By this de- 
fense, to which the recently accomplished miracle gives an irresistible 
force, He escapes the present danger; but He sees Himself obliged im- 


58 BOOK Il. THE GOSPEL. 


mediately to leave Judea, which for a long time remains shut against 
Him. 

In chap. vi. we find Him, therefore, again in Galilee. 

The Passover is near (ver. 4). Jesus cannot go and celebrate it at Jeru- 
salem. But God prepares for Him, as well as for His disciples, an equiv- 
alent in Galilee. He repairs with them to a desert place; the multitudes 
follow Him thither ; He receives them compassionately and extemporizes 
for them a divine banquet (the multiplication of the loaves). The people 
are enraptured ; but it is not the hunger and thirst for righteousness which 
excites them; it is the expectation of the earthly enjoyments and gran- 
deurs of the Messianic Kingdom, which seems to them close at hand; 
they desire to make Him a King (vi. 15). Jesus measures the danger with 
which this carnal enthusiasm threatens His work. And as He knows 
how accessible His apostles still are to this spirit of error, and perhaps 
discerns in some one among them the author of this movement, He 
makes haste to isolate them from the people by causing them to recross 
the sea. He Himself remains alone with the multitudes, in order to 
quiet them ; then, He commends His work anew to the Father in solitude, 
and thereafter, walking on the waters, He rejoins His disciples who are 


struggling against the wind; and on the next day, in the synagogue of © 


Capernaum, where the people come to rejoin Him, He speaks in such a 
way as to cool their false zeal. He gives them to understand that He is 
by no means such a Messiah as the one whom they are seeking, that He 
is “the heavenly bread” designed to nourish souls that are spiritually 
hungry. He pushes so far His opposition to the common ideas that almost 
the whole body of His disciples who habitually follow Him break with 
Him. Not content with this purification, Jesus even wishes to make it 
penetrate further, even into the circle of the Twelve, to whom with bold- 
ness he gives the liberty of withdrawing also. We can understand that it 
was especially to Judas, the representative of the carnal Messianic idea 
among the Twelve, that He thus opened the door; the evangelist him- 
self remarks this as he closes this incomparable narrative (vv. 70-71). 

A whole summer passes, respecting which we learn nothing. The 
feast of Tabernacles draws near (chap. vii.). Jesus has an interview with 
His brethren; they are astonished that, having already failed to go and 
celebrate at Jerusalem the two feasts of the Passover and Pentecost, He 
does not seem disposed to repair to this one,in order to manifest Himself 
also to His adherents in Judea. He replies to them that the moment for 
His public manifestation as the Messiah has not yet come. This moment, 
indeed—He knows it well—will infallibly be that of His death; now His 
work is not yet finished. He repairs to Jerusalem, however, but seerctly, 
as it were, and only towards the middle of the feast; He thus takes the 
authorities by surprise, and gives them no time to take measures against 
Him. On the last and great day of the feast, He compares Himself to 
the rock in the wilderness whose waters of old quenched the thirst of the 
fainting people. Lively discussions in regard to Him arise among His 
hearers. At every word which He utters He is interrupted by His adversa- 


ANALYSIS. 59 


ries,and while a part of His hearers recognize in Him a prophet, and some 
even declare Him to be the Christ, He is obliged to reproach others with 
cherishing towards Him feelings inspired by the one who is a liar and 
murderer from the beginning. All the discourses which fill chaps. vii. 
and viii. are summed up, as He Himself says, in these two words : judg- 
ment and testimony; judgment on the moral state of the people, testimony 
given to His own Messianic and divine character. A first judicial meas- 
ure is taken against Him. Officers are sent out by the authorities to lay 
hold of Him in the temple where He is speaking (vii. 32). But the power 
of His word on their consciences and the power of the public sentiment, 
still favorable to Jesus, arrest them ; they return without having laid hands 
upon Him (ver. 45). The rulers then take a new step. They declare 
every one excommunicated from the synagogue who shall recognize 
Jesus as the Messiah (comp. ix. 22); and in consequence of one of His 
sayings which seems to them blasphemous (“ Before Abraham was, I am,” 
viii. 58), they make a first attempt to stone Him. 

Chapter ix. also belongs to this sojourn at the feast of Tabernacles. 
A new Sabbath miracle, the healing of the man who was born blind, ex- 
asperates the rulers. In the name of the legal ordinance, this miracle 
should not be, cannot have been. The blind man reasons in an inverse 
way : the miracle is ; therefore, the Sabbath has not been violated. This 
unsettled conflict ends with the violent expulsion of the blind man. 
Jesus reveals to this man His divine character, and, after having cured 
him of his double blindness, receives him into the number of His own. 
Thereupon, in chap. x., He describes Himself as the divine Shepherd who 
brings His own sheep from the ancient theocratic sheepfold, in order to 
lead them to life, while the mass of the flock is led to the slaughter by 
those who have constituted themselves their directors and masters. 
Finally, he announces the incorporation in His flock of new sheep 
broughtarom other sheepfolds (ver. 16). On hearing this discourse, there is 
a still more marked division among the people, between His adversaries 
and His partisans (vv. 19-21). 

Three months elapse; the evangelist does not speak of the use made 
of them. It cannot be supposed that, in the condition in which matters 
were, Jesus passed all this time at Jerusalem or even in Judea—He who, 
before the scenes of this character, had been able to reappear at Jerusa- 
lem only unawares. He undoubtedly returned into Galilee. At the end 
of December, Jesus goes to the feast of the Dedication (x. 22-39). The 
Jews surround Him, resolved to wrest from Him the grand declaration : 
“Tell us whether thou art the Christ?” Jesus, as always, affirms the 
thing while avoiding the word. He emphasizes His perfect unity with 
the Father, which necessarily implies His Messianic character. The ad- 
versaries already take up stones to stone Him. Jesus makes them fall 
from their hands by this question (ver. 32): “I have shown you from my 
Father many good works; for which one do you stone me?” He well 
knew that it was His two previous miracles (chaps. v. and ix.) which had 
caused their hatred to overflow. Then He appeals, against the accusation 


60 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


of blasphemy, to the divine character attributed by the Old Testament 
itself to the theocratic authorities—a fact which should have prepared 
Israel to believe in the divine character of the supreme messenger, the 
Messiah. 

From Jerusalem Jesus betakes Himself to Perea, into the regions where 
John had baptized, into that region which had been the cradle of His 
work (x. 40-42). 

It is there (chap. xi.) that the appeal of the sisters of Lazarus reaches 
Him. We are surprised to see (ver. 1) Bethany designated as the village 
of Mary and Martha. As these two sisters have not yet been named, how 
can the mention of them serve to give the reader information respecting 
the village. It must, indeed, be admitted, here also, that the author 
makes an allusion to other narratives which he supposes to be known to 
the readers (comp. Luke x. 88-42; then also John xi. 2 with Matt. xxvi. 
6-13 and Mark xiv. 3-9). The miracle of the raising of Lazarus completes 
that for which the two preceding ones had prepared the way. It brings 
to maturity the plans of Jesus’ enemies. At the proposal of Caiaphas 
(xi. 49, 50), the Sanhedrim decide to rid themselves of the impostor. 
And while Jesus withdraws to the north, to the neighborhood of an isolated 
hamlet named Ephraim, the rulers determine at length to take a first 
public measure against His person. Every Israelite is called upon to tell 
the place where Jesus is to be found (ver. 57). At that time, perhaps, 
there sprang up in the heart of Judas the first thought of treachery. 
Shortly afterwards, six days before the Passover, Jesus sets out for Jeru- 
salem; He stops at Bethany, and there, at a banquet which is offered Him 
by His friends, He detects the first manifestation of the murderous hatred 
of Judas (xii. 4, 5). 

On the next day the royal entrance of Jesus into His capital takes 
place; this event realizes the wish which His brethren expressed six 
months before. His miracles—the raising of Lazarus, in particular—have 
excited to the highest degree the enthusiasm of the pilgrims who came to 
the feast; the rulers are paralyzed, as it were, and do nothing. Thus is 
accomplished the great Messianic act by which, once at least, Jesus says 
publicly to Israel: “Behold thy King.” But, at the same time, the rage 
of His adversaries is pushed thereby to extremity (xii. 9-19). The resur- 
rection of Lazarus and the public homage which resulted from it—these, 
therefore, according to the narrative of John, were the two immediate 
causes of the catastrophe which had long since been preparing. 

Jesus was not ignorant of what was passing; He was not indifferent to 
it. The occasion was afforded Him of giving utterance in the temple 
itself to the impressions of His heart, in these days when He saw the end 
approaching. Certain Greeks asked that they might speak with Him 
(ver. 20). Like an instrument whose stretched strings become sonorous 
at the first contact with the bow, His soul responded to that appeal. The 
Greeks? Yes, certainly; the Gentile world is about to open itself; the 
power of Satan is about to crumble in this vast domain of the Gentile 
world and to give place to that of the divine monarch. But words cannot 


ANALYSIS. 61 


suffice for such a work; death is necessary. It is from the height of the 
instrument of punishment that Jesus will draw all men to Himself. And 
what anguish does not that bloody prospect cause Him! His soul is 
moved, even troubled by it. John alone has preserved for us the story of 
that exceptional hour. It was the close of His public ministry. After 
having yet once more invited the Jews to believe in the light which was 
about to be veiled from them, “He departed,” he says, “and did hide 
Himself from them” (ver. 36). 

Having arrived at this point, the evangelist casts a glance backward on 
the way which has been gone over,—on the public ministry of Jesus in 
Israel. He asks himself how the unbelief of the Jews has been able to 
resist so many and so great miracles (ver. 87 ff.),so many and so powerful 
teachings (ver. 44 ff). 

This general blindness, however, had not been universal (ver. 42). The 
divine light had penetrated into many hearts, even among the members 
of the Sanhedrim; the fear of the Pharisees alone prevented them from 
confessing their faith. In fact, even in this part of the Gospel which 1s 
devoted to tracing the progress of the national unbelief, the element of 
faith is not entirely wanting. Throughout the whole narrative, we can 
follow the steps of a development of faith parallel with, although subor- 
dinate to that of unbelief: thus, in the confession of Peter, chap. vi.; in 
the selection which is effected at Jerusalem (chaps. vii. viii.) ; in the case of 
the man born blind, in chap. ix., and in that of those sheep, in chap. x., 
who, at the shepherd’s call, follow Him out of the theocratic sheepfold; 
finally, in the case of the numerous adherents in Bethany and in that of 
the multitudes who accompany Jesus on Palm Sunday. These are the 
hearts prepared to form the Church of Pentecost. 

IV. As since chap. v., we have seen the tide of unbelief prevailing, so, 
from chap. xiii., it is faith in the person of the disciples which becomes 
the preponderant element of the narrative; and that even till this faith 
has reached its relative perfection and Jesus is able to give thanks for the 
finished work (chap. xvii.). This development is effected by manifesta- 
tions, no longer of power, but of love and light. There is, first, the wash- 
ing of the feet, intended to make them understand that true glory is 
found in serving, and to uproot from their hearts the false Messianic 
ideal which still hid from them, in this regard, the divine thought realized 
in Jesus. Then there are the discourses in which He explains to them in 
words that which He has just revealed to them in act. First of all, He 
quiets their minds with regard to the approaching separation (xiil. 31-xiv. 
81); it will be followed by anear reunion, His spiritual return. For death 
will be for Him the way to glory, and if they cannot follow Him now into 
the perfect communion of the Father, they will be able to do so later in 
the way which He is about to open to them. In the meantime, by the 
strength which He will communicate to them, they will accomplish in 
His stead the work for which He has only been able to prepare. If they 
love Him, let them rejoice, therefore, in His departure, instead of sorrowing 
because of it, and let them, as a last farewell, receive His peace. After this, 


62 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


Jesus transports them in thought to the moment when,by the bond of the 
Holy Spirit, they will live in Him and He in them, in the same manner as 
the branch lives when united to the vine (xv. 1-xvi. 15); He points out to 
them the single duty of this new condition, to abide in Him through obe- 
dience to His will; then He describes to them, without any reserve, the 
relation of hostility which will be formed between them and the world; 
but He reveals to them also the force which will contend by means of 
them, and by means of which they will conquer; the Spirit, who shall 
glorijy Him in them. Finally, in closing (xvi. 16-83), He returns to that 
impending separation which so sorrowfully preoccupies their thoughts. 
He vividly portrays to them its brevity, as well as its grand results. And, 
summing up the object of their faith in these four propositions which an- 
swer to one another (ver. 28): “I came forth from the Father, and am 
come into the world; and now I leave the world, and go to the Father,” 
He illuminates their minds with such a vivid clearness that the promised 
day, that of the Holy Spirit, seems to them to have arrived, and they cry 
out: “We believe that thou camest forth from God!” Jesus answers 
them: “ At last ye believe!” And to this profession of their faith he affixes, 
in chap. xvii., the seal of the act of thanksgiving and prayer. He asks of 
the Father for Himself the reinstatement in His condition of glory which 
is indispensable to Him, in order that He may give eternal life to those 
who believe in Him on the earth. He gives thanks for the gaining of 
these eleven men; He prays for their preservation and their perfect con- 
secration to the work which He entrusts to them. He intercedes, finally, 
for the whole world, to which their word is to bring salvation. This prayer 
of chap. xvii. recapitulates, in the most solemn form, the work accom- 
plished in His disciples chaps. xiii—xvii., after the same manner as the 
retrospective view at the end of chap. xii. summed up the development 
of unbelief in the nation and among its rulers (chaps. v.-xu.). Neverthe- 
less, as the element of faith was not wanting in the part describing unbe- 
lief, so also the fact of unbelief is found in this picture of the develop- 
ment of faith. It is represented in the inmost circle of the disciples by 
the traitor, whose presence is several times recalled to mind in the course 
of chap. xiii. The departure of Judas (ver. 80), marks the moment when 
that impure element finally gives place to the spirit of Jesus. 

The history of Jesus contains something more and other than the reve- 
lation of the character of God and the impressions of faith and unbelief to 
which that revelation gives rise among men. The essential fact in this 
history is the work of reconciliation which is accomplished, and which 
prepares the way for the communication of the life of God Himself to 
believers. Here is the reason why the history of Jesus includes, besides 
the picture of His ministry of teaching, the account of His death and 
resurrection! It is by means of these last facts that faith will enter into 


1JTt is easy to observe the embarrassment the substance of the narrative of our Gospel. 
of those who, like Reuss, Hilgenfeld, etc., They cannot account for the two following 
make of the idea of the revelation of the Logos __ parts. 


ANALYSIS. 63 


complete possession of its object and will reach its full maturity, as it is 
by means of them, also, that the refusal will be consummated which con- 
stitutes final unbelief. 

V. The whole story of the Passion, in chaps. xvili. and xix., is related 
from the point of view of Jewish unbelief, which is consummated in put- 
ting the Messiah to death. This part is connected with the previous one, 
in which the development of this unbelief was related (v.—-xii.). At the 
very outset, we remark the complete omission of the scene in Gethsem- 
ane; but, after the numerous allusions to the Synoptical narratives which 
we have already established, these words: “Having said this, He went 
away with His disciples beyond the brook Cedron into a garden, into 
which He entered with His disciples,” can only be regarded as a reference to 
the account of that struggle which was known from the earlier writings. 
Then follows the deliverance of the disciples by reason of the powerful 
impression of the words: “Iam he.’ On the occasion of the striking of 
the high priest’s servant with the sword, Peter and Malchus are desig- 
nated by name in this Gospel only. The story of the trial of Jesus mentions 
only the preliminary examination which took place in the house of Annas. 
But by expressly designating this appearanee for trial as the jirst (ver. 13: 
“to Annas first’”’), even though a second one is not related, and by indica- 
ting the sending of Jesus to Caiaphas (ver. 24: “Annas sent Jesus bound 
to Caiaphas, the high priest”), the evangelist gives us to understand, as 
clearly as possible, that he supposes other accounts to be known, which 
complete what is omitted in his own. The three denials of St. Peter are 
not related in succession; but they are, as must in reality have been the 
fact, interwoven with the phases of the trial of Jesus (xviii. 15-27). The 
description of the appearance before Pilate (xviii. 28-xix. 16) reveals with 
an admirable precision the tactics of the Jews, at once audacious and 
crafty. The instinct of truth and the respect for the mysterious person of 
Jesus which restrain Pilate until he finally yields to the requirements of 
personal interest, the cunning of the Jews, who pass without shame from 
one charge to another, and end by wresting from Pilate through fear what 
they despair of obtaining from him in the name of justice, but who only 
obtain this shameful victory by renouncing their dearest hope and bind- 
ing themselves as vassals to the heathen empire (xix. 15: “We have no 
king but Ceesar’’),—all this is described with an incomparable knowledge 
of the situation. This is, perhaps, the master-piece of the Johannean 
narrative. 

One feature of the story should be particularly noticed. In xviii. 28, 
the Jews are unwilling to enter into Pilate’s palace—“ that they might not 
be defiled, but might eat the Passover.” The Paschal feast was therefore 
not yet celebrated on the day of Christ’s death, according to our Gospel ; 
it was to be celebrated only in the evening. It was, therefore, the 14th of 
Nisan, the day of the preparation of the Passover. This circumstance is so 
purposely made prominent in several other passages (xiii. 1, 29; xix. 31, 
etc.), that we are led to think of other narratives which placed the death 
of Christ only on the following day, the 15th of Nisan, and after the Paschal] 


64 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


supper. Now this is what the Synoptical account seems to do. A new 
proof of the constant relation existing between the two narratives. 

In the picture of the crucifixion, the disciple whom Jesus loved—that 
mysterious personage who had already played a quite peculiar part in the 
last evening—is found, as the only one among the disciples, near the cross. 
To him Jesus entrusts His mother. It is he, also, who sees the water and 
the blood flow from the pierced side of Jesus, and who verifies in this 
single fact the simultaneous accomplishment of two prophecies. 

VI. The story of the resurrection (chap. xx.) includes the description of 
three appearances which took place in Judea: that which was granted to 
Mary Magdalene, near the sepulchre; that which, in the evening, took 
place in the presence of all the disciples, and in which Jesus renewed to 
the apostles their commission, and imparted to them the first-fruits of 
Pentecost; and, finally, that which occurred eight days afterwards, and in. 
which the obstinate unbelief of Thomas was overcome. From this we 
see that, just as the element of faith was not entirely wanting in the scenes 
of the Passion (it is sufficient to recall to mind the parts played by the 
disciple whom Jesus loved, the women, Joseph of Arimathea, and Nico- 
demus), so the element of unbelief is no more wanting in the portion 
intended to describe the final triumph of faith. The exclamation of adora- 
tion uttered by Thomas, “My Lord and my God!” in which the faith of 
the most incredulous of the disciples suddenly takes the boldest flight and 
fully reaches the height of its divine object, as it is described in the pro- 
logue, forms the conclusion of the narrative. Thus it is that the end 
connects itself with the starting-point. 

These three aspects of the evangelical fact already indicated in the pro- 
logue: the Son of God, Jewish unbelief, and the faith of the Church are, 
accordingly, now fully treated; the subject is exhausted. 

VII. The last two verses of chap. xx. are the close of the book.! The 
author declares therein the aim which he set before himself. It is not a 
complete history that he has desired to relate; it is, as we have ourselves 
proved, the selection of a certain number of points designed to produce 
in the readers faith in the Messiahship and divinity of Jesus—a faith in 
which they will find life as he himself has found it. 

VIII. Chap. xxi., in consequence of what precedes, is a supplement. 
Is it from the hand of the author? The affirmative and negative are 
still maintained. It is a matter of very little importance; for, even if it is 
from another writer, the latter has only written out a story which fre- 
quently came from the author’s lips; so similar are the style and manner 
of narrating to those of the book itself. This appendix must have been 
added very early, and before the publication of the work, since it is not 
wanting in any manuscript or in any version. It completes the story of 
the appearances of Jesus by giving an account of one which took place in 


1 Hilgenfeld believes himself able to main- dence. Renan says, without hesitation, 
tain, with some others, that the narrative “With all critics, I make the first redac- 
continues even to the end of chap. xxi. But tion of the fourth Gospel end at chap xx.” 
this is to come into collision with the evi- — (p. 534). 


ANALYSIS. 65 


Galilee. Jesus gives to the disciples, by asymbolic act which connects itself 
with their former worldly occupation, a pledge of the magnificent success 
which they will obtain in their future apostleship (xxi. 1-14). Then He 
reinstates Peter in this office, and announces to him his future martyr- 
dom by which he will completely efface the stain of his denial. The 
author takes advantage of this opportunity to restore the exact tenor of a 
saying which Jesus had uttered on that occasion with regard to the dis- 
ciple whom He loved; He had been erroneously reported as saying that 
this disciple would not die. 

In this appendix we easily remark a want of connection which is for- 
eign to the rest of the Gospel. It is a desultory narrative, and one whose 
unity can only be established in a somewhat artificial way. It must be 
considered as an amalgam of various reminiscences, which came on dif- 
ferent occasions from the tips of the narrator.! 

Verses 24 and 25, which close this appendix, are unquestionably from 
another hand than that of the author of the Gospel. “We know,” is said 
in the name of several. The singular, no doubt, returns in ver. 25: “I 
suppose.” But he who speaks thus in his own name is none other than 
that member of the preceding collective body (ver. 24) who holds the pen 
for his colleagues. They bear witness, all of them at once (ver. 24), by 
means of his pen (ver. 25), that the disciple especially loved by Jesus is 
the one “ who testifies these things and wrote these things.” From the 
contrast between the present testifies and the past wrote, it naturally follows 
that the writers of these lines added them during the lifetime of the 
author and when his work was already finished. 

The entire book, thus, is composed of eight parts, of which jive form the 
body of the story, or the narrative properly so called ; one forms the pre- 
amble: one the conclusion: the eighth is a supplement. 

The permanent basis of the history which is related is the revelation of 
Jesus as the Messiah and Son of God (xx. 30, 81). On this basis there ap- 
pear, at first in a confused way (i. 19-iv.), then more and more plainly, 
those two decisive moral facts: unbelief and faith; the unbelief which 
rejects the object of faith in proportion as it reveals itself more com- 
pletely (v.-xii.), and the faith which apprehends it with an increasing 
eagerness (xili.-xvil.); the unbelief which even goes so far as to try to de- 
stroy it (xvili—xix.), and the faith which ends by possessing it in its glori- 
ous sublimity (xx.). 

This exposition would, of itself, be sufficient to set aside every hypoth- 
esis which is opposed to the unity of the work. The fourth Gospel is 
indeed, according to the expression of Strauss, “the robe without seam 
for which lots may be cast, but which cannot be divided.” It is the 
admirably graduated and shaded picture of the development of unbelief 
and of faith in the Word made flesh. 


1“This conclusion resembles,” says M. or for the initiated” (p.535). We donot sub- 
Renan, “a succession of private notes, which scribe to the last words. 
have a meaning only for him who wrote them 


5 


66 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


CHAPTER SECOND. 
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 


BEFORE approaching the questions which relate to the way in which 
our Gospel was composed, it is fitting that we should give an exact account 
not only of the contents of the work, but also of its nature, of its tendency, 
and of its literary characteristics. This is the study to which we are now 
to devote ourselves. It is the more indispensable, since in modern times 
very different ideas on these various subjects have been brought out from 
those which were previously current. 

Thus Reuss maintained even in his earliest works, and still maintains, 
that the tendency of the fourth Gospel is not historical, but that it is 
purely theological. The author has inscribed a speculative idea at the 
beginning of his book; we see from his own narrative, and from comparing 
it with that of the Synoptics, that he is not afraid to modify the facts in 
the service of this idea, and he develops it most prominently in the 
discourses which he puts into the mouth of Jesus, and which form the 
largest part of his book. 

Baur shares in this view. The fourth Gospel is, according to him, an 
entirely speculative work. The few truly historical elements which may 
be found in it are facts borrowed from the Synoptical tradition. Keim 
also, in his Life of Jesus, denies all historical value to this work. 

Another point which the two leaders of the schools of Strasburg and of 
Tiibingen have sought to demonstrate, is the anti-Judaic tendency of our 
Gospel. It was generally believed that this work connected itself with 
the revelations of the Old Testament and with all the theocratic dispensa- 
tions by a respectful and sympathetic faith. These two critics have 
endeavored to prove that, to the author’s view, the bond between Judaism 
and the Gospel has no existence, and that there reigns in his book, on the 
contrary, a sentiment hostile to the entire Israelitish economy. 

We shall seek, therefore, first of all to elucidate the following three 
points, so far as it shall be possible to do this without encroaching upon 
the questions of the authenticity and aim of the Gospel, which are 
reserved for the Third Book. 

1. The distinctive features of the Johannean narrative and its relations 
to that of the Synoptic Gospels. 

2. The attitude assumed by this work with reference to the Old Testament. 

3. The forms of idea and style which are peculiar to it. 


¢1. THE NARRATIVE OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 


Our examination here must bear upon three points: the general idea 
of the book; the facts; the discourses. 
I. The ruling idea of the work. 


At the beginning of this narrative is inscribed a general idea, the notion 
of the incarnate Logos, which may indeed be called the ruling idea of the 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS, 67 


entire narrative. This feature, it is asserted, profoundly distinguishes our 
Gospel from the Synoptical writings. The latter are only collections of 
isolated facts and detached sayings accidentally united together, and their 
historical character is obvious; while this speculative notion, placed here 
at the beginning of the evangelical narrative, immediately betrays a 
dogmatic tendency and impresses on the whole book the stamp of a 
theological treatise. Reuss even goes so far as to claim that the term gospel 
cannot be applied to this work in the sense in which it is given to the 
other three, as designating a history of the ministry of Jesus. It is neces- 
sary to go back to the wholly spiritual sense which this term had at the 
beginning, when, in the New Testament, it denoted the message of salva- 
tion in itself considered, without the least notion of an historical setting 
forth of it. 

This general estimate seems to me to rest upon two errors. A ruling 
idea, formulated in the prologue, certainly presides over the narrative 
which follows, and sums it up. But is this feature peculiar to the fourth 
Gospel? It is found again in the first Gospel, which is opened by these 
words, containing, as we have seen, an entire programme: “Genealogy of 
Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” It is unnecessary to 
show again how this notion of the Messianic royalty of Jesus and of the 
fulfillment by Him of all the promises made to Israel in David, and to the 
world in Abraham, penetrates into the smallest details of Matthew’s nar- 
rative. The same is true of the Gospel of Mark, which opens with these 
words: “The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” 
This is the formula which sums up the whole narrative that is to follow: 
Jesus, realizing, in His life as Messiah-King, the wisdom and power of a 
being who has come from God. St. Luke has not himself expressed the 
idea which governs his book; but it is nevertheless easy to discover it: the 
Son of man, the perfect representative of human nature, bringing gratui- 
tously the salvation of God to all that bears the name of man. If, then, 
the fourth Gospel also has its primal idea—that of the Son of God having 
appeared in the form of the Son of man—this feature by no means consti- 
tutes, as is claimed, a “capital difference ” between this work and the other 
three. The central idea is different from those of these latter three: that 
is all. Each of them has its own idea, because no one of the four writers 
has told his story solely for the purpose of telling it. They tell their story, 
each one of them, in order to-set in relief one aspect of the person of Jesus, 
which they present especially to the faith of their readers. They all pro- 
pose, not to satisfy curiosity, but to save. 

The second error connected with the estimate of Reuss is this : a general 
idea, placed at the head of a narrative, cannot fail to impair its historical 
character. This is not so. Would the description of the life and conquests 
of Alexander the Great become a didactic treatise, because the author gave 
as an introduction to the history that great idea which his hero was called 
to realize: the fusion of the East and the West, long separated and hostile, 
into one civilized world? Or would the author of a life of Napoleon com- 
promise the fidelity of his narrative because he placed it under the control 


68 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


of this idea: the restoration of France after the revolutionary tempest? Or 
must one, in order to relate in conformity with the actual truth the life of 
Luther, give up bestowing upon him the title: The reformer of the Church? 
Every great historic fact is the expression, the realization of an idea; and 
this idea constitutes the essence, the greatness, even the truth of the fact. 
To make this prominent even at the beginning is not to render the fact sus- 
picious; it is to render it intelligible. The presence of an idea at the be- 
ginning of a narrative does not, then, exclude its historical character. The 
only question is to determine whether this idea is the true one, whether it 
is evolved of itself from the fact, or whether it is imported into it. Hase 
expresses himself thus on this point: “The nerve of the objection would be 
cut if Jesus was really, in the metaphysical sense, that which our Gospel 
teaches (the Word made flesh). I dare not affirm it.” And borrowing the 
avowal which Goethe puts in the mouth of Faust: “I know the message in- 
deed,” he says, “but I lack the faith.” Well and good! This lack of faith 
is an individual matter. But the writer confesses that the beaming of an 
idea across a fact does not resolve it intoa myth. A fact without an idea 
is a body without a soul. A notion like this has no place except in the 
materialist system. 

The prologue of the Johannean gospel has, therefore, in itself nothing 
incompatible with the strictly historical character of the narrative which 
is to follow. 

No, not necessarily, it is said; but is there not reason to fear that the 
idea, when once it has taken possession of the author’s mind, will influence 
more or less profoundly the way in which he considers and sets forth the 
facts? Might it not even happen that, in all good faith, he should invent 
the situations and events which seemed to him most fitted to place in a 
clear light the idea which he has formed? Let us see whether it is thus 
in the case with which we are concerned. 


II. The facts. 


Baur claimed that excepting the small number of materials borrowed 
from the Synoptics, the facts related here are only creations of the genius 
of the author, who sought to set forth in this dramatic form the internal 
dialectics of the idea of the Logos. Reuss, without going quite so far, 
regards the narrative sometimes as freely modified on behalf of the idea, 
sometimes as wholly created for its use. Nicodemus, the Samaritan 
woman, the Greeks of chap. xii., are only fictitious personages, placed on 
the scene by the author in order to afford the opportunity of putting into 
the mouth of Jesus the conception of His person which he has formed 
for himself. The history related in this Gospel has so little reality, that 
even from the beginning (chap. v.) it seems to have reached its end: the 
Jews wish already to put Jesus to death (v.16)! The visits to Jerusalem, 
which form the salient points of the narration, are fictitious scenes, the 
theatre of which has been chosen with the design of contrasting the light 
(Jesus) with the darkness (the Jewish authorities), and of furnishing to 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 69 


Christ the opportunity of testifying of the divinity of His person. For 
this same reason, the miracles of the fourth Gospel are made more won- 
derful than those of the Synoptics; and, besides, they are presented, no 
longer as works of compassion, but as signs of the divinity of Jesus. The 
author thus interweaves them into his theory of the Logos. The 
account of the Last Supper is omitted, because, from his idealistic point 
of view, the author is satisfied with having set forth the spiritual essence 
of itin chap. vi. The scene in Gethsemane is left out, because it would 
present the Logos in a state little worthy of His divine greatness. No 
healing of a demoniac is related, because the unclean spirits are too 
ignoble adversaries for such a being. No mention is made of the miracu- 
lous birth, because that prodigy is thrown into the shade by the greater 
miracle of the incarnation, etc., etc. It is thus that the study of the 
narrative, both in itself and in a comparison of it with that of the 
Synoptics, reveals at every step the alterations due to the influence of the 
idea upon the history. 

In order to study this grave question with the scrupulous fidelity which 
it demands, we must begin by verifying the essential characteristics of the 
narrative which we have to estimate. 

The first is certainly the potent wnity of the story. The narration begins 
and ends precisely at the point determined by the plan of the work. The 
author, as we have seen, proposes to relate the gradual and simultaneous 
development of unbelief and faith under the sway of the increasing 
manifestations of the Christ as the Son of God. His narrative has, thus, 
as its starting-point the day on which, for the first time, Jesus was revealed 
as such by the testimony which John the Baptist, without naming Him 
as yet, bore to Him in presence of the deputation of the Sanhedrim—a 
day which was, as a consequence, also that of the first glimmering of 
faith in Jesus in the hearts of His earliest disciples. On the other hand, 
the end of the narrative places us at the moment when faith in Christ, 
fully revealed by His resurrection, attained its height, and, if we may so 
“speak, its normal level in the profession: “My Lord and my God,” 
coming from the lips of the least credulous of the disciples. 

Between these two extreme points the history moves in a connected 
and progressive way, both on the side of Jesus, who, on each occasion 
and especially at each feast, adds to the revelation of Himself a new 
feature in harmony with a newly given situation (iii. 14: the brazen ser- 
pent; iv. 10: the living water; v.19: the Son working with the Father; 
vi. 85: the bread of life; vii. 87: the rock pouring forth living water ; 
vili.56: the one in whom Abraham rejoices ; ix.5: the light of the world; 
x. 11: the good shepherd; xi. 25: the resurrection and the life; xii. 15: 
the humble king of Israel; xiii. 14: the Lord who serves; xiv. 6: the 
way, the truth and the life; xv. 1: the true vine; xvi. 28: He who has 
come from the Father and returns to the Father; xvii.8: Jesus the Christ ; 
Xvill. 37: the king in the kingdom of truth; xix. 86: the true Paschal 
lamb; xx. 28: our Lord and God),—and with respect to faith, which in- 
creases by appropriating to itself each one of these testimonies in acts and 


70 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


words, and of which the progress is frequently marked by forms of ex- 
pression such as this: “And his disciples believed on him ” (ii. 11; comp. 
vi. 68, 69; xi. 15; xvi. 80, 81; xvii. 8; xx. 8, 29),—and with reference to 
Jewish unbelief, the hostile measures of which succeed each other with an 
increase of violence all whose stages we can verify (ii. 18, 19: refusal to 
participate in the Messianic reformation; v. 16-18: first explosion of 
hatred and desire for murder; vii. 32: first active measure, in the order 
given to the officers to arrest Jesus; vill. 59: a first attempt to stone Him ; 
ix. 22: excommunication of every one who acknowledges Him as the 
Messiah; x. 31: new and more decided attempt to stone Him; xi. 53: 
meeting of the Sanhedrim in which the death of Jesus is in principle de- 
termined upon, so that there remains nothing further except to discover 
the ways of carrying it into execution; x1.57: first official measure in this 
direction through the public summoning of witnesses against Jesus; x1il. 
27: contract of the rulers with the traitor; xviil. 3: request for a detach- 
ment of Roman soldiers to effect the arrest; xviii. 18 and 24: sittings for 
examination in the house of Annas and for judgment in that of Caiaphas ; 
Xvili. 28: demand for execution addressed to Pilate; xix. 12: last means 
of intimidation employed to obtain his consent; xix. 16: the execution). 
—Such is the history which the fourth Gospel traces out. And yet Reuss 
can seriously put this question: “Is there anywhere the least trace of a 
progress, a development, in any direction?” (p. 28); and Stap can affirm 
that ‘the denouement might be found on the first page as well as on the 
last; and, finally, Sabatier can speak of “ shufflings about on one spot,” 
which mark the course of our Gospel! Is not the Synoptic narrative, 
rather, the one against which this charge might be made? For in that 
narrative Jesus passes suddenly from Galilee to Jerusalem, and dies in 
that city after only five days of conflict. Is this a sufficient preparation 
for such a catastrophe ?—Reuss takes offence at the fact that, in v. 16, it is 
said that they already seek to put Him to death. But he may read pre- 
cisely the same thing in the Gospel of Mark—the one which, in his view, 
is the most primitive type of the narration—ill. 6: ‘Then the Pharisees 
took counsel with the Herodians against him to put him to death.” ‘This 
is said after one of the first miracles, and at the beginning of the Galilean 
ministry. 

The strong unity of the Johannean narrative appears, finally, in the 
precise and complete data by means of which the course of Jesus’ minis- 
try is, in some sort, marked out, so that, by means of this work, and this 
work only, can we fix its principal dates and make anew the outline of it. 
Here are the data which it furnishes us, ii. 12, 18: a first Passover, at 
which Jesus inaugurates His public work; it is followed by a working for 
several months in Judea, and finally by a return to Galilee by way of 
Samaria, about the month of December in that same year; chap. v.: a 
feast at Jerusalem, doubtless that of Purim, in the following spring and a 
month before the Passover; vi. 4: the second Passover, which Jesus can- 
not go to Jerusalem to celebrate, so great is the hostility towards Him, 
and which He passes in Galilee; vii. 2: the feast of Tabernacles, in the 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 71 


autumn of this second year, to which Jesus is only able to go incognito and, 
as it were, by surprise; x. 22: the feast of Dedication, two months later, in 
December, when, again, He makes but one appearance in Jerusalem ; 
finally, xii. 1: the third Passover, when He dies. Here is a series of dates 
outlined by a steady hand, with natural intervals, which gives us sufficient 
information as to the course and duration of our Lord’s ministry, and 
which affords us the means of tracing out a rational delineation of it. The 
only story which does not enter organically into this so strongly united 
whole is that of the adulterous woman, which logically appertains neither 
to the development of unbelief, nor to that of faith, and which would thus 
be suspicious to a delicate ear, even if the external testimonies did not as 
positively exclude it as they do. 

But, at the same time, this narrative, so thoroughly one, so consecutive, 
so graduated, forming such a beautiful whole, is found to be astonishingly 
fragmentary. It begins in the middle of John the Baptist’s ministry, with- 
‘out having described the first part of it. It stops with the scene concerning 
Thomas, without any mention being made of the subsequent appearances 
in Galilee, or of the ascension itself—In vi. 70: Jesus says to the apostles : 
“Have not I chosen you, the Twelve?” And yet there has not been up 
to this time a single word said of the foundation of the apostolate; the 
reader is acquainted with only five of the disciples, from the first chapter 
onward.—At ver. 71, Judas Iscariot is named as a perfectly well-known 
personage; and yet it is the first time that he is introduced on the scene.— 
xiv. 22; the presence of another Judas among the Twelve is supposed to 
be known; and yet it has not been mentioned.—xi. 1, Bethany is called the 
village of Mary and Martha, her sister ; and yet the names of these two 
women have not as yet been given,—xi. 2, Mary is designated as she “ who 
had anointed the Lord with ointment; ” and yet this incident, supposed to 
be known to the reader, is not related until afterwards.—ii. 28, those are 
spoken of who believed at Jerusalem on seeing the miracles which Jesus did ; 
iii. 2, Nicodemus makes allusion to these miracles, and iv. 45, it is said 
that the Galileans received Jesus on His return because they had seen the 
miracles which He did at Jerusalem ; and yet not one of these miracles is 
related. 

We have seen that from the first Passover to Jesus’ return to Galilee, 
chap. iv., seven or eight months elapsed (from April to December). Now, 
of all that occurred during this time—in this long sojourn in J udea—with 
the exception of the single conversation with N icodemus, we know only 
one fact: the continuance of the baptism of John the Baptist by the side 
of that of Jesus and the last testimony given by the forerunner (iii. 22 ff). 
—From the return of Jesus to Galilee, chap. iv., to His new journey to 
Jerusalem, chap. v. (feast of Purim), three months elapsed, which the 
author sums up in this simple expression : after these things, V. 1.—Between 
this journey to Jerusalem and the second Passover. chap. vi., there is a 
whole month of which we know nothing except this single statement, v1. 
2: “And a great multitude followed him, because they saw the miracles 
which he did on the sick.” Of these numerous miracles which attracted 


72 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


the crowds not one is related!—Between this Passover, chap. vi., and the 
feast of Tabernacles, chap. vii.,—that is to say, during the six months from 
April to October,—many things certainly occurred; we have only these 
two lines thereupon, vil. 1: “And after that Jesus walked in Galilee; for 
He would not walk in Judea.”—Between this feast and x. 22 (December), 
two months, and then, from that time to the Passover, three months, of 
which nothing (except the resurrection of Lazarus) is reported.—Thus, of 
two years and a half, we have twenty months touching which there is 
complete silence !? 

In xviii. 18, it is said that Jesus was led to the house of Annas first ; this 
expression gives notice of a subsequent session in another place. The 
account of this session is omitted. It is indicated, indeed (ver. 24: “And 
Annas sent Jesus bound to Caiaphas, the high-priest”’), but not related; 
and yet it is one of the most indispensable links of the history, since in 
the sitting in the house of Annas a simple examination was carried on, 
and in order to a capital execution an official session of the Sanhedrim 
was absolutely necessary, at which the sentence should be pronounced 
according to certain definite forms. The subsequent appearance before 
Pilate, when the Jews endeavored to obtain from him the confirmation of 
the sentence, leaves no doubt as to the fact that it had actually been pro- 
nounced. Now all this is omitted in our narrative, as well the session in 
the house of the high-priest Caiaphas as the pronouncing of the sentence. 
How are we to explain the omission of such facts ?—In iii. 24, these words: 
“Now John had not yet been cast into prison,” imply the idea in the 
mind of the reader that, at that moment, he had already been arrested. 
But there is not a word in what precedes which was fitted to occasion 
such a misapprehension. 

Is not such a mode of narrating as this a perpetual enigma? On one 
side, a texture so firm and close, and on the other as many vacant places 
as full ones, as much of omission as of matter? Is there a supposition 
which can in any way explain two such contradictory features of one and 
the same narrative. Yes; and it is in the relation of our fourth Gospel to 
the three preceding ones that we must seek this solution, as we shall 
attempt to show. 

The relation of the Johannean narrative to that of the Synoptic Gos- 
pels may be characterized by these two features: Constant correlation, on 
the one hand, and striking independence, and even superiority, on the 
other. 

1. There is no closer adaptation between two wheels fitted to each 
other in wheelwork, than is observed, on a somewhat attentive study, 
between the two narratives which we are comparing. The full parts of 
the one answer to the blanks of the other, as the prominent points of the 
latter to the vacant spaces of the former. John begins his narrative with 


1 How, in the face of such facts,canawriter the materials furnished by the Synoptics 
who respects himself, write the following might be placed.” (Stap. Etudes historiques 
lines: “John, we know(!), does not present et critiques, p 259.) 
any trace of gaps, or vacant spaces in which 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. eee et os 
the last part of the ministry of John the Baptist, without having described 
the first half of it, without even having given an account of the baptism 
of Jesus; just the reverse of what we find in the Synoptics. He relates 
the call of the first believers on the banks of the Jordan, without men- 
tioning their subsequent elevation to the rank of permanent disciples on 
the shores of the lake of Gennesaret; again, the reverse of the Synoptic 
narrative. He sets forth a considerably long ministry in Judea, anterior 
to the Galilean ministry, which the Synoptics omit; then, when he 
reaches the period of the Galilean ministry so abundantly described by 
his predecessors, he relates, in common with them, only a single scene 
belonging to it—that of chap. vi. (we shall see with what motive he 
makes this exception), and, as for all the rest of these ten to twelve 
months of Galilean labor, he limits himself to indicating the framework 
and the compartments of it, without filling them otherwise than by the 
two brief summaries, ver. 1 of chap. vi. and ver. 1 of chap. vu. These 
compartments, left vacant, can only be naturally explained as references 
to other narratives with which the author knows his readers to be ac- 
quainted. But, while he passes on thus without entering into the least 
detail respecting the entire Galilean ministry, he dwells with partiality 
upon the visits to Jerusalem, which he describes in the most circumstan- 
tial way, and the omission of which in the Synoptics is so striking a blank 
in their narrative. In the last visit to Jerusalem, he omits the embar- 
rassing questions which were addressed to Jesus in the temple, but he 
relates carefully the endeavor of the Greeks to see Him, which is omitted 
by all the other narratives. In the description of the last meal, he gives 
a place to the act of washing the disciples’ feet, and omits that of the 
institution of the Lord’s Supper; and in the account of the trial of Jesus, 
he takes notice of the appearance in the house of Annas, which is 
omitted by all the others, and, in exchange, passes over in silence the 
great session of the Sanhedrim in the house of Caiaphas, at which Jesus 
was condemned to death. In the description of the crucifixion, he calls 
to mind three expressions of Jesus, which are not reported by his prede- 
cessors, and he omits the four mentioned by them. Among the appear- 
ances of the risen Lord, those to Mary Magdalene and Thomas, omitted or 
barely hinted at by the Synoptics, are described in a circumstantial way; 
one only of the others is recalled, and it is given with quite peculiar 
details. 

Could the closely fitting relation of this Gospel to the Synoptics which 
we have pointed out be manifested more evidently? We do not by any 
means conclude from this that John related his story zn order to complete 
them—he set before himself, surely, a more elevated aim—but we believe 
we may affirm that he wrote completing them; that to complete was, not 
his aim, but one of the guiding principles of his narration. There was on 
the author’s part a choice, a selection, determined by the narratives of his 
predecessors. If his work left us in any doubt on this point, the declara- 
tion which closes it must convince us: “‘ Many other signs did Jesus in the 
presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book (év TO BiBriw 


7 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


rovrw).” The expressions here employed signify two things: 1. That he 
has left aside a part of the facts which he might also have related ; 2. That 
he has omitted these facts because they were already related in other 
writings than his own (this book, in contrast with others). What were 
these books? It is impossible not to recognize our three Synoptic Gos- 
pels, from the following indications: The choice of the Twelve, which 
John refers to in vi. 70, is related in Mark iii. 18-19 and Luke vi. 12-16. 
The two sisters, Martha and Mary, designated by name in John x1., as ii 
persons already known, are introduced on the Gospel stage by Luke (x. 
38-42). The confusion of the first two returns to Galilee (comp. John 1. 
44 and iy. 3), which John so evidently makes it a point to dispel (11.11 and 
iv. 54), is found in our three Synoptics (Matt. iv. 12 and parallels) ; and the 
idea that no activity of Jesus in Judea had preceded the imprisonment of 
John the Baptist—an idea which John corrects (iii. 24)—is found expressly 
enunciated in Matthew and Mark (passages already cited). How, then, can 
we doubt the close and deliberate correlation of John’s narrative with that 
of the Synoptic Gospels? Renan has always recognized it.’ And Reuss, 
after having more or less called it in question, ? now consents to admit 
it. He goes even so far, as we all shall soon see, as to transform this cor- 
relation into a relation of dependence on the part of John with reference 
to the Synoptics. Baur and Hilgenfeld likewise recognize this relation, 
so that it may be regarded as a point which has been gained. 

Starting from this fact, therefore, have we not the right to say: That 
two narratives which are in so close and constant relation to each other 
cannot be written from entirely different points of view, and that if the 
first, while seeking, in each of its three forms, to bring out one of the 
salient characteristics of the person of Jesus, pursues this end on a truly 
historical path, the same must be the case with the other, which, at every 
step, completes it and, in its turn, is completed by it? 

It will be objected, perhaps, that the author of the Johannean narrative, 
being an exceedingly able man, labors, by means of all that he borrows 
from the earlier narratives, not to break with the universally received 
tradition, and at the same time, by all that he adds of new matter, attempts 
to make his dogmatic conception prevail, as M. Reuss says: in other 
words, to secure the triumph of his theory of the Logos. 

This explanation must be examined in the light of the other two 
features which we have pointed out in the relation between our Gospel 
and the Synoptics. I mean, the complete independence and even the 
decided historical superiority of the former. 

Baur had affirmed the dependence in which John stands with relation 





1“ The position of the Johannean writer is 
that of an author who is notignorant of the fact 
that the subject of which he treats has been 
already written upon, who approves many 
things in that which has been said, but who 
believes that he has superior information and 
gives it without troubling himself about the 


others” (p. 531). 

2He said previously: “One cannot dis- 
cover, except with difficulty, in this Gospel 
the traces of a relation with the so-called 
earlier Gospels. The facts do not constrain 
us absolutely to hold that the author had any 
acquaintance with our Synoptic Gospels.” 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 75 


to the Synoptic narrative, as concerning all truly historical information ; 
Holtzmann has sought to prove this in detail, and Reuss now declares 
himself, in spite of his previous denials, converted to this opinion.! 

It is necessary, indeed, to distinguish here between the correlation 
which we have just proved and which, like every relation whatsoever, is a 
sort of dependence (but only as to the mode of narrating), and the depend- 
ence which has a bearing upon the very knowledge of the facts. As we 
affirm the first, so we are prepared to deny the second, and to affirm that 
the author of the Johannean narrative is in possession of a source of 
information which is peculiar to himself, and which, as to the matter of 
the narrative, renders him absolutely independent of the Synoptical tra- 
dition. Let us consult the facts. 

It is not from the Synoptics that he knows the public testimony which 
the forerunner rendered to Jesus. For, before the baptism of Jesus, 
nothing of the kind is or could be attributed to him by them, and, after 
the baptism, the Synoptics do not mention anything beyond that single 
saying of John, which is rather an expression of doubt: “ Art thou he that 
should come, or do we look for another?” And yet the answer of Jesus on 
occasion of the official inquiry of the Sanhedrim respecting His Messianic 
authority, (Matt. xxi. 23, and parallels), implies the existence of a public and 
well-known testimony of the forerunner, such as that which John relates in 
i. 19 ff—It is not from the Synoptics that John has derived the account of 
the first relations of Jesus with His earliest disciples (chap. i.); and yet 
these relations are necessarily presupposed by the call of the latter to the 
vocation of fishers of men, on the shores of the lake of Gennesaret 
(Matt. v. 18 ff.).—It is not from the Synoptics that John has learned that 
Jesus inaugurated His public ministry by the purification of the temple, 
since they place this act in His last visit to Jerusalem. Now all the prob- 
abilities are in favor of the time assigned to this fact by John. Reuss 
himself acknowledges it, since according to him, if Jesus was at Jerpsalem 
several times (a fact which he accepts), it is almost impossible to hold 
that He had been indifferent the first time to that which on a later occa- 
sion could excite His holy indignation.2—It is certainly not from the 
Synoptics that John borrows the correction which he brings to their own 
story, iii. 24, by recalling the fact that Jesus and His forerunner had 
baptized simultaneously in Judea at the beginning of the Lord’s ministry, 
and iv. 54 (comp. i. 44 and iv. 3), by clearly distinguishing between the 
first two returns of Jesus to Galilee which are blended into one by the 
Synoptic narrative. And yet every one is obliged to admit that these cor- 
rections are well-founded rectifications and in harmony with the actual 
course of the history; for (1) if Jesus had not at first taught publicly in 
Judea, the imprisonment of John the Baptist would not have been a 
reason for His withdrawing and departing again for Galilee (Weizsiicker) ; 


1“Tn my previous works, I believed myself ion, which is at present shared even by those 
able to maintain the independence of the who in other respects adopt the traditional 
fourth Gospel in regard to the Synoptic text. views.” (La Théologre johannique, p. 76.) 
1 am obliged to go over to the opposite opin- 2P. 139. 


76 | BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


and (2) there remains a manifest gap in the Synoptic narrative between 
the baptism of Jesus and the imprisonment of John the Baptist, a gap 
which the Johannean narrative exactly fills (Holtzmann).—Westcott with 
perfect fitness says: “‘ Matt. iv. 12 and Mark i. 14 have a meaning only on 
the supposition of a Judean ministry of Jesus, which these books have 
not related.” 

It is not from the Synoptics that John borrows the account of the visits 
to Jerusalem ; here is the feature which most profoundly distinguishes 
his narrative from theirs. And yet, if the Johannean narrative possesses 
a pronounced character of superiority to the other, we may say it is 
certainly in this point. Keim speaks very pathetically, it is true, of these 
“breathless journeys”! of Jesus to Jerusalem! Nevertheless, all are not 
agreed on this subject. Weiss expresses himself thus: “ All the historical 
considerations speak in favor of John’s narrative, and in the Synoptic 
narratives themselves there are not wanting indications which lead to this 
way of understanding the history.”? Renan himself remarks that 
“persons transplanted only a few days before [the disciples, on the suppo- 
sition that they also had not previously visited Jerusalem] would not 
have chosen that city for their capital...” And he adds, “If things 
had occurred as Mark and Matthew would have it, Christianity would 
have been developed especially in Galilee.” * Hausrath and Holtzmann 
express themselves in the same way. Without pursuing this enumer- 
ation, let us limit ourselves to quoting Hase, who, in a few lines, appears 
to us to sum up the question: “So far as we are acquainted with the 
circumstances of the time, it was natural that Jesus should seek to obtain 
the national recognition [of His Messianic dignity] at the very centre of 
the life of the people, in the holy city ; and even the mortal hatred of the 
priests at Jerusalem would be more difficult to explain, if Jesus had never 
threatened them near at hand. But it is very natural that these journeys 
to Jerusalem, in so far as they are chronological determinations, should be 

— effaced in the Galilean tradition and blended in the single and last journey 
which led Jesus to His death. In the Synoptic Gospels are preserved the 
traces of an earlier sojourn of Jesus in the capital and its neighborhood : 
‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets and stonest them 
that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children 
together as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings; and ye would 
not!’” This sorrowful exclamation which escaped from the deepest depths 
of the heart of Jesus, finds no satisfactory explanation in the visit of a 
few days which Jesus made in that city according to the Synoptics. The 
explanation of Baur is a subterfuge—he thinks that the children of Jeru- 
salem are taken here as representatives of the whole people, while this 
exclamation is addressed in the most precise and local way to Jerusalem 

. itself; as also it is a mere shift of Strauss to find here the quotation of a 
passage from a lost work (“The Wisdom of God ”’),—a passage which, in 

1“TDas athemlose Festreiseu.” 4 Neutest. Zeitgesch. I., p. 386; Gesch. des 


2Introd., p. 35. Volks Israel, I1., pp. 372, 373. 
3 Vie de Jésus, 13th ed., p. 487. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 77 


any case, could have been thus put into the mouth of Jesus only as the 
public mind remembered more than one visit to Jerusalem. Moreover, 
according to the Synoptics also, Jesus has hosts at Bethany, to whose 
house he returns every evening. ...”! Sabatier calls to mind, besides, 
the owner of the young ass at Bethphage, the person at whose house Jesus 
caused the Passover supper to be prepared at Jerusalem, Joseph of 
Arimathea who goes to ask for His body. It is difficult to believe that 
all these relations of Jesus in Judea were contracted in the few days only 
which preceded the Passion. Finally, let us not forget the remarkable 
fact that Luke himself places at a considerably earlier period the first 
visit of Jesus at the house of Martha and Mary (x. 38 ff.). 

Reuss cannot deny the weight of these reasons. While continuing to 
think that the choice of this theatre was dictated to the author “ by the 
very nature of the antithesis, the antagonism between the Gospel and 
Judaism,” that it is, consequently, the theological conception which 
created this framework, he is nevertheless obliged to admit “that there 
are evident traces of a more frequent presence of Jesus in Jerusalem ” 
than that of which the Synoptics speak. But if historical truth is so 
evidently on the side of John, how can it be maintained, on the other hand, 
that “it is to the theological conception that this framework is due?”’? 

Reuss is likewise led by the facts to give the preference to the chronolo- 
gical outline of John’s narrative, which assigns to the ministry of Jesus a 
duration of two years and a half, and not of a single year only, as the 
Synoptic narrative seems to do. “We do not think,” he says, “that it can 
be affirmed that Jesus employed only a single year of His life in acting 
upon the spirit of those around Him.”* Weizsicker makes the same 
observation: “The transformation of the previous ideas, views and be- 
liefs of the apostles must have penetrated even to the depths of their 
minds, in order to their being able to survive the final catastrophe and to 
rise anew imniediately afterwards. In order to this, the schooling of 
a prolonged intercourse with Jesus was necessary. Neither instructions 
nor emotions were sufficient here; there was necessity of growing into 
the inner and personal union with the Master.”* Renan also declares 
that the mention of the different visits of Jesus to Jerusalem (and, conse- 
quently, of His two or three years of ministry) “ constitutes for our Gos- 
pel a decisive triumph.”® Here is no secondary detail in the relation of 
John to the Synoptics. It isthe capital point. How can it be maintained, 
after such avowals, that the fourth Gospel is dependent on its predeces- 
sors? How can we fail to recognize, on the contrary, the complete inde- 
pendence of the materials of which it disposes and their decided histor- 
ical superiority to the tradition recorded in the Synoptics. 

In the account of the last evening, the first two Synoptics divide the 
sayings of Christ into three groups: 1. The revelation of the betrayal and 
the betrayer; 2. The institution of the Holy Supper; 3. The personal 

1 Geschichte Jesu, nach acad. Vorles, p. 40. 4 Untersuchungen, p. 313. 


2 Théol. johann., pp. 57-59. 5 P. 487. 
3P. 58. 


78 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


impressions of Jesus. Luke the same, but in the inverse order. There 
are always three distinct groups in juxtaposition. This arrangement was 
that of the traditional narration, which tended to group the homogeneous 
elements. But it is not that of real life: so it is not found again in John. 
Here the Lord reverts several times both to the betrayal of Judas and His 
own impressions. The same difference is seen in the account of Peter’s 
denial. The three acts of denial are united in the Synoptics as if in one 
place and time; this narrative was one of the arouruovebyara (traditional 
stories), which formed each of them a small, complete whole, in the popu- 
lar narration. In John we do not find these three acts artificially grouped ; 
they are divided among other facts, as they certainly were in reality ; the 
narrative has found again its natural articulations. This characteristic 
has not escaped the sagacity of Renan, who expresses himself thus: “The 
same superiority in the account of Peter’s denials. This entire episode 
in the case of our author is more circumstantial, better explained.” 

We know that, according to John’s account, the day of Christ’s death 
was the 14th of Nisan, the day of the preparation of the Paschal supper, 
and not, as it keems, at the first glance, in the Synoptics, the 15th, the day 
after the supper. It has been claimed that this difference arose from the 
fact that the author of the fourth Gospel wished to make the time of 
Jesus’ death coincide with that at which the Paschal lamb was sacrificed 
—a ceremony which took place on the 14th in the afternoon; and this in 
a purely dogmatic and typological interest. It is difficult to understand 
what the author would have gained by making so violent a transposition 
of the central fact of the Gospel,—that of the cross. For, after all, the 
typical relation between the sacrifice of the lamb and the crucifixion of 
Christ does not depend on the simultaneousness of these two acts. This 
relation had already been proclaimed by Paul (1 Cor. v. 7: “Christ, our 
Passover, has been sacrificed for us”); it was recognized by the whole 
Church, on the ground of the sacramental words: “Do this in remem- 
brance of me,” by which Jesus substituted Himself for the Paschal lamb. 
It is easier, on the other hand, to understand the loss which the author 
risked by subjecting the history to an alteration of this kind; he compro- 
mised inthe Church the authority of his work and thereby (to put our- 
selves at the point of view of those who give this explanation) even that 
of his conception of the Logos, which, moreover, had nothing to do with 
typological and Judaic symbolism, and was even contrary to it. But more 
than this, we shall show, and that by the Synoptics themselves, that the 
Johannean date is the true one. Reuss cannot help admitting this, with 
ourselves, for the same reasons (the facts indicated Mark xiv. 21, 46 and 
parallels, which could not have occurred on a Sabbatical day, such as the 
15th of Nisan was). Here also, accordingly, it is John’s account which 
brings to light again the true course of things, left in obscurity by the 
Synoptic narrative. . 

We shall not enter into the detailed study of the accounts of the Passion 


1See Théol. johann., p. 60. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 79 


and resurrection. I may limit myself to quoting this general judgment 
of Renan respecting the last days of Jesus’ life: “In all this portion, the 
fourth Gospel contains particular points of information infinitely superior 
to those of the Synoptics.” And with relation to the fact of the resur- 
rection of Lazarus, he adds: “ Now—a singular fact—this narrative is 
connected with the last pages [of the Gospel history] by such close bonds 
that, if we reject it as imaginary, the entire edifice of the last weeks of 
Jesus’ life, so solid in our Gospel, crumbles at the same blow.” And, in 
fact, all things in the Johannean narrative are historically bound together : 
the resurrection of Lazarus determines the ovation of Palm Sunday; and 
this, joined with the treason of Judas, constrains the Sanhedrim to pre- 
cipitate the denouement. 

It is true that Hilgenfeld regards this explanation of the relation be- 
tween John and the Synoptics as “a degrading of these last, they being 
nothing more than defective beginnings, of which John’s work would be 
the censor.”? Reuss several times expresses the same idea: “ A singular 
way of strengthening the faith of the Christian—by suggesting the idea 
that what he may have previously read in Matthew or in Luke has great 
need to be corrected.” * But to complete, is to confirm that which pre- 
cedes and that which follows the gap which is filled up; and to correct 
an inaccuracy of detail in a narrative is not to unsettle the authority of 
the whole—it is, on the contrary, to strengthen it. The corrections and 
complements brought by John to the Synoptic story have been noticed 
since the first ages of the Church, but they have not in the least impaired 
the confidence which the Church has had in those writings. 

We now have the necessary elements for resolving these two questions: 
Is the fourth Gospel, in the truth which it relates, dependent on the Syn- 
optics? In the points where he differs from them, does the author mod- 
ify the history according to a preconceived and favorite theory ? 

As to the first question, the facts, as rigidly examined, have just proved 
that the author of the fourth Gospel possesses a source of information 
independent of the Synoptic tradition. The negative solution of the 
second follows plainly from the fact that in case of a difference in the two 
narrations, it is, in every instance, the Johannean narrative which, from 
the historical point of view, deserves the preference. A narrative which is 
constantly superior, historically speaking, is secure from the suspicion of 
being the product of an idea. 

What is urged in opposition to this result from facts, which are for the 
most part conceded by the objectors themselves? It is claimed, in spite 
of all, that there are found in the Johannean narrative certain traces of 
dependence on the Synoptic narrative. Holtzmann has exercised his 
critical adroitness in this domain. The following are some of his discoy- 
eries.* John saysi. 6: “There was a man” (éyévero dvOpwroc).” It is an 
imitation of: “There came a word (éyévero pjua),” Luke iii. 2. John says 
(i. 7): “This one came;” he copies the: “And he came,” Luke iii. 3. 


1p. 514, *P. 32, 
2 Zeitsch. fiir wissensch. Theol., I., 1880. 4 Zeitschr. fiir wissensch. Theol., 1869. 


80 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


The expression: “Lazarus our friend sleepeth ” (John xi. 11), reproduces 
that of Mark vy. 39 and parallels: “She is not dead, but sleepeth ” (although 
Mark’s term xaGeidec is different from John’s, kexoiuntat), The sickness of 
Lazarus (John xi.) is a copy of the representation of Lazarus covered with 
sores in the parable of Luke xvi. 20, and the whole account of the resur- 
rection of Lazarus of Bethany is only a fiction created after that parable 
of the wicked rich man. According to Renan, the reverse is the case. 
The two assertions are of equal value. In Luke, Abraham refuses, as a 
useless thing, to send back Lazarus who is dead to the earth; in John, 
Jesus brings him back among the living: what animitation! It is claimed 
also, from this point of view, that the representation of Martha and Mary, 
chap. Xi., is an imitation of that in Luke x. 88 ff.; or that the two hundred 
denarii of Philip (vi. 7) are derived from the text of Mark vi. 87, as the three 
hundred of Judas (xii. 5) are borrowed from the text of Mark xiv. 5; or 
again that the strange term vapdo¢ tictixg (pure nard, trustworthy) in John 
(xii. 38) comes from Mark (xiv. 8). The comparison of the three accounts 
of the anointing of Jesus at Bethany has produced on Reuss so great an 
impression, that it has decided his conversion to the view of dependence, 
maintained by Holtzmann.1 According to him, indeed, two different 
- anointings are related by the Synoptics; that which took place in Galilee 
by the hands of a sinful woman, in the house of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 
vu.), and that which took place at Bethany on the part of a woman of that 
place, in the house of Simon the leper (Matt. xxvi.; Mark xiv.). “Well,” 
says Reuss, “the author of the fourth Gospel gives us a third version,” 
which can only be understood as an amalgam of the other two. He puts 
into the mouth of Jesus the same words as the narrative of Mark does. 
And at the same time he borrows from Luke this characteristic detail,— 
that the oil was not poured on His head (Mark and Matt.), but on His 
feet. Moreover, he thinks it good to deviate from the account of the first 
two Synoptics by transferring the scene from the house of Simon the leper 
to that of Lazarus, who has recently been raised from the dead. The truth 
is: 1. That John relates exactly the same scene as Mark and Matthew; but 
2. That he relates it with more precise details ; and 3. Without contradicting 
them in the least degree. He is more precise: he indicates exactly the day of 
the supper; it is that of the arrival of Jesus at Bethany from Jericho, the 
evening before Palm Sunday; in Matthew and Mark all chronological de- 
termination is wanting. He mentions the anointing of the feet, that of the 
head being understood as a matter of course, since it was an act of ordi- 
nary civility (comp. Ps. xxiii.5; Luke vii. 46), while anointing the feet with 
a like perfume was a prodigality altogether extraordinary. It was pre- 
cisely this exceptional fact which occasioned the murmuring of certain 
disciples and the following conversation. Then, John alone mentions Ju- 
das as the fomenter of the discontent which manifested itself among some 
of his colleagues. Matthew and Mark employ here only vague terms: the 
disciples; some. But these Gospels themselves, by the place which they 


1 Théol. johann., p. 76, note. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 81 


assign to this story—making it an intercalation and, as it were, an episode 
in that of the treachery of Judas (comp. Mark xiv. 1, 2 and 10, 11, and the 
parallels in Matt.), indirectly bear testimony to the accuracy of this more 
precise detail of John’s narrative. Tradition had assigned this place to the 
story of the anointing precisely because of the part of Judas on this occa- 
sion, which was as if the prelude to his treachery. It was an association 
of ideas for which John substitutes the true chronological situation. 
Finally, John’s narrative does not, by any means, contradict the parallel 
narrative of the two Synoptics as to the house in which the supper took 
place. For the expression: “And Lazarus was one of those who were at 
table with him” (in John),—far from proving that the feast took place 
in the house of Lazarus,—is the indication of exactly the opposite. It 
would not have been necessary to say that Lazarus was at table in his own 
house, and that Martha served there. There remains the identical detail 
of the three hundred denarii and the common term muorix#7. There would 
be no impossibility surely in the fact that, having the narrative of Mark 
under his eyes, John should have borrowed from it such slight details; his 
general historical independence would, nevertheless, remain intact. But 
these borrowings are themselves doubtful; for 1. John’s narrative possesses, 
as we have seen, details which are altogether original; 2. The term zuorixg 
was a technical term, which was used in contrast with the similarly tech- 
nical one, pseudo-nard (see Pliny); 3. The two numbers, being certainly his- 
torical, might be transmitted in two accounts which were independent of 
each other. Moreover, in the narrative of the multiplication of the loaves, 
the parts ascribed to Philip and Andrew betray in John the same inde- 
pendence of information which we have just proved in that of the anoint- 
ing in Bethany. 

We come to the solution of the second question, the most decisive 
question: whether the philosophical idea of the Logos, which is believed 
to be the soul of the narrative, has not exerted an unfavorable influence 
on the setting forth of the facts, and whether it is not to this influence 
that we must attribute most of the differences which we notice between 
this narrative of the history of Jesus and that of the three Synoptics. 

The facts which we have just proved contain, in a general way, the 
answer to this question. If in the cases of divergence previously examined, 
we have established, in every instance, the incontrovertible historical 
superiority of John’s narrative, what follows from this fact? That the 
author had too much respect for the history which he was relating, to 
permit the idea which inspired him to be prejudicial to the faithful state- 
ment of the facts, or that this governing idea, belonging to the history itself, 
moved over the narrative, not asa cause of alteration, but asa salutary 
and conservative rule. | 

Let us, however, enter into details and take notice of the particu- 
lar divergences which are cited as specimens of the unfavorable effect of 
the theological standpoint. The question is either of facts omitted, or of 
narratives repeated, with or without modifications, or finally of features 
added, by the Johannean story. 

6 


82 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


There are three facts, especially, the omission of which seems to several 
critics significant,—the temptation, the institution of the Holy Supper, 
and the agony in Gethsemane. The first and third of these facts, it is 
thought, appeared to the author unworthy of the Logos; as for the 
second, it was enough for him, from his spiritualistic point of view, to 
have unveiled the essence of it in the discourse of chap. vi.; after that, 
the outward ceremony had no more value to his view. Does he not 
proceed in the same way with respect to the baptism? He does not, any 
more than in the former case, give an account of its institution, but he sets 
forth its essence, iii. 5. We believe that John’s silence respecting these 
two facts is to be explained in quite a different way. If the author was 
afraid to compromise the dignity of the Logos by placing Him in conflict 
with the invisible adversary, would he make Him say, xiv. 80: ‘I will no 
longer talk much with you, for the prince of the world cometh?” It 
must not be forgotten that the starting-point of John’s narrative is later 
than the fact of the temptation. It is the same with the baptism of Jesus, 
which is also not related, but which the author does not dream of deny- 
ing, since he distinctly alludes to it in the saying attributed to John the 
Baptist, i.32: “I have seen the Spirit descending from heaven like a 
dove and abiding upon him.” The scene of Gethsemane is omitted; but 
it is sufficiently indicated by that statement, which is really a reference to 
the Synoptical narratives, xvi. 1: “ After that Jesus had said these things, 
he went forth with his disciples beyond the brook Cedron, where there was 
a garden into which he entered, himself and his disciples.” John takes pre- 
cisely the same course here as he does with relation to the great session 
of the Sanhedrim, at which Jesus was condemned to death ; that scene, 
which is necessarily presupposed by the appearance before Pilate, he 
nevertheless does not relate, but contents himself with indicating it by 
the words, xvii. 24, “ And Annas sent him bound to Caiaphas, the high- 
priest” (comp. also the words “to Annas first,” ver. 13). This tacit refer- 
ence to the Synoptics belongs to John’s mode of narrating. Limiting 
himself to a delicate hint, which should serve as a nota bene, he passes 
over the points with which he knows his readers to be sufficiently well 
acquainted. If he was afraid of compromising the dignity of the Logos, 
how should he have related in chap. xil., in a scene which he alone has 
preserved from oblivion, that inward struggle, the secret of which Jesus 
did not fear to betray to the people who were about him, ver. 27: ‘ And 
now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say?” How should he make 
Him weep at the tomb of Lazarus (xi. 85) and represent him as troubled 
in His spirit in the presence of the traitor (xiii. 21)? The omission of the 
institution of the Holy Supper is no less easily explained. JOhn was not 
writing the Gospel for neophytes; he was relating his story in the midst 
of Churches which had been long since founded, and in which the Holy 
Supper was probably celebrated every week. Far from wishing to describe 
the ministry of Jesus in its entireness, he set forth the manifestations in 
acts and words which had especially contributed to the end of revealing 
to himself the Christ, the Son of God; comp. xx. 30, 31. Now, this aim 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 83 


did not oblige him to take particular notice of the institution of the 
Supper; and as this ceremony was sufficiently well-known and universally 
celebrated, he could omit the institution of it without detriment. No 
more does he give an account of the institution of baptism, although he 
makes an allusion to it in iii. 5 and iv. 2. 

Three examples ought to show to a cautious criticism how much it 
needs to be on its guard, when the question is of drawing from omissions 
like these conclusions as to the hidden intentions of the author. He 
omits the story of the selection of the twelve apostles; is this in order to 
disparage them? But he himself puts in the mouth of Jesus (vi. 70) this 
word: “Have not I chosen you, the twelve?” Let us suppose that this 
declaration were not found there, what consequences would not an im- 
passioned criticism draw from the omission? The fourth Gospel does 
not give an account of the ascension ; does it mean to deny it? But in 
vi. 62, we find these words in the mouth of Jesus: “ How will it be, when 
you shall see the Son of man ascending where he was before?” The ground 
of the omission is, very simply, the fact that the close of the narrative, 
the scene connected with Thomas, is anterior to this event, which, besides, 
was suited in the best possible way to the idea of the Logos. If there 
was in the Synoptics a fact fitted to be used to advantage in behalf of this 
theory, it was, certainly, that of the transfiguration. Very well! it is 
omitted, no less than the scene of Gethsemane. Such examples should 
suffice to bring criticism back from the false path in which it has been 
wandering for the last forty years, and into which it is drawing after itself 
an immense public who blindly swear according to it. 

But we are arrested in our course here. If the author of the fourth 
Gospel, they say to us, really proposed to himself to complete the two 
others, why does he relate a certain number of facts already reported by 
them : for example, the expulsion of the dealers and the multiplication 
of the loaves, the anointing by Mary at Bethany and the entrance into 
Jerusalem on Palm Sunday ? 

We have already said: the author does not write for the purpose of 
completing. He proposes to himself a more elevated aim, which he 
himself points out in xx. 30, 31. But in these same verses he also defines 
his method, which consists in selecting, among the things already written 
or not yet written, that which best suited the end which he is pursuing: 
to give the grounds of his faith in Christ the Son of God, in order to the 
reproduction of the same faith in his readers: “Jesus did many other 
signs . . . which are not written in this book; but these are written in order 
that...” This mode of selecting implies omissions—we have remarked 
them—but it also authorizes repetitions, on every occasion when the 
author judges them necessary or even useful to his purpose. 

Thus the driving out of the dealers (chap. ii.) is related anew by him, 
because he knows that it played,in the ministry of Jesus and in the 
development of the national unbelief, a much more serious part than that 
which was attributed to it in the Synoptical narrative. The latter, by 
placing this fact at the end of Jesus’ ministry, prevented it from being 


84 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


looked upon as the bold measure by which Jesus had called His people 
to join themselves with Him in beginning the spiritual reform of the 
theocracy; the refusal of the people and their rulers on that occasion 
ceased thus to be the first step in the path of resistance and rejection. 

The multiplication of the loaves (chap. vi.) appeared in the Synoptics 
only as one among the numerous miracles of Jesus. The important 
part appertaining to the crisis in the history of Jewish unbelief which 
resulted from this fact, was in them almost completely effaced. It is this 
side of the event which John restores to full light. He shows the carnal 
and political character of the Galilean enthusiasm, which desires, on this 
occasion, to proclaim the royalty of Jesus, and which, immediately after- 
wards, is offended at the declarations by which He refuses to promise to 
His own anything else than the satisfaction of spiritual hunger and 
thirst. At the same time, the fact thus presented becomes a very con- 
spicuous landmark in the history of faith, by displaying the contrast 
between the abandoning of Jesus by the greater part of His former dis- 
ciples and the energetic profession of St. Peter: “To whom else shall we 
go ...? Thou art the Holy One of God.” 

The story of the anointing at Bethany (chap. xii., 1 ff.) is, on the one side, 
connected with the resurrection of Lazarus, which has just been related 
in the preceding chapter, and, on the other, with the treachery of Judas 
which is to play so important a part in the picture of the last supper. 
This twofold connection did not appear in the Synoptics, who gave no 
account of the resurrection of Lazarus, and who, by substituting for the 
name of Judas the vague expressions: some (Mark), the disciples (Matt.), 
prevented the connection between this malevolent manifestation and the 
monstrous act which was about to follow from being perceived. 

The entrance into Jerusalem (xii. 12 ff.) is related so summarily by John 
that it is really nothing but a complement of the Synoptic narrative. 
Thus, when he says: “ Having found a young ass,” and when he adds 
that, after the ascension, “the disciples remembered that these things 
were written and that they had done these things,” while in his own narra- 
tive they have done nothing at all to Him, it is evident that, for the com- 
plete picture of the scene, he refers to other narratives already known. 
Only he is obliged to recall the fact to mind, in order to present it, on the 
one hand, as the effect of the resurrection of Lazarus (vv. 17, 18), and, on 
the other, as the cause which forced the Sanhedrim to precipitate the 
execution of the judgment already given against Jesus (ver. 19). 

We can easily see, therefore, how these narratives are, not useless repe- 
titions, but essential features in the general picture which the author pro- 
poses to himself to trace. Take away these, and you have, not merely a 
simple omission, but a rent in the very texture of the narrative. 

It remains for us to consider a last class of facts in which it is believed 
that one may detect, in a peculiarly sensible way, the influence exerted 
upon the narrative by the dogmatic conception which filled the mind of 
its author. These are the facts and particular features which John adds 
to the narrative of his predecessors. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 85 


One of the features which most profoundly distinguish this Gospel from 
the preceding ones is, certainly, the chronological framework traced out 
above. The question is, whether this framework is a product of the idea, 
or whether it belongs to the actual history. We have already shown that, 
by the admission of Reuss, the second answer is the true one. What 
significance would it have, moreover, for the idea of the Logos that the 
ministry of Jesus continued for one year, or for two years and more ?— 
that He taught and baptized during a first year in Judea, before establish- 
ing Himself in Galilee, as John relates, or, on the contrary, that He betook 
Himself to that country immediately after His baptism by the forerunner, 
as appears to be indicated by the Synoptics (Matt. iv. 12 and parallels)? It 
seems rather, that the shorter the sojourn of the Logos on the earth was, 
the more magnificently does the power of the work accomplished by Him 
shine forth.—Or again, those large intervals, entirely destitute of facts, 
which extend from one to three, or even six months,—are they to be con- 
sidered pure inventions of the author for the benefit of the Logos theory ? 
But with justice, Sabatier asks, “if the author had invented this frame- 
work, how should he have neglected to fill it out?” (p. 188). Reuss thinks 
he cites a decisive fact against the historical tendency of the Johannean 
narration, when he says: “A single fact fills an entire season vi. 4—vii. 2.’’! 
But how is it that he does not see that this almost total silence of the 
author respecting the contents of these six entire months, between the 
Passover and the Feast of Tabernacles, is the unanswerable proof that he 
has not invented “this season” with a speculative end in view, and that 
he mentions it only with a truly historical purpose. 

It is in the fact of the visits to Jerusalem that the influence of the idea 
on the Johannean narration can, as it is thought, be most clearly proved. 
The great conflict between the light and the darkness demanded the 
capital as itstheatre. But those who reason thus, are themselves forced to 
recognize in these visits to Jerusalem related by John, an indispensable 
element of the history—a factor without which neither the tragical catas- 
trophe at Jerusalem, nor the foundation of the Church in this same city, 
can be understood (see pages 76, 77). These visits are not, then, a pro- 
duct of the idea. All that can be claimed is that they have been chosen 
and made prominent by the author as the principal object of his narra- 
tive, because he has judged them particularly fitted to bring out the 
principal idea of his work. Let us add here, however, that this idea is, by 
no means, a metaphysical notion, like that of the Logos, but the fact of 
the development of faith and of unbelief towards Jesus Christ. Moreover, 
to this ideal explanation of the visits to Jerusalem, Sabatier rightly opposes 
the narrative of chap. vi.: “ We may well be surprised,” he says, “to see 
beginning in Galilee, in the synagogue at Capernaum, the crisis whose > 
denouement is to come in Jerusalem. We cannot explain such partial 
annulling of the system ’’—we say, for ourselves: of the alleged system— 
“of the author, except by the very distinct recollection which he had 
of the Galilean crisis.” 

1P. 23, 


86 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


At this point there arises, undoubtedly, a difficult question—the most 
obscure of ali those which are connected with the relation between John 
and the Synoptics: that of the omission of the visits to Jerusalem in the 
latter. We have seen that their whole narrative supposes these visits and 
requires them; how is it that they give no account of them? This 
strange omission seems to us explicable only by means of these two facts: 
one, that our three Synoptics are the redaction of the popular tradition 
which took form at Jerusalem after the day of Pentecost; the other, that 
this tradition had, from the beginning, left these visits in the background 
for some reason which can only be conjectured. As we have seen that 
the various allusions to the treachery of Judas during the last supper 
(John xiii.) were blended into one in the traditional and Synoptic story, 
and that the narrative of John is necessary in order to restore them to 
their true places; that, in the same way, the story of the denials of Peter, 
which, in the Synoptics, form a single and unbroken cycle, has found 
again in John’s Gospel its natural articulation—so a similar fact probably 
occurred with reference to the journeys to Jerusalem. In the popular 
narration, they all came to be mingled together in that last journey—the 
only one which really told decisively on the history of the Messianic work, 
and which consequently remained in the tradition. We readily notice, in 
studying the three accounts of the Galilean ministry in the Synoptics, that 
they are divided into certain groups or cycles, each containing the same 
series of stories; what Lachmann has called the corpuscula historix evan- 
gelice. The journeys to Jerusalem did not fall within any of these 
groups. And when the evangelical tradition thus divided and grouped 
was committed to writing, these journeys remained in the shade. The 
very contents of the discourses which Jesus had spoken in the capital 
might, likewise, contribute to this omission in the ordinary proclaiming of 
the Gospel. It was not easy to reproduce forthe Jewish and Gentile mul- 
titudes who heard of the Gospel for the first time, discourses such as that 
of the fifth chapter of St. John, on the dependence of the Son as related 
to the Father, and on the various testimonies which the Father bears to 
the Son; or discussions such as those which are reported in chaps. vii. and 
vill., where Jesus can no longer say a word without being interrupted by 
evil-minded hearers. The discourse of chap. vi. held in Galilee, could not 
be reproduced for the same reason, while the fact of the multiplication of 
the loaves, which had given occasion to it, remained in the tradition. How 
much easier, more natural and more immediately useful 1t was to repro- 
~ duce varied scenes, like those of the Galilean life, or moral discourses and. 
conversations, like the parables or the Sermon on the Mount? For all 
these reasons, or for some other besides these which is unknown to us, this 
important part of the ministry of Jesus was omitted in the tradition and 
also, afterwards, in our Synoptics. But, as Hase so well says, “as 1t wasin 
the natural order of things that those who, like Luke, desired to describe 
the life of Jesus without having lived with Him, should keep to that which 
was published and believed in the Church respecting that life;—so it was 
natural also that, if an intimate disciple of the Lord came to undertake 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 87 


this work, he should keep much less to the common matter which had 
been accidentally and involuntarily reduced to form, than to his own 
recollections. Then, such a man was less bound by pious regard for that 
sacred tradition; for he was also himself a living source of it. Iam not 
at all surprised, therefore, that a Johannean Gospel, in its high originality, 
deviates from that common matter; much rather, if a Gospel published 
under the name of this disciple did nothing but repeat that collective in- 
heritance, and did not differ from it more than the Synoptics differ from 
one another, should I in that case doubt the authenticity of that Gospel.” } 

An objection is also derived from the miraculous works, to the number 
of seven, which are related in our Gospel ; it bears upon these four points : 
1. These works have a more marvelous character even than those of the 
Synoptics ; 2. They are presented as manifestations of the glory of the 
Logos, and no longer as the simple effects of the compassion of Jesus; 3. 
Several of these miracles are omitted by the Synoptics—a fact which, by 
reason even of their extraordinary greatness, renders them more suspi- 
cious; 4. No casting out of a demon is mentioned. 

1. We think that it would be difficult to say wherein the change of the 
water into wine at Cana, chap. ii., is more extraordinary than the multi- 
plication of the loaves and fishes, related by our four gospels alike. Is it 
more marvelous to transform the qualities of matter, than to produce it? 
Has not the latter act a greater analogy to the creative act ?—If, in the 
healing of the son of the royal officer, chap. iv., the miracle is wrought at 
a distance, the fact is not otherwise in the case of the servant of the cen- 
turion at Capernaum, Matt. viii., and in that of the daughter of the 
Canaanitish woman, Matt. xv.—The impotent man of Bethesda, John v., 
was sick for thirty-eight years: but what do we know of the time during 
which the impotent man, whose healing the Synoptics relate with circum- 
stantial particularity, was paralyzed?—If in the story of the walking on 
the water, John vi., the bark reaches the shore immediately after the ar- 
rival of Jesus, the story in Matthew presents a no less extraordinary de- 
tail—the person of Peter made to participate in the miracle accomplished 
in the person of Jesus.—Two miracles remain in which the narrative of 
John appears to go beyond the analogous facts related by the Synoptics: 
the healing of the one born blind, chap. ix., and the resurrection of Laz- 
arus, who had been dead four days. By these two altogether peculiar cir- 
cumstances, the author proposed, it is said, to glorify the Logos in an 
extraordinary way.—But how can we make such an intention accord with 
several sayings which the same author puts into the mouth of Jesus, and 
in which the value of miracles, as a means of laying a foundation for 
belief, is expressly combated or at least depreciated. “Unless ye see 
wonders and signs, ye will not believe ” (iv. 48): it is with this reproach 
that Jesus receives the request of the royal officer. “If ye believe not me, 


1 Geschichte Jesu, pp. 39,40. Letus remark selves, we are as yet treating only that of the 
that Hase, in this passage, is discussing the historical or speculative character of our 
question of the authenticity. As for our- narrative. 


88 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


at least believe the works” (x. 88); comp. also xiv. 11. And yet the 
author who has preserved such declarations of Jesus, the authenticity and 
elevated spirituality of which every one recognizes, makes himself the 
flatterer of the grossest religious materialism, by inventing new miracles 
and giving them a more wonderful character ! 

2. Is it true that our Gospel forms a contrast with the Synoptics, in the 
fact that the latter present the miracles as works of compassion, while in 
the former they are the signs of the glory of the Logos?—But let us ob- 
serve, first of all, that in the Gospel of John the miracles are not even 
ascribed to the power of Jesus. It is one of the characteristic features of 
this work, that it makes the miracles, so far as Jesus is concerned, acts of 
prayer, while the operative power is ascribed to the Father alone. “TI can 
do nothing of myself,” says Jesus, v. 30, after the healing of the impotent 
man. ‘The works which God has given me to do, these works testify for 
me,” He adds, ver. 36. The miracles are an attestation of the Father only 
because it is the Father who accomplishes them on His behalf. In xi. 41, 
42, Jesus says publicly, before the grave of Lazarus: “ Father, I thank 
thee that thou hast heard me ...; I know that thou hearest me always.” 
He must therefore ask, beg for His miracles, as one of us might do; and 
is it claimed that these acts are the glorification of His own divine power? 
No doubt, it is also said, ii. 11, after the miracle at Cana, that “he mani- 
fested his glory,” and xi. 4, that “the sickness of Lazarus is for the glory 
of God,”—then it is added: “in order that the Son of God may be glori- 
fied thereby.” If this glory is not that which He derives from His own 
power, what can it be? Evidently that which results from His compas- 
sion manifested in His prayer, as the glory of the Father results from His 
love manifested by hearing it. Here, indeed, is the glory “full of grace 
and truth,” of which the author himself spoke in i. 14. It is, therefore, 
very easy to escape from the antithesis which Reuss establishes between 
the miracles of compassion (in the Synoptics) and those of revelation and 
of personal glorification (in St. John). The glory of the Son in the latter 
consists precisely in obtaining from the Father that which His compassion 
asks for. How, for example, is the resurrection of Lazarus introduced 
in our Gospel? By those words which overflow with tenderness, and 
which have nothing like them in the Synoptices: “And Jesus loved Martha 
and her sister and Lazarus” (xi. 5). In order to apprehend completely 
the manner in which the miracles are presented in our Gospel, it must, 
indeed, be considered that the true aim of these acts passed far beyond the 
relief of the suffering being who was the object of them. If Jesus was 
moved only by compassion for individual suffering, why, instead of giving 
sight to a few blind persons only, did He not exterminate blindness from 
the world? Why, instead of raising two or three dead persons, did He 
not annihilate death itself? He did not do it, although His compassion 
would certainly have impelled Him to it. It was because the suppression 
of suffering and death is a blessing for humanity only as a corollary of the 
destruction of sin. The latter must, therefore, precede the former; and 
the miracles were signs, intended to manifest Jesus as the one by whom sin 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 89 


first, and then suffering and death, are to be one day radically extermi- 
nated. As collective love for humanity does not exclude compassion 
towards a particular individual, so the notion of miracles in John does not 
exclude the Synoptic point of view, but includes it, while subordinating 
it to a more general point of view. 

3. But how does it happen that of the seven miracles related by John, 
five are omitted in the previous Gospels. That of Cana naturally fell out 
with the first year of the ministry which they omitted. That of Bethesda 
and that of the man who was born blind are omitted with the visits to 
Jerusalem of which they form a part. That of the son of the royal officer 
had nothing peculiarly striking in it and had its counterpart in a miracle 
which is related by the Synoptics, that of the healing of the centurion’s 
servant, which many even identify—wrongly, in our view—with the mir- 
acle reported by John. 

The omission of the resurrection of Lazarus in the Synoptics is the 
most difficult fact to explain. It is not enough to say that the miracle 
took place in Judea; for at the time when it occurred the Synoptics pre- 
sent the Lord to us as sojourning in Perea and in the southern districts. 
We have only one explanation: tradition remained silent with respect to 
this fact through consideration for Lazarus and his two sisters. This 
family lived within a stone’s throw of Jerusalem and was thus exposed to 
the hostile stroke of the Sanhedrim. We read in John xii. 10 that “ the 
chief priests took counsel that they might put Lazarus also to death” 
together with Jesus, because of the influence which the sight of this man 
who had been raised from the dead was exerting upon the numerous pil- 
grims arriving at the capital. The case might have been precisely the 
same after the day of Pentecost ; and it is probable that it was found pru- 
dent, for this reason, to pass over this fact in silence in the traditional Gos- 
pel story. Either the names of Martha and Mary, in the story of the 
anointing (see Mark and Matthew), or the name of Bethany, when the 
two sisters were designated by their names (see the account of Luke x. 
88), were likewise omitted. It was, undoubtedly, for a similar reason that, 
in the account of the arrest of Jesus in Gethsemane, the name of the dis- 
ciple who drew the sword was suppressed in the tradition (see the three 
Synoptical narratives), while it is mentioned without scruple by John, 
who wrote at a time when no harm could any longer come to Peter from 
this precise indication. Objection is made, it is true, that the Synoptic 
narratives were drawn up after the death of Peter, and after that of the 
members of the Bethany family ; to what purpose, then, these precau- 
tions (see Mever)? But we too, do not, by any means, ascribe these pre- 
cautions to the authors of these works; we ascribe them to the Gospel 
tradition, formed at Jerusalem from the days which followed the day of Pen- 
tecost. We sce from the account of the ill treatment to which the Sanhe- 
drim subjected the apostles, from the martyrdom of Stephen and of 
James, and from the persecutions of which Saul became the instrument, 
that, at that time, the power of the enemies of Jesus was still unimpaired, 
and that it was exercised in the most violent manner. Their hatred went 


90 BOOK Il. THE GOSPEL. 


on increasing with the progress of the Church; and there must have been 
an apprehension, that if any one should put publicly on the scene those 
who had played a part in that history, he would make them pay very 
dearly for such an honor. John, who composed his work at a time when 
there was no longer any Sanhedrim or Jewish people or temple, and who 
wrote under the sway, not of tradition, but of his own recollections, could, 
without fear, re-establish the facts in their integrity. This is the reason 
why he designates Peter as the author of the blow which was given in the 
scene in Gethsemane, while at the same time, at the suggestion of this 
name, he calls to mind that of Malchus, the one who was injured; this is 
the reason why he gives himself up to the happiness of tracing in all its 
details the wonderful scene of the resurrection of Lazarus. 

4. We shall not dwell long upon the omission of the cures of demoniacs. 
Does not the author himself say that there are also in the history of 
Jesus numerous miracles, different from those which he has mentioned 
(xx. 30: woAAG Kai dara onucia)? Does not Jesus speak, xiv. 30, of “the 
prince of this world coming to Him”? There would be nothing, there- 
fore, to prevent the evangelist from speaking of the victories of Jesus over 
his demoniacal agents. Cases of possession are mentioned only rarely in 
Greek countries (Acts xvi., xvii.). They were less known there. 

The want of historical character, which criticism charges against the 
accounts of miracles in the fourth Gospel, it discovers again in the person- 
ages whom this book brings on the stage. They are not, it claims, living 
beings, but mere types. Nicodemus is the personification of learned 
Pharisaism. ‘We see him come, but we do not see him go away ;” this 
is a favorite observation of Reuss; it passes from one of his works to 
another. He adds: “In any case there is no more question as to him.” 
Finally, he asserts that the reply made by Jesus to this nocturnal visitor 
“ends in a theoretical exposition of the Gospel,” and, consequently, is not 
at all addressed to him. The same estimate of the Samaritan woman, in 
chap. iv.; in this woman is simply personified “the artless and confident 
faith of the poor in spirit.” And the same also of the Greeks of chap. 
xiil.: they represent heathenism yearning for salvation. What meaning, 
indeed, would the mediation of Philip and Andrew have, to which they 
have recourse, and which was, by no means, necessary in the presence of 
a being whom every one could freely approach? These are, then, ideal 
figures, as suits the essential character of a book which is nothing but a 
treatise on theology.? 

Reuss would wish, no doubt, that the account of the conversation with 
Nicodemus had been followed by this remark: And Nicodemus returned 
to his house. The narrator has not considered this detail necessary. He 
has judged it more useful to relate to us, in chap. vii., that, in a full session 
of the Sanhedrim, this same senator, who at the beginning came to Jesus 
by night, had the courage to take up His defense and to expose himself to 
insult from his colleagues. He has also preferred to show us, on the day 


1 Reuss, pp. 14, 15. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE FACTS. 91 


of deepest darkness, when the most intimate friends of Jesus were despair- 
ing of Him and His work, this same man offering to His dead body at the 
foot of the cross a royal homage, and publicly making known his faith in 
Him, in whom he recognized, at that hour, the true brazen serpent lifted 
up for the salvation of the world; comp. John iii. 14, 15. Here, it seems, 
are features which attest the reality of a man, and in presence of which it 
ought not to be said: “In any case there is no more question as to him.” 
It is also wholly false to call the end of the conversation of Jesus with him, 
in chap. iii., “a theoretical exposition of the Gospel ;” for every word of 
Jesus sets a feature of the true Messianic programme in direct opposition 
to the false Pharisaic programme which Nicodemus brought with him: 
The Messiah must be lifted up like the brazen serpent; which means: and 
not like a new Solomon. God so loved the world: and not only the Jews. 
The Son is come to save: and not to judge the uncircumcised. The one 
who is condemned is whoever does not believe: and not the Gentile as 
such. The one whois saved is whoever believes: but not the Jew as such. 
Through the addition of this last word: “ He who does the truth comes to 
the light,” it is very clear, for every one who puts himself in the situation, 
that Jesus makes an encouraging allusion to the step which Nicodemus 
had taken; there is here a farewell full of kindness which is a guaranty 
for his future progress. Everything in this story, therefore, from the first 
word to the last, applies personally to Him. Is it possible to picture to 
oneself a scene more real and life-like than that at Jacob’s well? That fa- 
tigue of Jesus carried to the extreme, even to exhaustion (kexorvaxéc); that 
malicious observation of the woman: “ How dost thou ask drink of me, 
who am a Samaritan woman?” that water-pot which she leaves and which 
remains there as a pledge of her speedy return; those Samaritans hasten- 
ing towards Jesus, whose eagerness makes upon Him the impression of a 
harvest already ripening, after a sowing which has just taken place at that 
very moment; that sower who rejoices to see, once in His life at least, His 
labor ending in the harvest feast, those people of Sychar who so artlessly 
attest the difference between their first act of faith, founded solely on the 
woman’s story, and their present faith, the fruit of their contact with Jesus 
Himself... What a painter is made of our author by attributing to his 
creative imagination such words, such a picture ?—Can we say that the 
Greeks were really lost from sight in the answer which Jesus makes to the 
communication of Philip and Andrew? But to whom, then, does that 
expression of xii. 82 apply: ‘“ When I shall be lifted up from the earth, I 
will draw all men unto me?” Our Lord means: My teaching and my 
miracles will not suffice to extend the Kingdom of God over the earth and 
to make all peoples enter into it; my elevation upon the cross will be 
needed, followed by my elevation to the throne. Then only, “after it shall 
have been cast into the earth, will the grain of seed bear much fruit (ver. 
24)’ Then only will it be possible for the great fact of the fall of Satan’s 
power and of the conversion of the Gentiles to be accomplished, which 
cannot yet at this moment be realized. The answer of Jesus, therefore, is 
equivalent, in its meaning, to that which He gave to the Canaanitish 


92 BOOK Il. THE GOSPEL. 


woman: “TI am not sent (during my earthly career), except to the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel.’’ It matters little to us, after this, to know 
whether the Greeks were admitted or not to a few moments of conversa- 
tion with the Lord. It was the moral situation in itself and its gravity for 
Israel and for the world, which the narrator wished to describe, as Jesus 
Himself had so solemnly characterized it on that occasion; and what 
proves that it is, indeed, Jesus who spoke in this way, is the following pic- 
ture of the profound emotion which this first contact with the Gentile 
world produces in Him: “ And now is my soul troubled; and what shall 
Isay? Father, save me from this hour? But for this cause came I unto 
this hour.” Most certainly it may be said:—here are words which were 
not invented, and which, in any case, were not invented in the interest of 
the Logos-theory! Now if these words are historical, the entire scene 
cannot be otherwise. As for the mediation of Philip and Andrew, it is 
in truth more difficult to comprehend the objection, than to solve it. 

After having given an account of the difficulties which have been raised, 
we ourselves proceed to raise some against this ddeal explanation of the 
Johannean narrative. The historical differences between this Gospel and 
the preceding ones arise, it is said, from the influence exerted by the Logos 
theory which this work is designed to set forth. Buta mass of details in 
John’s narration are either wholly foreign or even opposed to this alleged 
intention. , 

We ask of what interest, from the point of view indicated, can be that 
tenth hour so expressly mentioned in i. 40, or that first sojourn of Jesus in 
Capernaum, indicated in ii. 12, but of which the author does not tell us the 
least detail; wherein is it of advantage to the Logos idea to mention, viii. 
20, that the place where Jesus spoke was the place called the Treasury of 
the temple, or x. 23, that “it was winter ” and that “Jesus was walking in 
Solomon’s porch;” or, xi. 54, that after the resurrection of Lazarus, Jesus 
withdrew to a place named Ephraim and near the desert, without our 
learning anything of what He did and saidthere. What does the Logos 
idea gain from our knowing that the name of the servant whose right ear 
Peter cut off was called Malchus, and that he was the brother of a servant 
of the high priest; that it was the apostle Andrew who discovered the 
small lad carrying the two barley-loaves and the five fishes; or that the 
disciples had already gone twenty-five furlongs when Jesus overtook them 
on the sea (vi. 18, 19); or that in the scene at the tomb John moved more 
quickly than Peter, but Peter was more courageous than John; that it 
was Philip who said: “Show us the Father;’’ Thomas who asked: 
“Make known to us the way;” Judas, “not Iscariot,” who wished to 
know why Jesus would reveal Himself only to believers and not to the 
world (chap. xiv.)? Is it fictitious realism which the author here indulges 
in as he introduces these names, these numbers, these minute details, or 
does he attach to them some symbolic meaning in connection with the 
theory of the Logos? The seriousness of the work does not allow the first 
explanation, common sense excludes the second. 

More than this: a multitude of details in the narrative are in open contra- 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. - 93 


diction to the notion of the Logos as it is ascribed to our author. The | 
Logos wearied and thirsty ! The Logos remaining in Galilee in order to 
escape the death with which He is threatened at Jerusalem, and going to 
that city only secretly! The Logos agitated in His soul and even in His 
spirit,—then, beginning to weep; praying and, at a given moment, troubled 
even to the point of not knowing how to pray! Itis easy to see that in no one 
of our Gospels is the truly human side of Jesus’ person so earnestly empha- 
sized as in the story of the fourth. Ifthe theme of the narrative is contained 
in these words: “The Word was made flesh,” the predicate in this propo- 
sition is made prominent in the narrative at least as much as the subject. 

But let us suppose, in spite of so many details which are foreign or 
contradictory to the philosophical notion of the Logos, that the intention 
of the author was to proclaim this new thesis and to win over the Church 
to it: what advantage was there for this end in introducing into the gen- 
erally received narrative modifications which could only render the whole 
work suspicious? Why create, in some sort as a whole, a new history of our 
Lord’s life, while it was so easy for him, as is shown by the discourse which 
follows the account of the multiplication of the loaves (chap. vi.), to connect 
his favorite theory with the facts already known and everywhere admitted. 

Finally, can we, without an insurmountable psychological contradic- 
tion, hold either that the author believed his own fictions so far as to 
amalgamate them in one and the same narrative with the facts which were 
most sacred to him—those of the Passion and resurrection,—or that, not 
himself believing them, he presented them to his readers as real, with the 
purpose of strengthening and developing their faith (xx. 30, 31)? In par- 
ticular, can we conceive that he founded on these miracles, invented by 
himself, the grand indictment which he draws up, in closing the part from 
vy. to xii, against Jewish unbelief: “Although he had done so many signs 
before them, they believed not on him, that the word of Isaiah the pro- 
phet might be fulfilled .. .” (xii. 37, 38). And yet he who wrote thus 
knew perfectly that these signs, in the name of which he condemns his 
people, had never occurred! — We reach here the limits of folly. 

Thus more and more men like Weizsicker, Hase and Renan feel them- 
selves obliged to recognize in the fourth Gospel a real and considerable 
historical basis. They stop at the half-way point, no doubt; but the pub- 
lic consciousness will not rest there. The purely and simply historical 
character of the entire work will impress itself upon that consciousness, 
as soon as the present crisis shall have passed; and we await with confi- 
dence the moment when reparation will be made to the narrative which 
we have just been studying. This, as has been seen, will not be the first 
retractation which it will have wrested from science. 


III. The Discourses. 


But if the narrative of the facts has not been altered by reason of the 
speculative idea, can the same thing be affirmed of the other part—and it 
is the more considerable part—of our Gospel, namely, the Discourses which 


94 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


it puts into the mouth of Jesus? According to the opinion of Baur, these 
discourses are only the evolution of the Logos idea presented in its 
various aspects. Reuss thinks that the author takes for his starting point 
certain authentic utterances of Jesus, but that he freely amplifies them, 
by giving them developments borrowed from his own Christian experience. 
In favor of this view, the glaring improbabilities are alleged, which are 
observed in the account given of most of these discourses; the singular 
conformity of thought and style between the way in which the author 
makes Jesus speak and the language which he ascribes to the forerunner, 
or his own language in the prologue and in his epistle; finally, and 
especially, the complete contrast in matter and form which exists between 
the discourses of Jesus in our Gospel and His teaching in the Synoptics. 

In order to treat this important subject thoroughly, we shall study the 
following three questions : 

1. Are the discourses of Jesus in this Gospel to be regarded as simple 
variations of the speculative theme which is placed by the author at the 
beginning of his book? Or, on the contrary, must we regard the prologue 
as a summing up, a quintessence, of the history and the teachings related 
in the following narrative ? 

2. Do the alleged difficulties render the historical character of the dis- 
courses inadmissible ? 

8. Can we rise to such a conception of the person of Jesus that the 
Johannean teaching shall flow from it as naturally as the Synoptic 
preaching? 


A. The relation of the prologue to the discourses and the narrative in general. 


Let us determine, in the first place, the true import of what is called 
the theorem of the Logos. It is claimed that, in thus opening his book, 
the author places the reader, not on the ground of history, but on that of 
philosophical speculation.’ This assertion can be sustained only on one 
condition, that of restricting the prologue, as Reuss, and he alone, does, 
to the first five verses. As soon as we extend it, as the sequel forces us to 
do, as far as ver. 18, we see that the author’s thought is not to teach that 
there is in God a Logos—in this, indeed, there would be a speculative 
theorem—but that this Logos, this divine being, has appeared in Jesus 
Christ—which is not a philosophical idea, but a fact, an element of history, 
at least as the author understood it. And in fact John the Baptist, vv. 
6-9, does not testify of the existence of the Logos, but of this historical 
fact: that in Jesus the true divine light has been manifested. John does 
not say, ver. 11, that the fault of the Jews consisted in refusing to believe 
in the existence of a Logos, but in not receiving, as their Messiah, this 
divine being When he had appeared in Jesus. The blessedness of the 
~Church (vv. 14-18) does not, according to him, flow from the fact that it 
has believed in the theorem of the Logos, but from the fact that it has 
received Him and that it possesses Him, in Jesus Christ, as the Son, the 


1 Reuss, p. 11. 


CHARACTERISTICS—-THE DISCOURSES. 95 


source of grace and truth. The question in the prologue, therefore, is 
only of what Jesus is, the one whose history the author is about to relate. 
The tendency of this preamble is historical and religious, not metaphysical. 

But more than this: the true notion of the person of Jesus is in itself 
only one of the essential ideas of the prologue. This passage contains 
two other ideas, which are no less important, and which belong still more 
manifestly to history. They are that of the rejection of Jesus by the 
Jews (ver. 11): “ He came to his own, and his own received him not ”— 
unbelief, with its consequence, perdition,—and that of the faith of the 
Church (ver. 16): “ And of his fullness have we all received, grace upon 
grace’’—the happiness and salvation of all believers, Jews and Gentiles. 
These two ideas are not metaphysical notions; they are, no less than the 
appearance of Christ, real facts, which the author had seen accomplished 
under his own eyes, and which he proposed to himself to trace out in his 
history. He contemplated them as realized, at the very moment when he 
was writing, so soon as he cast a glance on the world which surrounded 
him. Let us not be told, then, of “abstract formulas placed at the begin- 
ning of this book, as a kind of programme!! It is the essence of the 
history itself which he is about to trace out, that the author sums up by 
way of anticipation in this preamble. 

There is, to his view, such a correlation between the Gospel history 
which is to follow and the prologue, that the course of the latter has 
exactly determined the plan of the former. The narrative presents to us 
three facts which are developed simultaneously : the growing revelation 
of Jesus as the Christ and the Son of God (xx. 80, 31); the refusal of the 
Jewish nation, as such, to accept this revelation; and the faith of a 
certain number of individuals in these testimonies, consisting in acts and 
words. This course of the history is found again exactly in that of the 
prologue: vv. 1-5, the Logos; vv. 6-11, the Logos rejected ; vv. 12-18, the 
Logos received. Now, who could hesitate for an instant as to the 
question whether the history was invented according to this plan, or 
whether this plan was conceived and traced out according to the history? 

Let us remark, also, that the discourses of Jesus were one of the most 
important factors in the development of the history. What in a war the 
successive battles are which bring final victory or defeat, this same thing 
in the ministry of Jesus were those solemn encounters in which the Lord 
bore testimony of the work which God had just accomplished through 
Him, or in which there was formed in the people, on one side, that aver- 
sion and hatred, on the other, that sympathy and devotion which decided 
the result of His coming. If it is so, how could the discourses of Jesus 
which are related by the author be to his view only free theological com- 
positions? Truly as the double result indicated by the prologue, the rejec- 
tion by Israel and the foundation of the Church, are real facts, so truly 
must the discourses of Jesus, which so powerfully contributed to lead the 
‘ history to this two-fold end, be facts no less real to his view. 


1 Reuss, p. 11. 


96 BOOK Il. THE GOSPEL. 


Finally, there is a quite singular and often noticed fact, which is abso- 
lutely opposed to the view that the discourses of Jesus in our Gospel are 
to be regarded as the developments of a speculative theory peculiar to the 
author; it is that the term Logos, or Word, which characterizes the pro- 
logue so strikingly, does not in a single instance figure, as taken in the 
same sense, in the discourses of Jesus. The expression word of God is 
frequently employed in them to designate the contents of the divine reve- 
lation. There was only one step more to be taken in order to apply this 
term to the revealer himself, as in the prologue. The author has not 
yielded to this temptation. He might have had, more than once, occasion 
to make Jesus speak thus, particularly in the conversation of x. 33 ff. 
The Jews accuse the Lord of blaspheming, because, being a man, He makes 
Himself God. He replies to them that, in the Old Testament itself, the 
theocratic judges receive the title of gods; comp. Ps. Ixxii. 6: “I have 
said, ye are gods.” It was in these terms that the Psalmist addressed him- 
self to the members of the Israelitish tribunal, as organs of the divine 
justice here below. From these words Jesus draws the following argu- 
ment: If the Scripture, which cannot blaspheme, calls men to whom the 
word of God is addressed gods, how say you that I blaspheme, I. . ., we 
almost infallibly expect here: I who am the Word itself. But no; the 
sentence closes with these words :—‘ I whom the Father hath sanctified 
and sent into the world.” The author does not yield, then, to any theo- 
logical allurement; he remains within the limits of the Lord’s own 
language. 

Other facts still attest the fidelity with which he can confine himself to 
his role as historian even in that which concerns the discourse-portion 
of his work. He had, in his prologue, attributed to the Logos the part of 
divine agent in the work of creation. He had done this, starting from the 
testimonies of Jesus respecting His pre-existence and completing them by 
the narrative of Genesis, and especially by that striking expression: “ Let 
us make man in our image” (comp. also Gen. ili. 22). Nevertheless, he 
had not heard this notion of the creative Logos coming forth expressly 
from the lips of Jesus; therefore he does not bring it into any of His dis- 
courses. And yet it might very naturally have presented itself to him, as 
he wrote, on more than one occasion. Thus, when Jesus prays, saying: “ Re- 
store to me the glory which I had with thee before the world was made.” 
How easy would it have been to substitute for these last words the following : 
Before I made the world, or: Before thou madest the world by me. In 
the prologue, the Logos is also presented as the illuminator of humanity 
during the ages previous to His coming (vv. 5, 9, 10). This idea, once 
expressed by the evangelist, has played a great part in theology since the 
earliest ages of Christianity. The author does not bring it out anywhere 
in the discourses of Jesus. And yet,in such a passage as x. 16, where 
Jesus declares that He has also other sheep which are not of this (Jewish) 
fold, and that He will ere long bring them, or in the discourse of chap. 
vi., where He several times expresses the idea, that there is needed a 
divine preliminary teaching and drawing in order to believe in Him, how 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 97 


natural it would have been to recur to the idea of the illumination of the 
human soul by the educating light of the Logos! No, surely, he who 
made Jesus say: “I say nothing except what my Father teaches me,” did 
not allow himself to make Him speak after his own fancy. As he himself 
declares, 1 Ep.i.1: “That which he announces to his brethren is only that 
which he has seen and heard.” Far from the discourses of Jesus being 
only the development of a theorem placed at the beginning of the book, 
the prologue is to the entire work only that which the argument placed 
at the head of a chapter, and drawn from the contents of it, is to the chap- 
ter of a book of history. It is a forcible synthesis, freely formulated, of 
the history and teachings related in the work itself. 

We should find a confirmation of this result in a fact frequently pointed 
out by Reuss, if this fact were as fully proved to our view as it is to his. 
According to this critic, we often meet in the Lord’s discourses expressions 
which tend to establish a doctrine directly contrary. to the speculative 
theory of the prologue. This doctrine is that of the subordination of Jesus 
in relation to God, which, it is urged, is contradictory to the notion of the 
perfect divinity of the Son, so clearly taught in the prologue. Reuss thinks 
that he finds in this very contradiction the proof of the fidelity with which 
the teachings of Jesus, on certain points, have been preserved by our 
evangelist, in spite of his own theology. But, for ourselves, we shall care- 
fully refrain from using this argument, which rests on a completely false 
interpretation of the data of the prologue. For it is easy to prove that the 
subordination of the Logos to the Father is taught in this section, as well 
as in all the rest of the Gospel. 

Before leaving this subject, let us bring foewaeds a strange observation 
of the same writer. The question is as to the words of John xvii. 3. The 
distinction between Jesus Christ and the only true God is there very strongly 
emphasized—a fact which, according to Reuss, is also contradictory to the 
teaching of the prologue respecting the divinity of the Saviour. This judg- 
ment on his part would have nothing surprising in it, if, in his view, those 
words had been really uttered by Jesus; they would come into the eate- 
gory of those of which we have just spoken. But no; according to this 
critic, these words are invented by the author, as well as those of the pro- 
logue. The evangelist, then, would ascribe to Jesus, in this case, words 
contradictory to his own theology! We have been assured up to this 
point, that he freely composed the discourses in order to put his theology 
into them, and lo, now, he makes Jesus speak in order to combat Himself. 
In what a labyrinth of contradictions poor criticism here loses itself! 


B. The difficulties alleged against the historical character of the discourses. 


There is a very prevalent opinion, at the present day, that Jesus could 
not have spoken as our evangelist makes Him speak. Renan regards the 
Johannean discourses as “pieces of theology and rhetoric to which we 
must not ascribe historical reality, any more than to the discourses which 
Plato puts into the mouth of his master at the moment of dying.” 

7 


$8 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


1. This opinion is, first of all, founded on the improbabilities inherent in 
the discourses themselves. 

The argument is, first, from the obscurity of the teachings. It would 
have been a strange want of pedagogic wisdom on Jesus’ part to teach in 
a way so little intelligible. “One would say that Jesus is anxious to speak 
in enigmas, to soar always in the higher regions inaccessible to the under- 
standing of the common people.” By such a mode of teaching He would 
never have “won hearts given birth to that enthusiastic faith which sur- 
vived the catastrophe of Golgotha.”* Assuredly not, if He had always 
spoken in this way, never otherwise. But our Gospel does not claim to 
be any more complete with regard to teachings, than with regard to facts. 
We have proved this: this work traces out only a score of occasions se- 
lected from a ministry of two years and a half. There were days—and 
they were the largest number—when Jesus led His hearers on the lower or 
middle slopes of the mountain which He wished to make humanity 
climb; but there were others when He sought to bring them near to the 
lofty summits and to give them a glimpse of their sublime beauties. With- 
out the discourses of the first sort, no bond would have been formed be- 
tween their souls and His own. Without those of the second, He would 
not have raised the Church to the height from which it was to conquer 
and rule the world. It is these last discourses which the fourth evangelist 
has especially reproduced, because this higher element of the Saviour’s 
teaching had not found a sufficient place in the primitive tradition in- 
tended for popular evangelization. We can understand, indeed, that the 
life-like and brilliant parables, the very forcible moral maxims, and all the 
elements of this sort, would rather have supplied the material for the cate- 
chetical instruction of the earliest times, and that the teachings of a more 
elevated nature would have remained in the background in it, without, 
however, as we shall see, being altogether wanting. 

With this first charge is connected that of a certain monotony. At bot- 
tom, there is in the whole Gospel, according to Sabatier, “only a single 
discourse;”’ Reuss would, indeed, find two of them. According to the 
first of these writers, it is throughout this same idea: “I am the way, the 
truth, the life.” According to the second, this theme is developed, some- 
times with regard to the unregenerate world, sometimes with regard to 
those who already belong to Jesus Christ.” 

Do the facts, when seriously questioned, confirm this estimate? On 
the contrary, has not every discourse in this Gospel its originality, its 
particular point of view, as much as the teachings contained in the 
Synoptics? When Jesus reveals to Nicodemus the spiritual nature of the 
kingdom of God, in opposition to the earthly idea which the Pharisees 
formed of it; when He teaches the Samaritan woman the wniversality of 
the worship which He comes to inaugurate on the earth, in opposition to 
the local character of the ancient worships; when, at Jerusalem, He 
unfolds the mystery of the community of action between the Father and 


1 Reuss, Théologie johannique, p. 51. a Sabatier, p. 185; Reuss, p. 28. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 99 


the Son, as well as the total dependence of the latter; when, at Caper- 
naum, He sets forth His relation to the lost world, and offers Himself to His 
hearers as the bread from heaven which brings the life of God to man- 
kind; when, in chap. x., He reveals to the people of Jerusalem the 
formation of the new flock which He is about to take out of the old one, 
and which He will fill up by the sheep brought from all the other folds; 
when, on the last evening, He announces to His disciples the commission 
which He entrusts to them of supplying His place on earth by doing 
works greater than His own; then, when He describes to them the hatred 
of the world of which they will be the objects, and when, finally, before 
saying a last farewell to them, and commending them to the Father 
in prayer, He promises the new Helper, by means of whom they will 
convince the world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment, and 
will obtain in His name a complete victory—can this be the teaching 
always of the same thing? Is there not some partisan interest in this 
judgment? There is monotony, if you will, in the light of the sun; but 
what variety in its reflections! There is the same in the boundless azure 
of the sky ; but what richness in its contrasts with the varied lines of the 
earthly horizon! At the foundation of every Johannean discourse there 
is an open heaven, the heart of the Son in communion with that of the 
Father. But this living, personal heaven is in constant relation to the 
infinitely different individuals who surround it, and to the changing 
situations through which it moves along its life. The monotony which is 
charged upon the evangelist, is not that of uniformity, but of unity. 
Offense is taken at the same monotony in the method employed by the 
evangelist to introduce the exposition of his theology. He regularly 
begins, by means of a figurative expression which he ascribes to Jesus, 
with making the hearer fall into a gross and absurd misapprehension ; 
whereupon Jesus develops His thought and displays His superiority, and 
that, ordinarily, by pushing His thought even to the extreme of contra- 
diction to that of His interlocutor. This is the fact in the case of Nico- 
demus, and in that of the Samaritan woman, in the case of the people 
after the multiplication of the loaves, and, finally, in the conflicts at Jeru- 
salem. There is here a manner adopted by the author, and one which 
cannot, it is said, belong to the history. But if the people who surrounded 
Jesus were carnal in their aspirations, they must have been so also in 
their understanding; for in the moral domain it is from the heart that 
both light and darkness proceed; Jesus Himself says this, Matt. vi. 22. 
What then more natural than the constant repetition of this shock at 
every encounter between the thought of Jesus and that of His contem- 
poraries? On one side, immediate intuition of things above; on the 
other, the grossest fleshly want of understanding. What point of spiritual 
development had the apostles reached, according to the Synoptics them- 
selves, after two whole years, during which Jesus had sought, in the 
conversations of every day, to initiate them into a new view of things? 
He gives them this admonition : “ Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees 
and of the Sadducees;” and they imagine that He means to reproach 


100 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


them with the forgetfulness into which they had fallen in respect to pro- 
viding themselves with bread for their proposed journey! Jesus is obliged 
to say to them: “ Have you no understanding, have you your heart stil] 
hardened, eyes not to see, and ears not to hear?” (Mark viii. 17,18.) And 
yet ‘the critic would declare a similar misunderstanding impossible in the 
case of Nicodemus, of the Samaritan woman, of His hearers in Galilee or 
in Jerusalem, who conversed with Him for the first time. And, moreover, 
it must not be forgotten that the thought of Nicodemus is simply this: “ It 
is not, however, possible that . . . ”—this is what the u# (negative inter- 
rogation), which begins his question, signifies; and that in other cases, 
such as John vii. 35 and viii. 22, the apparent misapprehension of the 
Jews is, in reality, only derisive bantering on their part. As to the misappre- 
hension of the people of Capernaum, John vi., many others were deceived 
here, even afterwards, in spite of the explanation of Jesus, ver. 63: “ It is 
the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.” The phenomenon 
which is marked as suspicious is, therefore, simply a feature drawn 
from fact. 

The same is true of the dialogue-form in which many of the teachings 
of Jesus are presented, especially in chaps. vii. and viii. and in chap. xiv. 
How could such minute details have been preserved, either in the indi- 
vidual recollection of the author, or traditionally? ‘These questions and 
objections,” it is said, “do not belong to the history, but to the form of the 
redaction.” They wonderfully depict the state of men’s minds, as the 
author found it before him when he wrote, but by no means as it was when 
Jesus was preaching.’ But are we then so exactly acquainted with the 
difference which the state of men’s minds may have presented at the be- 
ginning of the second century or about the middle of the first? And how 
can it be seriously maintained that the questions and objections which 
follow suit better the state of mind in Asia Minor at the beginning of the 
second century, than the Palestinian prejudices in the time of Jesus? 
“Doth the Christ, then, come out of Galilee ...? Doth he not come 
from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” (vii. 41, 42.) “We know 
whence this man is; but when the Christ shall come, no one will know 
whence he is’”’ (ver. 27). “Are we not right in saying that thou art a 
Samaritan?” (vii. 48.) “Art thou, then, greater than our father Abra- 
ham?” (ver. 53.) “We are Abraham’s seed, and have never been in 
bondage to any one” (ver. 33). “ How can this man give us his flesh to 
eat?” (vi. 52.) “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and 
mother we know? How then doth he say: I came down from heaven?” 
(ver. 42.) If one desires to find a speaking proof of the truly historical 
character of the teaching of Jesus in our Gospel, it is precisely in these 
dialogues that it must be sought. To open a commentary is enough to 
convince us that we have here living manifestations of the Palestinian Ju- 
daism which was contemporary with Jesus. Besides, this dialogue-form is 
not constant; barely indicated in chaps. iii., iv., a little more developed in 


1 Reuss, Théol. joh., p. 9. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 101 


chap. vi., it is altogether dominant in chaps. vii., viii—a thing which is 
perfectly suited to the situation, since here is the culminating point of the 
conflict between the Lord and His adversaries at Jerusalem. We find 
scarcely any traces of it in chap. x., where Jesus begins to withdraw from 
the struggle. It reappears in an emphatic way only in chap. xiy., where 
it is again rendered natural by the situation. It is the last moment of con- 
versation between Jesus and His own; they take advantage of it to express 
freely the doubts which each one of them still has in his heart. Let one 
picture to himself a Christian of the second century crying out, with the 
simplicity of Philip: “ Lord, show us the Father and it sufficeth us!” or, 
with the pretence of sharing in the ignorance of Thomas, setting himself to 
say: “We know not whither thou goest, and how shall we know the way?” 
or asking with Judas: “ Why wilt thou make thyself known to us, and not 
to the world?” or murmuring aside like the disciples (xvi. 17): “ What is 
this that he saith: A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again a 
little while, and ye shall see me? We cannot tell what he saith.” The 
situation which gave rise to these questions and these doubts existed but 
for a moment, on that last evening in which John’s narrative places them. 
From the days which followed all these mysteries had received their solu- 
tion through the great facts of salvation which were from this time forward 
accomplished. These objections and questions, which it is claimed are to 
be placed in the second century, carry therefore their date in themselves 
and belong in their very nature to the upper chamber; it is, consequently, 
the same with the answers which correspond to them. 

Certain historical contradictions are also alleged. The following are the 
two principal ones. Chap. x. 26, in the account of the visit of Jesus at 
the feast of the Dedication, in December, the evangelist places in His 
mouth this reproach: “ Ye are not of my sheep, as I said unto you,” which 
is supposed to be a quotation of the words addressed to the Jews, some 
months before, at the feast of Tabernacles (comp. the allegories of the 
Shepherd, the Door, and the Good Shepherd, in the first part of the same 
chapter). He forgets, therefore, as he makes Jesus speak thus, that the 
audience had entirely changed from the one feast to the other. But why 
changed? we will ask. It was not to pilgrims who were strangers, that 
Jesus had spoken so severely some months before. It was to a group of 
Pharisees who asked Him, mocking, (ix. 40): ‘“ And are we also blind?” 
They spoke thus in the name of their whole party, and this party, we 
know, had its seat at Jerusalem. I do not say certainly that at the feast 
of the Dedication it was the same individuals who found themselves again 
face to face with Jesus; but it was indeed the same class of persons, the 
Pharisees of Jerusalem, together with the population of that city which 
was entirely governed by their spirit. Besides, every one knows that the 
words: as I said unto you, on which all the complaint rests, are omitted 
in six of the principal majuscules, particularly in the Sinaitic and 
Vatican. 

Another similar argument is drawn from the discourse of Jesus, reported 
in xii. 44 ff It is “a recapitulation of the evangelical theology,” says 


102 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


Reuss; and the author puts it into the mouth of Jesus here, without 
thinking that, according to his own narrative, Jesus has just “ withdrawn 
and disappeared from the public view.” Here is a fact, adds this critic, 
which is well fitted “to give us a just idea of the nature of the discourses 
of Jesus” in this work.!’ Baur had already concluded from this passage 
that the historical situations are for the author nothing but mere forms. 
It is not the evangelist’s fault if his narrative is thus Judged. He had 
counted on readers who would not doubt his common sense. He had 
just expressly concluded the narrative of the public ministry of Jesus by 
this solemn sentence: “ And departing, he did hide himself from them ”’ 
(ver. 36). And yet he is said to put into His mouth, immediately after- 
wards, a solemn address to the people! No; from ver. 87 the author has 
himself begun to speak; he gives himself up to the sorrowful contempla- 
tion of the unsuccessfulness of such an extraordinary ministry. He 
proves by the facts the inefficacy of the numerous miracles of Jesus to 
overcome the unbelief of the people (vv. 37-43). Then, in ver. 44, he 
passes, in this same recapitulation, from the miracles to the teachings, 
which, as well as the miracles, had remained inefficacious before such 
obduracy; and in order to give an understanding of what the entire 
preaching ministry accomplished by Jesus in Israel had been, he sums it 
up in the discourse, vv. 44-50, which is, in relation to the discourses of 
Jesus, what ver. 87 was to His miraculous activity, a simple summary : 
“ And yet he cried aloud!” Then follows the summary, thus announced, 
of all the solemn testimonies which had remained fruitless. This passage, 
also, is distinguished from all the real discourses, in that it does not 
contain a single new idea; for every word, two or three parallels can be 
cited in the preceding discourses. Reuss, therefore, is unfortunate in 
proposing to draw from this discourse, which is.not one in the intention 
of the evangelist himself, the true standard for the estimate of all those 
which, in this work, are put into the mouth of our Lord. 

Finally, objeetion has also been made to the truth of the diseourses by 
reason of the impossibility that the author should have retained them in 
memory up to the time, no doubt quite late in his life, when he wrote 
them out. Reuss abandons this objection. He thinks that the words of 
Jesus, so far as the author either heard them himself or borrowed them 
from the tradition, “‘must have been throughout his hfe the subject of his 
meditations, and must have been impressed the more deeply on his mind 
the longer he fed upon them.”? In fact, if the question is of the earnest 
discussions carried on at Jerusalem (chaps. vii. vili.), how should they not 
have been distinctly impressed on the memory of the one who witnessed 
them with such lively anxiety? As for the discourses which are some- 
what extended, like those of chap. v. and vi., x., xv.-xvil., the hearer’s 
memory found, in every case, a point of support in a central idea which 
was clearly formulated at the beginning, and which unfolded itself after- 
wards in a series of particular notions subordinated to this primal idea. 


TP, 50. 2P, 44. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 103 


Thus in chap. v., the first part of the apologetic discourse of Jesus is con- 
tained, as if in its germ, in that very striking saying of ver. 17: “My 
Father worketh hitherto, and [consequently] I also work.” This idea of 
the necessary co-operation of the Son with His Father is developed in a 
first cycle under two aspects: The Son beholding the Father, and the 
Father revealing His work to the Son, vv. 19, 20. Then, this first cycle, 
which is also very summary in its character, becomes the starting-point 
of a new, more precise development, in which is unfolded, even to its 
most concrete applications, the work of the Son in execution of the 
thought of the Father. This work consists in the two divine acts of quick- 
ening and judging (vv. 21-28), acts which are taken up each one of them 
successively, and followed out through all their historical phases even to 
their complete realization, at first spiritual, then external and material 
(vy. 24-29).—It is nearly the same in the second part of this discourse (vv. 
30-47), in which everything is subordinated to this principal thought: 
“There is another [the Father] that beareth witness of me,” and in which 
is set forth the three-fold testimony of the Father on behalf of the Son, 
with a final forcible application to the hearers.—In chap. vi., it is easy to 
see that everything—discourse and conversation—is likewise subordinated 
to a great idea,—that which naturally arises from the miracle of the pre- 
ceding day: “I am the bread of life.” This affirmation is developed in a 
series of concentric cycles, which end finally in this most striking and 
concrete expression: “ Unless ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye will 
not have life in yourselves.” In chap. xvii., in the second part of the 
sacerdotal prayer, which contains the intercession of Jesus for His dis- 
ciples, His thought follows the same course. The general idea: “I pray 
for them,” soon divides itself into those two more particular ones which 
become, each of them, the centre of a subordinate cycle: “ Keep them” 
(rhpyoov), ver. 11, that is to say: “ Let not the work be impaired which I 
have accomplished in them,” and: “ Sanctify them” (ayiacov), ver. 17, that 
is to say: “ Perfect and finish their consecration.”—In these several cases, 
if the thoughts of Jesus really were unfolded in this form, which best suits 
the nature of religious contemplation, we can readily understand how it was 
not difficult for an attentive hearer to reproduce such sayings. It was 
enough for him to fix his attention strongly on the central thought, dis- 
tinctly engraved upon his memory, and then inwardly to repeat the same 
process of evolution which, from this germ, had produced the discourse. 
He thus recovered again the subordinate ideas, from which he reached 
even the most concrete details. Jesus, however, did not always speak in 
this way; we have the proof of this in our Synoptics, and in the fourth 
Gospel itself. This method was natural when a theme of great richness 
was indicated to Him by the situation, as in chaps. v. and vi. But we do 
not find anything of the kind either in the conversation with Nicodemus, 
or in those of chap. xiv—which proves that we need not see in this a style 
peculiar to the evangelist. The following is, probably, what happened in 
the last mentioned cases. The conversation with Nicodemus certainly 
continued much longer than the few moments which we use in reading 


104 BOOK ‘II. THE GOSPEL. 


it, and the last conversations of Jesus with the disciples, having filled a 
great part of the evening, must have lasted some hours. It must there- 
fore be admitted (unless all this was invented) that a work of condensation 
was wrought in the mind of the narrator, in which the essential thoughts 
gradually became separated from the secondary thoughts and transitions, 
and then were directly, and without a connective, joined to one another, 
as they actually appear to us in the account given by John. There remain 
for us, therefore, of these conversations only the principal points. Nothing 
could be more simple than this process. 

The conclusion of this study, therefore, is that there is no serious intrinsic 
difficulty to prevent us from admitting the historical truth of the teachings 
of Jesus contained in our Gospel. 

II. But a more serious objection is drawn from the correspondence of 
these discourses with those of John the Baptist, and with the author’s own 
teachings in the prologue and in his first epistle. 

Jesus, in St. John, speaks just as John the Baptist does (comp. 1. 15, 29, 
30; ili. 27-36), just as the evangelist himself does in his own writings. Is 
there not here an evident proof that the discourses—those of Jésus, like 
those of John the Baptist—are his own composition? There can be no 
question here of style, as to its grammatical and syntactic forms; how, 
indeed, is it possible that the style should not be that of the evangelist ? 
Neither Jesus nor John the Baptist spoke in Greek ; and to reproduce their 
discourses in a tolerable way in that language, whose genius is precisely 
the opposite of that of the Aramzean language, in which the Saviour and 
His forerunner spoke, a literal translation was impossible. The author 
was obliged in any case, therefore, to go underneath the words to the 
thoughts, and then to clothe these again with a new expression borrowed 
from the language in which he was relating them. In sucha work of 
assimilation and reproduction, why might not the language of John the 
Baptist have taken a coloring like that of the language of Jesus, and the 
language of both the coloring of the evangelist’s style? The question 
here is not of the external forms of speech; it is of the faithful preserva- 
tion of the thoughts. In translating the words of John and Jesus, is it to 
be supposed that the author altered their meaning? Was there anything 
of his own added? Or did he even compose with entire freedom? 
It is supposed that an affirmative answer can be given. First of all, the 
discourse of John the Baptist, ii. 27-36, is alleged. Reuss grants, no 
doubt, that two expressions of this discourse proceed from the forerunner 
—that which forms the opening of it: “I am not the Christ,’ and the 
word which is its centre: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” ? 
Moreover, continues the critic, “there is not in all the remainder a word 
which does not find a place quite as well, or rather a hundred times 
better, in the mouth of a Christian wholly imbued with the dominant 
ideas of this book, and which is not reproduced elsewhere, as to its essence, 
in the discourses ascribed to Jesus Himself.”? But what! can it be that 


1 Reuss’ Translation. 2 Pp. 48, 49. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 105 


these words made up the whole of the Baptist’s answer to his disciples, 
who were bitterly accusing Jesus of ingratitude! Let it be allowed us to 
believe that he developed them somewhat, and, in particular, to place in 
the number of the authentic expressions that word of inimitable beauty 
(ver. 29): “He that hath the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the 
bridegroom who standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of 
the bridegroom’s voice; and this my joy is fulfilled.” Men did not invent 
after this fashion in the second century, as our Apocryphal books bear 
witness! Let us go still further: if we admit the narrative of the 
Synoptics, according to which the forerunner had heard the voice of the 
Father saying to Jesus: “Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well 
pleased,” is it impossible to admit that the same man should have uttered 
these words, which the evangelist puts into his mouth (ver. 385): “ The 
Father loveth the Son, and hath put all things into his hand?” If it is also 
true—still according to the Synoptics—that John saw the Holy Spirit 
descending upon Jesus in the form of a dove, that is, in His organic and 
indivisible plenitude, is it incredible that he should have expressed himself 
with regard to Jesus as he does, according to John, in ver. 34: “He speak- 
eth the words of God; for God giveth him the Spirit without measure (or: 
the Spirit giveth them to him without measure)?” And if John the 
Baptist expresses himself at the beginning of his ministry as the Synoptics 
make him speak: “ Brood of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from 
the wrath to come? Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is cut 
down and cast into the fire!” (Matt. iii. 7-10), is it not very natural that 
he should close his public activity with this warning: “ He that refuseth 
to obey the Son, the wrath of God abideth on him.” Here is the last echo of 
the thunders of Sinai, which is in its appropriate place in the mouth of the 
last representative of the old covenant. But the objection falls back on 
the saying: “He testifieth of what he hath seen and heard, and no man 
receiveth his testimony,” and it asks how it can be that John the Baptist 
should so literally repeat the declaration of Jesus Himself in His conver- 
sation with Nicodemus (ver. 11): “ Verily, I say unto thee, we speak that 
which we know and testify that which we have seen, and ye receive not 
our testimony.” He was not present, however, at that conversation! No; 
but it may well be that something of it had been reported to him; and, 
even if it was otherwise, what meaning would the words of the Baptist 
have which we were just now calling to mind: “The friend.of the bride- 
groom who standeth and heareth, rejoiceth exceedingly because of the 
bridegroom’s voice ; and this my joy is fulfilled?” He hears the voice of 
the bridegroom! Some word of Jesus, then, has come to his ears. And 
is it not natural indeed, that, while John and Jesus were baptizing in each 
other’s neighborhood (vy. 22, 23), those of the apostles who had been dis- 
ciples of the forerunner should have taken a few steps to go and salute 
their former master, and should have reported to him what Jesus did and 
said? The discourse of John the Baptist is thus explained from beginning 
to end. And the word to which Reuss reduced it, ver. 30, was simply its 
central idea. Indeed, all that precedes (vy. 27-29), is the development of 


106 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


the second proposition: “I must decrease,” and all that follows, vv. 31-36, 
is that of the first: ‘““ He must increase.” 

But is it possible to regard as historical the words put into the mouth 
of John the Baptist in the prologue, i. 15, and repeated afterwards in the 
narrative itself, 1.80: “ He who cometh after me was before me?” Could 
John know and declare the divine pre-existence of Jesus? If this declara- 
tion had been mentioned only in the prologue, which is the composition 
of the evangelist, the doubt would be possible. But the author expressly 
places it again, at a little later point, in its historical context (ver. 30). He 
relates how it was at Bethany that the forerunner uttered it, on the day 
which followed that of the deputation of the Sanhedrim. There would be 
a singular affectation, not to say, palpable bad faith, in these subsidiary 
indications of time and place, if the words were the invention of the au- 
thor. Besides they have a seal of originality and of mysterious concise- 
ness which is foreign to the later fictions. .And why should they not be 
authentic? When John the Baptist began his ministry, we know that 
the programme of his work was the double prophecy of Isaiah xl. 3: “A 
voice crying in the wilderness: Prepare ye the way of the Lord,” and of 
Malachi iii. i: “Behold, I send my messenger, and he shall prepare the 
way before me” (Matt. 111.3; x.10; Mark 1. 2,3; Luke i.17; vii. 27). 
Now, in the second of these two passages, always so closely bound to- 
gether, He who sends the messenger (Jehovah) is none other than He 
who is Himself soon to follow him (Jehovah as Messiah); this is unan- 
swerably proved by the words, before me, in the prophetic utterance. If 
John the Baptist was acquainted with this passage, could he not under- 
stand—what do I say ?—could he fail to understand, that the one coming 
after him (the Messiah) was the one sending him, and consequently his 
predecessor on the scene of history, the invisible theocratic King. The 
question comes back, then, to this: Did John the Baptist know how to 
read ? 

The resemblance in matter and form between the prologue and the dis- 
courses of Jesus does not constitute a difficulty which is any more serious. 
For, on the one hand, we have seen that the matter of the teachings of 
the prologue is, in great part, only a résumé of these very discourses; and, 
on the other, it is impossible that, in translating them from Aramaic into 
Greek, the author should not, in a certain measure, have clothed them 
in his own style. The conformity indicated is, therefore, a fact which is 
easily explained. 

Is the conformity between the discourses and the first Epistle to be con- 
sidered more compromising for the authenticity of the former? As to the 
form, the resemblance is explained by the causes already pointed out, when 
speaking of the prologue. But even from this external point of view, H. 
Meyer has discovered a kind of impoverishment in the vocabulary of the 
epistle, as compared with that of the discourses.! Some thirty substantives, 
some twenty verbs—this is the whole linguistic fund of the epistle. What 


1 Les discours du IV.¢ évangile, p. 94. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 107 


a difference from the discourses, so rich in living and original words, and 
in striking and varied images! There are also, on the other hand, certain 
particular expressions which appertain to the epistle and which are foreign 
to the Gospel, such as to be born.of God (ii. 29; iii. 9; iv.7; v.1; comp. 
the prologue, Gosp. i. 18); the anointing of the Spirit (ii. 20, 27); the title 
of Paraclete applied to Jesus (ii. 1). 

As to the matter, we discover even much more remarkable differences 
between the epistle and the Gospel, which prove that the author observed 
very carefully the line of demarcation between his own thoughts and the 
teachings of Jesus. We shall set forth three points, especially, which hold 
an important place in the epistle, and which are not mentioned anywhere 
in the discourses: 1. The expiatory value of the Lord’s death (Ep. i. 7, 9; 
ii. 2; iv.10; v.6); 2. The coming of Antichrist (ii. 18,22; iv. 1-3); 3. The 
expectation of the Parousia (i. 18, 28; iii. 2). These three notions, while 
connecting our epistle closely with the Synoptic Gospels, distinguish it 
profoundly from the Johannean discourses. The attempt has been, not 
long since, made to explain this difference by ascribing the epistle to an- 
other author than the Gospel. This hypothesis has not been able to main- 
tain itself, even in the midst of the school in which it arose. The disciples 
of Baur, such as Hilgenfeld, Lidemann, etc., are agreed in rejecting it. 
How then can we explain this singular difference? Several critics have 
been led to think that the author of the two works was still imbued with 
his old Jewish ideas when he composed the epistle, and that he rose only 
at a later time to the sublime spirituality which distinguishes the Gospel.! 
The epistle would, thus, be older than the Gospel. We do not believe that 
this hypothesis can be sustained. The discourses contained in the Gospel 
are distinguished from the teachings of the epistle by a force of thought 
and a vigor of expression, which indicate for them a date anterior to the 
composition of this latter work. Besides, the man who, in the epistle, ad- 
dresses himself not only to the children and young men, but also to fathers 
of families and to all the members of the churches, calling them “my little 
children” (ii. 1, 18, 28; v. 21), cannot have been otherwise than far ad- 
vaneed in age. It is not under such conditions that a man rises from the 
style of the epistle to that of the Gospel, from the somewhat slow and even 
hesitating step of the one to the straightforward and powerful flight of the 
other2 A further proof that the composition of the discourses preceded 
that of the epistle, is the fact that all the ideas which in the discourses are 
presented in a form which is historical, oceasional, actual, applicable to 
particular circumstances and hearers, reappear in the epistle in an abstract 
form as general Christian maxims, and, in some sort, as the elements of a 
religious philosophy. Jesus said in the Gospel: “God so loved the world,” 
or “Thou didst love me before the foundation of the world.” The epistle 
says: “God is love.” Jesus said: “The Father whose offspring you are is 


1 Hilgenfeld, Einleitung, p. 738; Lidemann, 2Sabatier himself acknowledges (p. 189) 
zur Enkldérung des Papias-Fragments, in the that the epistle is poorer, more feeble than 
Jahrb. fir prot. Theol., 1879. the discourses in the Gospel. 


108 BOOK Il THE GOSPEL. 


the devil, and you do the works of your father.” The epistle says: “He 
that commits sinis of the devil.” Jesus said: “You have not chosen me, but 
I have chosen you.” The epistle says: “It isnot we who have loved God; 
it is He who has loved us.” Jesus said: “I am the light of the world; he 
that followeth me shall not walk in darkness.” The epistle says: “God is 
light . .. the true light now shineth.” Jesus said: “I have a witness greater 
than that of men.” The epistle says: “If we receive the witness of men, 
that of God is greater.” Isit not evident that these aphorisms of the second 
work are nothing but the generalization of the special affirmations, full of 
reality, which belong to the first? The Gospel is history; the epistle is the 
spirit of history. It is consequently contrary to all sound criticism to 
place the latter before the former. 

The difference between these two works must, therefore, be explained 
in another way. It is an indisputable fact that the ideas which we have 
pointed out as clearly distinguishing the epistle from the Gospel, apper- 
tain to the Synoptic teaching, and consequently form a part of the apos- 
tolic beliefs and of the doctrine of the Church in general. Here, then, was 
the matter from which the author drew when writing the epistle. But 
when he wrote out the five or six discourses which he has preserved for 
us, he did not allow himself to go beyond their original purport, nor to 
introduce into them, as Reuss claims, the whole of his theology. He lim- 
ited himself to that which he had heard on those particular occasions. The 
epistle forms thus a natural link of connection between the Johannean 
teachings and those of the Synoptics. And the more closely it attaches 
itself to the latter in the substance of the ideas, the more does it become 
a confirmation of the historical character both of the one and the other. 

Far then from giving us grounds of suspicion, the comparison of the dis- 
courses with the author’s own compositions is converted into a proof of 
the fidelity with which he has reproduced the former, and the author 
seems nowhere to have crossed the line of demarcation between what he 
had heard and what he himself composed. 

III. We here reach the most difficult side of the question with which 
we have to do. We possess in the first three Gospels three documents, 
perfectly harmonious and of undisputed value, containing the teachings 
of Jesus. These teachings appear therein in a simple, popular, practical 
form; they are what they must have been in order to charm the multi- 
tudes and win their assent. How could the abstruse and theological dis- 
courses of the fourth Gospel have proceeded from the same mind and the 
same lips? “We must choose,” says Renan: “if Jesus spoke as Matthew 
would have Him, He could not have spoken as John would have Him.” 
‘‘ Now,” he adds, “between the two authorities no critic has hesitated, or 
will hesitate.” 

Is the contrast thus indicated really as inexplicable as is asserted? It 
is to the study of this question that we are going to devote the following 
pages. 

As to the contents of the teachings, three points, especially, appear to 
distinguish the discourses of John from those of the Synoptics: 1. The 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES, 109 


difference in the part assigned to the person of Jesus in the matter of 
salvation; 2. The Johannean notion of the existence of Jesus, as a divine 
being, anterior to His earthly life; 3. The omission in John of every 
expression relating to His visible return, as judge of the world. 

With regard to the part of Jesus in the matter of salvation, it is alleged 
that, while the Christ of the Synoptics simply announces the kingdom of 
God—the good tidings of the near coming of that glorious state of things,— 
the Christ of John can only preach Himself, and tell what He is as related 
to God and what He is as related to the world. While the Synoptic teach- 
ings bear upon the most varied moral obligations, beneficence, humility, 
veracity, detachment from the world, watchfulness, prayer—in a word, 
upon the righteousness of the kingdom, according to the expression of Jesus 
Himself,—in John, on the contrary, every duty is reduced to the attach- 
ing of oneself to that being come from heaven, in whom God reveals 
and gives Himself. In the Synoptics, Jesus is the preacher of salvation ; 
in John, He is salvation itself, eternal life, everything. 

Is the difference thus pointed out as considerable as it is said to be, and 
is the contrast inexplicable? No, this cannot be; for the central position 
which the person of Christ occupies in the Johannean teaching is also 
decidedly ascribed to Him in that of the first three Gospels. The moral 
precepts which Jesus gives in the latter are placed in intimate relation 
with His own person; and among the duties of human life, that which 
takes precedence of all the rest is, in them as in John, faith in Christ the 
indispensable condition of salvation. Let the reader judge for himself. 

“Sell that thou hast and give to the poor..., then follow me,” says 
Jesus to the rich young man (Matt. xix. 21). The second of these com- 
mands explains the first; the one is the condition, the other the end. 
“Verily I say unto you that, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these 
my brethren, ye have done it unto me” (Matt. xxv. 40). It is the sympa- 
thy for Him, Jesus, which constitutes the worth of this help, and which is, 
if we may so speak, the good work in the good work (comp. x. 42). Jesus 
adds (xxv. 41), as He turns towards the condemned: “ Depart from me, ye 
cursed!” Perdition is ‘the rupture of all union with Him. To receive 
_ Him is to receive God, He declares to His disciples (Matt. x. 40). The 
most indisputable proof that one possesses the humble disposition which 
is necessary in order to enter into the kingdom, is that of receiving a child 
in thé name of Jesus; that is, as if one were receiving Jesus Himself; and 
the offense which will infallibly destroy him who has the unhappiness to 
occasion it, is this—that it is caused to one of these little ones who believe in 
Him (Matt. xviii. 5, 6); so true is it that the good in the good is love for 
Him, and the crime in the crime is the evil which one does to Him. The 
infallibly efficacious prayer is that of two or three persons praying in His 
name (Matt. xviii. 20). Real watchfulness consists in waiting for Him, the 
returning Lord, and the condition of the entrance with Him into His glory 
is the being ready to receive Him at His coming (Luke xii. 36). If the 
foolish virgins are rejected, it is for not having fulfilled their duty towards 
Him (Matt..xxv. 12). To confess Him here below is the way to be ac- 


110 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


knowledged by Him above, as also to deny Him is to pronounce one’s own 
sentence (Matt. x. 82, 83; Mark viii. 38). The most intimate and sacred 
relations of human life must remain constantly subordinated to the bond 
which unites the believer to Jesus, so that the believer must be ready to 
break them, “to hate father, mother, child, wife, his own life,” if the su- 
preme bond requires this sacrifice (Matt. x.37). Otherwise one would not 
be worthy of Him, which is equivalent to being ranked among the workers of 
iniquity, and being excluded with them (Matt. vil. 23; xxv. 12). Not to 
have turned to account the gifts entrusted by Him for working in His 
cause, for increasing His wealth here below,—to have been His unprofitable 
servant,—this is enough to cause one to be cast into the outer darkness, 
where there are only weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matt. xxv. 30). The 
most decisive act of the moral life, the indispensable condition to being 
able to find one’s life again in the future,—to give oneself, to lose oneself{— 
this act can be accomplished only for His sake (Matt. x. 39). Could Jesus 
describe otherwise the relation of man to God Himself? 

There is one fact in the Gospel history omitted by John, but preserved 
by the three Synoptics, which shows, more clearly than all the sayings can 
do, how Jesus really made the whole religious and moral life of His own 
consist in personal union with Himself. It is the institution of the Holy 
Supper, together with those two declarations which explain it: “This is 
my blood which is shed for many for the remission of sins;” and, “The 
Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many” (Matt. xxvi. 28; xx. 
28). To incorporate Jesus into oneself, is to appropriate life to oneself. 
Jesus is not only the preacher of salvation; He is also, as in John, salvation 
itself. .-The part of Jesus in the matter of salvation, therefore, does not 
fundamentally differ in the two teachings; and so the Church has never 
experimentally felt the contrast indicated. Herein only, as it seems to 
me, is the difference and its origin. The Synoptics, with a partiality for 
them—we have seen the reason of this—traced out the popular and daily 
preachings of Jesus, in which He sought to awaken the moral life of His 
hearers and to stimulate the spiritual instincts which alone could lead them 
to Him. Now, these hearers were Jews, brought up from infancy in the 
expectation of the Messianic Kingdom. Jesus, like John the Baptist, takes, 
therefore, this glorious hope for the starting-point of His teaching, while 
endeavoring to spiritualize it and to set forth holiness as the essential char- 
acteristic of that future state of things. With this purpose, He emphasizes 
forcibly the moral qualities which its members must possess. But this was 
only the propaedeutic and elementary teaching, the general basis (which 
was common to Him with the law and the prophets) of the special and 
truly new preaching which He brought to the world. This preaching had 
reference to the part played by His person in the work of salvation and in 
the establishment of the kingdom. And when He comes to this subject 
in the Synoptics, He insists, no less than in the fourth Gospel, on the vital 
importance of faith in Him, and on the concentration of salvation in His 
person and work. Without the first form of teaching, He would have 
found His hearers only deaf. Without the second, He would never have 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. Lit 


carried them on to the point to which He desired to raise them. While 
describing to us particularly the first, the Synoptics have nevertheless 
faithfully preserved the second; and it is in this that we especially dis- 
cover, as we have just now done, the common matter, as between them and 
John. 

But there is a point on which the fourth Gospel seems to pass decidedly 
beyond the contents of the Synoptic teaching. It is that of the divine 
pre-existence of Jesus. Must we recognize here an idea imported by the 
author of the fourth Gospel into the Lord’s teaching, or should we re- 
gard this notion as a real element in the testimony of Jesus respecting 
Himself? | 

Three sayings, in the Gospel of John, in particular, evidently contain 
this notion: “What will happen when you shall see the Son of man 
ascending up where he was before” (vi. 62). “ Verily, verily, I say unto 
you, Before Abraham was, I am” (vill. 58). “ And now, Father, glorify 
thou me with thyself, with the glory which I had with thee before the world 
was” (xvii. 5); or indeed, as Jesus says in ver. 24, “ because thou lovedst 
me before the foundation of the world.” Beyschlag, Weizsicker, Ritschl, 
and others attempt to give to this pre-existence only an ideal sense: 
Jesus felt and recognized Himself as the man whom God had from 
eternity foreseen, loved, chosen, and destined to be the Saviour of man- 
kind, and the feeling of this eternal predestination formulated itself in 
Him as the consciousness of His personal pre-existence. But this attempt 
at explanation stops far short of the meaning of the words which we have 
just quoted. “ Where He was before ” can only designate an existence as 
real, as personal, as the present existence of Him who thus speaks. And 
in the other two declarations, the comparison with Abraham (“before 
Abraham was,” literally, became, yevéofac), and with the world (“before the 
world was’’), two perfectly real beings, does not allow us to ascribe to Him 
who is compared with them, in the point of precedence, a less real exist- 
ence than theirs. The sole question, consequently, is whether Jesus 
Himself spoke in this way, or whether some other person attributed to 
Him such assertions. 

Let us, first of all, recall to mind the fact that the idea of the divinity 
of the Messiah was one of the fundamental points of the doctrine of the 
prophets. Only an exegesis thoroughly determined not to bow before the 
texts can deny this. If the critics will have it so, we will not insist upon 
the second Psalm, although, according to our conviction, the words: 
“Thou art my Son,” and these: “ Kiss the Son,” cannot denote anything 
else than the participation of the Messiah in the divine existence, and the 
obligation on the part of men to worship Him. But what cannot be 
denied is the titles of Mighty God and Eternal Father which Isaiah gives to 
“the child who is born to us” (ix. 5); the contrast which Micah institutes 
(v. 2) between the earthly birth of the ruler of Israel, at Bethlehem, and 
His higher origin which is from eternity ; the identification, in Zechariah, 
of Jehovah with the suffering Messiah, in that expression which is tortured 
in yain: “They shall look on me whom they have pierced” (xii. 10); 


112 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


finally and above all, that promise which Malachi puts in the mouth—of 
whom? of Jehovah or of the Messiah? evidently of both, since it iden- 
tities them, as we have already seen: “ Behold, J send my messenger (the 
forerunner), and he shall prepare the way before me, and the Lord whom 
ye seek, the angel of the covenant whom ye desire, shall suddenly enter 
into his temple; behold, he cometh, saith the Lord of hosts” (iii. 1). The 
coming of the Messiah is the coming of the Lord, of Adonai, a name 
which is given only to God; it is the coming of the angel of the covenant, 
of that angel of the Lord of whom the Pentateuch speaks many times, 
and whom Isaiah calls “the angel of his presence” (Ixiil. 9), of that 
mysterious being in whom the Lord appears, ever since the earliest times, 
when He wishes to manifest Himself in a manner apprehensible to 
the senses, and of whom God says (Num. xxiii. 21): “ My name (my mani- 
fested essence) is in Him.” It is this mysterious being who, in these 
words of Malachi—which may be called the culminating point of Messianic 
prophecy—declares Himself to be at once the Messiah who is to follow the 
forerunner and the God who sends Him, and who is worshiped at Jeru- 
‘salem. And let it not be said that we put into this passage things which 
are notin it, or which, at least, were not yet seen in it in the time of 
Jesus. We have already had the proof of the contrary. That saying of 
John the Baptist: “He who cometh after me was before me,” was derived 
by him from this source through the illumination of the Spirit. But we 
possess yet another proof—it is the words which Luke puts into the 
mouth of the angel, when he announces to Zachariah the birth of John 
the Baptist : ‘He (John) shall turn many of the children of Israel to the 
Lord their God, and he shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, 
to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children....” He shall go be- 
fore him... Beforewhom? The preceding words say expressly: “before 
the Lord, their God.” And if we could doubt that these words are a repro- 
duction of those of Malachi, this doubt would fall away before the follow- 
ing words: “in the spirit and power of Elijah,” which are literally taken 
from the following chapter of the same prophet (iv. 5,6). No man in 
Israel, therefore, to whom the prophecies were familiar, could refuse to 
ascribe to the person of the Messiah a superhuman nature. There would 
be, consequently, even from the natural point of view, nothing surprising 
in the fact that Jesus, who proclaimed Himself the Messiah, should, at 
the same time, have affirmed His divine pre-existence. 

A second instructive fact presents itself to us in the New Testament. 
The pre-existence of Christ is not only taught in the discourses of John; it 
is taught in the epistles of Paul. According to 1 Cor. viii. 6, as according 
to John’s prologue, it is Christ who created all things. According to the 
same epistle, x. 4, the invisible rock which led Israel in the wilderness, and 
which delivered Israel, was Christ. According to Col. i. 15-17, He is “the 
first-born before the whole creation;” He is “before all things;”’ it is “by 
Him that all things are created, the heavenly and the earthly; all is by 
Him and for Him, all subsists in Him.” And it is not only St. Paul 
who enunciates this idea. The epistle to the Hebrews which, by its desti- 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 113 


nation even, testifies to the faith of the primitive Palestinian Church,} 
declares that it is Christ who made the world, whom the angels worship, 
who laid the foundations of the earth and the heavens, who is always the 
same, and is as much more exalted than Moses as the one who has built 
the house is greater than the house itself (i. 2, 6, 10,12; 111.3). More than 
this: the same idea is found again in the Apocalypse, that Judaizing book 
as it is claimed. Jesus is therein, as Jehovah Himself is in Isaiah, called 
the first and the last; that is to say, as the author himself explains it, the 
beginning and the end (apy Kai réAoc) of the whole creation;? all creatures 
fall down before the Lamb seated on the throne, as well as before the 
Father. It is not then either to any individual (whether the true, or the 
pseudo-John), or to any school (that of Ephesus), or to any semi-Gnostic 


party, or to any Church of Asia Minor, that the doctrine of the divinity 


and pre-existence of the Christ belongs; it is to the Church represented in 
all its parts by the authors and the readers of the writings which we have 
just quoted.’ Imfit is so, this idea, so generally received, of the person of 
Christ must have rested upon positive testimonies which proceeded from 
the mouth of Jesus, such as those which we find in the fourth Gospel. 

The first three Gospels themselves, far from contradicting this result, 
confirm it. We have already shown that these writings attribute to the 
person of Christ absolutely the same central position, as related to the hu- 
man soul, which the Old Testament ascribes to God. For whom were ab- 
solute trust and love reserved by Moses and the prophets? Jesus claims 
them for Himself in the Synoptics, and this even in the name of our sal- 
vation. Would Jewish monotheism, which was so strict and so jealous of 
the rights of God, have permitted Jesus to take a position like this, if He 
had not had the distinct consciousness that in the background of His hu- 
man existence there was a divine personality? He cannot, as a faithful 
Jew, wish to be for us that which in the Synoptics He asks to be, except so 
far as He is what He declares Himself to be in John.t 

A large number of particular facts in the same writings add their force 
to this general conclusion. We have just seen how, in Luke, He who comes 
after the forerunner is called, in the preceding words, the Lord their God. In 


1We cannot allow any critical probability 
to the opinion which seeks in Italy or in any 
other country than Palestine the persons to 
whom this epistle was addressed. 

24.17; 11.8; xxii.13. Hilgenfeld claims that 
the Jesus of the Apocalypse is only the first 
created among the angels (iii. 14). But comp. 
xxii. 9, 16, which positively excludes this 
idea; xxii. 11 proves that apxq, iii. 14, signi- 
fies not beginning, but origin, unless rédAos 
must signify that Jesus is the end of the ex- 
istence of the universe, in the sense of de 
Hartmann! 

3 Here is what Weizsacker himself says (p. 
222): “ At the time when the primitive apos- 
tolic tradition was still represented by a 
whole series of witnesses, the Apostle Paul 


8 


taught respecting the person of Jesus a doc- 
trine according to which He was the Son of 
God who had come from heaven to renew 
mankind, the one whom God made use of as 
His instrument in the creation of the world. 
And we do not find any trace of an opposition 
which this teaching had encountered in the 
primitive apostolic circles, and which gave it 
the character of a peculiar view.” 

Schultz writes these words in his recent 
work on the divinity of Jesus Christ: “The 
sentiment of religious dependence is not ad- 
missible except before the only true God... 
We should not bow religiously except before 
that which is really divine.” (Die Lehre von 
der Gottheit Christi, pp. 540, 541.) 


114 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


Mark, the person of the Son is placed even above the most exalted crea- 
tures: “Of that day knoweth no one, not even the angels who are in hea- 
ven, nor even the Son [during the time of His humiliation], but the Father 
only” (xiii. 32). In Matthew, the Son is placed between the Father and 
the Holy Spirit, the breath of God: “ Baptize all the nations in the name 
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit” (xxviii. 19). In the 
parable of the vine-dressers, Jesus Himself represents Himself, in contrast 
with the servants sent before Him, as the son and heir of the Master of the 
vineyard (Matt. xxi. 387, 38). It will be in vain to subject the question of 
Jesus (Matt. xxii. 45): “If David calls the Christ his Lord, how is he his 
son?” to all imaginable manipulations; the thought of Jesus will ever 
come forth simple and clear for him who does not try to find difficulties 
where there are none. If, on one side, the Christ is the son of David by 
His earthly origin, on the other side He is, nevertheless, his Lord, in virtue 
of His divine personality. This is what Micah had said already (v. 2). And 
how, if He did not have the consciousness of His divinity, could Jesus 
speak of His angels (Matt. xii. 41), of His glory (xxv. 31), finally, of His 
name under the invocation of which believers are gathered together? The 
Old Testament did not authorize any creature thus to appropriate to him- 
self the attributes of Jehovah. Now the notion of His pre-existence was 
for Jesus implicitly included in that of His divinity. 

Undoubtedly, we do not find in the Synopties any declaration as precise 
as those which we have just now quoted from the Johannean discourses. 
But do we not discover in the Gospel of Luke the immense quantity of 
materials which would be entirely wanting to us if we possessed only those 
of Matthew and Mark; for example, the three parables of grace (Luke 
xv.; the lost sheep, the lost drachma, the prodigal son) ; those of the unfaith- 
ful steward and of the wicked rich man (Luke xvi.); those of the unjust 
judge, and of the publican and the Pharisee (Luke xviii.); the story of 
Zaccheus; the incident of the converted thief, and so many other treasures 
which Luke has rescued from the oblivion where the other redactions of 
the tradition had left them, and which he alone has preserved to the 
Church? How, then, can we make of the omission of these few sayings in 
our first three Gospels an argument against their authenticity? If pictures 
so impressive, narratives so popular, as those which we have just recalled 
had not entered into the oral preaching of the Gospel, or into any of its 
written redactions, how much more easily could three or four expressions 
of a very elevated and profoundly mysterious character have been oblit- 
erated from the tradition, to reappear later as the reminiscences of a hearer 
who was particularly attentive to everything in the teaching of Jesus which 
concerned His person? The dogmatic interest which these declarations 
have for us did not exist to the same degree at that time; for the impres- 
sion of the person of Jesus, contemplated daily in its living fullness, filled 
all hearts and supplied all special vacancies. Let us not forget, moreover, 
that of these three sayings one is found in the discourse which follows the 
multiplication of the loaves, a discourse which the Synoptics omit alto- 
gether; the second, in a discourse pronounced at Jerusalem, and which is 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 115 


likewise omitted in them, together with the entire visit of which it forms 
a part; the third, in the sacerdotal prayer of which they have also given 
no report. As to John, according to his plan he must necessarily call 
them to mind, if he wished, as appears from xx. 30, 31, to give an account 
. of the signs by which he had recognized in Jesus the Christ, the Son of God, 
and which might contribute to produce the same assurance of faith in his 
readers. These culminating points of the testimony of Jesus respecting 
His person could not be wanting in such a picture. 

There remains the difference in the eschatological ideas. In the Synoptics, 
a visible return of the Lord, a final external judgment, a bodily resurrection 
of believers, a reign of glory; in John, no other return of Christ than His 
coming into the hearts in the form of the Holy Spirit; no other resurrec- 
tion than that of the soul through regeneration; no other judgment than 
the separation which is effected between believers and unbelievers through 
the preaching of the Gospel; no other reign than the life of the believer 
in Christ and in God. “This entire Gospel is planned,” says Hilgenfeld, 
‘“so as to present the historical coming of Christ as His only appearance 
on the earth.’”!—But is this exclusive spiritualism which is attributed to 
the fourth Gospel indeed a reality? John certainly emphasizes the return 
of Jesus in the spirit. But is this in order wholly to supersede and to deny 
His visible return? No, according to him, the first is the preparation for 
the second: “I will come again,” here is the spiritual return. Then he 
adds: “And I will take you unto myself, that where I am (in my Father’s 
house, where there are many mansions, and where Jesus Himself is now 
going), you may be also with me,” xiv. 3; here is, in some sense, a consum- 
mation. “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee?” (xxi. 
23.) And in the first epistle: “ My little children, abide in Him, to the 
end that, when he shall appear, we may have boldness” (ii. 28). “We 
know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him” (iii. 3).—The 
spiritual judgment which John teaches is likewise, according to him, the 
preparation for the external judgment in which the economy of grace will 
end. “It is not I who will accuse you before the Father, it is Moses in 
whom you hope.” ‘The hour is coming in which all who are in the 
tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of man, and shall come forth; those 
who have done good, to a resurrection of life; those who have done evil, 
to a resurrection of judgment” (v. 45 and 28, 29). Here, surely, an exter- 
nal judgment and a bodily resurrection are duly proclaimed. Scholten 
thinks, it is true, that these verses must be an interpolation. For what 
reason? They are not wanting in any manuscript, in any version. No; 
but the critic has decreed a priori what the fourth Gospel must be in order 
that it may be the antipode of the other three. And as these verses pre- 
sent an obstacle to this sovereign decision of his criticism, he takes his 
scissors and cuts them out. This is what at the present time is called 
science. Moreover, little is gained by these violent proceedings. Four 
times successively in chap. vi., indeed, Jesus returns to these troublesome 


1 Hinl., p. 728. 


116 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


facts of the last day and the resurrection of the dead: “That I may not 
lose anything of what the Father hath given me, but that I may raise it 
up at the last day” (ver. 39); “that whosoever beholdeth the Son and 
believeth on Him may have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last 
day” (ver. 40); “no man can come unto me, except the Father draw 
him; and I will raise him up at the last day ” (ver. 44); “he who eateth 
my flesh and drinketh my blood . . .; I will raise him up at the last day ” 
(ver. 54). It will be confessed that considerable boldness is needed to 
maintain that a book, in which such a series of affirmations is found, does 
not teach either a last Judgment or the resurrection of the body. But 
the critics count, and unfortunately with good reason, upon a public which 
does not examine critically. 

The truth is that, in conformity with his custom, the author of the 
fourth Gospel speaks less of external results than of spiritual preparations, 
because the popular preaching, and as a consequence the Synoptics, did 
Just the reverse. Without omitting the coming of the Holy Spirit and 
His action in the heart (Luke xxiv. 48, 49; Matt. xxviii. 19; Luke xii. 11, 
12, etc.), the first Gospels had transmitted to the Church, in all its details, 
the teaching of Jesus respecting the destruction of Jerusalem and His 
visible return at the end of time (Matt. xxiv., Mark xiii., Luke xxi. and 
xvil.). John had nothing to add on these various points. As for ourselves, 
in reading the conclusions which the critics draw from his silence, we cannot 
conceal a feeling of astonishment; here are men who maintain that the 
great discourse of Jesus on the end of time, in the Synoptics, was never 
spoken by Him; that it is only a composition of some Jewish or Jewish- 
Christian author in the year 67 or 68; and the same men dare to allege 
the absence in John of this unauthentic discourse, as a reason against the 
trustworthiness of this Gospel! Should criticism betome a matter of 
jugglery ? 

It is impossible, then, to detect an essential difference, that is to say, one 
bearing on the matter of the teaching, between the Synoptics and the 
fourth Gospel. 

But what is to be thought of the entirely different form in which 
Jesus expresses Himself in the Johannean discourses and the Synoptic 
preachings? Here, brief moral maxims, strongly marked, popular, easy 
to be retained; there, discourses of a lofty and ina sense theological, 
import. Here, as Keim says, “the jewel of the parable;” there, not a 
single picture of this kind. In a word, there the simple and practical 
spirit; here a mystic, exalted, dreamy hue. 

As to the parable, it isin fact wanting in John, at least in the form in 
which we find it in the first Gospels; but we must recall to mind the fact, 
that nothing was more adapted than this kind of discourse to form the 
substance of the popular evangelization in the earliest times of the 
Church. All that could be recalled of such teachings was, therefore, 
successively put in circulation in the tradition, and passed from thence 
into the first evangelical writings. What could have been the object of 
the author of the fourth Gospel in suppressing these teachings with which 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES, 117? 


he must have been acquainted, and which would have given credit to his 
book, on the supposition that his narrative was a fiction? But if he was 
simply recounting the history, what purpose would it serve to repeat that 
which every one could read in writings which were already within the 
reach of all? He could only have been led to take a different course if 
the parables had been a necessary land-mark in the history of the apos- 
tolic faith which he had it in mind to describe; but this was evidently not 
the case. Moreover, if we do not find in the fourth Gospel the parable in 
the form of a complete story, we do find it in a form closely allied to this, 
that of allegory... Here is the analogue of what are called, in the Synoptics, 
the parables of the leaven or of the grain of mustard-seed; thus, the 
pictures of the Shepherd, the Door, and the Good Shepherd (chap. x.), or 
that of the woman who suddenly passes from the excess of grief to that 
of joy (xvi. 21), or again that of the vine and the branches (xv. 1 ff). It 
is still the figurative and picturesque language of Him who, in the first 
Gospels, spoke to the people in these terms: ‘“‘ What went ye out into the 
wilderness to see? A reed shaken with the wind..... toe Math, S107) 
This question very nearly recalls the saying of Jesus in our Gospel (v. 35); 
“John was a lamp which shineth and burneth; and ye were willing to 
rejoice for a season in his light.” Let the following similitudes, also, be 
compared: The Spirit is ike the wind which blows where it wills, and the 
presence of which we know only because we hear the sound of it (iil. 8). 
The unbeliever is like the evil doer who seeks the night to accomplish his 
evil works (vv. 19, 20). Spiritual emancipation is the formula of manu- 
mission which the son of the house pronounces upon the slaves (viii. 36), 
etc. Each of these figures is a parable in the germ, which the author 
could have developed as such, if only he had wished to do so. 

As to the elevated, mystical character of the discourses of Jesus, the lan- 
guage forms a contrast, it is true, with the simple, lively, piquant cast of the 
Synoptic discourses. But let us notice, first of all, that this contrast has 
been singularly exaggerated. Sabatier himself acknowledges this: “A com- 
parison of these discourses with those of the Synoptics proves that, at the 
foundation, the difference between them is not so great as it appears to be 
at the first view.” How can we fail to recognize the voice which strikes us 
so impressively in the Synoptics, in those brief and powerful words of the 
Johannean Christ, which seem to break forth from the depths of another 
world? “My Father worketh hitherto and I also work.” “Destroy this 
temple, and I will raise it up in three days.” “ Apart from me ye can do 
nothing.” ‘Except the grain be cast into the earth and die, it abideth 
alone; but if it die, it beareth much fruit.” “‘He who hath seen me, hath 
seen the Father.” ‘The prince of this world cometh, but he hath nothing 
in me.” There is a fact which is beyond dispute: we discover at least 
twenty-seven sayings of Jesus in John which are found in almost exactly 


1It is remarkable that, in x. 6, John uses for employed in the Synopties to designate the 
characterizing this kind of comparisons the parables properly so-called. 
same word, mapo.uta, which is so frequently 


118 BOOK Ul. THE GOSPEL. 

the same form in the Synopties (see the list in the note).!. Very well! no 
one can maintain that these sayings in the least degree harmfully affect 
either the texture of John’s text or that of the Synoptic text. This fact 
proves, indeed, that the difference which has been pointed out has been 
singularly exaggerated. If, in fact, sayings of such an original cast as those 
of Jesus can, simultaneously and without surprising us in the least degree, 
occupy a place in the two sorts of documents, this fact proves that these 
documents are fundamentally homogeneous. 

Several expressions are especially alleged by the critics which belong to 
John’s style and which are foreign to the Synoptics,—for example, the 
terms light and darkness; or expressions in use in the latter which are 
wanting in the former, like the kingdom of heaven (or of God), for which John 


substitutes the less Jewish and more mystical term eternal life. 


But the 


contrast of light and darkness is found, also, in the Synoptics, as witness 


1 JoHN. 


ii. 19: “ Destroy this temple, and in three 
days I will raise it up.” 


iii. 18: “He that believeth on Him is not 
condemned: but he that believeth not is con- 
demned already.” 

iv. 44: “ For Jesus Himself testified, that a 
prophet hath no honour in his own coun- 
try.” 


v. 8: “Jesus saith unto him, Arise, take up 
thy bed and walk.” 


vi, 202 Jt is.) >be not,atraid,.’ 


vi. 35: “He that cometh to me shall not 
hunger; and he that believeth on me shall 
never thirst.” 

vi. 37: “All that the Father giveth me shall 
come to me; and him that cometh to me I 
will in no wise cast out.” 

vi. 46: “Not that any man hath seen the 
Father, save He which is from God, He hath 
‘seen the Father.” Compare i. 18: “No man 
hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten 
Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He 
hath declared Him.” 

xii. 8: “For the poor always ye have with 
you; but me ye have not always.” 


xii.25: “He that loveth his life loseth 
it; and he that hateth his life in this world 
shall keep it unto life eternal.” 


xii. 27: “Now is my soul troubled; and 
what shall I say? Father, save me from this 
hour; but for this cause came I unto this 
hour.” 

xiii. 3: “Jesus knowing that the Father 
had given all things into His hands.” 


THE Synoprics. 


Mattr: xxvii. 61, Gexvils 340)5- a his’ man 
said, I am able to destroy the temple of God, 
and to build it in three days” (Mark xiv. 58 
and xv. 29). 

Mark xvi. 16: “He that believeth, and is 
baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth 
not shall be condemned.” 

Matt. xiii. 57: “Jesus said unto them, A 
prophet is not without honour, save in his own 
country, and in his own house” (Mark vi. 4 
and Luke iv. 24). 

Matt. ix. 6: “Arise, take up thy bed, and 
go unto thine house” (Mark ii. 9; Luke v. 
24). 

Matt. xiv. 27: “Itis I; be not afraid” (Mark 
vi. 50). 

Matt. v. 6, Luke vi. 21: “Blessed are they 
that hunger and thirst: for they shall be 
filled.” 

Matt. xi. 28,29: “Come unto me, all ye that 
labour and are heavy laden ...and ye shall 
find rest unto your souls.” 

Matt. xi. 27: “No man knoweth the Son, but 
the Father; neither knoweth any man the 
Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever 
the Son will reveal him” (Luke x. 22). 


Matt. xxvi.11: “For ye have the poor al- 
ways with you; but me ye have not always” 
(Mark xiv. 7). 

Matt. x. 39: “He that findeth his life shall 
lose it; and he that loseth his life for my sake 
shall find it” (xvi.25; Mark viii. 35; Luke ix. 
24, xvii. 33). 

Matt. xxvi. 38: “Then saith He unto them, 
My soul is exceeding sorrowful even unto 
death” (Mark xiv. 34 ff.). 


Matt. xi. 27: “ All things have been delivered 
unto me of my Father.” 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 119 
Luke xi. 34-36 and Matthew vi. 22 and 23. Is it not already very common 
in the Old Testament? And as to the Johannean expression eternal life, it 
is employed in the Synoptics as the equivalent of the kingdom of God, ab- 
solutely as it isin John. We call to witness the examples quoted in the 
note, which have been very happily brought forward by Beyschlag.' John, 


JOHN. 

xiii. 16: “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, A 
servant is not greater than his lord; neither 
one that is sent greater than he that sent 
him.” 

xiii. 20: “He that receiveth whomsoever I 
send, receiveth me; and he that receiveth 
me, receiveth Him that sent me.” 

xiii. 21: “Verily, verily, I say unto you, 
that one of you shall betray me.” 

xiii.38: “ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, The 
cock shall not crow, till thou hast denied me 
thrice.” 


xiv. 18: “I will not leave you desolate ; 
I will come to you;” and 23: “ We will make 
our abode with him.” 

xiv. 28: “My Father is greater than I.” 


xiv. 31: “Arise, let us go hence.” 
xv. 20: “If they persecuted me, they will 
also persecute you.” 


xv. 21: “But all these things will they do 
unto you for my name’s sake.” 

xvi. 32: “Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is 
come, that ye shall be scattered, every man 
to his own, and shall leave me alone.” 

xvii. 2: “As Thou gavest Him authority 
over all flesh.” 

xviii. 11: “Put up the sword into the 
sheath.” 

xviii. 20: “Lever taught in synagogues, and 
in the temple.” 

xviii. 37: “ Pilate therefore said unto Him: 
Art thoua king then? Jesus answered, Thou 
sayest that Iama king. To this end have 
I been born.” X 

xx. 23: “Whose soever sins ye forgive, 
they are forgiven ...,” etc. 


THE SyYNOPTICS. 


Matt. x. 24: “A disciple is not above his 
master, nor a servant above his lord.” 


Matt. x. 40: “He that receiveth you, re- 
ceiveth me; and he that receiveth me, re- 
ceiveth Him that sent me” (Luke x. 16). 

Matt. xxvi. 21: “ Verily I say unto you, that 
one of you shall betray me” (Mark xiv. 18). 

Matt. xxvi. 34: “Verily I say unto thee, 
that this night, before the cock crow, thou 
shalt deny me thrice” (Mark xiv. 30; Luke 
XXii. 34). 

Matt. xxviii. 20: “Iam with youalway, ever 
unto the end of the world.” 


Mark xiii. 32; “That day knoweth no one, 
not even the angels which are in heaven, 
neither the Son, but the Father.” 

Matt. xxvi. 46: “ Arise, let us be going.” 

Matt. x. 25: “Ifthey have called the Master 
of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall 
they call them of his household.” 

Matt. x. 22: “Ye shall be hated of all men 


, for my name’s sake.” 


Matt. xxvi. 31: “For it is written, I will 
smite the shepherd and the sheep of the flock 
shall be scattered abroad.” 

Matt. xxviii. 18: “All authority hath been 
given unto me in heaven and on earth.” 

Matt. xxvi. 52: “Put up again thy sword 
into its place.” 

Matt. xxvi. 55: “I sat daily in the temple 
teaching.” 

Matt. xxvii. 11: “And the governor asked 
him, saying, Art thou the king of the Jews? 
And Jesus said unto him, Thou sayest.” 


Matt. xviii. 18 (xvi. 19): “What things 
soever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound 
in heaven... ,” etc. 


1The two verses placed in parallel lines are taken in each case from the same Gospel and 


from the same narrative: 


Matt. xviii.3: “Ye shall not enter into the 
kingdom of heaven.” 

Matt. xix. 17: “If thou wouldest enter into 
life.” 

Matt. xxv. 34: “ Inherit the kingdom prepared 
for you.” 

Mark ix. 45: “It is good for thee to enter 
into life.” 


Matt. xviii. 8: “It is good for thee to en- 
ter into life.” 

Matt. xix. 23: “It is hard for a rich man to 
enter into the kingdom of heaven.” 

Matt. xxv. 46: “ But the righteous into eter- 
nal life.” 

Mark ix. 47: “It is good for thee to enter 
into the kingdom of God.” 


120 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


moreover, in the conversation with Nicodemus, twice uses (iii. 8, 5) the 
term kingdom of God (or of heaven, in the Sinaitic MS.). 

What is there left, after all this, which suffices to establish, in respect to 
the form, an insoluble contrast between the words of Jesus in John and 
His language in the Synoptics? A certain difference remains ; Ido not 
deny this. It consists in that altogether peculiar tone of holy solemnity, 
and, if I may venture to speak thus, of heavenly suavity, which dis- 
tinguishes not only our Gospel, but also the first Epistle of John, from all 
the other products of human thought, and which makes of these writings 
a literature by itself; with this difference, however, which has been already 
pointed out, that, while the course of thought is steady and of a strictly 
logical tenor in the Gospel, the subjects are treated in the epistles in a 
softer, more hesitating, and more diffuse way.—In order to explain the 
real contrast between the fourth Gospel and the preceding ones, we must 
first of all, as we have seen, take into account the influence exercised on 
the form of the discourses by the peculiar style of the translator, and by 
the work of condensation which was the condition of this reproduction. 
But, after this, there is still left a certain, in some sort, irreducible remnant, 
which demands a separate examination. It is said that the unexplained 
remainders in science are the cause of great discoveries. We are not 
ambitious of making a great discovery; but we would like, nevertheless, 
to succeed in giving, a little more clearly than has been given hitherto, an 
account of the difference with which we are concerned. 

The question is whether this particular tone, which might be called the 
Johannean timbre, was foreign to Jesus, in such a degree that our evan- 
gelist was the real creator of it and, of his own impulse, attributed it to the 
Saviour; or whether it appertained to the language of Jesus Himself, at 
least in certain particular moments of His life. We have seen that the 
scenes related in our Gospel represent only a score of days, or even of 
moments, distributed over an activity of two years anda half. And it is 
consequently permitted us to ask whether these scenes, chosen evidently 
with a design, did not have an exceptional character which marked them 
out for the author’s choice. He has made a selection among the facts, 
that is certain, and himself declares this (xx. 30, 81). Why might he not 
also have made one among the discourses? The sclection in this case 
must have been with reference to the design of his work, which was to 
show that “ Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” ‘If it is so, he was natu- 
rally obliged to choose, from among the numerous teachings of Jesus, the 
few words of an especially elevated character, which had, most of all, con- 
tributed to make him understand for himself the sublime richness of the 
being whom he had the happiness to see and to hear. 

We have an expression which the author places in the mouth of J esus, 
and according to which Jesus Himself distinguished between two sorts of 
discourses which were included in His teaching. He says to N icodemus, 
ii. 12: “If I have told you earthly things (ra éxiyew) and ye believe not, 
how shall ye believe when I tell you heavenly things (ra éroupdvia)?” In 
expressing Himself thus, Jesus recalled to Nicodemus the teachings which 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. tt 


He had given since His arrival in Jerusalem. What proved, indeed, that 
His hearers had not been laid hold of by them (had not believed), is the fact 
that Nicodemus himself was able to put forward, as the proof of the divine 
superiority of the Lord’s teaching, only His miracles (ver. 2). What were 
those teachings of Jesus, in which He spoke of earthly things? His 
preachings in Galilee, such as we find them in the Synoptics, may give us 
an idea of them. It was the earth,—that is, human life, with all its differ- 
ent obligations and relations—considered from the heavenly point of view. 
It was, for example, that lofty morality which we find developed in the 
Sermon on the Mount: human life as related to God. But from this 
elementary moral teaching Jesus expressly distinguishes that which He 
calls the teaching of heavenly things. The object of the latter is no longer 
the earth estimated from the heavenly point of view; it is heaven itself 
with its infinite richness. This heaven—Jesus lived in it continually while 
acting upon the earth. He says this Himself in the following verse: “No 
man hath ascended to heaven but he who came down from heaven, the 
Son of man who is in heaven” (ver. 13). .In the intimate and uninterrupted 
relation which He sustained to the Father, He had access here below 
to the divine thoughts, to the eternal purposes, to the plan of salvation, 
and He was able, in certain hours, to unfold to those who surrounded 
Him, friends or enemies, as He did in the progress of this nocturnal 
conversation with the pious councilor, the facts appertaining to this higher 
domain of the heavenly things. He would not have fully accomplished 
His mission, if He had absolutely concealed from the world what He was 
Himself for the heart of His Father, and what His Father was for Him. 
How could men have comprehended the infinite love of which they were 
the objects on heaven’s part, if Jesus had not explained to them the infinite 
value of the gift which God made to them in His person. Does not love 
measure itself by the cost of the gift, by the greatness of the sacrifice? 
On the other hand, this revelation of the heavenly things could not be 
the habitual object of the Lord’s teachings. Scarcely would one or two 
disciples have followed Him, if He had stayed upon these heavenly 
heights; the yet gross mass of the people who asked only for a Messiah 
after their own carnal heart—a king capable of every day giving them 
bread in the proper sense of the word (vi. 15, 34), would have remained’ 
strangers to His influence, and would soon have left Him alone with His 
two or tnree initiated ones. 

It is undoubtedly for the same reason, that these teachings respecting 
the heavenly things remained, in general, outside of the limits of the first 
apostolical preaching and the oral telling of the Gospel story. 

Nevertheless, even if this was the course of things, it is improbable that 
every trace of this mode of teaching, more lofty in matter and tone, 
would have completely disappeared from the Synoptic narrative. And, 
indeed, two of our evangelists—those who, along with John, have labored 
most to transmit to us the teachings of Jesus—Matthew and Luke, have 
preserved for us the account of a moment of extraordinary emotion in 
the Lord’s life which presents us the example naturally looked for. It is 


5 Wy BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


in Luke especially, that we must seek the faithful representation of it 
(chap. x.). Jesus has sent into the fields and villages of Galilee seventy of 
His disciples, weak spiritual children, to whom He has entrusted the task 
of making the population understand the importance of the work which 
is being accomplished at this time, and the nearness of the kingdom. 
They return to Him filled with joy, and inform Him of the complete 
success of their mission. At this moment, the evangelist tells us, “Jesus 
rejoiced in His spirit, and said: I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and 
earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast 
revealed them unto babes! Yea, Father, for so it seemed good in thy 
sight. All things have been delivered unto me by my Father, and no one 
knoweth who the Son is but the Father, nor who the Father is but the 
Son, and he to whom the Son willeth to reveal him.” In reading these 
words, we ask ourselves whether it is indeed from St. Luke or St. Matthew 
that we are reading, and not from St. John. What does this fact prove? 
That, according to the Synoptics themselves, in certain exceptional 
moments of elevation, the language of Jesus really assumed that sweet 
tone, that mystic tinge, as it has been called—is it not more correct to say, 
heavenly ?—of which we find in them but one single example, and of 
which six or seven discourses in John bear, in greater or less degree, the 
impress. This passage of Luke and Matthew has been called an erratic 
block of Johannean rock strayed into the Synoptic ground. The figure 
is quite just; what does it prove? The smallest fragment of granite 
deposited on the calcareous slopes of Jura, is for the geologist the unde- 
niable proof that somewhere in the lofty Alpine summits the entire rock 
is in its place. Otherwise this block would-be a monstrosity for science. 
The same is true of this fragment of Johannean discourse in the Synoptic 
Gospels. It is fully sufficient to prove the existence, at certain moments, 
of this so-called Johannean language in the teaching of Jesus. The real 
difference between John and the Synoptics, on this most decisive point, 
amounts to this: while these last have handed down to us but a single 
example of this form of language, John has preserved for us several 
examples selected with a particular purpose. 

As, on the one hand, it is certain from the very nature of things, that 
the peculiar style of the translator has colored that of the Preacher whose 
discourses he reproduces, on the other hand, the passage of the Synoptics, 
which we have just quoted, places beyond doubt the fact that the language 
of the Lord Himself had stamped its impression deeply on the soul of the 
evangelist, and exercised a decisive and permanent influence on his style. 
There was here, therefore, if I may venture to express myself thus, a 
reflex action, the secret of which, undoubtedly, no one will ever com- 
pletely disclose. 

Moreover, the discourses of Jesus in the fourth Gospel bear in them- 
selves, for every one who has eyes to see them, the seal of their true 
origin, and, notwithstanding all the assertions of learned men, the Church 
will always know what it should think of them. An intimate, filial, 
unchanging communion with the God of heaven and earth, like that 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. ize 


which here reveals itself by the mouth of Jesus, must be lived in order to be 
thus expressed—what shall I say, in order to our having even a glimpse 
of it. The inventor of such discourses would be more than a genius of the 
first rank; he would need to be himself a Son of God, a Jesus equal to 
the true one. Criticism gains only one more embarrassment by such a 
supposition. 


C. The Johannean notion of the Person of Jesus. 


Is it possible for us to go back even to the single source from which flow 
forth, like two diverging streams, the two forms of Jesus’ teaching which 
we have just established. First of all, let us set aside the opinion, at pres- 
ent somewhat widespread, which holds that a dualism can be discerned 
even in the teaching of our Gospel. Two scholars, Baur and Reuss, have 
claimed that the author of this work did not hold a real incarnation of 
the Logos ; that, according to him, the divine being continued in Jesus in 
the possession and exercise of His heavenly attributes, in such a way that 
His humanity was only a passing and superficial covering, which did not 
modify, in any respect, the state which He had possessed before coming to 
the earth. Starting from this point of view, Reuss finds in our Gospel a 
series of contradictions between certain words of Jesus, which he believes 
to be authentic, and that conception which is exhibited in the amplifica- 
tions due to the pen of the evangelist. While in the former, Jesus dis- 
tinctly affirms His inferiority to the Father, the author of our Gospel, 
filled with his own notion of the Logos, presents Him as equal with God. 
It is difficult to conceive a more complete travesty of the Johannean nar- 
rative. We have already shown that no Gospel sets forth with more pro- 
nounced features than this one the real humanity of Jesus, body, soul and 
spirit. The body is exhausted (iv. 6); the soul is overwhelmed in trouble 
(xii. 27); the spirit itself is agitated (xiii. 21) and groans (xi. 83). What 
place remains in such a being for the presence of an impassible Logos? 
More than this: according to the prologue, which is certainly the work of 
the evangelist, the Logos Himself, in His state of divine pre-existence, 
tends towards God as to His centre (i. 1); He dwells in God, as a first-born 
Son in the bosom of His Father (i. 18). Where in this representation is 
the place for a being equal with God? No; the subordination of the Son 
to the Father is affirmed by the evangelist as distinctly as it could have 
been by Jesus when speaking of Himself; and as for His real humanity, 
it is emphasized by this same evangelist more strongly than by any one 
of the Synoptics. 

There is, then, no trace of a twofold contradictory theology in our Gos- 
pel... .This supposition is already, in its very nature, in the highest degree 
improbable. It implies a fact which it is very difficult to admit. This 
fact is, that so profound a thinker as the one who composed this work, the 
most powerful mind of his epoch, could, without being in the least degree 


1 As Beyschlag now claims; comp. also the thesis of Jean Réville, La doctrine du Logos, 188). 


124 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


aware of it, simultaneously teach two opposite conceptions respecting the 
subject which occupied the first place in his thoughts and in his heart. 

The idea which the evangelist formed of the person of Christ, and 
which is in perfect accord with even the smallest historical or didactic 
details of the entire narrative, is clearly formulated by the author in the 
prologue: “The Word was made flesh,’”—which evidently signifies that 
the being whom he calls the Word divested Himself of His divine state 
and of all the attributes which constituted it, in order to exchange it for 
a completely human state, with all the characteristics of weakness, ignor- 
ance, sensibility to pleasure and pain, which constitute our peculiar mode 
of life here below. This mode of conceiving of the person of Christ 
during His sojourn on the earth is not peculiar to John; it is also that of 
Paul, who tells us in Philippians: ‘‘ He who was in the form of God... 
emptied himself, taking upon him the form of a servant, and being made 
in the likeness of men” (ii. 6, 7); and also in Second Corinthians: “Ye 
know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, who, though he was rich, for 
your sakes became poor, that ye, through his poverty, might become 
rich” (2 Cor. vili. 9). The same teaching is found in the Epistle to the 
Hebrews and the Apocalypse, though it would require too much space to 
show this here.? Here is the key to all the Christological ideas of the 
New Testament. It is, in particular, the explanation of that double form 
of teaching which we find in the mouth of Christ, in John and in the 
Synoptics. 

Up to His baptism, Jesus had lived in a filial communion with God; 
that saying of the child of twelve years is the proof of this: ‘“ Must I not 
be in that which belongs to my Father?” (Luke ii. 49.) But He had not 
as yet the distinct consciousness of His eternal, essential relation to the 
Father; His communion with Him was of a moral nature; it sprang 
from His pure conscience and His ardent love for Him. In this state, He 
must, indeed, have hada presentiment that He was the physician of sinful 
humanity, as the Messiah. But an immediate divine testimony was 
necessary, in order that He should be able to undertake the redemptive 
work. This testimony was given to Him at His baptism; at that moment 
the heavens were opened to Him; the heavenly things, which He was to 
reveal to others, were unveiled to Him. At the same time the mystery 
of His own person became clear to Him; He heard the voice of the 
Father which said to Him: “Thou art my beloved Son.” From that day 
He knew Himself perfectly; and knowing Himself as the only-begotten 
_ Son, the object of all the Father’s love, He knew also how greatly the 
Father loved the world to which He was giving Him: He knew fully, as 
man, the Father himself, the Father in all the riches of the meaning of 
this word. Thus it was that, from this day onward, He carried heaven in 
His heart, while living on the earth. He had, then, if we may so speak, 


1 The same expression is used (ii. 9), to ex- attributes. 
press the change of the water into wine: one 2Comp. Heb. i. 3; ii. 17, 18; v. 6-8; Apoc. i. 
same substance, but clothed with different dO ho bb bea VA ee ala 


CHA RACTERISTICS—-THE DISCOURSES. 125 


two sources of information: one, the experience of the earthly things 
which He had learned to know during the thirty years of life which He had 
just passed here on earth as a mere man; the other, the permanent intui- 
tion of the heavenly things which had just unveiled themselves to Him at 
the hour of the baptism. How can we be surprised, therefore, that Jesus 
spoke alternately of the one and the other, according to the wants of His 
hearers, finding in the first the common ground which was needed by 
Him to excite their interest and gain their attention, deriving from the 
second the matter of the new revelation, by means of which He was to 
transform the world? On the one side, there were the moral obligations 
of man, his relations to things here below, treated from a divine point of 
view, as we see particularly in the Synoptics; on the other, the higher 
mystery of the relation of love between the Father and the Son, and of 
the love of both towards a world sunk in sin and death, a world to which 
the Father gives the Son and the Son gives Himself. 

It seems to me that, by placing ourselves at this point of view, we may 
see springing up, as if by a sort of moral necessity, the two modes of 
teaching which fill science, but not the Church, with astonishment. Do 
we not know young persons or mature men who, after having led a per- 
fectly moral life, see all at once opening before them, through the 
mysterious act of the new birth, the sanctuary of communion with Christ, 
the life of adoption, the inward enjoyment of the fatherly love of God? 
Their language assumes then, at certain moments, a new character which 
astonishes those who hear them speak thus, and ask themselves whether 
it is, indeed, the same man. There is in their tone something elevated, 
something sweet, which was previously strange to them. The words are, 
as it were, words coming from a higher region. We are tempted to cry 
out with the poet: 


Ah! qui n’oublierait tout a cette voix céleste ! 
Ta parole est un chant .. . 


but without adding, with him, 
ou rien d’humain ne reste.! 


For this divine language is, nevertheless, the most human language which 
can be spoken. Then, when this moment of exaltation has passed, and 
the ordinary life resumes its own course, the ordinary language returns 
with it, although ever grave, ever holy, ever dominated by the immediate 
relation with God which henceforth forms the background of the entire 
life. Such experiences are not rare; they serve to explain the mystery 
of the twofold teaching and the twofold language of the Word made flesh, 
from the moment when He had been revealed to Himself by the testimony 
of the Father.” 


1 Ah, who would not all forget in that celes- 2 Regarded from this point of view, the fact 
tial voice. of the incarnation, while still presenting to hu- 
Thy speech is asong.... where nothing man reason profound mysteries, does not seem 


of man remains. to us to contain unsolvable contradictions. 


126 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


But, even if we cannot reach in thought the sublime point where, in 
the person of Christ, the two converging lines of the humanity which 
rises to the highest point, and the divinity which humbles itself most 
profoundly, meet together, do we not know that, in mathematics, no one 
-refuses to acknowledge the reality of the point where the two lines called 
asymptotes meet when infinitely produced, and that the operations are 
carried on with reference to this point as with reference to a positive 
quantity? Weiss rightly says :! ‘It is necessary, indeed, to consider that 
the appearance of Jesus in itself, as the realization of a divinely human 
life, was much too rich, too great, too manifold, not to be presented in a 
different way according to the varied individualities which received its 
rays, and according to the more or less ideal points of view at which these 
rays were reflected ; while, however, this difference could not be prejudicial 
to the unity of the fundamental impression, and of the essential character 
in which this personality made itself known.” 

Criticism has often compared the difference with which we are con- 
cerned to that which is presented by the two representations of the person 
of Socrates, traced by Plato and Xenophon. At the outset, the historians 
of philosophy turned to the side of Xenophon, thinking that they could 
recognize the true historical type in the simple, practical, varied, popular 
Socrates of the Memorabilia. At that time, the Socrates of Plato was re- 
garded as only a mouth-piece chosen by that author in order to set forth 
his own theory of ideas. Xenophon was the historian, Plato the philoso- 
pher. But criticism has changed its mind; Schleiermacher, above all, has 
taught us that, if the teaching of Socrates had not contained speculative 
elements, such as Plato attributes to him, and elements as to which the 
other writer is completely silent, no account could be given either of the 
relation which so closely united the school of Plato to the person of Soc- 
rates, or of the extraordinary attractive power which the latter exercised 
over the most eminent and most speculative minds of his time, or of the 
profound revolution effected by him in the progress of Greek thought.’ 
With Xenophon alone, there remains a vacancy—a vacancy which we can- 
not fill except with the aid of Plato. This fact arises, on the one hand, 
from the special aim of Xenophon’s book, which was to make a moral 
defense of his master ; on the other, from the circumstance that Xenophon, 
a practical man, lacked the philosophical capacity which was necessary 
for the apprehension of the higher elements of the Socratic teaching. 
Zeller also acknowledges that Xenophon did not comprehend the scientific 
value of Socrates; “that Socrates cannot have been that exclusive and 
unscientific moralist for which he was so long taken,” while the starting- 
point for criticism was made from the work of Xenophon only. “ There 
is,’ he says, “in the exposition of each of the two writers, a surplus 
(Ueberschuss) which can without difficulty be introduced into the com- 
mon portrait.” No doubt, Plato has put into the mouth of Socrates his 


1 Introduction to his Commentary on the 2 Scholars like Brandis and Ritter hold this 
Gospel of John, p. 33. opinion. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. roy 


own theory of ideas. But it was only the development of the teaching of 
Socrates himself; and it must be admitted that where he puts Socrates on 
the stage as an historical personage (in the Apology and the Symposium, 
for example), he does not take this course.! 

This parallel presents, mutatis mutandis, several remarkable correspond- 
ences in detail. But it offers, above all, this fundamental analogy that, 
in the case of Socrates as in that of Jesus, we find ourselves in the pres- 
ence of two portraits of an historical personage, the perfect synthesis of 
which it is impossible to make. Now, if philosophy is still seeking after 
the fusion of the two portraits of the wisest of the Greeks, are we to be sur- 
prised that theology has not yet succeeded in effecting that of the two 
pictures of Christ. Is the richness of the former, a man whose influence 
on the moral history of his people was so serious, but so transient, to be 
compared to the richness of Him whose appearance has renewed and is 
constantly renewing the world? And if there was in the former that 
which furnishes matter for two portraits, both of them true and yet not 
reducible to a single one, why should we be surprised to see the same 
phenomenon reappearing with regard to Him who could have ex- 
claimed in Greece : “ A greater than Socrates is here,” as He did exclaim 
in Judea: “A greater than Solomon is here.” 

“No one knoweth the Son but the Father,” says Jesus in the Synoptics. 
The point of convergence of the two representations—the Johannean and 
the Synoptic, is accordingly the consciousness which the Son had of Him- 
self. We shall, undoubtedly, not be successful in reconstructing it per- 
fectly here on earth. 

We behold one sun in the arch of heaven; and yet what a difference 
between its burning reflection on the slopes of the Alpine glaciers and its 
calm and majestic image in the waves of the ocean! The source of light 
is one, but the two mirrors are different. 

We conclude : 

1. The primal idea of the Johannean work did not by any means nec- 
essarily impair its historical character. 

2. The truthfulness of the narrative appears manifestly from the com- 
parison of the story with that of the Synoptics, to which it is invariably 
superior in the cases where they differ. 

3. The truthfulness of the account of the discourses, which is supported 
by such strong positive reasons, does not in fact encounter any insur- 
mountable difficulty. ; 

The fourth Gospel is, therefore, a truly historical work. 


@2. THE RELATION OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL TO THE RELIGION OF THE 
OLD TESTAMENT. 


Modern criticism believes itself able to prove a tendency in the fourth 
Gospel decidedly hostile to Judaism. Baur thinks that the author of this 
book desired to introduce anti-Jewish Gnosticism into the Church; that he 


1 Philos. der Griechen, IIter Th., 3d ed., pp. 85 ff.; 151, 155. 


128 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


was a Docetist and dualist, professing the non-reality of the body of 
Jesus and the eternal contrast between darkness and light. Without going 

»as far as this, Reuss says, “that he speaks of the Jews as of a class of for- 
eigners, with whom he had no connection;” that “ all that preceded Jesus 
belongs, according to him, to a past without any value, and can only serve 
to lead men astray and cause them to miss the gate of salvation” (x. 8)." 
Renan also attributes to the evangelist a “lively antipathy” to Judaism. 
Hilgenfeld, finally, is the one who has gone, and still goes, the farthest in 
the affirmation of this thesis. He originally ascribed our Gospel to some 
Gnostic writer of the second century ; he has since softened this assertion ; 
he thinks that the author, while belonging to the Church, “nevertheless 
goes a considerable distance along with Gnosticism.” According to the 
fourth evangelist, “Judaism belonged, as much as paganism, to the dark- 
ness which preceded the Gospel ;” the religion of the Old Testament pos- 
sessed “only an imperfect and dim prefiguration of Christianity.” The 
knowledge of the true God was wanting to it as much as to Samaritan 
paganism.” 

What is alleged in justification of such judgments? In the first place, 
some particular ¢erms, familiar to the evangelist, such as this: the Jews, an 
expression which he employs in a sense always hostile to that people; or 
that other expression: your law, a term in which a feeling of disdain for 
the Mosaic institution and the Old Testament betrays itself. But the un- 
favorable sense attached in our Gospel to the name, the Jews, to designate 
the enemies of the light, proceeds not from a subjective feeling of the 
evangelist, but from the fact itself—that is to say, from the position taken 
towards Jesus from the beginning (John ii.) by the mass of the nation and 
by their rulers. The author uses this term also, when there is occasion for 
it (which is rare), in an entirely neutral sense, as in ii. 6 (“the purification 
of the Jews”) and xix. 40 (“the custom of the Jews to embalm bodies”); 
or even in a favorable sense, as in the passages iv. 22 (“salvation is from 
the Jews”) and xi. 45 (“many of the Jews who came to Mary believed on 
him”). We may also cite here the use of the name Israelite, applied as a 
title of honor to Nathanael (i. 48). In the Apocalypse, which is affirmed 
to be an absolutely Judaizing work, the Jews who obstinately resist the . 
Gospel are designated in a much more severe way: ‘Those who say they 
are Jews and who are not, but are the synagogue of Satan” (ii. 9; comp. ill, 
9) The great crisis which had cast Israel out of the kingdom of God, and 
which had made it henceforth a body foreign and even hostile to the 
Church, had begun already during the ministry of Jesus. This is what the 
author sets forth by this term: the Jews, which is contrasted in his narrative 
with the term: the disciples. In making Jesus say your law, the evangelist 
cannot have had the intention of disparaging the Mosaic institution, any 


1 Théol. joh., pp. 82 and 19. 3 Ewald (Comment. in Apoc. Joh. ad. h. 1.): 
2 Das Evangelium und die Briefe Johannis, “John, in a piquant way, calls the Jews an 
1849; comp. with his more recent article in assembly, not of God, but of Satan, as Jesus 
the Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliche Theologie Himself does (John viii. 37-44).” 
1865, and Einleitung, pp. 722 ff. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 129 


more than in making Jesus say: “Abraham your father” (viii. 56), he 
dreamed of depreciating that patriarch. He exalts him, on the contrary, 
in that very verse, by setting forth the joyous sympathy which he experi- 
ences in a higher state of existence for Himself and His work: ‘“ Abraham 
rejoiced in expectation of seeing my day, and he sawit and was glad.” In 
the same way, x. 34, after having used the expression: your law, He im- 
mediately adds, in connection with the passage of the O. T. which he has 
just quoted, these words: “And since the Scripture cannot be broken,” 
making the law thus a divine and infallible revelation. Elsewhere He de- 
clares that “it is the Scriptures which testify of him” (v. 39); that the sin 
of the hearers consists in “not having the word of God abiding in them” 
(ver. 38), and even that the real cause of their unbelief towards Him is 
nothing else than their unbelief with respect to the writings of Moses (vv. 
46, 47). The evangelist who makes Jesus speak thus evidently does not 
seek to disparage the law; the contradiction would be too flagrant. Jesus, 
therefore, in using the expression your law, means: “that law which you 
yourselves recognize as the sovereign authority,” or: “that law which you 
invoke against me, and in the name of which you seek to condemn me.” 
It must be remarked that He could not say “our law,” because His per- 
sonal relation to that institution was too widely differerft from that of the 
ordinary Jews to be included under the same pronoun; just as He could 
not say, when speaking of God: ‘our Father,” but only “my Father,” and 
“your Father” (xx. 17). 

It has been remarked that Jesus never speaks in this Gospel of the law 
as the principle on which the life of the new community is to rest. This 
is true; but this is because He supposes the law to have become the inter- 
nal principle of the life of believers through the fact of their communion 
with Him. 

Critics also allege the freedom with which Jesus, in His cures, was ready 
to violate the Jewish Sabbath. Hilgenfeld even discovers the intention of 
abolishing that institution in the words of v.17: “My Father worketh 
hitherto, and [also work.” As to the Sabbath cures, they are found in the 
Synoptics as well as in John; and there, as here, it is these acts which be- 
gin to excite the deadly hatred of the Jews against Him (Luke vi. 11). But 
we formally deny the position that by these healings Jesus really violated 
the terms of the Mosaic command. He transgressed nothing else than 
that hedge of arbitrary statutes by which the Pharisees had thought fit to 
surround the fourth commandment. Jesus remained, from the beginning 
to the end, in our Gospel as in the others, the minister of the circumcision 
(Rom. xv. 8),—that is to say, the scrupulous observer of the law. As to the 
words of v. 17, they are by no means contrary to the idea of the Sabbath 
rest; they only mean: “As the Father labors in the work of the salvation 
of humanity—and this work evidently suffers no interruption at any mo- 
ment whatsoever, still less on the Sabbath day than on any other—the Son 
cannot fold His arms and leave the Father to labor alone.” This declara- 
tion does not contradict the Sabbatic rest when properly understood. 

Hilgenfeld alleges also the two following passages: iv. 21, and viii. 44. 

9 


130 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. - 


In the first, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman: “The hour cometh 
when ye shall no longer worship the Father either in this mountain or at 
Jerusalem,” which proves, according to him, that Jesus wished to set ° 
Himself in opposition to the Jews no less than to the Samaritans, and 
that consequently, when he says in the following verse: ‘ Ye worship that 
which ye know not,” this judgment applies tothe former as well as to the 
latter. The Jewish religion would therefore be, according to these words 
of Jesus, as erroneous as all the rest—But there is enough in the follow- 
ing words: “because salvation comes from the Jews,” to refute this 
explanation; for, instead of because, the author would have been obliged 
in that case to have said although: “Although the Jews are as ignorant as 
you and all the others, it has pleased God to make salvation come forth 
from the midst of them.” The because (ér:) has no meaning unless Jesus 
in the preceding words had accorded to the Jews a knowledge of God 
superior to that of the Samaritans. This fact proves that the words: “We 
worship that which we know” apply not only to Him, Jesus, personally, 
but to Him conjointly with all Israel1 The true meaning of the words of 
ver. 21 is explained by ver. 23 (which resumes ver. 21): “ Your worship, 
as for you Samaritans, will not be confined to this mountain Gerizim, nor 
will it, any more, be transported and localized anew at Jerusalem.” Indeed, 
this second alternative must have appeared to the woman the only one 
possible, when once the first was set aside. 

in the passage viii. 44, Jesus says to the Jews, according to the ordinary 
construction: “ You are of a father, the devil.” Hilgenfeld translates, asis 
no doubt grammatically possible: “ You are of the father of the devil.” 
This father of the devil is, according to him, the God of the Jews, the 
Creator of the material world, who in some of the Gnostic systems (Ophi- 
tes, Valentinians) was actually presented as the father of the demon. 
This is not all; Jesus says at the end of the same verse: “When he 
speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, because he is a liar, and his father,” 
which is ordinarily understood in this sense: because he is a liar and the 
father of the liar (or of the lie). But Hilgenfeld explains: because he 
(the devil) is a liar, as also, his father (is a liar). And he finds here a sec- 
ond time the father of the devil, who is called “a liar as well as his son,” 
because, throughout the entire Old Testament, the God of the Jews made 
Himself pass for the supreme God, while He was only an inferior divin- 
ity.—The author of this explanation is astonished that it could have been 
regarded as monstrous, and claims “that no one has yet advanced the 
first reasonable word against it.” He must, nevertheless, acknowledge 
the following facts: 1. The father of the devil is a personage totally for- 
eign to the Biblical sphere, and the author of our Gospel would have 
greatly compromised the success of his fraud by introducing him on the 
stage. 2. The notion of two opposite and personal Gods, of whom the 
second is another being than the devil, is so opposed to the Israelitish and 


1It was ‘only through placing Himself in tans), that He could say we in speaking of 
opposition toa foreign people (the Samari- Himself and the other Jews, as He does here. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. FOU 


Christian monotheism professed by the author (v. 44), that it is impossi- 
ble to admit such a teaching here. 38. WhatJesus, according to the entire 
context, wishes to prove to the Jews, is that they are the children of the 
devil, but not his brothers, as would follow from Hilgenfeld’s translation : 
“You are born of the father of the devil.” In this whole passage the 
matter in hand is that of contrasting filiation with filiation, father with 
father. ‘“Yedo that which ye have seen with your father,” Jesus said, 
ver. 88. The Jews replied to Him: “We have only one father, God” 
(ver. 41). And Jesus’ answer is the echo of theirs: “Ye are born of a 
father, [who is] the devil.” The first epistle offers a decisive parallel 
(iii. 10). “In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the 
devil.” 4, Finally, let us remark, that if the first words of the verse are 
applied to the father of the devil, it is necessary to apply to this same per- 
sonage the whole series of the following propositions, even inclusive of the 
last. These words: “because he isa liar as well as his father,” would 
signify, then (according to the explanation of Hilgenfeld): the father of 
the devil is a liar and his father none the less so. After having seen the 
father of the devil make his appearance, we should find ourselves here in 
the presence of his grandfather! All this phantasmagoria vanishes away 
before a single comma introduced between the two genitives rarpéc (of a 
father) and rot daZddov (of the devil), which makes the second substantive 
appositional with the former, and notits complement. The necessity of this 
explanation from the grammatical standpoint appears from the opposi- 
tion to ver. 41: ““We have one father [who is] God,” and religiously from 
ii. 16, where the temple of the God of the Jews, in Jerusalem (which, accord- 
ing to Hilgenfeld, ought to be the house of the devil’s father), is called by 
Jesus “the house of my Father.” It is certainly, therefore, according to 
our Gospel, the only true God (xvii. 3) who is worshiped at Jerusalem. 

Hilgenfeld and Reuss rest also upon the words of x. 8: “ All those who 
came before me are thieves and robbers;” they think that Jesus meant 
to characterize by these two terms all the eminent men of the Old Cove- 
nant. Who then? The patriarchs and Moses, the psalmists and the 
prophets? And that in a book in which the author makes Jesus say, that 
to believe Moses is implicitly to believe in Him (v. 46, 47); in which He 
Himself declares that Isaiah beheld in a vision the glory of the Logos 
before His incarnation, and foretold the unbelief of the people towards 
the Messiah (xii. 38, 41); in which the words of a psalmist are quoted as 
_ the word of God which cannot be broken (x. 34, 35); in which Abraham 
is represented as rejoicing exceedingly at the sight of the coming of the 
Christ (viii. 56)! No; the quoted expression applies simply to the actual 
rulers of the nation, who already for a considerable period were in posses- 
sion of power at the time when Jesus was accomplishing His work in 
Israel. This is clearly indicated by the present: eic/, are, and not, were, 
as the word has sometimes been rather thoughtlessly translated. ‘Those 
who came before me are thieves and robbers.” 

Reuss maintains that, in general, no expression in this work connects 
the Church in a more special way with Judaism: and Hilgenfeld affirms 


132 BOOK II. TITE GOSPEL. 


that this work “breaks every bond between Christianity and its Jewish 
roots.” And yet the second of these scholars cannot help acknowledging 
what the first tries in vain to deny: that in the declaration of 1.11: “ He 
came to his own, and his own received him not,” the author really speaks 
of the Jews, considering them, he himself adds—“ as the people of God or 
of the Logos.”! No doubt, he endeavors afterwards to escape from the 
consequences of this conclusive fact, but by means of subterfuges which 
do not deserve even to be mentioned. Moreover, let the following facts 
be weighed: The temple of Jerusalem is “ the house of the Father” of Jesus 
Christ (ii. 16); salvation comes from the Jews (iv. 22); the sheep whom 
Jesus gathers from the theocracy constitute the nucleus of the true Messianic 
flock (x. 16); the Paschal lamb slain at Jerusalem prefigures the sacrifice 
of the Messiah, even in the minute detail that the bones of both are to be 
preserved unbroken (xix. 86); the most striking testimony of the Father 
on behalf of Jesus is that which is given to Him by the Scriptures of the 
Old Covenant (v. 39). Finally, the author himself declares that he wrote 
his book to prove that Jesus is not only the Son of God, as he is so often 
made to say, but, first of all, the Christ, the Messiah promised to the Jews 
(xx. 30, 31).2 The Messianic character of Jesus is expressly pointed out 
before His divine character. From end to end, our Gospel makes the 
appearance and work of Jesus the final evolution, the crowning of the 
Old Covenant. 

As to all the passages which Hilgenfeld alleges with the design of 
proving that Jesus denies to Judaism all true knowledge of God (vii. 28; 
viii. 19; xv. 21; xvi. 25, etc.), they do not prove anything whatever; it is 
not to the Jewish religion as such, it is to the carnal and proud Jews who 
surround Him, that this often repeated reproach is addressed, that they 
did not know God, the God who nevertheless had revealed Himself to 
them. The prophets had all spoken in the same way, and had distin- 
guished from the mass of the people (this people, Is. vi. 10) the elect, “the 
holy remnant ” (vi. 18). They surely were not, for this reason, anti-Jewish. 

The charge of dualism, directed against our Gospel by Hilgenfeld par- 
ticularly, falls before this simple remark of Hase:* “A moral relation is 
thereby falsely translated into a metaphysical relation.” Is it necessary to 
find a dualistic notion in that saying of Jesus: “To you it is given to know 
the mysteries of the kingdom; but to them it is not given” (Matt. xi. 11)? 
or, in that other, ver. 88: “The good seed are the children of the kingdom ; 
the tares are the children of the evilone?” or, again, in the contrast which 
St. Paul makes, 1 Cor. ii. 14, 15, between the psychical man who cannot 
understand spiritual things. and the pnewmatic man who judges all things? 
Who ever dreamed, because of such words, of imputing to Jesus and to 
Paul the idea of two human races, one proceeding from God, the other 
from the devil. The Scriptures teach throughout that a holy power and 


1 FHinleitung, p. 723. striking out this term, the Christ ; comp. Sa- 
2It is curious to observe how, in the cita- batier, Encyclop., p. 184. There are other 
tion of this passage, our critics are sometimes examples of this. 
guilty of an inconsiderate inaccuracy in 3 Geschichte Jesu, p. 44. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE DISCOURSES. 133 


an evil power act simultaneously on the heart of man, and that he can 
freely surrender himself to the one or the other. The more emphatic the 
choice is in the one direction or the other, the more is the man given up 
to the moral current which bears him away, and thus it may happen that 
on the path of evil a man becomes incapable of discerning and feeling any 
longer the attraction of what is good. Here is the incapacity which Jesus 
so often charges upon the Jews; it is their own act; otherwise, why 
reproach them with it, and to what purpose call them again to repentance 
and to a renewal by faith? This hardness is only relative, because it is 
voluntary ; Jesus declares this most expressly in that so profound expla- 
nation of Jewish unbelief (v. 44): ‘“ How can ye believe, ye who receive 
your glory one from another, and seek not the glory which comes from 
God only?” If, then, they cannot believe, it is because they will not, 
because they have made themselves the slaves of a good which is opposite 
to the benefits which faith procures,—oef human glory. This dualism is 
moral, the effect of the will, not metaphysical or of nature. By teaching 
otherwise, the author would contradict himself; for has he not said in the 
prologue that “all things were made by the Logos, and that nothing, not 
even a single thing, came into being without Him?” Undoubtedly, Hil- 
genfeld claims that the existence of the darkness, i. 5, not having been 
explained as caused by anything, implies the eternity of the evil principle ; 
but following upon that which Ra he (the creation, the primitive state), 
it is altogether natural to find here the appearance of evil in humanity— 
the fall, as it is related after the creation in the story of Genesis, which the 
author follows, as it were, step by step. 

Baur found in our Gospel the spirit of Gnostic Docetism, which would be, 
no less than dualism, in contradiction to the spirit of the Old Testament. 
But every one seems, at the present day, to have abandoned this opinion, 
and we believe that we can remit to exegesis the charge of proving the 
emptiness of it! In order to maintain it, we must torture the meaning 
of that expression in which the whole work is summed up: “The Word 
was made flesh,” and must reduce the force of it to this idea: The Word 
was clothed with a bodily appearance. The fourth Gospel throughout repels 
this mode of explaining the incarnation, which is also, up to a certain 
point, that which Reuss attributes to it. A being who is fatigued, who is 
thirsty, whose soul is troubled at the approach of suffering, and who must 
be preserved by extraordinary circumstances from the breaking of his 
bones; a being who rises from the dead, and who says: “Touch me not,” 
or, again: “ Reach hither thy finger,” has certainly a real and material 
body, or the author does not know what he is saying. 

Hilgenfeld discovers, finally, in the opposition of our Gospel to Chiliasm 
a proof of its anti-Judaic spirit. “The entire Gospel,” says this writer, “is 
planned in such a way as to present the historical coming of Christ as His 
only appearance on the earth.” But, first, it is false to regard Chiliasm, 
the expectation of a final reign of Christ over mankind, as the mark of a 


1See on the passages vii. 10 and viii. 59. 


134 BOOK Il THE GOSPEL. 


Judaistic tendency. Hase rightly says: “This was the belief of nearly 
the whole Church in the second century, and even till far on in the third.” 
But further, as the same author adds, “our Gospel, while turning the 
attention away from everything which delights the senses, does not con- 
tradict that hope.” We have seen this, indeed; with many repetitions, 
mention is made of a glorious resurrection of the body which is promised 
to believers, and of a last day. But here, as in all things, John makes it 
his study to set forth the spiritual preparation on which the Synoptics 
had not dwelt, rather than the outward results described by the latter in 
so lively and striking a way. 

We have, in this chapter, developed only the points which are related to 
the characteristics of our Gospel, without touching upon that which comes 
into the question of its origin,—of its composition by this author or by 
that. It is in studying this last subject that we shall seek for the origin 
of the notion and the term Logos. What concerned us at this point was 
to thoroughly establish the relation of our Gospel to the Old Covenant. 
This relation is a double one, as we have proved: on the one side, the 
Johannean Gospel fully recognizes the divinity of the Old Testament, law 
and prophets; on the other, it sees in the work and teaching of Christ a 
decided superiority to the old revelations. The God of Israel is the Father 
of our Lord Jesus Christ, but the patriarchal and prophetic revelations 
only made Him known imperfectly. It is the only-begotten Son, repos- 
ing in His bosom, who has come to reveal Him to us. “The law was 
given by Moses;”’ it prepared its faithful subjects to receive Jesus Christ ; 
but it is only in Him that there is accorded to the believer a divine “ full- 
ness of grace and truth” (i. 16-18). The Word had in Israel His home, 
long since prepared on the earth; but the new birth through which a 
man obtains the life of God is impossible except through faith in the 
Word who has come in the flesh (i. 12, 18). 

The evangelist began by recognizing in Jesus the promised Christ; 
thence he rose to the knowledge of the Son of God (i. 41; vi. 69; xvi. 28, 
29). The expression in xx. 31, sums up this development. 


23. THE STYLE OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 


It remains for us to study our Gospel from a literary point of view. 
Tholuck, in the introduction to his brief commentary, has well set forth 
the unique character of the evangelist’s language. There is nothing analo- 
gous to it in all literature, sacred or profane; childlike simplicity and 
transparent depth, holy melancholy and vivacity no less holy; above all, 
the sweetness of a pure and gentle love. ‘Such a style could only ema- 
nate,” says Hase, “from a life which rests in God and in which all oppo- 
sition between the present and the future, between the divine and human, 
has wholly come to an end. 

Let us try to state precisely the peculiarities of this style. 


1It is impossible to treat this subject with does in the Introduction to his Commentary, 
more acuteness and delicacy than Luthardt 2d ed., 1875, Vol. 1., pp. 14-62. 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE STYLE. 135 


1. The vocabulary, upon the whole, is poor. It is, in general, the same 
expressions which reappear from one end to the other: light (ga¢) twenty- 
three times; glory, to be glorified (dd&a, dof4leo3ac) forty-two times; life, to 
live (Cw, Cav) fifty-two times; to testify, testimony (uaprupeiv, uaprrpia) forty- 
seven times ; to know (yivdoxerv) fifty-five times; world (xécouoc) seventy-eight 
times; to believe (xwrevew) ninety-eight times; work (épyov) twenty-three 
times; name (svoua) and truth (aa“Geva) each twenty-five times; sign (onueiov) 
seventeen times. Not only does the author not hesitate to repeat these 
words in his work, but he does this, and with reiteration, in sentences which 
are very closely allied to one another. At the first glance, this gives to his 
style a monotonous character; but only at the first glance. These expres- 
sions soon compensate the reader for their small number by their intrinsic 
richness. They are not at all,as one thinks at the first sight, purely 
abstract notions, but powerful spiritual realities, which can be contem- 
plated under a multitude of aspects. If the author possesses in his 
vocabulary only a small number of terms, these words may be compared 
to pieces of gold with which great lords make payments. This feature 
is in harmony with the oriental mind, which loves to plunge into the 
infinite. The Old Testament already is familiar with these so rich expres- 
sions and their deep meaning: light, darkness, truth, falsehood, glory, name, 
life, death. 

2. Certain favorite forms, which, without precisely offending against the 
laws of the Greek language, are nevertheless foreign to that language, 
betray a Hebraistic mode of thinking. Thus, to designate the most inti- 
mate spiritual union, the use of the term to know; to indicate moral 
dependence with respect to another being, the terms to be in (eivac év), to 
dwell in (uévew év); to characterize the relation between a spiritual prin- 
ciple and the person in whom it is incarnated, the expression son, the son 
of perdition (vide tH¢ atwAeiac); certain forms of a purely Hebrew origin : 
to rejoice with joy (xapa yaipew), for ever (sic tov ai@va); finally, Hebrew 
words changed into Greek terms, as in the formula: Amen, amen (auzy, 
aunv), Which is found only in John. 

3. The construction is simple ; the ideas are rather placed in juxtapo- 
sition, than organically fitted together after the manner of Greek construc- 
tion. This peculiar feature is especially observed in some striking ex- 
amples (i. 10; ii. 9; iii. 19; vi. 22-24; viii. 82; xvii. 25), where it would 
not have been difficult to compose a truly syntactical sentence, as a Greek 
writer certainly would have done. With this altogether Hebraic form are 
also closely connected the very frequent anacolutha, according to which 
the dominant idea is first placed at the beginning by means of an absolute 
substantive, and then repeated afterwards by a pronoun construed in 
accordance with the rules; comp. vi. 89; vii. 88; xvii. 2. We know that 
these cases are still more frequent in the Apocalypse. 

4. Notwithstanding the abundance of particles belonging to the Greek 
language, the author only makes use of now (dé), more frequently of and 
(kai), then (obv), and as (é¢ or xaddc). Mév, which is so common, is almost 
unknown in his work. I think that it appears only once (xix. 24). The 


136 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


and and then take the place of the vav conversive which is, in some sort, 
the only Hebrew particle. The then sets forth the providential necessity 
which in the author’s view binds the facts together. The and is frequently 
used in cases where we should expect the particle of opposition but ; thus: 
“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended it not ” 
(i. 5); or again: “And they have seen and have hated both me and my 
Father” (xv. 24). “ We speak that which we know, and ye receive not our 
testimony ” (ili. 11). Luthardt acutely observes that this form is the sign 
of a mind which has risen above the first emotion of surprise or indigna- 
tion produced by an unforeseen result, and which has come to contemplate 
it for the future with the calmness of indifference, or with a grief which 
has no bitterness. The use of the particle as (comp. for example, chap. 
Xvil.) is inspired by the necessity of setting forth the analogies; this 
feature is one of the most characteristic ones of the mind which created 
this style. This tendency goes even so far as to identify the earthly 
symbols of divine things with these latter: ‘TI am the true vine; Iam the 
good. shepherd.” To the eyes of him who writes thus, the reality is not 
the earthly phenomenon, but the divine, invisible fact; the sensible 
phenomenon is the copy. 

The author also very frequently uses the conjuction in order that (iva) in 
a weakened sense, and one which, as it seems, is tantamount to the simple 
notion of the Latin ita ut, so that; nevertheless, we think, with Meyer, that 
this is only apparently the case. The question in these cases is of a divine 
purpose. And here also there is revealed a peculiarity of the author’s 
turn of mind: the teleological tendency, which belongs to the spirit of 
sacred historiography. That which, to the eyes of men, seems only an 
historical result, appears, from a more elevated point of view, as the real- 
ization of the design of God. 

5. A singular contrast is observed in the narrative forms. On the one 
hand, something slow, diffuse—for example, that form so frequent in the 
dialogues: ‘He answered and said;” or the repetition of proper names, 
John, Jesus, where a Greek writer would have used the pronoun (a thing 
which also appertains to the oriental stamp of style: Winer, Gram. N. T., 
@ 65); or again that dragging construction, in virtue of which, after the 
statement of a fact, a participle with its dependent words comes in unex- 
pectedly, with the purpose of bringing out in a clearer light one of the 
aspects of the fact mentioned (comp. i. 12; iii. 18; v. 18; vi. 71; vii. 50); 
or finally, instead of the finite verb, the heavier form of the ve~b to be 
joined with a participle, a form which, in certain cases, is undoubtedly 
founded on reasons, as in the classical style, but which is too frequently 
employed here not to be, as Thiersch has observed, a reproduction of the 
analogous form belonging to the Aramaic language ;—and on the other 
hand, the frequent appearance of short clauses which break the sentence 
as if by an abrupt interruption: “And Barabbas was a robber ” (xviii. 40); 
“now it was night ” (xiii. 80); “it was the tenth hour” (i. 40); “it was the 
Sabbath ” (v. 9); “Jesus loved Martha and Mary” (xi. 5); “Jesus wept” 
(xi. 35). Here are jets of an internal fire which, by its sudden outbursts, 


CHARACTERISTICS—THE STYLE. 137 


breaks the habitual calmness of serene contemplation. Such indeed is 
the Semite; an exciting recollection may draw him all at once out of the 
majestic repose with which he ordinarily thinks it fit to envelop himself. 

6. In the manner in which the ideas are connected together, we 
remark three characteristic features: Either, as we have seen, a brief, 
summary word is placed as a centre, and around it is unrolled a series of 
cycles, which exhaust more and more, even to its most concrete applica- 
tions, the primary thought. Or there is a whole series of propositions 
without external connection, as in the first twenty verses of chap. xv., 
which all follow one another by asyndeton ; it seems as if each thought 
had its whole value in itself and deserved to be weighed separately. Or, 
finally, there is a bond of a peculiar nature which results from the repeti- 
tion, in the following clause, of one of the principal words of the preced- 
ing, for example, x. 11; xiii. 20; xvii. 2, 8, 9,11, 15, 16; and, above all, 
i. 1-5. Each clause is, thus, like a ring linked with the preceding ring. 
The first two forms are repugnant to the Hellenic genius, the third is bor- 
rowed from the Old Testament (Psalm exxi., and Gen. i. 1 ff.). 

7. We have already called attention to the figurative character of the 
style; let us here add its profoundly symbolic character; thus the expres- 
sions to draw, to teach, in speaking of God; to see, to hear, in speaking of 
the relation of Christ to the invisible world; to be hungry, thirsty, in the 
spiritual sense. It is always the oriental and especially the Hebraic stamp. 

8. We will only cite two more features; the parallelism of the clauses, 
which is known to be the distinctive mark of the poetic style among the 
Hebrews, and the refrain, which is likewise in use among them. At all 
times when the feeling of the one who speaks is elevated, or his soul is 
stirred by the contemplation of a lofty truth to which he is bearing 
testimony, these two forms appear in the Old Testament. It is exactly 
the same in John. For the parallelism, see iii. 11; v. 37; vi. 35, 55, 56; 
xi. 44, 45; xilil. 16; xv. 20; xvi. 28; for the refrain, iii. 15, 16; vi. 39, 40, 
44; comp. Gen. i.: “And the evening was,” etc.; Amos i. and ii.; and 
elsewhere, especially in the Psalms. 

What judgment shall we pass, then, on the style and literary character 
of this work? On the one hand, Renan tells us: “ This style has nothing 
that is Hebraic, nothing Jewish, nothing Talmudic.” And he is right, if 
by style we understand only the wholly external forms of the language. 
We do not find in the fourth Gospel, as in certain parts of Luke (in the 
first two,chapters, for example, after i. 5), Hebraisms, properly so called, 
imported just as they are into the Greek text (thus the vav conversive), 
nor, as in the translation of the LXX., Hebrew terms of expression 
roughly Hellenized. On the other hand, a scholar, who has no less pro- 
foundly studied the genius of the Semitic languages, Ewald, expresses 
himself thus: “ No language canbe, in respect to the spirit and breath 
which animate it, more purely Hebraic than that of our author.” And 
he is equally right, if we consider the internal qualities of the style; the 
whole of the preceding examination has sufficiently proved this. 

In the language of John, the clothing only is Greek, the body is Hebrew ; 


138 BOOK II. THE GOSPEL. 


or, as Luthardt says, there is a Hebrew soul in the Greek language of this 
evangelist. Keim has devoted to the style of the fourth Gospel a beauti- 
ful page; he sees in it “the ease and flexibility of the purest Hellenism 
adapted to the Hebraic mode of expression, with all its candor, its 
simplicity, its wealth of imagery, and sometimes, also, its awkwardness. 
No studied refinement, no pathos; everything in it is simple and flowing 
as in life; but everywhere at the same time, acuteness, variety, progress, 
scarcely indicated features which form themselves into a picture in the 
mind of the reflective reader. Everywhere mysteries which surround 
you and are on the watch for you, signs and symbols which we should 
not take in the literal sense, if the author had not affirmed their reality, 
accidents and small details which are found, all at once, to be full of 
meaning; cordiality, calmness, harmony; in the midst of struggles, grief, 
zeal, anger, irony; finally, at the end, at the farewell meal, on the cross, 
and in the resurrection, peace, victory, grandeur.” 


From this study of the historiographical, theological and literary 
characteristics of our Gospel, it follows: 

1. That the narrative of the fourth Gospel bears, both with respect to 
the facts, and the discourses, the seal of historical trustworthiness. 
2. That, while marking the advance of the Gospel beyond the religion 
of the Old Testament, it affirms the complete harmony of the two 
covenants. 

3. That though Greek in its forms, the style is, nevertheless, Hebrew in 
its substance. ; 


BOOK rE tRt. 
THE ORIGIN OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 





WE come to the principal subject of this study, the mode of composi- 
tion of the work which occupies our attention. This subject includes the 
following four points: 1. The epoch at which this book was composed ; 2. 
The author to whom it is to be attributed ; 3. The place where it had its 
origin; 4. The purpose which presided over its composition. 

The means which we have at command for resolving these various 
questions are, besides the indications contained in the work itself, the 
information which we draw from the remains of the religious literature 
of the second century, from the canonical collections of the churches of 
that epoch, and from the facts of the primitive history of Christianity. 

The remains of the literature of the second century are few in number; 
they resemble the fragments of a shipwreck. They are, first, the letter of 
Clement of Rome to the Church of Corinth, about the end of the first 
century or at the beginning of the second, and the so-called Epistle of 
Barnabas, belonging to the same period. After this come the letters of 
Ignatius, of the earlier part of the second century, provided we admit 
their authenticity either in whole or in part, and the letter of Polycarp to 
the Philippians, of a little later date, but with the same reservation. The 
Shepherd of Hermas, the letter to Diognetus, and a homily which bears the 
name of the Second Epistle of Clement follow next in order. The date of 
all these works is variously fixed. We come next to the writings of the 
Apologists about the middle of the century; Justin Martyr with his three 
principal works; Tatian, his disciple ; Athenagoras with his apology, mes- 
sage addressed to Marcus Aurelius; Theophilus and his work addressed to 
Autolycus; Melito and Apollinaris with the few fragments which remain 
of their writings; finally, Irenwus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, and 
Tertullian of Carthage, who form the transition to the third century. 

All these writers belong to the orthodox line. Parallel with them we 
find in the heretical line Basilides and his school ; Marcion ; then Valentinus, 
with his four principal disciples, Ptolemy, Heracleon, Marcus, and Theodo- 
tus, all of them authors of several works, some fragments of which we read 
in Irenzeus, Clement and Hippolytus; the work of the last-mentioned 
author, recently discovered and entitled Philosophwmena, is particularly im- 
portant. Finally, let us mention the Jewish-Christian romance called 
Clementine Homilies. 

139 


140 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


The canonical collections of this epoch with which we are acquainted 
are three in number: That of the Syrian Church in the translation called 
Peschito ; that of the Latin Church in the translation which bears the 
name of Jtala,and the so-called fragment of Muratori, which represents 
the canon of some Italian or African Church about the middle of the 
second century. 

It is by means of all these documents, as well as of the indications con- 
tained in the Gospel itself, that we must choose between the following four 
principal dates which at the present day are assigned by criticism to the 
composition of our Gospel. 





CHAPTER FIRST. 
THE TIME. 


THE traditional opinion, in attributing this book to the Apostle John, by 
this very fact places its composition in the first century, towards the end 
of the apostolic age. 

At the opposite extreme to this traditional date is that for which Baur, 
the chief of the Tiibingen school, has decided. According to him, our 
work was composed between 160 and 170; he places its origin in special 
connection with the Paschal controversy which broke out at that epoch. 

The disciples of Baur have gradually moved back the date of the com- 
position as far as the period from 180 to 155: Volkmar, about 155 ; Zeller 
and Scholten, 150; Hilgenfeld, 180-140; thus, a quarter of a century, 
nearly, earlier than Baur thought. This arises from the fact that several 
of these writers place the composition of our Gospel in connection with 
the efflorescence of Gnosticism, about 140. 

Many critics, at the present day, make a new step backward. Holtz- 
mann believes our Gospel to be contemporaneous with the Epistle of 
Barnabas; Schenkel speaks of 115-120; Nicolas, Renan, Weizsicker, 
Reuss, Sabatier, all regarding the fourth Gospel as a product of the school 
in which the Johannean traditions were preserved at Ephesus, fix its com- 
position in the first quarter of the second century. This was also the 
opinion of Keim, when he published, in 1867, his great work, /’ Histoire de 
Jésus de Nazara; he indicated as the date the years 100-120 (p. 146), and 
more precisely 110-115 (p. 155). More recently, in his popular editions, 
he has come back to the date of Hilgenfeld (130). 

Here are four situations proposed, which we must now submit to the 
test of facts. Shall we begin with that which is most advanced, or that 
which is most remote? In our preceding edition, we adopted the former 
of these two courses. A want of logic has been noticed in this, since, in 
short, the facts which speak against the earliest dates give proof a fortiori 
against the most recent ones, and yet they are not pointed out until after 
the discussion of the latter has already taken place.’ This is true; but 


1 Review in the Chrétien évangélique, by Prof. Ch. Porret. 


THE TIME—160-170. 141 


we have confidence enough in the logic of our readers to hope that they 
will themselves make this reckoning, and that when, for example, they 
reach, in the discussion of the date 140, a fact which proves it too late, they 
will not fail to add this fact to those by which the dates more recent than 
this had been already refuted. We continue to prefer the course which 
is chronologically regressive, because, as Weizsaicker has been willing to 
acknowledge, it gives more interest to the exposition of the facts. On the 
progressive path, every fact giving proof in favor of an earlier date ren- 
ders the discussion respecting the more recent dates unnecessary. 


160-170.—(Baur). 


Eusebius declared, in the first part of the fourth century, “that the Gos- 
pel of John, well-known in all the churches which are under heaven must 
be received as in the first rank” (Hist. Eccl., iii. 24); and he consequently 
reckoned it among the writings which he calls Homologoumena, that is to 
say, universally adopted by the churches and their teachers. When speak- 
ing thus, he had before his eyes the entire literature of the preceding cen- 
turies collected together in the libraries of his predecessor Pamphilus, at 
Caesarea, and of the bishop Alexander, at Jerusalem. This declaration 
proves that in studying these writings he had found no gap in the testi- 
monies establishing the use of our Gospel by the Fathers and the churches 
of the first three centuries. It is necessary to recall to mind here with 
what exactness and what frankness Eusebius mentions the least indica- 
tions of a wavering in opinion with regard to the Biblical writings; for 
example, he does not fail to mark the omission of any citation from the 
Epistle to the Hebrews in the principal work of Irenzeus (an omission which 
we can ourselves also verify), although that epistle takes rank, according 
to him, among the fourteen epistles of St. Paul. Let us suppose that he 
had found in the patristic literature up to the date 160-170 an entire blank 
in relation to the existence and use of our Gospel, would he have been able 
in all good faith to express himself as he does in the passage quoted? 

Origen, about 220, places the Gospel of John in the number of the four 
“which are alone received without dispute in the Church of God which is 
under heaven ” (Euseb. H. E., vi. 25). Would this place have been thus 
unanimously accorded to it, if it had been known only after 170? 

Undoubtedly, Eusebius and Origen are not the bearers of the tradition ; 
but they are the founders of criticism who grouped the information from 
the preceding centuries and evolved from it the preceding summations of 
the case. 

Clement of Alexandria, the master of Origen, is already in a little dif- 
ferent position; he collected the items of information which were trans- 
mitted to him by the presbyters whose line of succession is connected with 
the apostles (a7 trav avéxabev tpecBurépwr). In speaking thus, he is thinking 
especially of Pantzenus, a missionary in India, who died in 189. The fol- 
lowing is the information which had come to him through those venerable 
witnesses: “John received the first three Gospels, and observing that the 


142 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


corporeal things (the external facts) of our Lord’s life had been recorded 
therein, he, being urged by the prominent men of the Church, wrote a 
spiritual Gospel” (Euseb. H. E., vi. 14). Could Clement, who wrote about 
190, have spoken thus of a work which had been in existence only twenty 
or twenty-five years? He must, for this to be so, have invented this tra- 
dition himself. Let us add that in another passage (Strom. iii., p. 465), 
when quoting a saying of Jesus contained in an uncanonical gospel, called 
the Gospel of the Egyptians, he makes this reservation: “that we do not 
find this saying in the four Gospels which have been transmitted to us” (év 
roic rapadedouévore juiv térrapo evayyeaiowc). The contrast which Clement here 
establishes, clearly shows that, from the standpoint of tradition, there was 
a radical difference between the Gospel of John and a gospel such as that 
of the Egyptians. 3 
Tertullian, born about 160, frequently cites our Gospel as being an 
authority in the whole Church. Would this be possible if this Father 
and this work were born in the same year, the one in Asia, the other in 
Africa? Let us notice that he quotes it according to a Latin translation 
of which he says (Ad. Prax.): “It is in use among our people (In usu 
est nostrorum).” And not only was it in use and so held in respect, that 
Tertullian did not feel free to turn aside from it, even when he was not in 
accord with it, but also this Latin translation had already taken the place 
of another earlier one of which Tertullian says (De Monogam, c. 11) “ that 
it has fallen into disuse (In usum eziit).’ And yet all this could have 
occurred between the birth of this Father and the time when he wrote! 
Irenzeus wrote in Gaul, about 185, his great work Against Heresies. 
More than sixty times he quotes our Gospel in it with the most complete 
conviction of its apostolic origin. He who acts thus respecting it was born 
in Asia Minor about the year 180, and had spent his youth there in the 
school of Polycarp, the friend and disciple of St. John. How could he, 
without bad faith, have dated from the apostolic age a Gospel which had 
not been in existence more than fifteen to twenty years at the moment 
when he was writing, and which he had never heard spoken of in the 
churches where he had spent his youth and which must, have been the 
cradle of this work? In 177, Ireneus drew up, on the part of the churches 
_of Vienne and Lyons, a letter to the churches of Asia and Phrygia, for the 
purpose of giving them an account of the terrible persecution which had 
just smitten them under Marcus Aurelius. This letter has been pre- | 
served to us by Eusebius (H. E., v. 1). It says, speaking of one of the 
martyrs, “Having the Paraclete within him;” and in another place: 
“Thus was the word uttered by our Lord fulfilled, that the time shall come 
when he who killeth you will think that he doeth God service.” These are 
two quotations from John (xiv. 26 and xvi. 2). Thus, about ten years after 
the time of composition indicated by Baur, quotations were taken in Gaul 
from our Gospel as if from a writing possessing canonical authority! 
About 180, Theophilus, bishop of Antioch, addresses to his heathen 


1Ronsch, Das Sprachidiom der urchristlichen Itala und der catholischen Vulgata, 1869, pp. 2-4. 


THE TIME—160-170. 143 


friend Autolycus an apology for Christianity ; he quotes in it the prologue 
of John, expressing himself thus (ii. 22): “This is what the holy writings 
and all the men animated by the spirit teach us, among whom John says” 
(John i. 1 follows). Can it be admitted, that only fifteen to twenty years 
after the appearance of our Gospel, the bishop of Antioch spoke in this 
way? He so fully placed it in the rank of the other three, which were 
received everywhere and at all times, that he had published a Harmony 


‘of the Gospels, which Jerome describes to us (De Vir. 25) as “ uniting in a 


single work the words of the four Gospels (quatuor evangeliorum in unum 
opus dicta compingens).’ The adversaries of the authenticity bring 
forward the circumstance, it is true, that here is the first instance in 
which the author of our Gospel is designated by name. But what does 
so accidental a fact prove? Irenzeus is the first ecclesiastical writer who 
names St. Paul as the author of the Epistle to the Romans. Would it 
be necessary to conclude, from this fact, that the belief in the apostolic 
authorship of the Epistle to the Romans began only at that moment to 
dawn on the mind of the Church? As it was not up to that time the 
custom to quote textually, so also it was not the custom to quote with a 
designation of the author. 

Apollinaris, bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia, about 170, contended 
against the opinion of persons who celebrated the Holy Passover Supper 
on the evening of the 14th of Nisan, at the same time that the Jews ate 
their Passover meal; for, as they alleged, according to the Gospel of 
Matthew, Jesus had eaten the Passover on that evening with His disciples, 
and He had not been crucified until the next day. Apollinaris made reply 
to this in two ways:! 1. That this view “was in contradiction to the law;” 
since, according to the law, the Paschal lamb was slain on the 14th, and 
not on the 15th; it was consequently on that day that the Christ must die; 
2. That if this view was well founded, “the Gospels would contradict each 
other.” This second remark can only refer to the account in the Gospel 
of John, which places the death of Jesus on the 14th, and not the 15th, as 
the Synoptics appear to do. Thus, in 170, Apollinaris rested upon the fourth 
Gospel as on a perfectly recognized authority, even on the part of his ad- 
versaries, and yet at this same epoch, according to Baur, it began to circu- 
late as an altogether new work! This critic has endeavored, to be sure, to 
wrest this passage from its natural meaning; but this attempt has been 
unanimously discarded. Besides, the same Apollinaris in still another 
passage, also, adduces the fourth Gospel. He calls Jesus, “ The one whose 
sacred side was pierced and who poured forth from His side water and 
blood, the word and the Spirit; ? comp. John xix. 34. 

At the same period Melito, bishop of Sardis, wrote also on the same 
subject. Otto (in the Corpus apologet., vol. ix.) has published a fragment 
from this Father, in which it is said that “Jesus, being at once perfect 
God and man, proved his divinity by his miracles in the three years which 


1 Chronicon paschale (ed. Dindorf I., p.14): eracrdgéry Soxet at’ avtods Ta evayyéAta. 
dev agiudwrds Te vouw } vonots adTav Kai 2 Chron. pasch., p. 14. 


144 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


followed his baptism, and his humanity during the thirty years which 
preceded it.” Those three years of ministry can come only from the 
Johannean narration. 

About the same time (in 176), Athenagoras thus expresses himself in 
his apology addressed to the Emperor Marcus Aurelius: “The Son of 
God is the Word of the Father; by him all things were made.” Here is 
an undeniable quotation; Volkmar himself acknowledges it. 

There is the same use of the fourth Gospel on the part of the heretics of 
this period, particularly on the part of the disciples of Valentinus. One 
of them, Ptolemy (in a fragment preserved by Irenzeus), recalled in these 
words the passage in John xii. 27: “Jesus said: And what shall I say? I 
know not.” He maintained (also according to Ireneeus) that the Apostle 
John himself had taught at the beginning of his Gospel the existence of 
the first Ogdoad (the foundation of the doctrine of Valentinus). Ireneeus 
and Epiphanius have preserved for us his letter to Flora, in which he 
cites John 1. 3 in these words: ‘‘The apostle declares that the creation of 
the world belongs to the Saviour, inasmuch as all things were made by 
him and nothing was made without him.” In the fragments of Theodotus 
preserved in the works of Clement of Alexandria, there are found seventy- 
eight quotations from the New Testament, of which number twenty-six 
are taken from the Gospel of John! The fact most important to be cited 
here is the commentary which Heracleon wrote on the fourth Gospel. 
At what time? About the year 200, Volkmar asserts; but Origen, who 
refuted this work, calls its author a familiar acquaintance of Valentinus 
(Ovarsvrivov yvopiuoc); now the latter taught between 140 and 160. Yes, 
replies Volkmar, but Heracleon is not at all mentioned by Irenzeus, which 
proves that he lived after 185, the date at which the latter wrote against 
the heretics of his time. This assertion is, as Tischendorf has shown, an 
error of fact arising simply from the omission of the name of Heracleon 
in the registers of names in the editions of Massuet and Stieren, at the 
-end of Irenzeus’ work. In fact, this Father expressly says ii. 4: “and all 
the other ons of Ptolemy and Heracleon.” This latter person lived and 
wrote, therefore, before Irenseus—at the latest, about 170 or even 160. 
And what did he write? A continuous commentary on the Gospel of 
John. This single fact implies that our Gospel enjoyed in the Church at 
that period an authority which was of long standing and general. For 
men do not comment except on a book which, up to a certain point, gives 
law to every one. How long a time must have elapsed, therefore, since 
this work was composed! Moreover, Irenzeus (iii. 12, 12), testifies that the 
Valentinians “made abundant use of the Gospel of John” (eo quod est 
secundum Johannem plenissime utentes). 

The Clementine Homilies which are located about the year 160,? express 
themselves thus (iii. 52): “This is the reason why the true prophet has 
said: Iam the gate of life (} ran tie Swic); he who enters through me 
enters into life... Mysheep hear my voice (ra éud rpéBara dxober rhe 


1 Hofstede de Groot, Basilides, p. 102. 2Keim himself, I., p. 187. 


THE TIME—160-170. 145 


éunc dwvgc).” This is an evident quotation from John x. 3, 9, 27; but it is 
not enough to make Baur, Scholten, Volkmar, Hilgenfeld, etc., admit the 
use of the Johannean Gospel by the vehement Judaizing writer who com- 
posed this pamphlet against the doctrine and person of St. Paul. The 
discovery made by Dressel, in 1853, of the end of this book as yet unknown, 
was needed to cut short all critical subterfuges. In the nineteenth homily, 
chap. xxii., there is found this unquestionable quotation from the story of 
the man born blind related in the ninth chapter of John: “This is the 
reason why our Lord also replied to those who asked him: Did this man 
sin, or his parents, that he was born blind ?—Neither did this man sin nor 
his parents, but that through him might be manifested the power of God 
healing the faults of ignorance.” The slight modification which the author 
of the Homilies introduces into the last words of this Johannean saying is 
connected with the particular idea which he is endeavoring to make 
prominent in this passage. If Volkmar finds herein a reason for denial 
even in the presence of such a quotation, Hilgenfeld, on the contrary, 
frankly says (Hinl., p. 734): “The Gospel of John is employed without 
scruple even by the adversaries of the divinity of Christ, such as the author 
of the Clementines.” What, then, must have been the authority of a book 
which even the adversaries of the teaching contained in the work used in 
this way! Here is what occurred in 160, and yet Baur tries to maintain 
that this work was composed between 160 and 170! 

A heathen philosopher, Celsus, wrote a book entitled The True Word 
(Adyoe aAnO%c), to controvert Christianity; he wished, he said, to slay the 
Christians “ with their own sword,” that is to say, to refute Christianity by 
the writings of the very disciples of its founder. He started in his work, 
therefore, from the universally acknowledged authenticity of our Gospels. 
Did he make use of the fourth Gospel also with this purpose? Certainly ; 
for he recalls the demand which the Jews addressed to Jesus in the temple 
to prove by a sign that He was the Son of God (John ii. 18). He com- 
pares the water and the blood which flowed from the body of Jesus on the 
cross (John xix., 34), to that sacred blood which the mythological stories 
made to flow from the body of the blessed gods. He speaks of the appear- 
ance to Mary Magdalene (that mdpouetpoc woman) near the sepulchre. 
He sets forth this contradiction between our Gospel narratives, that, 
according to some (oi zév), two angels appeared at the tomb of Jesus, 
according to the others (oi dé), on the contrary, only one. And in fact 
Matthew and Mark speak of only one angel, Luke and John mention two. 
The use of John in this passage, which Zeller still ventured to deny, is now 
acknowledged by Volkmar himself, but this avowal ends, as usual, in a 
subterfuge: “And who tells us that Celsus wrote before the beginning of 
the third century?” And by means of a passage of Origen the purport of 
which is incorrectly given, the attempt is made to prove that that Father 
spoke of Celsus as his contemporary! Tischendorf has done full justice 
to this procedure. It was enough for him to quote Origen correctly, in 


1 Ursprung uns. Evang., p. 80. 
10 


146 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


order to show that he said nothing of the sort. He has, in addition, 
recalled another passage of this Father, where he expressly designates 
Celsus as “a man already and long since dead (67 kai mdAau vexpod).’”?! 
If we adopt the latest date for the work of Celsus, that of Keim (in 178), 
it still remains impossible that a heathen should have held a work pub- 
lished only eight years before to be composed by one of the disciples of 
Jesus. And how will it be if Celsus lived much earlier? 

There remain to us three documents of the canonical collections of 
apostolic writings, already existing in the churches of the second cen- 
tury. In Syria, about the end of this century, a translation of the New 
Testament in the Syriac language was read, and our fourth Gospel cer- 
tainly formed a part of it, for the only books of the New Testament which 
were wanting in this collection were, according to unquestionable data, four 
of the Catholic epistles and the Apocalypse. It even appears, from several 
fragments in the Syriac language which Cureton has published, that this 
translation which is called Peschito, and which contained the Old Testa- 
ment as well as the New, had been already preceded by another more an- 
cient one.? .At the same period, at the opposite extremity of the Church, 
in Italy, in Gaul, and in the province of Africa, the Latin translation al- 
ready existed of which we have spoken in connection with Tertullian. In 
this canonical collection, which also contained the Old Testament, the 
writings of the New Testament seem to have been divided into five groups: 
1. The body of the four Gospels, the evangelical instrument, collection of docu- 
ments; then, the apostolical instruments, to wit: 2. That of the Acts; 3. That 
of Paul; 4. That of John (Apocalypse and 1 John); 5. A group of disputed 
writings (1 Peter, Hebrews, Jude). Is it possible to suppose that in the 
last quarter of the second century, a work which did not appear until be- 
tween 160 and 170, had already been translated into Syriac and into Latin, 
and had become possessed of canonical dignity in countries which, so to 
speak, formed the antipodes of the Church? 

The famous document which was recovered in the last century by Mu- 
ratori in the Library of Milan, and which bears the name of that scholar, 
is located between 160 and 170. It is a treatise on the writings which were 
said to have been read publicly in the churches. The author indicates in 
it the custom of the Church of Italy or of Africa to which he belongs. The 
Gospel of John is mentioned in it as the fourth. The author gives an ac- 
count in detail of the manner in which it was composed by the Apostle 
John, and brings out some of its peculiarities. This is what was written 
in Italy or in Africa at the very date which Baur assigns to the composi- 
tion of this Gospel! 

It will not be surprising to any one, after the enumeration of these 
facts, that the so-called critical school has judged it impossible to maintain 
the position chosen by its master. It has effected its retreat movement 
throughout, and has sought, by going backward in the second century, a 


1 Wann wurden unsere Evangelien verfasst? 2 Remains of a very ancient recension, etc.; 
pp. 73, 74. London, 1858. 


THE TIME—130-155. 147 


more tenable situation. Before we follow it, let us note the fact that 
between 160 and 170 the fourth Gospel existed in the Greek, Latin and 
Syriac languages, and that it was publicly read in all the churches, from 
Mesopotamia even to Gaul. Facts like these imply, not only two or three 
decades of years, but at the least a half century of existence. 


(180-155.) 


Volkmar, 155; Zeller, Scholten, 150; Hilgenfeld, 130-140; Keim (since 
1875), 130. 


Instead of the fifty years which we ask for in order to explain the facts 
which we have just mentioned, only twenty or thirty are granted us. Let 
us see whether this concession is sufficient to account for the facts which 
we have yet to point out. Our means for guiding our course in the 
examination of this new date are the writings of Justin Martyr, the 
Montanist movement, and the two great Gnostic systems of Marcion and 
Valentinus. 

Justin, born in Samaria, had traversed the Orient and then had come 
to Rome to establish a school of Christian instruction, about 140. There 
remain to us three generally acknowledged works of his: the greater and 
smaller Apology, which, since the labors of Volkmar, are ordinarily regarded 
as dating, the first from 147; the second, a supplement to the first, from 
one of the succeeding years; they are addressed to the emperor and 
the senate. The third work is the Dialogue with Trypho the Jew; it is the 
account of a public debate held at Ephesus. ‘It is a little later than the 
Apologies. Justin was put to death in 166. 

In these three works the author cites seventeen times, as the source of 
the facts of Jesus’ history which are alleged by him, writings entitled, 
Memoirs of the Apostles (axouvynuovebyata tov aroorédwv),' and the decisive 
question, in the matter which occupies us, will be whether the fourth 
Gospel was in the number of the writings comprised in this collection. 

In order to understand the importance of the question here proposed, 
we must recall to mind the fact that the writings cited by Justin as his 
authorities were not only his private property. According to the famous 
passage of the first Apology (i. 67), in which Justin describes the worship 
of the Christians in the first half of the second century, the Memoirs of 
the Apostles were read every Sunday in the public assemblies of the 
Church, side by side with the books of the prophets;? and it is very evi- 
dent that this description does not, in the writer’s thought, apply only to 
the worship celebrated by the Church of Rome, but to that of Christendom 
generally ; this follows from the expressions used by him: “ All those who 
dwell in the towns and in the country meet together in one place.” Justin 


1 Apol. 1. 33; 66; 67; Dial., 88; 101; 102; 103 country meet together in one place, and 
(twice); 104; 105 (3 times); 106 (3 times). the Memoirs of the Apostles and the writings 

2 On the day called the day of the Sun, all of the prophets are read, according as the 
those who dwell in the towns and in the _ time permits; afterwards...” 


148 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


had visited Asia Minor and Egypt; he knew, therefore, how the worship 
was celebrated, as well in the East as in the West. Moreover, he defended 
before the emperor, not only the Christians of Rome, but the Church in 
general. Consequently, what he says in this passage of the celebration of 
public worship, and in several others of that of baptism (Apol. i. 61) and 
of the Holy Supper (Apol. i. 66), must be applied to the whole of the 
Christendom of that epoch. 

What, then, were these Apostolic Memoirs which were venerated by 
the churches of the second century so far as to be read publicly in worship 
equally with the book which, according to the example of Jesus and the 
apostles, the Church regarded as the Divine Word, the Old Testament? 
Justin does not indicate to us the particular titles of these writings; it is 
our task to determine them. 

1. First of all, let us note a probability which rises almost to certainty. 
We have seen above that Irenzeus, who wrote thirty years after Justin 
(180-185), spoke, in Gaul, of our four canonical Gospels as the only ones 
received in the Church. This usage was already so fixed at his time, that 
he calls our evangelical collection the four-formed Gospel (retpdyopgov 
evayyéduov), and that he compares these four writings to the four Cherubim 
of the Old Covenant and to the four quarters of the horizon. They form 
for him an indivisible unity. Nearly at the same time, Clement, in Egypt, 
also calls our Gospels, as we have seen, “the four which alone have been 
transmitted to us” (p.141). Theophilus, in Syria, at the same epoch, com- 
poses a Harmony of these four narratives (p.142f). Finally, a little 
earlier still (about 160), the fragment of Muratori, enumerating the 
Gospels which are adopted for public reading, expresses itself thus: 
“Thirdly, the book of the Gospel according to Luke . . . ; fourthly, the 
Gospel of John...” Then there is nothing more with regard to 
writings of this kind; it passes to the Acts and Epistles. Can it be 
admitted that the Apostolic Memoirs, of which Justin tells us that they 
were generally read in the Christian worship twenty or thirty years before, 
were other writings than those which these Fathers and the churches them- 
selves distinguished thus from all the other writings of the same kind, or 
that they did not, at least, make a part of the collection to which the Martyr 
already assigned a place in the worship by the side of the prophetic 
writings of the Old Testament? To this end there must necessarily have 
been wrought, during that short space of time, a revolution in Christian 
worship, a substitution of sacred writings for sacred writings, of which 
history does not present the least trace, and which is rendered absolutely 
impossible by the universality and publicity of the use of the Memoirs of 
which Justin speaks, and by the stability of the apostolic usages at that 
period. The Fathers, such as Ireneeus, were at hand keeping watch over 
the matter, and they would not have permitted a change of the docu- 
ments from which the Church derived its knowledge of the life of Jesus 
to be accomplished, without indicating it. 

2. A special fact proves a still more direct connection between Justin, 
on the one side, and the Fathers of a little later date (Ireneeus, etc.), on 


THE TIME—130-155. 149 
the other. Justin had a disciple named Tatian, who had already, before 
Theophilus, composed a work similar to his. Eusebius tells us (H. E. iv. 
19) that this book was entitled Diatessaron, that is to say, composed by 
means of the four. Now, according to the report of the Syrian bishop 
Bar Salibi (xii. cent.), who was acquainted with this work since he quotes 
it in his Commentary on the Gospels, this writing began with these words 
of John’s prologue (i. 1): “In the beginning was the Word.” According 
to the same author, Ephrem, the well-known deacon of Edessa (died in 
373), had composed a commentary on this same work of Tatian, an Arme- 
nian translation of which has been recently recovered and published 
(Venice, 1876). This translation confirms everything which the Fathers 
have reported respecting Tatian’s Harmony. In a workof anapocryphal 
character, the Doctrine of Addzxus (of the middle of the third century), in 
which the history of the establishment of Christianity at Edessa is related, 
it is said: “The people meet together for the service of prayer and for 
[the reading of ] the Old Testament and [for that of the] New in the Dia- 
tessaron.”? This work of Tatian, therefore, was very widely spread abroad 
in the East, since it was read in the East, even in the public worship, 
instead of the four Gospels. This is confirmed by the report of the bishop 
of Cyrus, in Cilicia, Theodoret (about 420). Herelates that he had found 
two hundred copies of Tatian’s book in the churches of his diocese, and 
that he had substituted for this Harmony, which was heterodox in some 
points, “the Gospels of the four evangelists (ra tév tetrapav evayyehiotwv avreto- 
hyayov evayyédia) ’”’—thus, our four separate Gospels, those which Tatian 
had combined in a single one. If we recall to mind the relation which 
united Tatian to Justin, the identity of the Apostolic Memoirs of the 
master with the four blended in one by the disciple cannot be doubted. 
Moreover, in his Discourse to the Greeks Tatian himself quotes Matthew, 
Luke and John; from the last, i. 3: “ All things were made by him ” (the 
Logos); iv. 24: “God is aspirit;” finally, i. 5, with that formula which 
indicates a sacred authority: “This is that which is spoken (rotré éore 70 
eipnuévov): The darkness did not apprehend the light; . . . now the light 
of God is the Word.” 

3. But why, if it is so, does Justin designate these books by the unusual 
name of Memoirs, instead of calling them simply Gospels? Because he 
addresses himself, not to Christians, but to the emperor and senate, who 
would not have understood the Christian name of Gospels, which was 
without example in profane literature. Every one, on the other hand, 
was acquainted with the aouvnuovebuata (Memoirs) of Xenophon. Justin 
has recourse to this ordinary name, exactly as he substitutes for the 
Christian terms baptism and Sunday the terms bath and day of the Sun. 


1See also Epiphanius, Haer. xlvi. 1, and unum ex quatuor. There is, thus, here either 


Theodoret, Haer. Fab. i. 20. 

2In the Catena of Victor of Capua (545), 
the work of Tatian is called Diapente “ com- 
posed by means of five.” But immediately 
before, the same author has described it as 


a negligence of the author, or perhaps an 
allusion to quotations of Justin, which are 
foreign to our four Gospels, which seemed to 
him to imply the use of a fifth source. 


150 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


Finally, Justin himself, in one of the passages where he quotes the Me- 
moirs (A pol. i. 4, 66), adds expressly: “which are composed by the apostles 
and called Gospels (4 xateira evayyéia),” and, in another passage (Dial. 103) 
he expresses himself thus: ‘“ The Memoirs which I say were composed by the 
apostles and by those who accompanied them,” which, whatever some critics 
may say, can only apply to our four Gospels, of which, as the fact is, two 
were composed by apostles and two by apostolic helpers. All the critical 
quibbles will not alter the evidence at all. 

4, But let us, finally, consider the quotations taken by Justin from the 
Memoirs themselves. No one, at the present day, any longer denies the use 
of the three Synoptics by this Father. In 1848, Zeller conceded it with 
respect to Luke ; in 1850, Hilgenfeld, with respect to Matthew ; the same, 
in 1854, with respect to Mark; Credner in 1860, Volkmar in 1866, Schol- 
ten in 1867, have acknowledged it with respect to all the three. The Gos- 
pel of John remains. Keim, already in 1867 (vol. 1., p. 188), wrote: “It 
is easy to show that the Martyr had under his eyes a whole series of 
Johannean passages,” and Hilgenfeld said in 1875 (Hinl. p. 734): “The 
first trace of the Gospel of John is found in Justin Martyr.” Mangold, in 
the same year, formulates thus the result of all the discussions which have 
recently taken place respecting this point: “That Justin knew and used 
the fourth Gospel is certain, and it is also beyond doubt that he makes 
use of it as a work proceeding from the Apostle John.”! And in fact 
John’s doctrine of the Logos appears in all the writings of Justin; this is 
their fundamental peculiarity. Let us quote a single example taken from 
each of these writings: “His Son, the only one who may be properly 
called Son, the Logos who was begotten by him before created things, 
when he created all things by him, . . . is called Christ” (Apol. ii. 6). 
“The first power after God, the Father and Master of all, is the Son, the 
Word, who, having in a certain way been made flesh, became a man (i¢ 
tiva Tpdrov capkorroinleic avOpwroe yéyovev)”’ (Apol. 1. 82). Dial. 105: “ Because 
he was the only begotten Son of the Father of all things (uovoyevie bre Hy TO 
matpi Tov bdwv).” The relation between Justin and John on this capital 
point is so evident that Volkmar has been obliged finally to acknowledge 
it; but he extricates himself by an expedient which not a little resembles 
a clown’s trick. According to him, it is not Justin who has imitated John ; 
it is a pseudo-John who, writing about 155, has imitated Justin, whose 
writings were in circulation since 147-150. Justin had drawn the first 
lineaments of the Logos theory; the false John has developed and per- 
fected it. ‘‘ But,” answers Keim to this supposition, “ who can seriously 
think of making out of the genial and original author of the fourth Gospel 
the disciple of a mind so mediocre, dependent, disposed to the work of 
compiling, and poor in style, as the Martyr?” We will add: The theology 
of the former is the simple expression of his religious consciousness, of 
the immediate effects produced on him by the person of Jesus, while, as 
Weizsicker has clearly shown,? the characteristic trait of Justin is to serve 


1Gett. gelehrte Anzeigen, 5 u. 12, Jan. 1881. 2 Jahrb. fiir deutsche Theol., 1867. 


THE TIME—130-155. 151 


as an intermediary between Christian thought and the speculations which 
were prevailing at his epoch outside of Christianity. Justin teaches us 
that the Logos comes from the Father as a fire is kindled by another fire, 
without the latter being diminished; he explains to us that he differs from 
the Father in number, but not in thought, etc., etc. How can one venture 
to affirm that Justin surpasses John in simplicity? The truth is that John 
is the witness, and Justin the theologian. John’s prologue—it is there only 
that there is any question of the Logos in our Gospel—is the primordial 
revelation, in its simple and apostolic form; the writings of Justin present 
to us the first effort to appropriate this revelation to oneself by the reason. 

Besides, let us listen to Justin himself, Dial. 105: “I have previously 
shown that it was the only begotten Son of the Father of all things, his 
Logos and his power, born of him and afterwards made man by means of © 
the Virgin, as we have learned through the Memoirs.” Justin himself tells us 
here from what source he had derived his doctrine of the Logos; it was 
from his Apostolic Memoirs. Hilgenfeld has claimed that Justin did not 
appeal to the Memoirs except for the second of the two facts mentioned 
in this passage: the miraculous birth; but the two facts indicated 
depend equally, through one and the same conjunction (67: that), on 
the verbal ideas: I have shown, and as we have learned. Moreover, the 
principal notion, according to the entire context, is that of the only 
begotten Son (novoyevfc) which belongs to the first of the two depend- 
ent clauses.!. Our conclusion is expressly confirmed by what Justin says 
(Dial. 48); he speaks of certain Christians who were not in accord with 
him on this point, and he declares that, if he does not think as they do, it 
is not merely because they form only a minority in the Church, but “ be- 
cause it is not by human teachings that we have been brought to believe 
in Christ [in this way], but by the teachings of the holy prophets and by 
those of Christ himself (roic¢ dua trav rpodytév KnpvxGeiot kai de’ aitov didax- 
Gcior).” Now, where can we find, outside of the Gospel of John, the 
teachings of Christ respecting His pre-existence? Comp. also Apol. i. 
46: “That Christ is the first-born Son of God, being the Logos of whom 
all the human race is made participant—this is what has been taught us 
(ddd yOnuev).”’ Wesee from this us, which applies to Christians in gen- 
eral, and by the term taught, that Justin was by no means the author of 
the doctrine of the incarnation of the Logos, but that, when calling Jesus 
by this name, he feels himself borne along by the great current of the 
teaching given in the Church, and of which the source must necessarily 
be found in the writings, or at least in one of the writings, of the apostles 
of which he made use. 

5. The use of our Gospel by Justin appears, finally, from several par- 
ticular quotations, Dial. 88: “And as men supposed that he [John the 
Baptist] was the Christ, he himself cried out to them :,I am not the Christ, 


1Thisis clearly brought outby Drummond, all this development is occasioned by the 
Theological Review (vol. xiv. pp. 178-182,comp. expression povoyerys in Ps. xxii., of which 
Ezra Abbot, p. 43) by recalling the fact that Justin is here giving the explanation. 


152 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


but I am the voice of one crying (ov« eiut 6 Xpiordc, GAAG gwr7 Bodvroc).” 
Comp. John i. 20, 23. Hilgenfeld acknowledges this quotation. Dial. 69, 
Justin says that Jesus healed those who were blind from birth (rovg éx yeverije 
anpovc); the Gospel of John alone (ix. 1) attributes to Him a healing of 
this kind; the same term éx yeverje is used by John. Another interesting 
passage is found in Dial. 88: “The apostles have written that, when Jesus 
came out of the water, the Holy Spirit shone above him like a dove.” This 
is the only case where Justin uses the expression, the apostles have written. 
It evidently applies to the two Gospels of Matthew and John. Dial. 29, 
Justin proves that Christians are no more bound to the Jewish Sabbath, 
and he does this by calling to mind the fact that God governs the world 
on that day as well as on the others. In c¢. 27, he also points out the fact 
that infants are circumcised on the eighth day, even though it falls upon 
a Sabbath («av 7 juépa tov caBBarwv). We easily recognize here the relation 
to John vy. 17 and vii. 22, 28. Apol. i. 52, Justin quotes the words of Zach. 
xii. 10: “They shall look on Him whom they pierced (kai tére dyovrar ei¢ dv 
é&exévtnoav).” In this form it differs both from the terms of the Hebrew 
text (“they shall look on me whom they ... ”) and from that of the 
LXX: “They shall look on me because they have mocked me.” Now we 
read this same passage in the fourth Gospel exactly in the form in which 
Justin quotes it (John xix.): dpovrae eig bv éexévtmoav. Some think, no 
doubt, that Justin may have derived this passage from the book of the 
Apocalypse, where it is likewise quoted, i.7: “And every eye shall see. 
Him, and they also who pierced Him.” But Justin’s text is more closely 
connected with that of the Gospel. Other grounds are alleged, it is true, 
such as the possibility of an ancient variation of text in the LXX.;! we 
shall, therefore, not insist much upon this fact. 

Here, on the other hand, is an important, and even decisive passage. 
Apol. i. 61, Justin relates to the senate that when a man has been con- 
vineed of the truth of the Gospel, “he is led to a place where there is 
water, to be regenerated like the believers who (have) preceded him; and 
that he is bathed in the water in the name of God, the Father and Lord 
of all things, and of our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the Holy Spirit;” for 

Christ said: ‘Unless ye are born again (av py avayevvyfijre), ye shall not 
enter into the kingdom of heaven. Now that it is impossible,” continues 
Justin, “for those who have once been born to enter again into the womb 
of those who gave them birth, is evident to all.” The relation to John iii. 
8-5 is manifest ; it appears especially from the last words, which reproduce, 
without any sort of necessity and in the most clumsy way, the meaning 
of the objection of Nicodemus in John’s narrative (ver.4). Many, however, 
deny that Justin wrote thus under the influence of John’s narrative. 
They allege these two differences: instead of the term employed by John, 
avabev yevvnbivat (to be born from above or anew), Justin says avayevvyOijvae (to 
be born again); then, for the expression Kingdom of God, he substitutes 
Kingdom of heaven. But these two changes do not have the importance 


2 See Abbott himself, p. 46. 


THE TIME—130-155. 153 


which some critics attribute to them. As to the first, Abbot proves that 
it is found also in Ireneus, Eusebius, Athanasius, Basil, Ephrem, Chry- 
sostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Anastasius Sin., as well as in most of the 
Latin authorities (renasci), all of whom made use of the Gospel of John 
and yet quote this passage as Justin does. Undoubtedly, it is because the 
term dveber yervybjvac Was obscure, and subject to discussion, and because it 
is read only once in the Scriptures, while the other is clearer and more 
common (1 Pet. i. 8, 23; ii. 2). As to the expression Kingdom of heaven, 
it arises in Justin evidently from the Gospel of Matthew, which, from a 
mass of proofs, was much the most read in the earliest times of the Church, 
and in which this term is habitually employed. Abbot proves that this 
same change occurs in the quotation of this passage in the Greek and 
Latin Fathers, all of whom had John in their hands. But the following 
isa more serious objection, namely: that this same saying of Jesus is 
found quoted in the Clementine Homilies (ix. 26) with precisely the same 
alterations as in Justin, which seems to prove that the two authors bor- 
rowed from acommon source other than John; for example, from the 
Gospel of the Hebrews. Here is the passage from the Clementines ; the 
reader can judge: “ This is what the true prophet has affirmed to us with an 
oath: Verily I say unto you that unless you are born again of living water 
(éav uh dvayevynlijre date Covte), in the name of the Father, the Son and the 
Holy Spirit, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” We see 
that the difference between Justin and the Clementines, as Abbot says, is 
much greater than that between these two works and John. The reason 
is, because the text of the Clementines is influenced not only, like that of 
Justin, by Matt. xviii. 8, but especially by Matt. xxviii. 19 (the formula of 
baptism)." 

Let us, finally, recall a quotation from the first Epistle of John which 
is found in Justin. Dial. c. 128, he says: “All at once we are called to be- 
come sons of God, and we are so,” which recalls 1 John iii. 1 (according to 
the reading adopted at the present day by many critics): ‘“ Behold, what 
love God has had for us, that we should be called children of God; and 
we are so.” Hilgenfeld acknowledges this quotation. 

How is it conceivable that, in the face of all these facts, Reuss can 
express himself thus (p. 94): “We conclude that Justin did not include 
the fourth Gospel among those which he cites generally under the name 
of Memoirs of the Apostles.” What argument, then, is powerful enough 
to neutralize to his view the value of the numerous quotations which we 
have just alleged? “Justin,” he says, “did not have recourse to our Gos- 
pel, as would have been expected, when he wished to establish the histor- 
ical facts of which he was desirous to avail himself.” But do we not 
know that there is nothing more deceptive in criticism than arguments 


1The author of the Recognitions quotes the expression and of the Spirit, to the end 
thus: “Amen dico vobis, nisi quis denuo of glorifying so much the more the baptism 
renatus fuerit ex aqua, non introibitin reg- of water, in conformity with the ritual tend- 
na celorum.” He quotes, combining the ency of that time. 
third and fifth verses of John; he only omits 


154 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


drawn from what a writer should have said or done, and has not done or 
said? Abbot cites curious examples of this drawn from contemporary 
history. We have already recalled to mind the fact that the Gospel of 
- Matthew was, in the earliest times of the Church, the source which was 
most generally used. This is also the case with Justin, who uses Luke 
much less frequently than Matthew, and Mark much less even than Luke. 
John is used more than Mark.! 

For ourselves, we think we have proved: 1. That the fourth Gospel 
existed in the time of Justin and formed a part of his apostolic Memoirs ; 
2. That it was publicly read in the churches of the East and West as one 
of the authentic documents of the history and teachings of Jesus; 3. That, 
as a consequence, it possessed already at that period, conjointly with the 
other three, a very ancient notoriety and a general authority equal to 
that of the Old Testament. Now it is impossible that a work which held 
this position in the Church in 140, should have been composed only about 
the year 180. 3 

In the same year 140, when Justin came to settle at Rome, there also 
arrived in that city one of the most illustrious representatives of the 
Gnostic doctrines, Valentinus. After having carried on a school for quite 
a long time in that capital, he went away to end his career in Cyprus, 
about 160. We already know some of his principal disciples, Ptolemy, 
Heracleon, Theodotus, and we know how much favor the fourth Gospel 
had in their schools; history confirms this saying of Irenzeus respecting 
them: “making use, in the most complete way, of the Gospel of John.” 
It is, therefore, very probable that their master had given them an exam- 
ple on this point. ‘Tertullian sets Valentinus in opposition to another 
Gnostic, Marcion, remarking that the former accepted the sacred collec- 
tion as a whole, not making up the Scriptures according to his doctrine, 
but rather adapting his doctrine to the Scriptures? We are acquainted 
with his system; he presented as emanating successively from the eternal 
and divine abyss pairs of A“ons (principles of things), of which the first 
four formed what he called the Ogdoad (the sacred eight). The names of 
these AZons were: Logos, Light, Truth, Grace, Life, Only begotten Son, Par- 


1The other general objections which are for example, we have no reason to occupy 
raised by A. Thoma in Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschrift ourselves with it here. 
(1875), and by the work called Supernatural 2To Justin is sometimes ascribed the Let- 
Religion, arerefuted by Abbot (pp. 61-76). ter to Diognetus, in which the fourth Gospel 
They do not concern us here, since Thoma has left its deeply marked imprint. In our 
himself admits that Justin was acquainted view,as in that of Reuss, this letter must 


with and in almost every chapter used “ the 
Gospel of the Logos;” he only claims that he 
did not recognize it as apostolic and truly 
historical. This is of little importance to us, 
since the question here is only whether the 
Gospel existed in Justin’s time and was used 
by him.—As to the question whether the few 
facts of the evangelical history cited by Jus- 
tin, which are not found in our Gospels, are 
borrowed from the oral tradition or from 
some lost work, the Gospel of the Hebrews 


date approximatively from the year 130. But, 
independently of those who, like Overbeck, 
bring it down to the fourth century, others 
place it only under Marcus Aurelius, in the 
second half ofthe century. Comp. Draeseke, 
Jahrb. fiir protest. Theol., 2 Heft.,1881. Under 
these conditions, we refrain from alleging 
the passages or expressions which are bor- 
rowed from John. 
3 De praescr. haeret, ch. 38. 


THE TIME—130-155. 155 


aclete. The influence of John’s prologue is easily recognized here, since 
all these names are found united together in that passage, with the excep- 
tion of the last, which appears only later in the Gospel, and which is used - 
in the epistle. It has been asked, it is true, whether perhaps it may not 
be the evangelist who composed his prologue under the influence of the 
Valentinian Gnosis, and Hilgenfeld has thought that his aim may have 
been to cause this new doctrine to penetrate the Church, by mitigating it. 
We have already seen to what forced interpretations (of John viii. 44, for 
example, and other passages), this scholar has been led from this point of 
view. Let us add that the terms by which Valentinus designates his 
ZEons receive in his system an artificial, strained, mythological sense, 
while in the prologue of John they are taken in their simple, natural and, 
moreover, Biblical meaning; for they, all of them, belong already to the 
language of the Old Testament. It certainly is not John who has trans- 
formed the divine actors of the Gnostic drama into simple religious ideas ; 
it is very evidently the reverse which has taken place : “Everything leads 
us to hold,” says Bleek, “that the Gnostics made use of these expressions, 
which they drew from a work which was held in esteem, as points of sup- 
port for their speculative system.” “John,” says Keim in the same line, 
“knows nothing of those AZons, of that Pleroma, of those masculine and 
feminine pairs, and of all that long line of machinery which was designed 
to bring God into the finite; it is he, therefore, undoubtedly, who is the 
earliest, and who, as Irenzeus indicates, laid the foundation of the edifice.” 
Hilgenfeld claims that the Logos of John is only a concentration of the 
series of AXons of Valentinus. Hase replies to him, that we can maintain, 
and with as good right at least, that it is the single Logos of John which 
was divided by the Gnostics into their series of ASons. In the Philoso- 
phumena (vi. 35), Hippolytus relates of Valentinus the following : “ He.says 
(¢no’) that all the prophets and the law spoke according to the Demiurge, 
the senseless god, and that this is the reason why the Saviour said: “All 
those who came before me are thieves and robbers.” This is an express 
quotation from John x. 8. Criticism replies: Perhaps it was not Valen- 
tinus himself who expressed himself thus, but one of his successors. Let 
us admit it, notwithstanding the very positive words He says of Hippoly- 
tus. The Ogdoad, with its Johannean names, which form the basis of the 
whole Valentinian system, remains nevertheless; and it would be very 
strange that the chief of the school should not have been the one who 
laid the foundation of the system. We do not think, therefore, that an 
impartial criticism can deny in the case of Valentinus himself the use of 
the fourth Gospel.! 

Two years before Valentinus, in 188, Marcion arrived in Rome ; he came 


1The following is what Heinrici says in 
his well-known work, Die Valentinianische 
Gnosis und die heilige Schrift: “ The Valentin- 
ians thus used the Scripture as a universally 
recognized authority; it possessed this au- 
thority, therefore, previously to the appear- 


ance of the system. The use which the 
Valentinians made of the Gospel of John and 
the Epistles tothe Colossians and the Ephe- 
sians proves that these writings were recog- 
nized and used as apostolic writings already 
in the first half of the second century.” 


156 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


from Pontus, where his father was bishop, and where he had been brought 
up in the Christian beliefs. Tertullian makes an allusion to his Christian 
past, when he apostrophizes him thus (De carne Christi, c. 2): “Thou who, 
when thou wert a Christian, didst fall away, rejecting that which thou 
hadst formerly believed, as thou dost acknowledge in a certain letter.” 
To what did this rejection (reseindendo) with which Tertullian reproaches 
him, and which had attended upon his spiritual falling away, refer? The 
answer is given us by two other passages from the same Father. In the 
work specially designed to refute the doctrines of Marcion, Tertullian 
relates (Adv. Mare. iv. 3), that Marcion, “in studying the Epistle to the 
Galatians, discovered that Paul charged the apostles with not walking in the 
truth, and that he took advantage of this charge to destroy the confidence 
which men had in the Gospels published under the name of the apostles 
and apostolic men, and to claim belief on behalf of his own Gospel which 
he substituted for these.” We know, indeed, that Marcion had selected 
by preference the Gospel of Luke, and that, after having mutilated it in 
order to adapt it to his system, he gave it to his churches as the rule of 
their faith. Now, what does the conclusion which he drew from Galatians 
li. prove? The apostles mentioned in that chapter are Peter and John. 
If Marcion inferred from that passage the rejection of their Gospels, it 
must be that he had in his hands a Gospel of Peter—was this Mark ?—and 
a Gospel of John. He rejected from this time those books of the Canon 
which had been handed down to him by his father, the bishop of Sinope. 
In the De carne Christi, chap. 8, we read a second expression which leads 
to the same result as the preceding: “If thou hadst not rejected the writings 
which are contrary to thy system, the Gospel of John would be there to 
convince thee.” In order that Marcion should reject this writing, it 
certainly must have been in existence, and Marcion must have previously 
possessed it. And let us notice, that he rejected it, not on the ground 
that it was not apostolic; but, on the contrary, that it was so. For to his 
thought the twelve apostles, imbued with Jewish prejudices, had not 
understood Jesus; so their Gospels (Matthew, Mark, John) must be set 
aside. Paul alone had understood the Master, and the Gospel of Luke, 
his companion, must alone be an authority—Volkmar has made the 
author of the fourth Gospel a partisan of Marcion, who sought to intro- 
duce his doctrines into the Church. But what is there in common between 
the violent hatred of Marcion against the Jewish law and the God of the 
Jews, and a Gospel in which the Logos, in coming to Israel, comes to His 
own, and, in entering into the temple of Jerusalem, declares that He is in 
the house of His Father? And how can it be reasonably maintained that 
a writer whose thought strikes all its roots into the soil of the Old Testa- 
ment, is the disciple of a master who rejected from the New everything 
that implied the divinity of the Old? In saying this, we have answered 
the question of the same author, who asks why, if John existed before 
Marcion, the latter did not choose to make his Gospel rather than 
Luke the Gospel of his sect. The ancient heretic was more clear-sighted 
than the modern critic; he understood that, in order to use John, he must 


~ 


THE TIME—110-125. 157 


mutilate it, in some sort, from one end to the other, and he preferred to 
reject it at one stroke rescindendo, as Tertullian says. 

At the same period in which Justin, Valentinus and Marcion met each 
other in Rome, a fanatical sect arose in Asia Minor, Montanism. Its 
leader wished to make a reaction against the laxness of Christendom and 
the mechanical course of the official clergy. Montanus announced the 
near coming of the Christ, and pretended to cause the descent upon the 
Church of the Spirit who was promised for the last days, and whom he 
called the Paraclete, evidently in accordance with the promise of Jesus in 
John xiv. 16, 26, etc. He even identified himself with this Spirit, if it is 
true, as Theodoret affirms, that he gave himself the titles of Paraclete, 
Logos, Bridegroom. But it is not only these expressions, borrowed from 
John, it is the whole spiritualistic movement, it is that energetic reaction 
against the more and more prevailing ritualism, which implies the exist- 
ence in the Church of a writing which was an authority, and was capable 
of serving as a point of support for so energetic a movement. 

Thus, then, in 140, Justin, the martyr belonging to the orthodox Church, 
Valentinus, the Egyptian Gnostic, Marcion, who came from Pontus, Mon- 
tanus, in Phrygia, are acquainted with and, excepting Marcion, use with 
one consent, the Gospel of John, in order to found upon it their doctrine 
and their churches; would all this be possible, if that work had only been 
in existence for a decade of years? The date 130-140 falls before these 
facts, just as the date 160-170 vanished in presence of those which were 
previously alleged. 

Let us come to the third position attempted by criticism in our days. 


110-125. 
(Reuss, Nicolas, Renan, Sabatier, Weizsicker, Hase.) 


History offers us here four points for our guidance: The Gnostic Basil- 
ides, and the three apostolic Fathers, Papias, Polycarp, and Ignatius. 
Finally, we shall interrogate the appendix of our Gospel, chap. xxi., which, 
while connected with the work, does not properly form a part of it. 

Basilides flourished at Alexandria about 120-125; he died a little after 
132. Before teaching in Egypt, he is said to have labored in Persia and 
Syria. In the work Archelai et Manetis disputatio, it is said: “A certain 
Basilides, more anciently still, was a preacher among the Persians a little 
after the time of the apostles.” According to Epiphanius (Haer. xxiii. 1-7; 
xxiv. 1), he had also labored at Antioch. His activity, consequently, goes 
back as far as the earliest period of the second century. He himself 
claimed that he taught only what had been taught him by the Apostle 
Matthias according to the secret instructions which he had received from 
the Lord. That this assertion should have any shadow of probability, it 
is certainly necessary that he should have been able to meet with that 
apostle somewhere ; a fact which carries us back for the period of his birth 
to a quite early time in the first century.! 


1See Hofstede de Groot, Basilides und seine Zeit. 


158 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


In a homily on Luke, attributed to Origen, it is said that “Basilides had 
the boldness already to write a gospel according to Basilides.”? The word 
already proves that Basilides was regarded as belonging to the earliest 
times of Gnosticism. As to the expression: a gospel according to Basilides, 
it is very doubtful whether it is necessary to understand thereby an evan- 
gelical narrative designed to come into competition with our Gospels. By 
this term, indeed, Basilides himself understood, not a simple narration, but 
“the knowledge of supersensible things ” (7 tov izepxoopiwv yraow) (Philos. 
of Hippolytus, vii. 27). We are told, also, that his narrative of the birth 
of Jesus accorded entirely with that of our Gospels (Philos., ibid.), and 
history does not present the least trace of an apocryphal Basilidian gos- 
pel. But we know from Eusebius (H. E. iv. 7.7), that this Gnostic wrote 
twenty-four books on the Gospel (sig 1d evayyédcov), which were refuted ina 
striking way by a Christian writer, named Agrippa Castor, whose work 
was still in the hands of Eusebius. The real nature of this work of Basil- 
ides appears from a quotation which Clement of Alexandria makes from 
it in the Stromata (Bk. iv.), where he expresses himself thus: ‘“ Basilides 
says in the twenty-third book of his exegetical dissertations. . . . ”* It was, 
therefore, a work of explanations; but on what text? The answer 
appears first, from the expression of Eusebius: “twenty-four books on (eic) 
the Gospel,” and second, from the passage from the Philosophumena (vil. 
22), according to which Basilides is said to have expressed himself as fol- 
lows: “ Here is what is said in the Gospels (rd Aeyéuevov év roi¢ évayyediorc).” 
From all this we conclude that this Gnostic set forth his theory respecting 
the origin of things in the form of exegetical explanations, having refer- 
ence to the text of the Gospels which were received at his time in the 
churches. But the question for us to determine is whether he also 
worked upon the fourth Gospel. Now, we have two passages which seem 
to leave no doubt on this point; one is that we have just mentioned 
(Philos. vii. 22): “Here, says he [Basilides], is what is said in the Gospels: 
It was the true light which lighteneth every man coming into the world ;” 
the other, a little further on, ch. 27: “ Let everything have its own appro- 
priate time, says he [Basilides], is what the Saviour sufficiently declares 
when he says: My hour is not yet come.”—These two quotations are evi- 
dently connected with John i. 8 and ii. 4. 

The criticism which is opposed to the authenticity of our Gospel is 
obliged to make all efforts to escape the consequences of these Johannean 
quotations in Basilides; for they amount to nothing less than the carry- 
ing back of the composition of the fourth Gospel even into the first cen- 
tury. In fact, men only quote in this way a book which has already a 
recognized authority. It has been claimed, therefore, that, in mentioning 
these quotations from Basilides, Hippolytus did not distinguish the writ- 
ings of the master from those of his later disciples. The term he says, it | 
is claimed, related simply in his thought to the adversary, whoever he 


1Ambrose and Jerome have repeated this by Agrippa Castor,” etc. 
statement. 3°Ep To eixooty Tpity Tav éfnynTLKav. 
2“ There has come down even to us a work 


THE TIME—110-125. 159 


was, Basilides or the Basilidians, Valentinus or the Valentinians; and in 
favor of this supposition, the alleged fact has been adduced, that Hippo- 
lytus sets forth the Basilidian system in a later form than that in which 
Trenzeus still knew it. According to the latter, indeed, the system was 
dualistic ; this was the earliest form ; according to Hippolytus, on the con- 
trary, it is rather pantheistic ; there is here, therefore, a more recent form.. 
Discussion can be carried on at great length respecting this difference. 
For ourselves, we are disposed to accept the explanation given by Char- 
teris (Canonicity, p. lxiil.), according to which Irenzeus did not, in his 
exposition of the system, go back to its first foundations. There was a 
hidden pantheism at the source of its apparent dualism, and Hippolytus 
who had examined even the writings of the master has, more completely 
than Ireneeus, apprehended and set forth the original principles. How- 
ever it may be with this explanation, it does not seem to us possible that a 
serious writer quotes a whole series of texts which he attributes to an ear- 
lier writer, repeating over and over again the formula he says, and even 
several times indicating the author by his name, without having his work 
under his eyes. Renan says, quite simply and frankly (L’Eglise chré- 
tienne, p. 158) : “The author of the Philosophumena undoubtedly made this 
analysis with reference to the original works of Basilides.” And Weiz- 
sicker, a few years ago, expressed himself also in the same way (Un¢ters. 
p. 233) : “ It cannot be doubted that we have here quotations from a work of 
Basilides, in which the Johannean Gospel was used.” At the present 
time, he has changed his opinion.!. For what reason? Because these 
quotations ascribed to Basilides relate to Biblical writings whose composi- 
tion is later than the time of Basilides himself. And what are these 
writings? They can only be the Epistles to the Colossians and the Ephe- 
sians, quoted many times by this Gnostic in the extracts from the Philo- 
sophumena, and perhaps the Gospel of John itself. Is it needful to call 
the attention of this scholar to the fact that he falls here into a vicious 
circle? For he rests his views precisely upon the point which is in ques- 
tion. If Weizsicker reasons thus: The Basilides of Hippolytus quotes 
the letters to the Ephesians and the Colossians; therefore there is here a 
false Basilides, since those letters did not yet exist at the time of the true 
Basilides ; have not we the right—we who believe in the authenticity of 
those epistles—to reason in an opposite way, and to say: Basilides quotes 
those writings : therefore in his time they existed and were acknowledged 
in the Church. This conclusion, valid for Colossians and Ephesians, is 
also valid for the Gospel of John. 

Keim has also made a discovery which is said to prove that our Gospel 
is posterior to Basilides. This Gnostic writer asserted that the Jews by 
mistake had crucified Simon of Cyrene instead of Jesus, and that Jesus 
was all the time laughing at them. Here, says the author of the Life of 
Jesus, is that which explains the omission of the story of Simon bearing 
the cross in the fourth Gospel. Pseudo-John had noticed the abuse which 


1 Jahrb. fiir deutsche Theol., 1868, p. 525. 


160 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


Basilides made of this incident, and for this reason he suppressed it. We 
need not long discuss such an argument. We have treated in detail John’s 
omissions and have shown that they are to be explained simply by the 
uselessness of such repetitions. To what purpose relate again what two 
or three widely-spread writings had already sufficiently related? It would 
be curious, certainly, to see one of our critics taking upon himself the 
task of explaining, by allusions to the Gnostic systems, all the gaps in the 
fourth Gospel! 

Papias was a contemporary of Basilides. We have already seen (p. 43) 
that by this expression: ‘‘ What Aristion and John the Presbyter say,” he 
indicates clearly that these two men, immediate disciples of Jesus, were 
still living at the moment when he wrote. The years 110-120, are, there- 
fore, the latest period to which we can assign the composition of his work. 
Already at that time, there was rising a whole literature which labored to 
falsify the meaning of the Gospel narratives. Papias also declares that 
“he does not take pleasure in the books in which many things are related, 
and in which the attempt is made to impose on the Church precepts that 
are strange and different from those which were given by the Truth itself.” ! 
It seems to me probable that in expressing himself thus he alludes to the 
first appearance of the Gnostic writings, such as those of Cerinthus, of the 
Ophites and the Sethians, of Saturninus, perhaps of Basilides himself. 

It is quite generally affirmed in our days that all trace of the fourth 
Gospel is wanting in Papias, and this fact is regarded as the most decisive 
proof of the later composition of the Gospel of John. We pray the im- 
partial reader carefully to consider the following facts: 

Of Papias’ work entitled Explanations of the Words of the Lord (in five 
books), there remain to us only some thirty lines, which Eusebius has 
preserved for us; they undoubtedly belonged to the preface. Papias ex- 
plains therein the preference which he had thought himself obliged to 
give, for the end which he proposed to himself, to the text of Matthew 
over that of Mark; this, at least, is the meaning which we attribute to his 
words. He gives an account of the sources from which he had drawn the 
anecdotes respecting the life of Jesus, which were not contained in our 
Gospels, and by means of which he tried to explain His sayings. These 
sources, as we have seen, were of two sorts: they were first the accounts 
which the elders (the immediate disciples of the Lord) had formerly given 
to him himself; they were, next, the reports which he had gathered from 
the mouth of visitors who had also had the advantage of conversing with 
apostles and disciples of Jesus. He asked them “What Andrew had said to 
them, or Peter, or Philip, or Thomas, or James, or John, or Matthew, or 
any other of the Lord’s disciples, and what Aristion and the Presbyter 
John, disciples of the Lord, say.” This enumeration offers food for 
thought. Why is Andrew named at the beginning and before Peter him- 
self? This order is contrary to the constant and in some sort stereotyped 
usage of the Synoptics; see all the apostolic catalogues (Matt. x.; Mark 


1 See the entire passage, pp. 43-45. 


THE TIME—110-125. 161 


iii.; Luke vi.). The first chapter of John alone gives the answer to this 
question: Andrew (with John himself, who remains unnamed), was the 
first who came into the presence of the Saviour; he figures as the first 
personage in the evangelic history. After Andrew, Papias says: Peter. 
According to John i., Andrew, his brother, brought him, indeed, on the 
same day to Jesus. Then Papias says: Philip; he is precisely the one 
who immediately follows Andrew and Peter in the Johannean narrative 
(i. 48 ff.). Moreover, Andrew and Philip are the two apostles who are 
afterwards most frequently named in our Gospel (vi. 5-9; xii. 20-22). 
Then comes Thomas. Nathanael is here omitted (John i. 46 ff.), we know 
not why; he is included in the sort of et cetera with which the incomplete 
list closes: “or any other of the Lord’s disciples.” As for Thomas, he is 
the one among all the rest of the disciples who, together with the pre- 
ceding ones, plays the most striking part in the fourth Gospel (xi. 16; xiv. 
5; xx. 24 ff.). Afterwards, come James and John. Why so late, these who 
are always named in the Synoptics immediately after and with Peter? 
It is in the fourth Gospel also, that we must seek the explanation of this 
phenomenon. The two sons of Zebedee are not once named in the whole 
course of the narrative; they are not expressly designated, except in the 
appendix, xxi., where their names are found, as here, at the end of the 
list of the apostles who are mentioned in that passage. Among all the 
other apostles, Matthew only is further named by Papias; and it has been 
supposed, rightly no doubt, that it is the mention of the fourth evangelist 
which here leads to the mention of the first. It may be presumed also 
that these three names. James, John and Matthew, occupy this secondary 
position because the question in this passage was of the apostles as having 
furnished to Papias the oral traditions which he used. Now James had 
died too early to be able to give much information, and John and Mat- 
thew had consigned the greater part of theirs to their writings. Finally, 
Papias names two personages who were still living, Aristion and the Pres- 
byter John, whom he calls “disciples of the Lord.” It is exactly in the 
same way that the Johannean enumeration xxi. 2, closes: “ And two others 
of his disciples” [not apostles]. If we add to these similarities, which are 
so striking, the fact that all these disciples named by Papias (except Peter, 
James and John), play no part whatever in the Synoptical narrative, we 
shall be led to acknowledge that the idea which this Father possessed of 
the evangelical history was formed on the foundation of the narrative of 
the fourth Gospel, even more than on that of the three others. Liide- 
mann, in his articles on the fragment of Papias,! does not call in question 
the similarity which we have just established. “It is a fact,” he says, 
“that the fragment of Papias is closely related to the Johannean manner 
of speaking, both in the expressions évrodAai, commandments, and aAnbera, 
truth (see the fragment, pp. 43-45), and in the beginning of the list of the 
apostolic names ... The unexpected coming in of Thomas, in Papias, 
likewise does not allow us to think of anything but the fourth Gospel.” 


1 Jahrb. fiir protest. Theol., 1879, 3d Heft. 
a 


162 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


But after this frank declaration come the expedients which are never want- 
ing. ‘There existed in the circle from which the Johannean writings came 
forth in Asia a mode of speaking and thinking, which, on the one hand, has 
left certain elements in the writings of Papias (between 120-140), and which, 
on the other, has found its full blossoming in the writings of pseudo-John, 
composed at nearly the same time.” This explanation would be strictly ad- 
missible, if the question were of some fact of the evangelical history related 
simultaneously by the two authors, or of the use of some common terms such 
as commandment and truth. But it cannot account for an enumeration of 
proper names, such as those mentioned in the passage of Papias and in 
which the whole evangelical history is reflected. Holtzmann has perceived 
the injury to his cause which was involved in the admissions of his col- 
league; he has attempted to ward off the blow in another way.’ He explains 
the order of the apostles in the fragment of Papias by the geographical situ- 
ation of the countries in which they are thought to have labored as mis- 
sionaries. This solution will remain the exclusive property of its author. 

Two facts seem to us further to attest the existence of the fourth Gos- 
pel before the time of Papias. Eusebius attests that this Father quoted 
‘as evidence, in his work, passages from the first Epistle of John, as well as 
from the first Epistle of Peter. Now we have proved that that letter of 
John is by the same author as the fourth Gospel, and that it was composed 
after the latter. If, then, Papias was acquainted with and used the Epis- 
tle, how should he not have been acquainted with and have used the Gos- 
pel composed by the same author ?—In the Vatican library there is found 
a Latin manuscript of the Gospels, of the ninth century, in which John’s 
Gospel is preceded by a preface wherein it is said: “The Gospel of John 
was published and given to the churches by John while he was still living, 
as Papias of Hierapolis, the beloved disciple of John, relates in his five 
exoteric books, that is to say, the last ones.” These last words evidently 
come from an incorrect copy, like so many of the sentences in the Mura- 
torian fragment. Instead of exoteric, we must, at all events, read eregetic ; 
comp. the title of Papias’ book: “ Expositions (é&yygoec) of the words of 
the Lord.” Besides, this statement is followed by some legendary details,’ 
which, however, are not ascribed to Papias himself. Notwithstanding all 
this, the fact that Papias spoke in his five books of the Gospel of John is 
yet attested by this passage.’ 

Irenzeus sometimes quotes the elders who lived with John in Asia Minor 
until the time of Trajan. They were, thus, contemporaries of Papias 
and Polycarp. Hereis an explanation which he ascribes to them (vy. 36): 
“ Ag the elders say: Those who shall be judged worthy of enjoying the 
heavenly abode will find their place there, while the rest will inhabit the 
city [the earthly Jerusalem]; and it is for this reason that the Lord said :* 


1 Papias und Johannes, in the Zeitschrift fur Evangelien verfasst? pp. 118, 119. 


wissenchaftl. Theol., 1880, Heft 1. 4 Literally: “And for this reason the Lord 
£Asthe following forexample:thatitwasPa- to have said (eipyxévat).” The infinitive serves 
pias who wrote the Gospel at John’s dictation. to indicate that here is the saying of the 


3Comp. Tischendorf, Wann wurden unsere elders themselves. 


THE TIME—110-125. 163 


“In my Father’s house there are many mansions.” If it is the saying of 
Jesus related in John xiv. 2, which the elders interpreted in this way, as 
seems evident, then the Gospel of John was already in their hands. This 
appears, likewise, from the passage in Irenzeus, ii. 22, where he attributes 
to them the idea that Jesus had attained the age of forty or fifty years— 
which can scarcely have arisen except through a misunderstanding of the 
words of the Jews, John viii. 57: “Thou art not yet fifty years old, and 
thou hast seen Abraham! ” 

Polycarp wrote, according to Irenzeus, a very large number of letters, of 
which there remains to us but a single one consisting of only thirteen 
brief chapters. The fourth Gospel is not quoted in it; but we can prove, 
on the other hand, the truth of the statement of Eusebius, who declares 
that Polycarp, as well as Papias, borrowed testimonies from the first Epis- 
tle of Peter and the first Epistle of John; this is what induced him to 
place these works among the homologowmena. In fact, we read in Poly- 
carp’s Epistle to the Philippians (chap. 7) these words: “ Whosoever does 
not confess that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is an antichrist.” This 
is the principle laid down by John, 1 Ep. iv. 3: “ Every spirit that con- 
fesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is not of God; and this 
is the spirit of antichrist.” The coincidence of these two sentences can- 
not be accidental. The expedient devised by Baur and Zeller, who would 
find herein only a maxim circulating at this period in the Church, and that 
of Volkmar, who claims that it is John who copies Polycarp, and not the 
reverse, are destitute of probability. Ten lines of John read by the side of 
ten lines of Polycarp show on which side are the originality and priority. 
We must, therefore, conclude that if this letter of Polycarp is authentic, 
as Zahn’ has with so much learning demonstrated, and if it dates, as 
appears from its contents, from the time which closely followed the martyr- 
dom of Ignatius (in 110), the first Epistle of John, and consequently the 
Gospel, already existed at that period. 

But it is asked how it happens, in that case, that Papias and Polycarp 
did not make more abundant use of such a work. Especially is the 
silence of Eusebius respecting any citation whatever from our Gospel, on 
the part of these two Fathers, set in contrast with the very express men- 
tion which he makes of the use of the first epistle, by both of them.—lIf 
Eusebius has expressly noticed this last fact, it is because the two epis- 
tles of Peter and John form a part of the collection of the Catholic Epis- 
tles, which, with the exception of these two, were all of them disputed 
writings. He was desirous, therefore, of marking their exceptional char- 
acter as homologoumena in this collection, a character appearing from the 
use which was made of them by two such men as Papias and Polycarp. 
It was quite otherwise with the Gospel, which indisputably belonged to 
the class of books universally received. The use which these two apos- 
tolic Fathers might have made of it entered into the general usage. Eu- 
sebius himself gives an explanation respecting his general method (H. E. 
ili. 3, 3): “ He wishes,” he says, “to point out what ecclesiastical writings 


1In his Ignatius von Antiochien, 


164 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 
made use of disputed books, and what ones among these books they made 
use of; then, what things, [or some of the things which]! have been said 
respecting the universally received writings of the New Testament, and 
everything which has been said (éca) respecting those which are not so 
received.” To mention certain interesting details respecting the Homo- 
logoumena (as we know that he has done with regard to Matthew and 
Mark), then to report everything which he could gather respecting the 
Antilegomena—this was the end which he proposed to himself. It was 
therefore precisely because he, together with the whole Church, ranked 
John in the first class, that he did not think himself obliged expressly to 
point out the use which these Fathers made of this gospel. But, on the 
other hand, if he had discovered, in the case of such men, a complete 
blank with respect to this work, he could not have affirmed, as he does, 
its universal adoption. Still more: a word in the discussion of Eusebius 
respecting the fragment of Papias which he has preserved for us, clearly 
shows that he had found in that Father numerous passages relating to the 
fourth Gospel. On occasion of the mention of the name of John in the 
enumeration of the apostles by Papias, he remarks that this Father means 
evidently to designate thereby “the evangelist” (cadd¢ dnAdv tov evayyeruo- 
7Hv). He might have said: the apostle, but he enters into the thought of 
Papias himself, and says: the evangelist, which clearly proves that he found 
in his work the constant evidence of the fact that John was the author of 
a Gospel. As to Polycarp, nothing obliged him, in precisely those eight 
pages of his which remain to us, to quote the Gospel of John. What 
preacher quotes in every one of his sermons all the writings of the New 
Testament which he recognizes as authentic? 

The interminable discussions are well known, to which the letters of 
Ignatius, the bishop of Antioch at the beginning of the second century, 
have given rise. A nearly unanimous tradition, supported by the testi- 
mony of authors who wrote at Antioch itself, such as Chrysostom and 
Evagrius, declares that he perished at Rome, being devoured by wild 
beasts in the circus, in consequence of a sentence of the Emperor Tra- 
jan? It was while on his way as a condemned person to that capital 
(between 107 and 116), that he is said to have written the seven letters 
which alone can claim authenticity. These letters exist in a double form, 
one longer, the other more simple and concise. Zahn, in his book on 
Ignatius of Antioch, has clearly proved that the first of these two texts is 
the result of a deliberate work of interpolation; he has even very prob- 
abiy pointed out the author of this fraud He has, at the same time, 


1 Both translations are possible, according as 
we accent the Greek pronoun tiva (what 
things), or teva (some of the things). 

2The chronicler John Malalas (8th cent.) 
places the martyrdom of Ignatius at Antioch 
itself. In that case, Ignatius could never have 
made the journey to Rome to which these 
letters refer. But how then can we explain 
so general a tradition ? Would the Church of 


Antioch itself have so easily resigned in favor 
of Rome the honor of having seen such a 
martyrdom accomplished in its own midst ? 

8 Eight others exist which are undoubtedly 
forgeries. 

4One of the least honorable representatives 
of the semi-Arian party, Acacius, the succes- 
sor of Eusebius at Cesarea. 


THE TIME—110-125. 165 


demonstrated the authenticity of the seven letters, as they have been pre- 
served for us in the briefer form. The historian Eusebius, already was 
acquainted only with these seven, and in this text. It is true that there 
have been recently discovered three among these seven, in Syriac, in 
a still briefer form;! and, at the first moment, the learned world was 
inclined to regard this text as the only faithful reproduction of the 
work of Ignatius. Zahn seems to us to have victoriously combated 
this opinion, and to have proved that this text is only an extract, made 
by some Syrian monk, from a more ancient translation in that language. 
There remains but one alternative; the authenticity of the seven letters, 
as Eusebius knew them, or their entire unauthenticity—Two reasons 
especially are alleged in favor of this last opinion: 1.-The Episcopal con- 
stitution, as it appears in these letters, belongs, it is said, to an epoch much 
later in the second century than the time of Ignatius ; 2. The Gnosticism 
which is combated in them, betrays likewise a time posterior to Ignatius’ 
death. These reasons do not seem to us decisive. The Episcopate, as its 
character is implied in these letters, is still a purely parochial ministry, as 
in the apostolic times, it is not the later provincial Episcopate. That 
which alone distinguishes it from the ministry of this name in the time 
of the apostles, is that it appears to be concentrated in a single person. 
But this is already the case in the Apocalypse, where the angel of the 
Church designates precisely the man who concentrates in himself the 
presbyterial power; and indeed long before this we meet already men 
like James, the Lord’s brother, at Jerusalem, then his cousin and suc- 
cessor, Simeon, Anianus at Alexandria, Evagrius at Antioch, Linus at 
Rome, who occupy a position exactly similar to that which Ignatius 
ascribes to the bishop of his time. As to the heresy implied in these let- 
ters, it already had all its antecedent conditions in the first century ; we 
can see this in the second Epistle to the Corinthians (xi. 8, 4), in the Epis- 
tle to the Colossians, and in the Apocalypse, where a form of Gnosticism 
is already clearly indicated (ii. 20, 24). The germs of heresy were sown 
abundantly in the East at the time of Ignatius. What in our view ren- 
ders the hypothesis of the unauthenticity of these letters inadmissible, is 
that it seems impossible to invent, not only a style so original and a 
thought so strange, but especially such a character. There isa man in 
these letters, and a man who is not manufactured. 

The following are some quotations from our Gospel which are contained 
in the seven letters, the text of which can lay claim to authenticity. 
Rom. (c. 7): “The living water which speaks in me says to me inwardly : 
Come to the Father; I take no pleasure either in corruptible food or in 
the joys of this life; I desire the bread of God which is the flesh of Jesus 
Christ . . . I desire as drink His blood which is incorruptible love.” The 
entire Gospel of John is, as it were, included in this cry of the martyr; 
but comp. more specially the words iv. Ty SAV-Gs Vi, oad 20} OO; 
Philad. (c. 7): “The Spirit does not deceive, he who comes from God; for 


1 They were published for the first time by Cureton (1845). 


166 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


he knows whence he comes and whither he goes, and he condemns secret 
things” (John iii. 8, 20). In the same epistle (c. 9): “ He who is the door 
of the Father (@ipa tov zarpéc) by which Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and the 
prophets and the apostles and the Church enter” (John x. 7-9). In the 
letter to the Ephesians (c. 7), Jesus is called (év capxi yevduevoc Oed¢) God come 
in the flesh: and in that to the Magnesians (c. 8) the expression is used (avrow 
Adyoc aidcoc), His eternal word. ‘The idea of spiritual communion (éveorc), Which 
forms the substance of these letters, as of that of Polycarp, rests on John 
xvil., as Riggenbach has remarked. 

Hilgenfeld, who places the composition of these letters in 166, finds no 
difficulty in acknowledging that our Gospel (published according to him 
in 130) is really used in the passages quoted in the letters to the Romans | 
and Philadelphians ; he even affirms that “the entire theology of Ignatius’ 
letters rests upon the Gospel of John.” We welcome this declaration and 
conclude that, however little authentic matter there may be in the letters 
of this martyr, the existence and use of the Gospel of John are attested 
from the beginning of the second century. } 

It remains for us to interrogate a final witness—the appendix placed at 
the end of the fourth Gospel, as the twenty-first chapter, in particular the 
twenty-fourth verse, the authenticity of which cannot be contested At 
the end of this account of one of the last appearances of Jesus after He 
rose from the dead, the exact text of a saying is restored which Jesus ad- 
dressed to Peter with regard to John, and which circulated in the Church 
in an incorrect form. Jesus was made to say that John was not going to 
die. The author of the appendix, who is either John himself or one of 
those who surrounded him, and who had heard him relate this scene (see 
p-64f.), recalls the fact that Jesus had not expressed Himself thus, but 
that He had simply said: “If I will that He tarry till I come, what is it 
to thee?” At what time can we suppose that this correction was judged 
necessary? At the end of the second century, where Keim places the 
composition of this passage? But at that time, either the saying of Jesus 
was forgotten, or, if it was still repeated, it was somewhat late to remove 
the offence which it might cause. No, surely; there was but one period 
when this correction would have been in place. It was when men saw 
the aged apostle growing feeble, and asked themselves: Is he, then, going 
to die, in spite of the Lord’s promise? Or when he had just died, and the 
offence was really occasioned. This passage, therefore, carries its date in 
itself; it comes either from the days which preceded, or from those which 
immediately followed John’s death. The contrast between the present par- 
ticiple: “This is the disciple who testifies (6 waprupév) of these things,” and 
the past participle: “and who wrote them («ai ypawac),” appears to me to 
decide in favor of the former alternative. The disciple whom Jesus loved 
was still living and testifying when this passage was written. However 


1 We do not mention here either the Testa- in which the borrowings from our Gospel do 
ments of the Twelve Patriarchs, because of not seem to us by any means evident. 
their numerous interpolations, nor the Shep- 2It is known that it is not the same with 


herd of Hermas and the Epistle of Barnabas, ver. 25, which is wanting in the Sinaitic MS. 


THE AUTHOR. 167 


this may be, this twenty-first chapter is necessarily later than the Gospel ; 
hence it follows that this work dates even from the life of John. 

We think we have thus proved that the third position attempted by 
criticism—that from 110-125—is as irreconcilable with the facts as the two 
others, and that we are forced to take a new step backward, and to place 
the composition of this work in the latest times of the first century. But 
we do not think that we can go back to an earlier date, Some writers— 
for example, Wittichen, Lange—have attempted to do this. The former 
dates our Gospel from 70-80 (see p. 25); the latter places it before the 
destruction of Jerusalem. <A period so far back is incompatible with the 
knowledge of our three Synoptical Gospels, which the author not only 
himself possesses, but which he supposes, from beginning to end, to be in 
the possession of his readers. The dissemination of those three works, 
published either a little before or a little after the destruction of Jerusalem, 
requires a considerably long interval of time between their composition 
and that of our Gospel. The date of this latter, therefore, must probably 
—in accordance with the facts which we have just set forth—be placed 
between 80 and 90. 





CHAPTER SECOND. 
THE AUTHOR. 


MANGOLD formulates his judgment respecting the external testimonies 
relative to the fourth Gospel in these terms: ‘“ The external attestation is 
scarcely less strong than that for the Synoptical Gospels;” then he adds: 
“Tt would be sufficient to authenticate it, if the internal reasons did not 
oppose to the admission of its authenticity objections which, for me at 
least, remain up to this time insurmountable.”! It is this second class of 
considerations which is now especially to occupy us. We approach the 
central and decisive question—the one for whose solution everything that 
precedes has only served to prepare the way. It has been sometimes 
claimed that our Gospel remains what it is, whoever may be its author. 
Those who maintain this proposition do not themselves seriously believe 
what they affirm; otherwise they would not be so zealous in contending 
against the Johannean origin of this work. And when Keim expresses 
himself thus: “The beauty of this book, its edifying quality, its saintliness 

. all this does not depend on a name,” he will permit us to reply to 
him: You deceive others, or you deceive yourself; for you cannot con- 
ceal from yourself the fact that the discourses put into the mouth of Jesus, 
and the conception of His person which is set forth in this book, have for 
the Church an altogether different value, according as it is the beloved apostle 
of the Lord who gives us an account of what he has seen and heard, or a 
thinker of the second century who composes all this after his own fancy. 

We have here four subjects to investigate: 1. The ecclesiastical testimonies 


1 Bleek-Mangold’s EHinl., p. 281. 


168 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


bearing more particularly on the person of the author; 2. The objections 
raised by modern criticism against the result of this tradition; 3. The in- 
ternal proof, derived from the study of the book itself; 4. The examination 
of the principal hypotheses which are in our days set in opposition to the 
traditional opinion of the Johannean origin. 


21. THE TRADITIONAL TESTIMONIES. 


Our point of departure is the period at which the general conviction of 
the Church expresses itself by a collection of indisputable testimonies, in 
the last third of the second century. 

We find here Clement of Alexandria, who relates to us the origin of the 
fourth Gospel in the following manner: “John, the last, perceiving that 
the bodily things (74 cwuarixd, the external facts) had been related in the 
Gospels, . . . composed a spiritual Gospel” (Eus. H. E., vi. 14). 

Polycrates of Ephesus, at the same time, expresses himself thus: “ Ilus- 
trious men are buried in Asia, Philip . . . at Hierapolis; and, moreover, 
John, who rested on the bosom of the Lord, and who is buried at Ephesus” 
(Eus. H. E., v.31). This testimony proves that at Ephesus John was re- 
garded as the author of the Gospel, since no one doubted that he was the 
beloved disciple who is spoken of in John xiii. 26. 

Treneeus thus closes his report respecting the composition of the Gos- 
pels: “After that, John, the disciple of the Lord who rested on His 
bosom, also published the Gospel while he dwelt at Ephesus, in Asia ” 
(Adv. Haer. iii. 1). 

We have already quoted the testimony of Theophilus: “ All the in- 
spired men, among whom John says, In the beginning was the Word.” 
The following is the way in which the Muratorian fragment relates the 
origin of our Gospel: “The author of the fourth among the Gospels is 
John, one of the disciples. As his fellow-disciples and the bishops ex- 
horted him [to write], he said to them: Fast with me these three days, 
and we will mutually relate to each other what shall have been revealed 
to each one. In that same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the 
apostles, that John should relate everything in his own name, all the 
others revising [his narrative] . . . What is there, then, surprising in this, 
that John, in his epistles, sets forth these things in detail, saying in refer- 
ence to himself: That which we have seen with our eyes, that which we 
have heard with our ears, and that which our hands have handled, we 
write unto you. Thus he declares himself successively eye and ear-wit- 
ness, and, moreover, a redactor of the wonderful things of God.” Hilgen- 
feld claims that we find in this report an allusion to doubts which existed 
at that time respecting the Johannean origin of our Gospel. Hesse, in 
his excellent work on the Muratorian fragment, has shown that this pas- 


1This term is not opposed to the term apos- by Papias to all the apostles, and many times 
tle, as Reuss thinks. It is the translation of by Irenzeus to John himself (iii. 1, 3, 4). 
the term paéyrys Tod Kupiov which is applied 


THE AUTHOR—TESTIMONIES. 169 


sage betrays no such intention. The expression “what is there surpris- 
ing?” applies not to the Gospel, but to the epistle. 

Starting from this point, let us try to ascend the stream of tradition 
even to the apostolic times, and to search out the earliest indications of 
that conviction which shows itself so universally at the end of the 
second century. Between 140 and 150, it expresses itself, as it seems to us, 
in an unquestionable manner. 

We have seen that Justin, according to the nearly universal admission 
at the present day, places our Gospel in the number of the Memoirs re- 
specting the life of Jesus, of which he habitually made use. He calls 
these writings Memoirs of the apostles, and declares that some were com- 
posed by apostles and others by apostolic helpers. Consequently, if the 
fourth Gospel formed a part of them, Justin could ascribe it only to an 
apostle, and this apostle could only be John, since no one has ever_ 
attempted to ascribe this book to any other apostolic personage than 
John. And as, according to Justin, the Memoirs of the apostles already 
formed a collection, which was joined with that of the prophets and read, 
side by side with the latter, in the public worship of the Christians, it 
must have been at that period that the four identically-framed titles were 
placed at the beginning of the Gospels: “ according to Matthew . . . ac- 
cording to John.” This designation by titles—a work of the Church— 
accompanied the uniting of them in a canonical collection. The title, 
according to John, is, therefore, the expression of the general sentiment 
of the churches touching this book in the middle of the second century. 

And it was not only the orthodox churches which, already at that period, 
had this thought ; it was also the sects which were separated from the great 
body of the Church; witness, on one side, Marcion, who rejected our Gospel, 
not because it was not by an apostle of Jesus, but, on the contrary, inas- 
much as it was composed by one of them, that is to say by John (see p. 
156); witness also the most illustrious disciple of Valentinus, Ptolemy, 
who, in his letter to Flora, quoted our Gospel, saying: “The apostle de- 
clares” (p. 144). According to Irenzeus, Ptolemy even went so far as to 
affirm, because of the prologue of the Gospel, that the true author of the 
Valentinian Ogdoad was John (p. 144). 

Going still further back to a period from which only rare monuments 
remain to us, we discover always the same conviction. 

We have already seen that, in the view of Papias, John was not only an 
apostle, but an evangelist, and that it is this quality of author of a Gospel’ 
which most naturally explains the position which he assigns to him in his 
famous list of apostles by the side of Matthew (see pp. 43, 160 f). 

If we do not possess any special testimony of Polycarp, there is a fact 
of much more considerable importance than any declaration whatever 
could have. Polycarp lived up to the middle of the second century ; it 
was, then, during his activity as bishop of Smyrna, that our Gospel began 
to be circulated, and that it was spread throughout the whole Church as 
John’s work. If he had not believed in the Johannean origin of this work, 
he would not have failed to deny it; for the use which the Gnostics made 


170 BOOK III THE ORIGIN. 


of this book rendered it very compromising for the Church, of which Poly- 
carp was the most venerated leader; and the least denial on the part of 
such a man would have profoundly shaken the opinion of the Church. 
But nothing of the kind occurred. History does not indicate the least 
trace of hesitation, either in the case of Polycarp himself or among the 
members of the Church. No one of the presbyters of whom Irenzeus 
speaks, and who “lived with John in Asia up to the time of Trajan,” ex- 
pressed a doubt—so that our Gospel was received without dispute, from 
one end of the world to the other, as the work of John. This absence of 
protestation is a negative fact of a very positive importance. We must 
not confound it with a mere literary silence which can be explained by 
accidental circumstances. 

But from this period and from the circle even in which John lived, a 
positive testimony makes itself heard: ‘This disciple [the one whom Jesus 
loved] is he who testifieth of these things and who wrote these things; and 
we know that his testimony is true.” This is what we read in John xxi. 
24. Who are those who speak to us in this way, and who thus attest the 
composition of the fourth Gospel by the diseiple whom Jesus loved? They 
are personally acquainted with him, since, in virtue of the knowledge 
which they have of him, they believe themselves able to guarantee the 
truth of his testimony. They do this during his life, since they say of him: 
“who testifieth and wrote” (p. 166). They live about him, therefore, and it 
is in their hands, undoubtedly, that he deposited his book; and, before 
giving it to the public, they supply this postscript, clearly perceiving that, 
by reason of the differences which exist between this work and its prede- 
cessors, it will have some difficulty in opening a way for itself. How can 
the force of such testimony be escaped? Reuss supposes that those who 
gave it were bona fide deceived, and that, living already quite a long time 
after John’s death, they confounded with him the anonymous writer who 
had, by means of his narratives, composed the Gospel. But we have al- 
ready seen that this twenty-first chapter can only have been written at a 
' period very near to the death of John, when such an error was not pos- 
sible. The use of the present: “he who testifieth,” confirms this remark. 
There would be only one possible supposition, namely : that the pseudo- 
John, in the course of the second century, had himself furnished this at- 
testation. After having assumed the mask of St. John, he attempted to 
sustain his first fraud by adding to it a second. He imagined a circle of 
friends of the apostle, and himself composed, under their name, the post- 
script which we have just read. The composers of apocryphal works have 
often been excused by speaking of pious fraud. But here we should evi- 
dently have something more; we should even come to the borders of 
knavery. And he who imagined a course like this, is the man to whom 
we must attribute the qualities of moral purity, profound holiness, intimate 
communion with God, which were necessary for the composition of such a 
Gospel! The psychological and moral sense protests. 

In the whole course of the second century, there exists, so far as our 
knowledge extends, but one single denial of the Johannean origin of the 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 172 


fourth Gospel. A party, to which Epiphanius gave the name Alogi (aoyor, 
those who deny the Logos), maintained that the author of this work was, 
not the Apostle John, but the heretic Cerinthus, his adversary at Ephesus. 
This rejection was not founded on any traditional testimony. “The 
grounds on which those persons rested,” says Zeller himself, “were, so far 
as we are acquainted with them, derived from internal criticism .. .” 
What follows from this fact—the only one which the adversaries of the 
authenticity can allege? Two things: first, that the Alogi lacked all sup- 
port from tradition; secondly, that there did not exist a pumice of doubt 
respecting the fact that our Gospel was composed at Ephesus in the time 
of St. John, since Cerinthus, to whom they ascribed it, was the contempo- 
rary and rival of this apostle. The sole opponents are, thus, transformed 
into witnesses and defenders. 


22. THE OBJECTIONS. 


It is in opposition to this result of a tradition which may be called 
unanimous, that many scholars rise up at the present day, and we have 
now to examine their reasons. 

Hase, in his History of Jesus, enumerates eight objections against the 
authenticity ; after having successively set them aside, he makes for him- 
self a ninth which he does not succeed in solving, and which determines 
his negative vote. We shall follow him in this very clear exposition. Only 
of these nine objections we shall detach some which he unites with the 
others, and which it seems to us preferable to treat separately. ‘The first 
seven, as we shall see, have already found their solution implicitly in the 
preceding pages. 

I. The silence of the most ancient Fathers, particularly those of nee 
Minor, respecting the fourth Gospel. It seems to us that the two pre- 
ceding chapters have solved this objection. Hase justly observes that 
“nothing is more uncertain than this assertion: a writer must have spoken 
of a certain thing or a certain person.” The Synoptical Gospels had been 
for a long time spread abroad; they had already for a generation formed 
the substance of the knowledge which the Church possessed of the history 
of Jesus. The Gospel of John, which was quite recent, had not yet made 
its way nor exerted its own influence; time must be allowed for it to take 
its place, before an appeal could be made to its narratives in the same 
way as to those of the earlier Gospels. We find this to be the fact only 
after the time of Justin. 

II. John, being Judaizing as he was, cannot be the author of a Gospel as 
spiritual as that which bears his name. This, as it seems, is the strongest 
objection in the view of Schiirer: “ It is psychologically inconceivable that 
an apostle who, in his mature age, still disputed with Paul respecting the 
permanent value of the law, should have afterwards written a Gospel whose 
anti-Judaism surpasses even that of Paul.”'—We think we have shown 


1 Studien u. Kritiken, 1876, iv., p. 774. 


ie", BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


that this estimate of John’s standpoint according to Gal. ii. is ill founded. 
The apostles personally observed the law, but not with the idea of its per- 
manent value for salvation; otherwise they must have imposed it on the 
Gentiles; and instead of giving the hand of fellowship to Paul and Barna- 
bas, they would have finally broken with them. The difference being a 
matter of practice, not of principle, the fall of Jerusalem must have resulted 
in the settlement of it, by breaking up the last remnant of solidarity 
_ between the apostles and their own people. Hase rightly remarks, that 
the residence of John in Asia Minor, his activity in the field which had 
been sowed by Paul, and the immense influence which he notoriously 
exercised in that country of Greek culture prove with what breadth, flexi- 
- bility and freedom of mind he adapted himself to this new region, and 
knew how to become a Greek with the Greeks. 

ItI. The Christianity of the churches of Asia Minor had a legal charac- 
ter. Now, if John was the author of such a teaching, he cannot have 
been the writer who composed our Gospel. But on what does this affirm- 
ation of the Judaizing character of the churches of Asia Minor rest? On 
their gross Chiliasm, it is answered. We have already seen that almost 
the whole Church of the second and of the greater part of the third cen- 
tury was devoted to Millenarianism; nevertheless it was not Judaistic. 
Moreover, the Paschal rite of these churches is alleged, in which their 
Judaistic sympathies are betrayed. The churches of Asia celebrated the 
Holy Supper of the Paschal feast on the 14th of Nisan in the evening, in- 
dependently of the day of the week on which this monthly date fell, while 
the other churches, Rome in particular, celebrated the Holy Paschal Sup- 
per on the Sunday morning which followed Good Friday, whatever might 
be the day of the month on which that Sunday occurred. What were the 
reasons which had determined the rite which the churches of Asia had 
adopted? Either they wished thus to celebrate the evening of the day 
in the afternoon of which, according to the fourth Gospel, Christ died 
(the 14th of Nisan, the day before the Passover); in that case, whatever 
Baur may say, the Asiatic rite rests on the narrative of the Passion 
according to the fourth Gospel, and bears witness thereby to the authen- 
ticity of this work; this rite is, therefore, entirely independent of Jewish 
legality. Or the churches of Asia celebrated the Supper on the evening 
of the 14th, because it was on that evening that the Jews celebrated the 
Paschal feast,—and this is the explanation which certain expressions of 
the Fathers render most probable. Would this be a symptom of Jewish 
legality? But St. Paul himself saw in the Paschal lamb the symbol of 
Christ (1 Cor. v. 7); he very carefully regarded the Jewish feasts, 
particularly that of the Passover, as is proved by Acts xx.6: “After 
the days of unleavened bread, we set sail from Philippi,” and 1 Cor. 
v. 8, where, exactly at the time of the Passover feast (comp. xvi. 8), he 
represents the Christian life as,a permanent feast of unleavened bread. 
It is probable, therefore, that it was Paul, and not John, who had origi- 
nally introduced at Ephesus this Paschal rite which John merely continued. 
We find here the same symbolism in virtue of which J esus, in the institu- 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. py 


tion of the Holy Supper, had transformed the memorial of the deliver- 
ance from Egypt into a memorial of eternal redemption. 

IV. The divergences from the Synoptics—We have already treated this 
subject, and shown in detail that they are all to the advantage of the 
fourth Gospel, and evidently prove its historical superiority, so that, far 
from forming a point in the argument against the authenticity of this 
work, they are one of the most decisive proofs in favor of it. 

V. The elevated, and, for the multitude, often even incomprehensible, con- 
tents of the discourses of Jesus. This subject has been treated at length; 
it is unnecessary to return to it. 

VI. How could a Galilean fisherman have attained such profound wisdom 
as that which shines forth in many parts of our Gospel? But, we will ask 
in our turn, how can we estimate what an intimate and prolonged 
contact with the Lord may have produced in an ardent and profound 
soul, such as John’s must have been? “If,” says Hase, admirably, “the 
highest human wisdom has come from Christianity, must it not be allowed 
that, in proximity to a being like Jesus, a young man with a rich and pro- 
found soul may have been developed and, as it were, set on fire? A mind 
so powerful as that which, in any case, Jesus had, does not merely attach 
itself to a faithful and loyal heart, but also to a mind which has lofty 
aims and aspirations. Most certainly, if John, when he taught in Asia, 
had only possessed the apostolic simplicity and culture of the Galilean 
fisherman, he would not have produced in that country the enduring im- 
pression of admiration and veneration which he left there.” 

VII. The author of the fourth Gospel came forth from the Gnostic cir- 
cles of the second century, not from the apostolic college. We have 
weighed this proposition, and it has been found to be too weak. There 
was certainly an elementary Gnosticism which dated from the apostolic 
times, and with which already the epistles of Paul and the letters in the 
Apocalypse contended ; it is against this that the first epistle of John is 
directed. It has nothing in common with the great Gnostic systems of 
the second century, except the general tendency; and the fourth evangei- 
ist, far from having been formed under the influence of these latter sys- 
tems, furnished in his book a part of the materials by means of which the 
leaders of those schools constructed their edifices on the very ground of 
Christianity. 

VIII. We come to the decisive point, the doctrine of the Logos. The 
Judeeo-Alexandrian origin of this idea and this term is historically proved ; 
this alone is enough to prove that an apostle of Jesus cannot have writ- 
ten a book which rests altogether upon it. It must, therefore, be ad- 
mitted that, as Philo, the principal representative of Alexandrianism at 
that period, made use of the ideas of Greek philosophy to give a rational 
uccount of the religious contents of his Jewish beliefs, in the same way the 
wuthor of the fourth Gospel, in his turn, made use of Philo in order to 
appropriate to himself speculatively the contents of his Christian beliefs. 


1See La doctrine du Logos dans le quatritme évangile, etc., by Jean Réville, pp. 179, 180. 


174 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


Two facts give an apparent support to this explanation of the Johannean 
teaching: 1. The term Logos inscribed at the beginning of our Gospel, 
which is precisely the one by which Philo expresses the fundamental 
notion of his philosophy; 2. The idea itself of an intermediate being 
between God and the world, by means of whom the absolute being com- 
municates with finite beings. But it is to this point that the whole anal- 
ogy is limited. And it remains to inquire whether what the two writers 
have in common in this relation is not explained by means of a higher 
source from which they both drew, or whether the fourth evangelist was 
really formed in the school of the Alexandrian philosopher.' 

In this last case, there may be differences of detail between them, 
undoubtedly, but the same general tendency will necessarily be found in 
them both. Now, there is nothing of this. The notion of the Logos is for 
Philo a metaphysical theory; with John, a fact of Divine love. For the 
former, God, being raised above all particular determination, is not appre- 
hensible by the human reason, and cannot communicate with matter 
except by means of the being in whom He manifests Himself; the Logos 
is the Divine reason, which conceives finite things and realizes them in 
the material world. With John, on the contrary, the idea of this being is 
a postulate of eternal love. ‘“ For thou didst love me before the creation 
of the world” (xvii. 24); and to this love of God for the Logos corre- 
sponds that of the Logos for God Himself: ‘In the beginning was the 
Word, and the Word was with God;” literally, tended to God, moved 
toward God. There is no secondary difference here; we are in the pres- 
ence of two different tendencies ;—on the one side, that of philosophical 
speculation, the need of knowing; on the other, that of piety, the need 
of salvation. Not that I would say that all piety is wanting to Philo, and 
all need of knowing to John. The question here is of the point of sup- 
port of the two teachings in the souls of the two writers. 

With this fundamental difference is connected the following fact: The 
doctrine of the Logos with Philo has its value in itself, as an idea indis- 
pensable to human speculation; with John, this idea is only at the ser- 
vice of an historical fact, a means of explaining the divine element which 
the author perceived in the person of Jesus Christ. Réville complains 
several times of the fact that thespeculative data respecting the nature 
and activity of the Logos “are extremely limited in the prologue of John 

A little more speculation, for the clearness of the narrative, would 
not have been misplaced” (pp. 37, 38). This charge is naive; the 
young writer demands of the fourth Gospel that it should be what it 
ought to have been, assuredly, if it were that which he would desire it to 
be. He wishes to make of it a philosophical work, and, as it does not 
respond to this demand, he censures it instead of turning his criticism 


1 Let us recall to mind the fact that Philo in which he tries to show the relation be- 
lived in the first century of our era, and that tween the Jewish beliefs and the Greek 
he wasa member of a rich Jewish family of philosophies, especially those of Plato and 
Alexandria. He wrote a multitude of trea- the Stoies. 
tises on philosophical and religious subjects, 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 175 


against his own theory. There is no philosophical speculation in the 
prologue; there is simply a conception of the person of Jesus expressed 
by means of a term which was current at that period in the philosophical 
language. 

And further, this term is taken in a wholly different sense from that 
which it has in speculation generally, and in that of Philo in particular. 
With the latter, the word Logos is used in the sense of reason; it denotes 
the Divine reason, whether residing in God or as realized in the world of 
finite beings—in the sense in which the Stoics spoke of reason diffused 
through all beings (6 Kowde Adyog 6 did ravtwv épyduevoc). Thus Philo calls 
it sometimes the idea of ideas (idéa ideGv) or the metropolis of ideas. It is 
the ideal of the finite world, in its whole and in its details, as existing in 
the divine understanding. With John, the term Logos is evidently taken 
in the sense of word; this is its constant meaning throughout the Gospel, 
where it denotes the divine revelation, and even in the prologue, where the 
creative word of Genesis is personified under this name. When Philo 
wishes to express this idea, he adds to the word Logos (reason) the term 
bjua (word, in the special sense of the word). Thus in this passage : “ God 
creates the one and the other (the heaven and the earth) 76 éavtod Adyy 
phuare (by his own Logos-word).” Or he uses only the second term: “The 
whole world was made 0:a pjuaroc rot aitiov (by the word, the cause of things).” 
This difference arises from the fact that Philo moves in the sphere of specu- 
lation, John in that of the divine action for the salvation of humanity. 

How different, also, the part played by the Logos in the one and in the 
other! The Logos of Philo is a universal principle, the general law of 
things; it is not placed in any relation to the person of the Messiah ; while, 
with John, the Messiah is Himself this incarnate Word, the gift which the 
Father makes to the world and by means of which He comes to save it. 
The mere supposition of the incarnation of the Logos would be, whatever 
Réville may say, an enormity to the view of Philo. Does not sin arise 
from matter, and does not the defilement of the human soul result from 
its connection with a body? What blasphemy, therefore, would it not be, 
to represent the Logos as having appeared in a human person having a 
soul and body! The Messiah of Philo is, also, only a simple man who 
will bring back the Jews from their dispersion and will restore to them 
the glorious state to which they are entitled. 

In the spiritual world itself the part sustained by the Logos differs en- 
tirely in the conception of Philo from what it is in that of John. With 
the latter, the Logos is the light of men (i. 4), and, if there is darkness in 
the world, it is because the world has not known Him—Him who con- 
tinues to act in His creation by illuminating every man (vv. 9, 10). To the 
view of Philo, the Logos is indeed the interpreter of God, but not for the 
men who belong to the rank of the perfect. The true sage rises by the act 
of immediate contemplation even to the knowledge of God, without de- 
pending on the aid of the Logos. The Logos is the God of the imperfect, 
who, not being able to rise as far as the model, must be content to con- 
template the portrait. The Logos of Philo, says Gess, is a guide who does 


176 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 

not lead to the end, to God Himself; a God, in whom one does not possess 
the real God. To speculate is to work on the Logos, on the Divine reason 
manifested in the world; but, on this path, one will by no means reach 
God Himself; one comes to Him only by the way of immediate intuition, 
which passes one side of the Logos. Here is not the Logos of the fourth 
Gospel, in which Jesus says: “I el the way, the truth and the life; no one 
cometh to the Father but by me.’ 

Finally, the intention of the theory of the Logos with Philo is to preserve 
God from all compromising contact with the material world. God is an 
absolutely transcendent being who cannot, without derogation, unite Him- 
self with the finite world. Réville, indeed, cites a certain number of cases 
where God seems endowed with goodness and grace, and acts by Himself 
in the finite world. This is a remnant of the influence exercised on the 
thought of the Jewish philosopher by the living monotheism of the Old 
Testament. We might add such passages to the innumerable proofs of 
inconsistency which are found in the speculation of Philo; but it is also. 
possible that he attributes these divine communications to the action of 
God confounded with that of the Logos. The Divine being, with John— 
He whom he calls absolutely God—is not an indeterminable essence; He 
is aperson full of will, of activity, of love; He is the Father, who loves not 
only the Son whom He sacrifices, but also the world to which He gives 
Him; who, by an inward teaching and an attraction exercised on human 
individuals, brings them to the Son Himself; “No man,” says Jesus, “can 
come to me except the Father who hath sent me draw him ... All that 
the Father giveth me, shall come to me” (John vi. 44 and 87). This Father 
“Himself beareth witness to the Son ” through acts wrought in the domain 
of matter, the miracles (v. 36). He even causes to resound in the temple 
an outwardly perceptible voice in answer to a prayer of Jesus (xii. 28). 
Thus the conception of John is so completely the opposite to that of Philo, 
that it makes of the Father an intermediate agent between Jesus and men, 
so that Jesus can utter those words, which would have been, for Philo, the 
height of absurdity: “Thine they were, and Thou gavest them me” 
(xvii. 6).! 

The difference between John and Philo is so profound, that Gess, the 
one who has most thoroughly studied them both, has said: “He who 
believes that he can unite in one the thought of John and that of Philo, 
understands nothing either of John or of Philo.”? It is not in certain 
details-only, it isin the tendency itself, that they differ. And yet there are 
between the two, as we have seen, certain analogies of which it is necessary 


1 See Gess, IT., p. 642 ff. 

2The defenders of the theory which we con- 
tend against are so dominated by their pre- 
conceived idea, that they even fashion after 
their own fancy, without hesitation, the texts 
which they quote. Thus we have pointed 
out that error of Colani, who, quoting the 
prayer of Jesus, John xii. 28, makes him say: 
“ Father, glorify my name,” instead of “ glorify 


thy name ’’(see our second ed., vol. IIT., p. 282). 
It happens that Réville commits a similar 
mistake in quoting the same verse: “A voice 
came from heaven and said: ‘I have both 
glorified thee, and will also glorify thee (thee, 
Jesus],’ while the actual voice said: ‘I have 
both glorified it, and will also glorify it [my 
name].’ ” 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 177 


to find the cause. But is it so difficult to discover it? Are not Philo and 
John, both of them, Jews, reared in the school of the law and the prophets? 

Three converging lines in the Old Testament lead to a single end: 1. 
The notion of the Word of God, as a manifestation of His all powerful and 
creative will in the finite world. Very frequently this principle of action 
in God is even personified in the Old Testament. Thus when, in Ps. evii. 
20, it is said: “ He sendeth His Word, and it healeth them,” or Ps. exlvii. 
15: “He sendeth His Word on the earth, and it runneth swiftly ;” or Is. ly. 
11: “ My Word shall do all the things for which I have sent it.” There is 
evidently here, however, only a poetic personification. 2. The notion of 
wisdom in the book of Proverbs, especially in chap. vili. The author repre- 
sents it as itself describing what it is for God: “ He possessed me from the 
beginning of his way, before his works . . .; I was a workman with him, 
and I was his delight continually.” Still a mere poetic personification, 
surely. The word is a power of action; wisdom, an intelligence and a 
conceived plan. 3. In several passages of Genesis, a being is spoken of in 
whom Jehovah Himself appears in the sensible world. He is sometimes 
distinguished from Him by the name Angel of the Lord, sometimes con- 
founded with Him by the way in which He expresses Himself, saying: J, 
in speaking of Jehovah Himself. Some theologians see in him only an 
ordinary angel,—not always the same one, perhaps,—each time accom- 
plishing a special mission. Others even deny Him personality, and see in 
Him only a sensible form, the passing mode of appearance of Jehovah 
Himself. These two interpretations are wrecked against the passage, 
Exod. xxiii. 21, where God, in speaking of this Angel of the Lord, says: 
“Beware! For he will not pardon your sin; my name isin him.” The 
name is the reflection of the essence. Here this name is the reflection of 
the holy essence of God, inflexible towards the will which is obstinate in 
sinning. Such a quality implies personality. The question, therefore, is 
of areal person, having a divine character, and in whom God Himself 
manifests Himself (my name—in him). This angel is also called by Isaiah 
(Ixili. 9): “ The Angel of the Presence” of Jehovah, and Malachi, at the end 
of the Old Testament, taking the final step, identifies him with the Mes- 
siah: “Suddenly the Lord whom ye seek and the Angel of the Covenant 
whom ye desire shall enter into his temple; behold, he cometh, saith the 
Lord of hosts.” In this third idea we find no longer only the divine intel- 
ligence or force personified, but a living divine being, Him who should 
come to save his people as Messiah.—These so remarkable indications 
did not remain unnoticed by the ancient Jewish doctors. They appear 
to have early endeavored to bring together these three lines into a single 
idea; that of the being of whom God makes use on every o¢casion when 
He puts Himself in connection with the external world. They designate 
Him sometimes by the names Shekinah (habitation), or Jekara (brightness), 
sometimes, and most frequently, by the name Memar or Memra di Jehovah 
(Word of the Lord). The Chaldaic paraphrases of the Old Testament, called 
Targums, constantly introduce this being where the Old Testament speaks 
simply of the Lord. These writings, perhaps, date only from the third or 

12 


178 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


fourth century of our era, it is true; but, as Schiirer says, it is beyond 
doubt that these paraphrases rest upon more ancient works, and are the 
product of an elaboration for ages. Fragments of similar writings are 
preserved, dating from the second century before Jesus Christ, from the 
time of John Hyrcanus. Already before the fall of Jerusalem, mention is 
made of a Targum on the book of Job, and the Mischna (of the second 
century after Jesus Christ) already speaks of translations of the Bible into 
Chaldee.! It is infinitely improbable, moreover, that the Jewish theo- 
logians would have accepted from the Christians a notion so favorable to 
the religion of the latter. Now, the following are some examples of the 
manner in which these doctors paraphrase the Old Testament. It is said 
in Gen. xxi. 20, in speaking of Ishmael: ‘God was with the lad;” the 
paraphrase says: “The Word of Jehovah was with the lad.” xxviii. 21, 
where Jacob says: “The Lord shall be my God;” the Targum makes him 
say: “The Word of Jehovah shall be my God.” xxxix. 21, instead of “The 
Lord was with Joseph,” ... “the Memra (the Word) was with Joseph.” 
Exod. xix. 17, instead of “And Moses brought forth the people to meet 
God” :.. “And Moses brought forth the people to meet the Word 
of Jehovah.” Num. xxii. 20, instead of “God came unto Balaam.”... 
“The Word of Jehovah came unto Balaam.” Deut. iv. 24, instead of “ God 
is a consuming fire.” ... “The Word of Jehovah is a consuming fire.” 


Is. i. 14, instead of “My soul hateth your new moons.” ... “My Word 
hateth,” .. . xlii. 1, instead of “ My soul delightethin him.” ... “ My Word 
delighteth,” . .. etc., etc. It is therefore indisputable that, at the time 


when John wrote, the Jewish theology had already, by the special name 
of Word, definitely expressed the idea of the God who enters into connec- 
tion with the external world. It will have been noticed that this form is 
particularly used in the passages in which the Scriptures ascribe to God a 
human feeling, such as that of repenting, of aversion, of complacency, of 
hatred. 

The question now is to determine whether these doctors represented 
this manifested God to themselves as a real person and distinct from the 
person of God Himself. There can be brought forward in relation to this 
point, just as in relation to the nature of the Logos of Philo, passages 
having opposite meanings. Gess regards as incompatible with the no- 
tion of a real person the passage 1 Kings viii. 15, in which the Targum 
substitutes for the expressions, the mouth and the hand of Jehovah, the fol- 
lowing: the Word (Memar) and the will of Jehovah, the first as declaring, 
the second as executing. In the same way, Jer. xxxii. 41, or again Gen. 
xxii. 16, where the Targum makes the Lord say: “I swear bymy Word,” 
instead of: “I swear by myself.” But is it necessary to suppose the par- 
aphrasts systematically consistent with themselves in a region so myste- 
rious and obscure? Besides, it appears to me much more difficult to ex- 
plain how God should swear by His Word, if it is not a person like Him- 
self, than if it is a personal being; and as to the first passage, the term 


1Schtirer, Lehrbuch des neutest. Zeitgeschichte, p. 479. 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 179 


Word seems to regain its ordinary meaning, since the two terms word and 
will correspond to the two acts: speaking and acting. It is impossible 
not to find the idea of personality in all the following passages: ‘My 
Word hates,” “My Word has pleasure,” “the Word shall be my God ;” 
“the Word shall contend for you; ” “ the Brightness of Jehovah arose and 
said.”” So much the more, since in several passages, instead of the Word 
or the Brightness of Jehovah, it is the Angel of the Lord who is substi- 
tuted for the simple name of Jehovah, for example, Exod. iv. 24, and 
Judges iv. 14. Gess objects that if this theory of a second divine person, 
called the Word of Jehovah, had been received in Palestine at that 
period, it could not be altogether wanting in the writings of St. Paul. But 
the teaching of that apostle is drawn from the revelation which he had 
received, and not from the lessons of his early masters. Paul may not 
have found in the region where he taught, and at the time when he taught, 
a call to use this term, while in the great centre, Ephesus, at the end of 
the first century, John found himself in circumstances which drew his 
particular attention to this term. The passages 1 Cor. viii. 6, where crea- 
tion is attributed to Christ, and 1 Cor. x. 5, where Christ is represented as 
the leader of Israel in the wilderness, show in any case that the notion 
itself was as familiar to him as it was to John; and this is the essential 
point. “ 

If the point is carefully considered, the paraphrasts, in denying to God 
all human emotions, in order to attribute them to the Memar (the Word), 
give in fact to this manifested God the seal of personality in even a much 
more pronounced way than to God Himself. But perhapsit is with them, 
as with Philo, whose idea respecting the personality of the Logos seems 
to be quite fluctuating. Zeller has clearly shown the cause of this oscil- 
lation in the mind of this philosopher. On one side, the Logos must 
appertain to the essence of God, which seems to make him a simple 
divine attribute (the divine reason or wisdom), and consequently to ex- 
clude personality ; on the other side, he must be in relation with matter, 
in order to cause the particular types to penetrate it on which finite things 
are formed, and this function supposes a being distinct from God, and, 
consequently, personal. A similar observation may be made with regard 
to the oriental paraphrasts ; and this correspondence between them would 
have nothing surprising in it if, as Schiirer thinks, Philo’s philosophy ex- 
ercised an influence on the exegesis of these latter! 

We may now conclude. Philo was formed, above all, in the school of 
the Old Testament ; he had learned in it, through all the facts which we 
have pointed out above, the existence of a being, personal or impersonal, 
by means of whom God acts upon the world, when He puts Himself in 
connection with it. And he believed that he could philosophically inter- 
pret the idea of this being, through explaining it by means of the Logos, 
or divine reason, of the Greek philosophers. For this reason he calls him 
sometimes Logos or second God (debrepoc 6e6c) when he speaks as a disciple 


\Schurer, Literatur-Zeitung, 1878, No. 17. 


180 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 

of these schools, and sometimes Archangel, High-priest, Son, First-born Son, 
when he resumes the Jewish language. So true is it that the Porch and 
the Academy furnished him the key of his Judaism, that in one instance 
he even goes so far as to say: “the immortal ideas (d6évarou Adyot) which 
we [Jews] call angels.” 

John, on his side, was also in the school of the Old Testament; he also 
learned from this sacred book the existence of that being, sometimes dis- 
tinct from the Lord, sometimes confounded with Him, with whom God 
‘conversed when He said: “ Let us make man in our image,” who conse- 
quently participated in the creative act, who communicates life to all 
things, but who has especially marked with His luminous impress every 
human soul, who finally is the permanent agent in the theophanies of 
the Old Testament. John is so penetrated by this view, that in the per- 
son of Adonai, the Lord, who calls Isaiah (chap. vi.) to the prophetic min- 
istry, he recognizes the same divine being who, at a later time, in Jesus 
Christ manifested His glory in a human life (John xii. 41);! exactly as 
St. Paul recognizes the divine being, manifested in Christ, in the leader of 
Israel through the wilderness (1 Cor. x. 4), and as the author of the Epistle 
to the Hebrews, finally, attributes to the Son the creation and preservation 
of all things, as well as the sacrifice of purification for our sins (Heb. i. 
1-3). . 

But here is the difference between John and Philo: instead of going 
from the Old Testament to the schools of Plato and the Stoics, John 
passed to that of Jesus. And when he beheld in Him that unique glory, 
full of divine grace and truth, which he has described John i. 14—when he 
heard declarations such as these: “He who hath seen me, hath seen the 
Father ;” “Thou didst love me before the foundation of the world;” 
“ Before Abraham was, I am;” he comprehended what He whom he had 
before him was, and without difficulty accomplished, in his mind, that 
fusion between the eternal agent of God and the Christ, which had not 
entered into the mind of the Alexandrian philosopher. Philo is the Old 
Testament explained by Greek philosophy; John is the Old Testament 
completed and explained by Jesus Christ.? 

As for the term Logos, on which John fixed in order to designate the 
divine being whom he had recognized in the person of Christ, it was 
offered to him, as we have seen, by the Old Testament; the part which 
the Word of God plays in that book, particularly in the account of the 
creation, was sufficient to make him prefer this term to every other. 
That of Son, as Gess rightly says, only expressed the personal relation be- 


tween God and the divine being whom John wished to characterize. 


1“Tsaiah said these things when he saw 
his glory and spake of him [Christ].” 

2 We see how many errors are included in 
the opinion of Jean Réville, which may be 
thus stated: “The Alexandrian theology is 
the synthesis of Judaism and Greek philoso- 
phy, and the doctrine of John is, in its turn, 


The 


the synthesis of this Alexandrian theology 
with the Christian tradition.” We believe 
that the Alexandrian theology is foreign to 
John’s teaching, and that this teaching, 
instead of resting on the Christian tradition, 
isa personal testimony (John i. 14; 1 John 
i, 1-4). 


x 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 181 


term Word, on the contrary, expressed His double relation, on one side 
to the God who reveals Himself in Him, and on the other to the world 
to which He manifests Himself. And if this name of Word was already 
used in the Jewish schools (as seems to be shown by the paraphrases), we 
may so much more easily understand how it may have been the first one 
which presented itself to the apostle’s mind. It is remarkable that this 
title is found as a designation of Christ in the three Johannean writ- 
ings (Gosp. i. 1; 1 Ep.i. 1-8; Apoc. xix. 18), and in these three writings 
alone. It is, as it were, an indissoluble bond which unites them. The 
fact that this name is found even in the Apocalypse, whose author, 
assuredly, is not lable to the suspicion of Alexandrianism, completes the 
proof that its source is Jewish, and by no means Philonean. Finally, 
being established at Ephesus, that focus of religious syncretism, whither 
all the philosophical doctrines flowed in from Persia, from Greece and 
from Egypt, John might have often heard, in the religious and philosoph- 
ical teachings or conversations, the term Word applied to the manifested 
God. When he inscribed it at the beginning of his narrative, therefore, 
it was as if he had said: ‘This Logos, respecting whom you are specula- 
ting, without coming to the real knowledge of Him, we possess, we Chris- 
tians. We have seen and heard Him Himself, and He it is whose history 
we are about to relate to you.” ! 

We see, consequently, that there is nothing compromising to the Johan- 
nean origin of the fourth Gospel in this term Logos, to which criticism 
clings with tenacity, and which it uses in a way that does little honor to 
its scientific impartiality. 

IX. After having done justice to all these considerations, Hase avows 
himself overpowered by a ninth and last one, namely this: Certain inci- 
dents in our Gospel have a legendary stamp, and cannot have been related 
by an eye-witness; thus, the picture of John the Baptist and the first dis- 
ciples of Jesus, the change of the water into wine and the multiplication 
of the loaves, finally, the appearances of Jesus after He rose from the dead. 
Hase, for a long time, believed that he could escape the force of this con- 
sideration by holding that John was not present when the facts occurred 
which gave rise to these legends. He now acknowledges that this was a 
forced expedient, and lays down his arms. The reply attempted by this 
theologian was, in fact, only a poor subterfuge, and he did well to renounce 
it. But the argument before which the veteran of Jena gives way, is of no 
more importance for that reason; for, however Hase may think he can 
affirm the contrary, it simply amounts to the question of the super- 
natural. 

X. Baur has especially insisted upon the argument derived from the 


1 Neander, Apost. Zeitalter, ii. p. 549: “ John should come and behold Him who had man- 
wished to lead those who were occupying ifested Himself in human _nature;—to 
themselves too much with speculations about believe and test by experience, as John 
the Logos, from their idealism to areligious _ himself testified of what he had seen and 
realism. .. Instead of exploring that which experienced.” 
is hidden and cannot be attained, each one 


182 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


Paschal dispute at the end of the second century, but from a different point 
of view from that from which we have already treated this question (p. 
172). He claims that in fixing on the 14th of Nisan as the day of Christis 
death, which the Synoptics placed on the 15th, the author of the fourth 
Gospel sought to completely put an end to the Paschal rite of the churches 
of Asia, which celebrated the Passover on the 14th in the evening. In 
fact, he displaces thus the day of the last meal of Christ and carries it back 
to the evening of the 13th. Now, as it was at that meal that Jesus insti- 
tuted the Passover, the author creates thereby a conflict between the Gos- 
pel history and the Asiatic rite. And as John must have been the author 
of that rite, he cannot have composed a Gospel designed to contest it. 
This argument rests on the idea that an annual commemorative festival is 
celebrated on the day on which that feast was instituted, and not the day 
on which the event that gave rise to it occurred. Every one at once per- 
ceives the falsity of this view. Besides, we have already shown that the 
narrative of John respecting this point is historically justified, and that by 
the Synoptics themselves (p. 78). It was not invented, therefore, in the 
service of ecclesiastical tactics. The rite of the churches of Asia probably 
depended, not on any date whatever in the history of the Passion, but on 
the day of the. Paschal meal in the Old Covenant. In any case, if the 
evangelist had desired to favor the Roman Church, which celebrated the 
Holy Paschal Supper on the Sunday of the resurrection, and to combat the 
Asiatic rite which placed it on the evening of the 14th, it would have served 
no purpose to place the institution of the Holy Supper on the 18th, at eve- 
ning;—to reach this end, it would have been necessary to place it on Sun- 
day morning, and to make it the first act of Jesus after His resurrection! 
(See, for further details, the Commentary, at the end of chap. xix.) 

XI. The difference of matter and form between the Gospel and the 
Apocalypse. The impossibility of referring these two works to the same 
author had formerly become a kind of axiom for criticism. Consequently, 
it was thought that, as the Apocalypse has in its favor earlier and more 
positive testimonies than the Gospel, it was just to give it the preference 
and to reject the Johannean origin of the latter. Thus even Baur, Hilgen- 
feld and many others reason. But the dilemma on which this conclusion 
rests is more and more doubted at present. It is positively set aside by Hase, 
who cites, as an analogy, the difference which is so marked between the 
first and second parts of Goethe’s Faust; more than this, he thinks that the 
Apocalypse, bearing testimony to John’s residence in Asia, rather confirms 
thereby the tradition relative to the Gospel.! Weizsicker cannot help ac- 
knowledging that, notwithstanding the difference of author, the Apocalypse 
is “in organic connection with the spirit of the Gospel.”? Baur himself 
has borne witness to the complete identity of the two works, by calling the 
Johannean Gospel “a spiritualized Apocalypse.” If,indeed, it can be proved 
that it is necessary to interpret spiritually the poetic images and plastic 
forms of the Apocalypse, wherein, according to this declaration of Baur 


1 Geschichte Jesu, pp. 29-31. 2 Untersuch., p. 295. 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 183 


himself, will it differ from the Gospel? Let us add that the superiority 
which is attributed to the testimony of tradition in relation to the Apoca- 
lypse is a fiction, which does not become more true for being continually 
repeated! Keim and Scholten find the Apocalypse as insufficiently at- 
tested as the Gospel, and reject them both. 

In our view, a choice between these works is by no means necessary, 
for they bear distinctly the seal of their composition by one and the same 
author. 

And (1) from the standpoint of style. The charge made against the 
author of the Apocalypse of transgressing the rules of grammar or of 
Greek syntax, is one of those mistakes which it would be well not to re- 
peat any further. The preposition azé from is construed with the nomi- 
natives 6 dv (who is) and 6 épyduevoc (who is to come). A barbarism! cries 
the critic. The Gospel, on the contrary, is written in correct Greek. 
But in the same verse, i. 4, we find this same preposition azé from, con- 
strued regularly with the genitive tév éxrd rvevudtwv (the seven spirits). 
And the same is the case, without a single exception, throughout all the 
rest of the book! The construction which is found fault with, far from 
being a schoolboy’s error, is, therefore, the bold anomaly of a master who 
wished to picture, by the immutability of the word, the immutability of 
the subject designated, namely God. Numbers of appositions in the 
nominative with substantives in the genitive or dative are charged. 
Comp. ii. 20 (Tisch.) iii. 12, etc. But constantly we find in the same book 
appositions in their regular cases (comp. i. 10, 11; iii. 10, etc.). In the 
cases of the opposite kind, the author, in setting grammar at defiance, 
has evidently desired to give a greater independence to the appositional 
substantive or participle. The Gospel,in several instances, offers us anal- 
ogous irregularities (comp. vi. 39; xvii. 2, etc.)—It is remarked further 
that the Gospel uses abstract terms, where the Apocalypse is disposed to 
clothe the idea with a figure. The one will say life, where the other 
says living fountains of waters ; the one light, where the other says the lamp 
of the holy city ; the one the world, the other the Gentiles ; the one death, 
the other the second death, etc., etc. It is sufficient, as a complete answer, 
to call to mind, with Hase, that “the Apocalypse employs the forms of 
poetry which are sensible (sinnlich).” Let us, also, not forget that the 
Apocalypse is the work of ecstasy and of vision, and that John conceived 
it év rvebuare (carried away in the spirit), while the Gospel is the calm and 
deliberate reproduction of simple historical recollections, and that it is 
written év voi (in an unexcited state of mind).—The Aramaisms of the 
Apocalypse are also spoken of, which form a contrast with the Greek 
accuracy of the Gospel. Account must here be taken of a decisive fact. 
The Apocalypse is written under the constant influence of the prophetic 
pictures of the Old Testament, the coloring of whose style, as a conse- 


1 The question is especially ofthe testimony tin, from that of Papias and from that of the 
which Justin gives to the Apocalypse; now, twenty-first chapter. 
we have seen what follows, in favor of the 2Comp. respecting this difference, 1 Cor. 
Gospel, from the testimony of the same Jus- xiv, 14, 15. 


184 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


quence, comes out in its own style,while the Gospel simply relates the events 
of which the author was a witness, independently of every foreign model. 
Under these so very different conditions of redaction, as the Dutch critic 
Niermeyer justly observes,’ the entire absence of difference between the 
two writings (on the supposition that they are both by the same author) 
would “ afford ground for legitimate astonishment.” Winer has remarked 
how the style of Josephus has a more Aramaic coloring when he relates 
the history of the Old Testament, and when he is under the influence of 
the sacred writings, than when he describes, in the Jewish War, the events 
which happened under his own eyes.—But with all this, what real and 
fundamental homogeneousness of style between these two works, to 
the view of every one who does not stop at the surface! We recommend, 
in this regard, the excellent study of Niermeyer (see p. 23 f). The same 
favorite expressions, to make a le, to do the truth; to keep the command- 
ments, or the word ; to hunger and thirst, to designate the deep wants of the 
soul; the term Amen, Amen, which so often begins the declarations of 
Jesus in the fourth Gospel, becoming in the Apocalypse the personal name 
of Christ Himself; the figure of the Lamb, applied in the Gospel (with the 
term auvdc) to the victim burdened with the sin of the world, and used in 
the Apocalypse, with the neuter and more emphatic term dpviov, in order 
to designate the glorified Lord and to form the counterpart of the term 
Onpiov, the Beast. Finally, the name Word or Word of God, given to 
Christ, which belongs only to the three Johannean writings in the entire 
New Testament, and unites them, as it were, by an indissoluble bond. 
To these analogies of expression let us add that of entire descriptions; for 
example, Apoc. ili. 20, where the author describes the intimate commu- 
nion of Christ with the believer: “ Behold, I stand at the door and knock; 
if any one hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to him, and 
will sup with him, and he with me.” Let this expression be compared 
with John xiv., more particularly with the 28d verse: “We will come to 
him and make our abode with him.” Or the description of the heavenly 
happiness of believers, Apoc. vii. 15-17: “And he that sitteth on the 
throne shall dwell with them. They shall hunger no more, and they shall 
thirst no more .... , because the Lamb who is in the midst of the 
throne shall feed them and shall lead them to living fountains of waters, 
and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.” We find here 
brought together several characteristic expressions of the Johannean style: 
oxyvooy év (to dwell in a tent), comp. John i. 14; recvav, dupav (to hunger, to 
thirst), comp. vi. 385; romuaivew (to feed) x. 1-16; xxi. 16; ddnyeiv (to guide) 
xvi. 13; and as to the last point, depicting God’s tenderness, does it not 
recall the expression of Jesus, xiv. 21: “He that loveth me shall be loved 
of my Father? ””—A final analogy, which sets the seal on the preceding, 
is found in the quotation from Zechariah (xii. 10), Apoc. i. 7, where the 
author corrects the translation of the LX X. precisely as the author of the 
Gospel does, in John xix. 37. 


1Statement by Busken-Huet, Revue de théologie, Sept., 1856. 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 185 


2. With regard to the matter, the agreement between the two writings is 
no less remarkable. 

It has been sometimes said that the God of the Apocalypse is a God of 
wrath, while the God of the Gospel is all love. It seems to be forgotten 
that it is in the Gospel that this threatening is found: “ He that obeyeth 
not the Son, the wrath of God abideth on him” (iii. 36), and that other 
threatening: “Ye shall seek me, but ye shall die in your sins” (viii. 24); 
and, on the other hand, that it is the author of the Apocalypse who twice 
reproduces (vil. 17 and xxi. 4) that promise of Isaiah—the most tender of 
all which the Scriptures contain: ‘God shall wipe every tear from their 
eyes.” Love rules in the Gospel, because this book describes the first 
coming of the Son of God, as Saviour ; severity in the Apocalypse, because 
it is the representation of the second coming of the Son, as Judge. 

The Christology of the Apocalypse is identical with that of the Gospel. 
We have already shown (p. 113) that the designation of Christ as 7 apy? 
Tie KTicewe Tov Oevd, the beginning of the creation of God (iii. 14), must not be 
understood in the sense of a temporal beginning, as if Jesus Himself 
formed a part of the creation, but in the sense in which eternity may be 
called the beginning, that is to say, the principle of the creation. This | 
sense follows from the passages in which the term beginning (apy) is com- 
pleted by the term end (réA0c) and in which the parallel epithet, the first, is 
also completed by the last. We must recall to mind the fact that these 
expressions are borrowed from Isaiah, with whom they are, as it were, the 
insignia of the peculiar glory of Jehovah. If Jesus Himself formed part 
of the creation, according to the author of the Apocalypse, as Hilgenfeld 
claims, how could he call Him 6 (6», the living one (i. 18)? This word re- 
minds one of the expressions of the Gospel, i. 4: “In him was life,” and 
vi. 51: “I am the living bread,” a term which, in the context, implies the 
sense of life-giving. The homage of worship from all creatures is addressed 
to the Lamb at the same time as to the Father (v. 15); a fact which may 
fitly be compared with xxii. 9: “ Worship God (only).” But, at the same 
time, the Son is subordinate to the Father. As for the revelation “ which 
He gives to His servants,” in this very book, it is “God who gave it to 
Him” (i.1). In the Gospel, Jesus declares also that it is “the Father who 
giveth the Son to have life in Himself” (v. 26), and that “ His Father is 
greater than He” (xiv. 28). The terms Word and Son, which are common 
to the two works, both of them imply this double notion of dependence 
and community of nature. 

The means of justification before God are absolutely the same in the 
two works; there is no question in the Apocalypse either of circumcision, 
or of any legal work. “Salvation” descends “ from the throne of God and 
of the Lamb” as a divine gift (vii. 10). The same figure is applied to the 
river of living water (xxii. 1). It is “in the blood of the Lamb that the elect 
wash their robes ” (vili. 14); it is ‘through this blood that they gain the 
victory over Satan” (xii. 11). Justification and sanctification are, there- 
fore, the fruit of faith in the work of Christ. If the keeping of the com- 
mandments of God is frequently spoken of, the case is exactly the same in 


186 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


the Gospel (xiv. 21; xv. 10) and in the first epistle (v. 2, etc.). And it is 
very evident that this obedience is that which springs from faith. Critics 
especially urge the reproach addressed to the bishop of Pergamos, of tol- 
erating persons who, “after the example of Balaam, teach men to eat meats 
sacrificed to idols and to commit fornication ” (ii. 14). The teaching thus 
made the subject of accusation is none other, it is said, than that of St. 
Paul in First Corinthians (viii—x.). Here, therefore, is a declaration of 
war made against Paulinism, and the evident indication of a Judaizing 
tendency ; it is the antipode of the fourth Gospel. But one and the same 
thing may be said in two very different spirits. Paulin 1 Cor. begins by 
permitting, in the name of monotheism and the freedom of faith, the 
eating of the meats sacrificed to idols ; the Christian should not be afraid 
of contracting defilement from material food; but afterwards he restricts 
this permission in two ways: 1. The exercise of this right is subordinate 
to the duty of charity towards brethren having conscientious scruples; 
2. It must never be carried to the point of participation in the sacred 
feasts celebrated in the heathen sanctuaries, because such an act implies 
a close union with idolatry (x. 14-21), and because in such circumstances 
the believer “who thinks that he stands” may easily fall (1 Cor. x. 12). 
Evidently he means by this: fall into impurity—that vice which was so 
prevalent in Corinth and against which he had just put the members of 
the Church on their guard, in chap. vi. Now it is precisely against this 
second manner of eating the sacrificial meats that the author of the Apoc- 
alypse also raises his voice, as is shown by the close connection which is 
made between these two expressions: to eat meats sacrificed to idols and to 
commit fornication. What temptation to this latter vice could have re- 
sulted from the fact of eating such food ata private table, either that of 
the Christian himself, or at the house of a brother who had invited him! 
And this is the only thing which Paul authorizes (1 Cor. x. 25-27). We 
know, on the contrary, that, towards the end of the first century, and from 
the beginnings of Gnosticism, the heretics set about recommending the 
eating of meats sacrificed to idols, precisely in the sense in which Paul 
had prohibited it. They sought thereby to reconcile Christianity with 
Paganism. Ireneeus says (1. 6) : “ They eat without scruple the meats which 
have been sacrificed to idols, thinking that they do not defile themselves 
thereby, and whenever there is among the heathen a festival prepared in 
honor of the idols, they are the first to be there.” We can understand the 
falls which resulted from this. “Ireneeus also immediately adds, “ that these 
Gnostics give themselves up to the lusts of the flesh with greediness;” 
and when the Jew Trypho reproaches Justin with the fact that the Chris- 
tians eat sacrificial meats, the latter replies, unhesitatingly, that “it is only 
the Valentinians and other heretics who act in this way.” Basilides 
taught, according to the report of Eusebius (H. E., iv. 7), that, in time of 
persecution, one might, in order to save one’s life, eat sacrificial meats and 
deny the faith. The first of these acts was only the outward form of the 
second. These are the abominations against which the author of the 
Apocalypse protests. What have they in common with the case which is 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 187 


authorized by Paul? We have discussed this passage at considerable 
length, because it is one of the principal supports on which the opinion 
rests, which is so widely extended at the present day, as to the Judaizing 
character of the Apocalypse. 

It has been maintained that when the author puts the Church of Ephe- 
sus on its guard “against those who say they are apostles and are not, and 
has found them liars,” he means to designate St. Paul. But what! in a 
letter addressed to a Church which Paul had founded during a residence 
of three years, and from which Christianity had spread through all the 
countries of the neighborhood, a man dared to maintain that the apostle- 
ship of this man was an untruth! Was it not in that region of Asia Minor 
that there were found those multitudes of converts due to the labor of 
the apostle, whose triumph the author of the Apocalypse celebrates in 
chap. vii. and elsewhere? Luthardt simply says, in answer to such an 
assertion: ‘He who proves too much proves nothing.” Volkmar has 
made another discovery: the false prophet, the beast with the horns of a 
lamb, the confederate of the antichrist, who seeks to bring the whole 
world under the power of the latter, is again St. Paul; for in the Epistle 
to the Romans (chap. xiii.), he teaches Christians the duty of submitting 
themselves to the superior powers, which is equivalent to binding them 
to assume the mark of the beast. Is not this a poor jest, rather than a 
serious argument? The way of submission marked out by Paul is that 
which the entire Scriptures teach with regard to earthly powers. It was 
that which Jeremiah marked out for the last kings of Judah towards Neb- 
uchadnezzar. Jesus knows no other: “ Put up thy sword into the sheath, 
for he that smiteth with thesword shall perish by the sword.” Theauthor 
of the Apocalypse himself recommends it to the Christians persecuted by 
the antichrist, for he sets in opposition to every desire for active resist- 
ance this threatening: “If any one leadeth into captivity, into captivity 
he shall go: if any one slayeth with the sword, he also shall be killed with 
the sword. Here is the patience and faith of the saints.” The strength of 
the persecuted Church will be, as Isaiah already said, to keep itself at rest, 
relying upon God alone. The Reformed Church in France has carried 
this line of conduct even to heroism, and, when it has for a time departed 
from it, it has had no occasion to congratulate itself. 

As to the conception of the Church, it is absolutely the same in the Apoc- 
alypse as in the fourth Gospel and with St. Paul; and it is a gross error 
to maintain, as Volkmar does, that the believing Gentiles are only toler- 
ated, in this book, and constitute only a sort of plebs in the Holy City. As 
Hase says: “ After the one hundred and forty-four thousand who are 
sealed from among the tribes of Israel, John sees an innumerable multi- 
tude from the twelve Gentiles, of every nation, of every tribe, of every 
tongue, clothed with white robes” (chap. vii.). “They are before the 
throne of God and serve him night and day in his temple,” and “God 
dwells with them ... and He wipes away every tear from their eyes” 
(vv. 15-17). Is this the reception given to a vile plebs? This assertion is so 
entirely false, that the one hundred and forty-four thousand Jews, who are 


188 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


previously spoken of, are not even yet believers. Their conversion is not 
related until chap. xiv. 1 ff. In chap. vii. they are merely sealed (re- 
served) in order to be consecrated afterwards. But, however it may be 
with this last point, and even if these one hundred and forty-four thou- 
sand formed the élite of the assembly of the Church, the Apocalypse in 
giving them this place would be in agreement with St. Paul, who, in the 
eleventh chapter of Romans, compares the converted Gentiles to wild 
branches grafted upon the patriarchal root in the place of the Jews, the 
natural branches; and also with the author of the fourth Gospel, who, in 
chap. x., makes the sheep taken from the Israelitish fold the centre of the 
Church and presents the sheep called from other nations as simply grouped 
about this primitive nucleus (ver. 16). The divine work which the author 
of the Apocalypse celebrates from the beginning to the end, when he puts 
into the mouth of all believers, without distinction, the song of the Lamb ; 
when he gives to them all the titles of kings and priests of God the Father, 
which Israel had borne only typically ; when to the twelve elders repre- 
senting the twelve tribes of Israelitish Christianity, he adds twelve others 
perfectly equal to the first, and representing, together with them, before 
the throne the Christians of the Gentile world,—all this new creation 
which he beholds with rapture and which he glorifies, is nothing else 
than the work of St. Paul. And yet in this book, St. Paul is the false pro- 
phet in the service of the antichrist ! 

But do not the author’s eschatological views condemn us perchance? 
Even Niermeyer feels himself embarrassed by that Jerusalem of the end 
of time, which seems to perpetuate the preponderance of Judaism even 
in the perfected state of the kingdom of God. “If,” says he, “the earthly 
Jerusalem could be removed from the Apocalyptic picture, this book 
would be spiritualized throughout by this fact alone.” It is not difficult to 
satisfy this demand. The author represents (xxi. 16) the wall of that 
future Jerusalem as having a height equal to its length and its breadth, 
and as forming, consequently, a perfect cube. This cube is of twelve 
thousand furlongs, which is nearly fifty leagues, in each dimension. Can 
it reasonably be believed that he is picturing to himself a real city of 
so monstrous a shape? But this image, grotesque if we take it in a 
material sense, becomes sublime as soon as it is spiritually understood. 
The Most Holy Place in the tabernacle and in the temple had the form 
of a perfect cube, while the Holy Place had that of a rectangle. What, 
then, does the author mean by this figure? That the New Jerusalem 
will be wholly what the Most Holy Place was in the former times: the 
dwelling-place of the Thrice Holy God. It is the realization of the last 
prayer of Jesus: “That they may be one in us, as we are one;”’ the state 
which Paul sets forth in 1 Cor. xv. 28: “God all in all.” And if any one 
hesitates to believe that this glorious state of things applies, in the Apoca- 
lypse, to other believers than those of Jewish origin, let him read, xxi. 2, 
3, these words: “I saw the holy city, the New Jerusalem coming down 
out of heaven from God, and I heard a great voice from heaven saying, 
Behold the tabernacle of God is among men.” And as if to leave no doubt 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 189 


respecting the sense of the word men, the author adds: ‘ And they [they 
who were not his people] shall be his peoples, and God Himself shall be 
with them, their God.” In speaking of the final Jerusalem, Niermeyer 
simply forgets that that future Jerusalem is by no means a restoration of 
the ancient Jerusalem, and that the author describes it as a new Jerusalem 
coming down out of heaven from God. It is the Church in all its extent 
and all its perfection, comprehending all that which, throughout the 
whole of humanity, has been given to Christ. We find here the widest 
universalism. And if it is thus with the holy city itself, the same method 
of spiritual interpretation must, of course, be extended to all that which 
constitutes its beauty: the gates, the walls, the square, the river, the trees. 
And all these images, spiritually understood, lead us directly, if the 
Gospel is really a spiritualized Apocalypse (Baur), to this result: that 
the Apocalypse is fundamentally identical with the Gospel. 

A general comparison of the Apocalyptic drama with the narrative 
contained in our Gospel leads us also to hold that their author was the same. 
True, the contrary is affirmed. It is said that the Apocalypse breathes 
the most intense hatred towards the Gentiles—it is by a Jewish author; 
the Gospel reserves all its hatred for the Jews—it is by a Gentile author. 
It is further said, that the Apocalypse moves amidst the scenes of the 
last times, which are unknown to the Gospel; the latter, on the contrary, 
treats only of the hostile relation of Jesus to the Jews during His sojourn 
on the earth. These two objections fall before a single observation. The 
work of Jesus is twofold. In the first place it concerned the Jews; then 
came the times of the Gentiles in which salvation was offered to these 
last. The Gospel gives an account of the first of these relations, the 
Apocalypse treats of the second; and the two works complete each 
other, as if the two halves of one and the same whole, which might have 
for its title: The substitution of the kingdom of God for that of Satan 
throughout the whole earth. The actors in the two dramas are also, at 
the foundation, the same. They are these three: Christ, faith, unbelief. 
In the Gospel: the Christ, as Christ in humiliation ; faith, represented 
by the disciples; unbelief, represented by the Jews. In the Apocalypse, 
the Christ, as the glorified Lord; faith, represented by the Bride, or the 
Church; unbelief» by the Gentiles, the majority of whom reject the call 
of the Gospel, in the same way as the majority of the Jews had rejected 
it in the time of Jesus. There is, therefore, no partiality in this book. 
On the one side, believing Gentiles, an innumerable multitude, whom the 
author with rapture beholds triumphant before the throne, precisely as, 
during the life of Jesus, there had been believing Jews, raised into the 
most intimate communion with Him. On the other side, a mass of unbe- 
lieving Gentiles who draw upon themselves, more and more, the judgments 
of the glorified Lord (seals, trumpets, bowls), precisely as the mass of the 
Jews had been hardened and infuriated more and more against the Lamb 
of God in the midst of them. The sole difference between the two 
dramas, the Evangelic and Apocalyptic—and this difference appertains to 
the very nature of things—is that in the former the Passion and Resur- 


/ 


190 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


rection, the foundations of the redemption of all, are related; in the 
latter, the second coming of Christ, as the consummation of salvation and 
judgment for all. This difference is one more bond of union between the 
two works; for thereby the Apocalypse all along supposes the Gospel 
behind itself, so to speak, and the Gospel, the Apocalypse before itself, in 
some sort; and thus we understand from what source comes the almost 
complete absence of the eschatological element in the Gospel. The 
progress and phases of the struggle, there with the Jews, here with the 
Gentiles, are also exactly similar. In both works the end seems near, 
even from the beginning. But, nevertheless, it is found to be deferred ; we 
expect it in the Apocalypse after the sixth seal, after the sixth trumpet; 
nevertheless, it is again postponed, as in the Gospel where John repeats 
several times the phrase: “But his hour was not yet come.” The 
denouement, also, is fundamentally the same, though under two different 
forms: outward victory of Satan over the kingdom of God: in the 
Gospel, by the murder of Jesus; in the Apocalypse, by the extermination 
of the Church under the Antichrist; but in both also, victory, at first 
spiritual, then soon afterwards external, of the champion of the cause of 
God; there, through the resurrection of Christ; here, through the glori- 
fication of the Church. We see that the two subjects only are different: 
on one side, the Christ having come, on the other, the Christ coming. But, 
nevertheless, the one of the two works seems to be made in imitation of 
the other, both in relation to the part of the actors and the progress of the 
action. 

There is only one way by which these two works can be successfully 
placed in contradiction to each other: it is, as Luthardt says, to material- 
ize the Apocalypse unduly, and unduly to spiritualize the Gospel. By 
this manceuvre the common crowd may be dazzled; but this is no longer 
science, it is fiction. The two works exist; and, sooner or later, the truth 
recovers its rights. 

If the results of our study are well founded, all the external proofs in 
favor of the Johannean origin of the Apocalypse, to which Baur, Hilgen- 
feld and Volkmar attach so high a value, become so many confirmations 
of the Johannean origin of the Gospel. 

XII. There is an objection which seems to have produced on the minds 
of our French critics, such as Renan and Sabatier, the decisive impres- 
sion. John is called in the fourth Gospel the disciple whom Jesus loved : 
this is a marked superiority which is ascribed to him as related to his 
fellow apostles. This is not all; he is constantly exalted in such a way 
as to become fully the equal of Peter or even to surpass him, not only in 
agility, but also in intelligence and in readiness of faith. This spirit of 
jealousy and mean rivalry cannot have been the spirit of John himself: 
it must be acknowledged that the redaction of our Gospel, at least, is due 
to a disciple of this apostle, who wished at any cost to exalt the person 
and the role of the venerated master whose narratives and lessons he had 
gathered together. We find ourselves here evidently in the presence of a 
tendency-process. There are facts related; with what purpose are they 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 191 


related? One answers: because they happened in this way, the other 
searches after secret intentions and soon discovers them; he attributes 
the facts to the imagination of the narrator as being moved by some par- 
ticular view. It is a serious thing to found conclusions, which may have 
decisive consequences for the Church, on such methods of interpretation. 
In this particular case, it happens that the supposed intention is in mani- 
fest contradiction to a very large number of facts. In chap. i. 438, Peter, 
it is true, only comes to Jesus as the third one. But if it were to exalt 
John at the expense of that disciple, the author, who does not trouble 
himself with the history, should have assigned to John himself the part 
of the one who introduced Peter to Jesus. This he does not do; he as- 
cribes this honor to Andrew, Peter’s own brother—by this expression he 
explains this part played by him, and assigns the cause of it historically. 
As for John, he is not directly designated in this scene, either by his 
name or by any paraphrase whatever. Not only this; but in ver. 41, 
even before Andrew brings Peter, when he is introduced for the first time 
on the scene, he is already designated as the brother of Simon Peter,—of 
that Peter who has not yet appeared, and who is thus presented, from the 
beginning, as the principal personage of the whole evangelical history by 
the side of Jesus. Finally, as if all this were not yet sufficient, in the 
view of the author, suitably to exalt the person and part of Peter, Jesus, 
at the first sight, discerns in him His principal auxiliary, and marks 
him by an honorable name, while he does nothing of the kind with re- 
gard to the four or five other disciples who were called at the same time. 
And yet in this scene itis that the critics are able to discover the inten- 
tion of disparaging Peter or exalting John! Chap. vi. places us again in 
the midst of the apostolic circle. Who plays a part in this scene of 
friendship? It is Philip, it is Andrew, who is again designated as the bro- 
ther of Simon Peter (vy. 5, 8). Then, at the end of the whole narrative, 
when, in presence of the defection of nearly all the Galilean disciples, 
one of the apostles begins to speak in reply to the question of Jesus: “Will 
ye also go away?” who is the one to whom the evangelist gives the post 
of honor, and who proclaims in the name of all his immovable faith in 
the Messiahship of Jesus? Isit John? Is it some little known disciple 
whose rivalry would be little dangerous to this apostle? It is Peter him- 
self, he whom our evangelist wishes to disparage! At the last supper, 
Peter beckons to John, who isseated next to Jesus, to request him to make 
inquiry of the Master. But if the thing really happened in this way, 
what conclusion is to be drawn from it? And who would be able seriously 
to affirm the opposite? Is there here an impossibility? Does not the 
following story actually prove, by an insignificant circumstance, that 
Peter was not at Jesus’ side (vv. 5,6)? Finally, in the same passage, does 
not the evangelist attribute to Peter an expression in which all his devo- 
tion, all his faith, breaks forth; “Not only my feet, Lord, but also my 
hands and my head!” (xiii. 9). The conversations which follow the sup- 
per presented to the evangelist an admirable occasion for placing upon 
the scene his favorite disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. Questions of 


+ 


192 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


Thomas, of Philip, of Judas are spoken of; but not the least allusion is 
made to the presence of this disciple. Peter’s exclamation of devotion: 
“T will lay down my life for thy sake,” is recalled to mind; can this be a 
piece of Machiavellism, for the purpose of more strikingly pointing out 
his presumption and afterwards making more prominent his denial? But 
as to this fall of Peter, John is precisely the one who relates it in the 
mildest way. No oath, no curse in Peter’s mouth; this simple word—He 
said. Peter is introduced into the High-Priest’s house by another disciple, 
who was an acquaintance of that personage; but nothing tells us that 
this disciple was John. And even if it were John, it would be a scanty 
honor, in a work whose tendency is said to be so strongly anti-Jewish, to 
have been in relation with the spiritual head of the nation. In Geth- 
semane, it is Peter who, in our Gospel, smites with the sword. When 
judged in relation to the thought of Jesus, this act isa fault, no doubt; 
but in contrast with the cowardice of the rest of the disciples, all of whom 
flee, it is assuredly an honor. Peter is not afraid to put into practice the 
profession of devotion which he had made. On themorning of the resur- 
rection, when the two disciples run to the tomb, John reaches it most 
quickly, and this is said to be one of the deliberate claims on behalf of this 
apostle of superiority to his colleague. . . . Do the critics dare to write 
such puerilities! If it is so, let them abstain, at least, from calling such 
a work, with Hilgenfeld, “the Gospel with an eagle’s flight!” Immedi- 
ately afterwards, from the mere sight of the order which reigns in the 
sepulchre, John reaches the belief in the resurrection (xx. 8), while it is 
not said that this was the case with Peter. Here we have what seems a 
little more suspicious. But precisely here is one of the most decidedly 
autobiographical features of the fourth Gospel. The question is of the 
most internal fact, that of faith,—and John simply tells us how this fact 
was accomplished in himself. Could he tell so exactly what took place in 
his colleague ?—whether the light came into his heart, also, at that moment 
and in that way? Perhaps he was always himself ignorant of it. But as 
Paul and Luke, both of them, speak to us of an appearance of Jesus after 
He rose, which was granted to Peter on that same day, this circumstance 
renders it probable that that apostle remained near the tomb with a con- 
fused presentiment, which was only transformed into real faith by means 
of that appearance. Let us remark, in passing, that no special appear- 
ance accorded to John is mentioned. There remains the scene of the 
twenty-first chapter. Ifthe writer truly desired to establish a parallel be- 
tween the two apostles, it must be acknowledged that the contrast is 
altogether in favor of Peter. John, it is true, discerns the Lord from the 
time when they were on the boat; but he does not stir from the place, 
while Peter immediately leaps into the water. John does not play the 
least part in the conversation which follows the meal; Peter is the sole 
object of the Lord’s attention. Not only does Jesus reinstate him as an 
apostle; but He expressly entrusts to him the direction of the Church, and 
even that of the apostolate: “ Feed my lambs! Lead my sheep!” And 
as the crown of his ministry, He promises him the honor of a bloody 


~ 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 193 


martyrdom. After this, it is he, and he only, whom He invites to follow 
Him, in order to receive, in a confidential conversation, the communica- 
tions which He has still to make to him. The disciple whom Jesus loved 
allows himself, without having been summoned, to walk modestly behind 
them; it is Peter himself who puts him on the scene, by means of the 
question which he addresses somewhat indiscreetly to the Lord with re- 
gard to him. But, it is said, the superiority of John reappears even here; 
for the promise which is made to him, that he should not die, eclipses even 
that of martyrdom which had just been made to Peter. Let it be so, if 
one will; only it must be admitted that the following explanation of the 
evangelist, in that case, ought not immediately to invalidate the pretended 
promise! What a contrast between those two expressions, the one rela- 
tive to John: “ Now Jesus did not say, that he should not die;” the other 
relative to Peter: “ Now he said this concerning the death by which Peter 
should glorify God.” 

There remains, in reality, only one expression that can be used to the 
advantage of the objection against which we are contending; it is the 
designation: The disciple whom Jesus loved. Weisse was the first, I believe, 
who was shocked at this expression, and saw in it a repulsive vainglory. 
Sabatier thinks that, if John had written it himself, “it would be difficult 
to place humility among his virtues.” How much more delicate tact and 
more just a judgment does Hase show! He says: “ Weisse did not com- 
prehend this joyous pride of being in all humility the object of the most 
unmerited love.” Among all the rays of the glory full of grace and truth, 
which the Word made flesh had displayed here below, there was one 
which had fallen upon John, and which he must reproduce in his work: 
the Son of God had carried condescension even to the point of having a 
friend. 'To recall to mind so sweet a remembrance was not pride: it was 
humble gratitude. To disguise his own name under this paraphrase was 
not to glorify the man; it was to exalt the tenderness of Him who had 
deigned to stoop so low. He knew himself no longer except as the 
pardoned believer knows himself—as the object of the most marvelous 
love. It is thus that Paul speaks of himself in 2 Cor. xii. 2-5. 

XIII. We have long since expressed the conviction that the position of 
Reuss with regard to the fourth Gospel is untenable. To admit the apos- 
tolic origin of this work, and at the same time to regard the discourses 
which are contained in it as together forming a treatise of mystical theol- 
ogy, which the author, of his own will, has put into the mouth of Jesus— 
there is here an evident moral impossibility. Reuss was obliged to seek 
the means of extricating himself from this contradiction, and he has 
recently discovered it. It is the passage xix. 35.1 Following the example 
of Weisse, Schweizer, Keim, and Weizsiicker, he thinks that he sees in this 
passage the perfectly clear distinction, established by the author of the 
Gospel himself, between his own person and that of the Apostle John, who 
orally furnished him the authentic materials of his narrative. Let us 


1 Théologie johannique, p. 103. 
13 


194 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


study this text more closely. It is composed of three propositions: “And 
he that hath seen, hath borne witness; and his witness is true; and he 
knoweth that he saith true, that ye may believe.” Until now, it had been 
thought that it was the witness himself who spoke here. 1. He declares 
that his testimony respecting the fact related (the simultaneous accom- 
plishment of the two prophecies by the thrust of the lance, apparently 
accidental, of the Roman soldier) is now given (the perfect peuapripyxe): it 
is a thing done, done by the story itself; comp. i. 34; 2. He attests the 
truth of this testimony; 8. He solemnly affirms the deep sense which he 
bears within himself of the reality of the fact related—and this, to the end 
that the readers (you) may fully believe it. 

In this third clause the author, in speaking of the witness, uses the pro- 
noun éxeivoc, that one, and many find in this word the proof that he speaks 
of the witness as of a different person from himself and one who can be no 
other than the apostle. But, first, the author may with perfect propriety 
speak of himself in the third person, as Paul does in 2 Cor. xii. 2-5, or as 
Jesus Himself does, when He designates Himself habitually under the 
name Son of man, and consequently he may employ the pronoun of the 
third person in all its forms. The reason why he chooses here the pro- 
noun éxeivoc, that one, is because this word has a peculiar and constant 
signification in the fourth Gospel. It designates, in this book, a being who 
exclusively possesses a certain character, a certain function; consequently, 
not a person remote in contrast with another who is nearer, but a single 
person in contrast with every other; thus i. 18: ‘No one hath seen God at 
any time . . .; the only-begotten Son, he it is, (éxeivoc), who hath declared 
him;” or xu. 48: “My word . . ., it, it alone (éxeivoc), shall judge him ;” 
comp. v. 389: “The Scriptures . . ., they are they (éxeivo:) Which . . .;” xvi. 
14: “The Spirit . . . he (éxeivoc) shall glorify me,” etc., etc. Jesus, also, 
in speaking of Himself, designates Himself by this pronoun; comp. ix. 
37: “Thou hast seen him (the Son of God) and he that speaketh unto thee 
is he (éxeivoc).”! It is exactly the same with xix. 35. He designates Him- 
self by this pronoun as the one who, having been the only witness of the 
fact among the apostles, can alone attest it with the certainty of an eye- 
witnessing. There exists, therefore, no well founded logical or grammatical 
objection against the most generally admitted sense of the passage. 

See now the sense which the before-mentioned writers endeavor to give 
to it. 

1st proposition : The redactor of the Gospel declares that it is the witness 
(the apostle) who has informed him concerning the circumstance which 
he has just related. This meaning is not impossible, although we 
might be surprised to see suddenly appearing here the distinction 
between these two personages, of which the narrative does not, up to this 
point, offer the least trace. 

2d proposition: The writer attests the truth of the story which he has 


1 Reuss objects that in the passage ix. 37, clause. What matters this? In both cases 
the pronoun éxetvos designates the predicate, _it is still the same person, who is speaking, 
while, in xix. 35, it refers to the subject of the who designates himself by this pronoun. 


THE AUTHOR—OBJECTIONS. 195 


from the lips of the witness. This is unnatural, for it would rather belong 
to the witness to attest the truth of the fact related by the evangelist. An 
unknown and anonymous redactor, presenting himself as guarantee for 
the story of the witness, and of a witness who is an apostle! This would 
be strange enough. Whence would he derive this right and this 
authority ? 

3d proposition: The redactor attests the deep sense which the witness 
bears within himself of the reality of the fact related. ‘ He knoweth (the 
apostle-witness) that he saith true.” This becomes altogether unintelli- 
gible; for how can a man testify of that which takes place in the inner 
consciousness of another individual? We might understand the redactor’s 
saying, ‘And I know that he saith true.” That would mean: Such an 
one as I know him to be,—I have the certainty that he cannot speak 
falsely. But with the form, “ he knows (he) that he says true,” the declara- 
tion has no meaning. Finally, the redactor adds: “to the end that ye 
may believe.” If it is John who says this, to indicate the purpose of the 
story which he has just committed to writing, we understand what he 
means: “I, the witness, have the inward consciousness that what I relate 
to you is true, to the end that you also (who read) may believe (as well as I 
who have seen).” His testimony is to become for those who read, what 
the sight itself has been for him. But if the matter, on the other hand, is 
of the oral narrative which the apostle gave to the author a long time 
before, this statement has no longer any meaning; for there is no direct 
connection between such a testimony and the readers of the present 
work; the words “to the end that you may believe” have no longer any 
justification. 

Finally, we must notice the two verbs in the present tense: “He 
knows” and “he says true.” What do they prove? That, at the moment 
when these lines were written, the witness of the facts was still living. 
And in that case, what is gained by substituting for him, as a redactor, 
one of his disciples? The Gospel remains nevertheless, a narrative 
composed under the eyes and with the approbation of John himself. 

There is, moreover, another passage which absolutely condemns this 
sense given to xix. 35 by Reuss and by many others; it is the analogous 
declaration of xxi. 24. Here men, in a position which was recognized by 
the Church and respected, expressly affirm that which these critics deny 
on the foundation of xix. 35, to wit, the identity of the evangelist-redactor 
with the apostle witness: “This disciple (the one whom Jesus loved)-is he 
who testifieth (6 waprvpov) of these things and who wrote them (6 ypayac), and 
we know that his testimony is true.” Reuss claims, it is true, that these 
men fell into an error, and that, a certain time after John’s death, they, 


1 Reuss, indeed, understands this serious 
difficulty and tries to find a way of removing 
it. He says that, if the author has said: He 
knows, it is because the Greek language did 
not offer him any special term for saying: He 
knew. But it was sufficient for the author to 


write instead of olSev he knows, 7See he knew (he 
knew when he was alive); and does not the 
following verb also, put in the present tense: 
“that he saith true,’ confute such a puerile 
evasion ? 


196 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


in good faith, confounded the apostle with the redactor. But these attes- 
tors, who had the power to provide the Gospel with a postscript which is not 
wanting in any manuscript or in any version, must have taken an active 
part in the publication of the work; they must, consequently, have been 
the first depositaries of it. Under these conditions, how could an error on 
their part be possible? Then, in order to their expressing themselves as 
they do, they must never have read the book which they themselves 
were publishing, at least the passage xix. 35, since, according to Reuss, 
the author declares, in the statement there made, precisely the opposite 
of what they solemnly affirm. Finally, when these two passages are 
compared, it must not be forgotten that the attestors of chap. xxl. say: 
We know, and not he knows, as the one who speaks in chap. xix. says. 
By the first person plural they distinguish themselves as clearly from the 
witness-apostle, as by the third person singular, he knows, the redactor of 
xix. 85 identifies himself with this witness. How, then, can Reuss say: 
“The sentence of xxi. 24 recurs in another place in the body of the 
Gospel; the analogy is patent.” Yes, but the difference is none the less 
patent.? 

Hilgenfeld has clearly perceived that it is impossible to find in xix. 35 
the distinction, intentionally made by the writer, between himself and the 
witness. Headmits, therefore, that the author, after having desired to pass 
himself off, throughout the whole work, as the Apostle John, forgot him- 
self for a moment in the passage xix. 35, and that he inadvertently drops 
his disguise. There remains, in fact, only this expedient. But is it ad- 
missible? The reader will judge. In any case, if it is so, we must give 
up speaking of the supreme ability of an author to whom it is believed 
that such an oversight can be ascribed ! 

XIV. Will it be necessary to stop at a last objection, to which some 
critics seem to attach a certain importance? How, it is said, could aman 
have regarded Jesus as a divine being, after having lived on familiar terms 
with Him for three years? But this conviction formed itself in him only 
gradually. And precisely this familiar acquaintance of every day took 
away from it whatever overpowering element it might have had for dog- 
matic reflection. The Apocalypse, that work which, in the so-called crit- 
ical school, is generally ascribed to the apostle, raises exactly the same 
problem. Jesus is there represented as the first and the last ; He is called 
the Holy One and the True, just as Isaiah calls Jehovah; and yet it is as- 
cribed to the apostle. The recognition of the Messianic dignity of Jesus 
was a first step, which rendered the transition easier to the recognition of 
His divinity. 

Having reached the end of this long review of all the objections raised 
by modern criticism against the unanimous tradition of the Church, we 
may be permitted to bring forward a curious phenomenon which is not 
without psychological importance in the estimate of this discussion. Is it 


1That we may not prolong this discus- what we have to say respecting the beginning 
sion, let us defer until the following section of the first Epistle of John (1 John i. 1-4). 


THE AUTHOR—THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 197 


not surprising that every adversary of the authenticity seems to be espe- 
cially impressed by some one among these fourteen objections, which 
makes only a feeble impression on the rest of the critics, and in compar- 
ison with which he himself attributes to all the others only a slight im- 
portance? We leave to the reader the work of explaining this fact, which 
has more than once given us food for thought. 


2 3. THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 


In his introduction to the New Testament (2 93), Credner has summed 
up this evidence in the following manner: “If we had no historical state- 
ment respecting the author of the fourth Gospel, we should, nevertheless, 
be led to a positive result by the indications which the book itself affords. 
The nature of the language, the freshness and dramatic vivacity of the 
narrative, the exactness and precision of the statements, the peculiar 
manner in which the forerunner and the sons of Zebedee are mentioned, 
the love, the passionate tenderness, of the author for the person of Jesus, 
the irresistible charm diffused over the evangelical history as presented 
from this ideal point of view, the philosophical reflections with which this 
Gospel begins,—all this leads us to the following result: The author of 
this work can only be a man born in Palestine, only an eye-witness of 
the ministry of Jesus, only an apostle, only the beloved apostle; he can 
only be that John whom Jesus had bound to His own person by the 
heavenly charm of His teaching, that John who leaned upon His bosom, 
who stood near the cross, and who, during his residence in a city such as 
Ephesus was, not only felt himself attracted by philosophical speculation, 
but even prepared himself to hold his place among these Greeks who were 
distinguished for their literary culture.” 

We cannot do better than follow the course traced out in this admirable 
paragraph, in which we would only desire to change the two terms, ideal 
and philosophical, which seem to us not to give the true shade of thought. 
Taking this summary as a programme, we shall also make our beginning 
from the circumference, so as gradually to approach towards the centre. 

I. The author is a Christian of Jewish origin. 

This is proved by his style which, without Hebraizing, nevertheless, has 
the inward peculiarities of the Hebrew language (see p. 135 f.). 

This follows also from the corrections which the author makes the 
translation of the LXX. undergo in accordance with the original Hebrew 
in a certain number of quotations. We believe, with Westcott}, that the 
fact is beyond dispute in the three passages which follow : vi. 45 (Is. liv. 18) ; 
xiii, 18 (Ps. xli. 9); xix. 87 (Zech. xii. 10); and we will add, without 
hesitation, xii. 40 (Is. vi. 10). In no single instance, on the contrary, does 
the evangelist quote according to the LXX. in disagreement with the 
Hebrew. 

The inner harmony of the teaching of Jesus with the Mosaic Law and 
the prophets, His constant references to the types of the Jewish history, 


1 The Holy Bible, St. John, p. xiv. 


198 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


the perfect communion of spirit established between Abraham and Jesus, 
—all these features are brought out so forcibly that we must subscribe to 
Weizsiicker’s judgment: Only a Jew who, in the foreign region where he 
was living, had preserved the inheritance of his youth, could relate his his- 
tory in this way. The development of the author’s personal faith has 
certainly passed through these two normal phases of Jewish-Christian 
faith: the recognition of Jesus as the Messiah, and faith in Him as the 
Son of God. Compare, for the first of these two steps, the profession of 
faith of the first disciples, 1. 42, 46, and for the second, the whole sequel of 
the narrative. This course of development is again suggested in the ex- 
pression which sums up the Gospel (xx. 31): “That ye may believe that 
Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” 

A final and entirely decisive proof appears from the acquaintance 
which the author shows with Jewish usages. He is perfectly acquainted 
with the Jewish feasts (the Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles), and not 
only the greater ones, but also the minor ones, which the law had not in- 
stituted,—as the feast of Purim, v.1 (see the Commentary), and that of the 
Dedication, x. 22. Heknowsof the addition of an eighth day to the Feast 
of Tabernacles (vii. 37) and the prohibition of all medical treatment on the 
Sabbath (ix. 14); the Jewish opinions, according to which the coming of the 
Messiah must be preceded by that of Elijah, and the Messiah must spring 
from an entirely obscure origin (i. 21; vii. 27). He is not ignorant either 
of the hostility prevailing between the Jews and the Samaritans, or of the 
more spiritual character of the Messianic expectation among the latter 
(iv. 9, 25, 26). The Jewish manner of embalming bodies, different from 
that of the Egyptians (xix. 40), the custom on the part of the Jews of 
purifying themselves on entering their dwellings (ii. 6), the synagogal 
excommunication (ix. 22), the custom of closing the sepulchral caves 
with great stones (xi. 88; xx. i.), the sale of animals and the money ex- 
change established in the temple (ii. 14),—all these circumstances, several | 
of which are not mentioned in the Synopties, are familiar to him. He is 
acquainted with the scruples which the Jews feel, both as to entering into 
the house of a Gentile, and as to leaving the bodies of condemned persons 
publicly exposed beyond the very day of execution (xviii. 28; xix. 31). 
He knows that a Rabbi does not engage in conversation with a woman 
(iv. 27); that the religious leaders of the nation treat with the most pro- 
found disdain the portion of the people who have not received the Rab- 
binical teaching (vii. 49); and finally, that, in case of a conflict between 
the law of the Sabbath and that of circumcision on the eighth day, the 
latter takes precedence of the former (vii. 22, 28). 

II. This Jew did not live in a foreign land; he is a Palestinian Jew. 

He speaks of different places in the Holy Land as a man who is ac- 
quainted with them for himself and to whom all the topographical details 
of that country are familiar. He knows that there are other places of the 
name of Cana and Bethsaida than those of which he is speaking, and 
which he marks by the epithet : of Galilee (ii. 1; xii. 21). He knows that 
Bethany is fifteen furlongs from Jerusalem (xi. 18); that Ephraim is situ- 


THE AUTHOR—THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 199 


ated on the borders of the desert (xi. 54) ; that 7Znon is near to Salim (iii. 28) ; 
that a distance of twenty-five or thirty furlongs is nearly equal to one-half 
of the breadth of the sea of Tiberias (vi. 19, comp. with Matt. xiv. 24); that 
the circuit of the northern shore of this sea can be easily made on foot 
(vi. 5, 22); that in order to go from Cana to Capernaum, one must go 
down (ii. 12); that Cedron must be crossed by a bridge in order to go from 
Jerusalem to the foot of the Mount of Olives (xviii. 1); that the pool of 
Siloam is very near to Jerusalem (ix. 7); and that there are intermittent 
springs in the neighborhood of the temple (v. 7). He also knows the 
place in the temple where the boxes designed to receive the offerings are 
found (viii. 20), and Solomon’s porch (x. 23). The picture of the entrance 
to the valley of Sichem, in the scene of Jacob’s well, can only have been 
traced by a man who had looked upon Mount Gerizim towering above 
the valley, and the magnificent fields of wheat which stretched to the 
right of the plain of Mukhna. Renan declares: “ A Jew of Palestine, who 
had often passed through the entrance of the valley of Sichem, could 
alone have written this.” 

The author is no less well-informed as to the historical circumstances of 
the epoch in which the facts which he describes occur. He knows that 
the right of putting to death has been recently taken away from the Jews 
(xviii. 31); he knows that, at the moment when Jesus appears for the first 
time in the temple, the work of the reconstruction of that edifice has 
already continued for forty-six years (ii. 20). He is thoroughly acquainted 
with the relations of family and sympathy which unite the present high- 
priest with the former high-priest, and the influence which the latter con- 
tinues to exercise upon the course of affairs (xviii. 18-28). 

Baur believed that he had discovered in our Gospel a multitude of his- 
torical and geographical errors. This accusation is abandoned at the 
present day. “There is no reason,” says Keim himself, “to believe in 
these alleged errors” (p. 183). Renan abounds in his expressions of this 
view: “The too often repeated opinion that our author was neither ac- 
quainted with Jerusalem nor with Jewish matters, seems to me altogether 
destitute of foundation ” (p. 522). 

III. We can prove by a mass of details that this Palestinian Jew was a 
contemporary of Jesus and a witness of His history; let us even add, in 
order that we may not enter too much into detail and prolong the discus- 
sion too far, an apostle. 

This appears from the mass of minute details, abounding in the narra- 
tive, which it is impossible to explain by a dogmatic or a philosophical 
idea, and which can only be the quite simple and almost involuntary ex- 
pression of personal recollection. 

And, first, with reference to times and occasions: “It was about the 
tenth hour” (i. 40); “ It was about the sixth hour” (iv. 6); “And he abode 
there two days” (iv. 40); “ Yesterday, at the seventh hour” (iv. 52); “It 


1See, on the alleged mistakes imputed by 23 (ZEnon); iv. 5 (Sychar); xviii. 1 (Cedron) ; 
Baur to the evangelist, this Commentary, at vii. 52; xi. 49, ete. 
the following passages: i. 28 (Bethany); iii. 


200 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


was winter,” or “It was stormy weather ” (x. 22); “It was night ” (xiii. 30) ; 
“Tn infirmity for thirty-eight years” (v. 5). As to the designation of 
places: the treasury of the temple (viii. 20); Solomon’s porch (x. 23); 
Jesus stopped outside of the village (xi. 80). As to numbers: the six 
water-pots in the vestibule (ii. 6); the four soldiers (xix. 28); the hundred 
pounds of perfume (xix. 39); the two hundred cubits of distance, and the 
one hundred and fifty-three fishes (xxi. 8,11). We are introduced by all 
sorts of details into the inmost circle of Jesus and His disciples. The 
author recalls the relations full of pleasantness, which Jesus sustained 
towards them—towards Philip, for example (vi. 5-7); the intervention of 
Andrew (vy. 8, 9); the small boy having the loaves; the indirect warning 
given to Judas (ver. 70); the name of the father of this apostle (ver. 71); 
the rough, but generous declaration of Thomas (xi. 16); his incredulous 
exclamation and his cry of adoration (xx. 25, 28) ; the questions of Thomas, 
Philip, and Judas, on the last evening (chap. xiv.); the decisive moment 
when the light finally came to them all, and when they proclaimed their 
faith (xvi. 30); the sudden invitation of Jesus: “ Arise, let us go hence” 
(xiv. 31). Points such as these may also be noticed: “They had kindled 
a fire of coals...” (xviii. 18); “The robe was without seam, woven 
from the top throughout ” (xix. 23); “ Having put the sponge around the 
hyssop-stalk ” (xix. 29); “The servant’s name was Malchus” (xviii. 10), 
etc., etc. “So many precise details,” says Renan, “which are perfectly 
understood if one sees in them the recollections of an old man of a won- 
derful freshness ;” but, we will add, which become repulsive, in so serious 
a narrative, if they are only fictitious details designed to conceal the 
romance-writer under the mask of the historian. Only a profane charla- 
tan could thus trifle with the person and character of the best-known 
actors in the evangelical drama, and with the person of the Lord Himself. 
Weitzel has properly noticed how this delicate narrative initiates us into 
all the varied shades of the inmost Ife of the apostolic circle! The author 
designates the disciples, not according to their names as generally received 
in the Church—the ones which they bear in the apostolic catalogues, but 
according to that which they bore among their fellow-disciples ; thus, in- 
stead of Bartholomew, he says: Nathanael (i. 46-50; xxi. 2), and three 
times he designates Thomas by the Greek translation Didymus (twin), as 
if it were for him a matter of personal reminiscence, dear to his heart 
(xi. 16; xx. 24; xxi. 2). 

To all these details, let us add the great scenes in which, as if openly, 
the pencil of the eye-witness shows itself: the story of the calling of the 
first disciples (chap. i.); of the visit to Samaria (iv.); of the confidential 
scenes at the resurrection of Lazarus and at the washing of the disciples’ 
feet (xi. and xiii.); and finally, the incomparable picture of the negotia- 
tions of Pilate with the Jews (xviii. and xix.). 

If, after all these facts, any doubts could remain for us with reference to 
the author’s having the character of an eye-witness, they would fall away 


1 Studien und Kritiken, 1849. 


THE AUTHOR—THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 201 


before his own testimony, which no one at the present day—neither Weiz- 
sicker nor Reuss and Sabatier,—can bring themselves to charge with im- 
posture, as the school of Baur did. 

This testimony is expressed in the three following passages: i. 14; xix. 
30, and 1 Ep. i. 1+4. 

The author expresses himself thus ini. 14; “ And the Word became 
flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory. . . .” It is at present 
claimed that the question here is only of the interior sight of faith, which 
is the appanage of every Christian. Does not Paul say, “ We behold the 
glory of the Lord with unveiled face” (2 Cor. iii. 18); and John himself: 
“ Whosoever sinneth hath not seen him” (1 John iii. 6)? Thus speak 
Keim and Reuss. There is a spiritual beholding of Jesus, it is true, to 
which the quoted words refer; but these words are not found, in the epis- 
tles from which they are taken, in connection with the representation of 
the fact of the incarnation, as in the passage John i. 14: “The Word 
became flesh, . . . it dwelt, .. . and we beheld... .” At the beginning of 
an historical work, which commences thus, and in which the earthly life of 
Jesus is to be related, such a declaration cannot have any other intention 
than that of solemnly legitimizing the narrative which is to follow. We 
cannot confound such a context with that of an epistle in which the 
author describes the spiritual state common to all Christians. 

The passage xix. 35 has already been examined. The identity of the 
author of the Gospel with the apostle who was witness of the crucifix- 
ion of Jesus, is there positively affirmed. “This passage,” Sabatier ob- 
jects, “is of too similar a tenor to that of the appendix (xxi. 24), for us 
not to draw from it the same conclusion.” But we have already shown 
(p. 185) that the tenor of the two passages is, on the contrary, entirely 
different, in chap. xix: (he knows), the witness affirms his identity with the 
redactor of the Gospel ; in chap.xxi.: (we know), the friends of the author 
and witness affirm his identity with the disciple whom Jesus loved; thus 
each affirms fundamentally the same thing, but in a manner apposite to 
his particular position and role. 

There exists a second work, coming evidently from the same pen as the 
Gospel, and whose author likewise declares himself a witness of the facts 
and an apostle, with a clearness which leaves nothing to be desired on the 
part of any one who does not wish to close his eyes to the light. We 
read, 1 Ep. of John i. 1ff.: “That which was from the beginning, which 
we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have beheld 
and our hands have handled of the Word of life, . . . we declare it unto 
you, that you may have fellowship with us; ... and we write unto you 
these things, that your joy may be fulfilled; and this is the message which 
we have heard from him and declare unto you. . . .”” How can we deny, in 
the face of expressions like these, that the author had the intention of 
giving himself out as an eye and ear-witness of the facts of the Gospel 


1The ten lines of Sabatier on this subject inexplicable enigma and one which cannot 
(Encycl. des sc. relig., p. 193), are for me an be discussed. 


202 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


history? Let any one tell us what more forcible terms he could have 
used in order to designate himself as such. Reuss says: “The fact that 
Jesus lived the life of mortals is enough to enable every believer to say: 
We have seen, heard, touched Him.”! Yes, but on the condition that, in 
speaking thus, he does not place himself in express contrast to other be- 
lievers who have neither seen nor heard nor touched, and to whom for 
this reason he says: ‘‘ We declare unto you, ... we write to you these 
things, to the end that you may have part in them, and that your joy may 
be as complete as ours.” Reuss says: “ Every preacher who hands over 
the truth to a new generation will constantly be able to express himself in 
the same way.” We leave in his happy quietude the man who can bring 
himself into tranquillity by such a subterfuge. There is evidently here 
the same contrast asin John xx. 29, between those who have seen and those 
who must believe without having seen, or, as in xix. 85, between the one who 
has seen and you who are to believe. Sabatier has recourse to another ex- 
pedient. He thinks he can explain these words by the author’s desire, 
“not to give an historical testimony, but to combat Docetism.” There is 
nothing more in these words therefore, he says, than “the positive aflfirm- 
ation of: the reality of the flesh of Jesus Christ” (p. 193). But, if it 
were so, to what purpose the commencing with these words: That which 
was from the beginning, which are developed in the second verse by the 
following: “ And the life which was with the Father was manifested, and we 
‘have seen it, and we bear witness of it?” We see that the thought of the 
author is not to contrast the reality of Jesus’ body with the idea of a mere 
appearance, but to bring out these two facts which seemed contradictory, 
and the union of which was of vital importance to his view: on one side, 
the divine, eternal being of Christ; on the other, the perfect reality, 
not of His body only, but of His human existence. It is the same thought 
as that which is formulated in the expression which is the theme of the 
Gospel: “The Word was made flesh.” Moreover, the Docetae did not 
deny the sensible appearances in the life of the Lord, and the apostle 
would not have accomplished anything in opposition to them by affirming 
these. 

It remains incontrovertible, therefore, for every one who is determined 
to take the texts for what they are, and not to make them say what he 
wishes, that the author expressly gives himself out in two of these texts, 
and that he is given out in the third by his friends who know him person- 
ally, as the witness of the facts related in this book; and if one refuses to 
admit this double testimony, one cannot escape the necessity of making 
him an impostor. We are thankful to the modern writers who, like Reuss 
and Sabatier, shrink from such a consequence; but we believe that it 1s 
impossible to do so except by sacrificing the exegetical conscience. 

IV. If we endeavor, finally, to designate this apostle, at once the witness 
and redactor of the evangelical facts, we are forced to recognize in him the 
disciple whom Jesus loved, John himself. 


1 Théol. johan., p. 106. 


THE AUTHOR—THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 203 


And first: The disciple whom Jesus loved. 

The author declares himself, xix. 35, to be the one who saw with his own 
eyes two prophecies fulfilled at the same time by the thrust of the heathen 
soldier's spear. Now, his narrative mentions only one apostle as present 
at the crucifixion of the Lord—the one whom Jesus loved (ver. 26). It is 
evident, therefore, that he gives himself out as that disciple. We have 
already noticed the description of the way in which the disciple whom 
Jesus loved reached the belief in the resurrection (xx. 8,9). The absolutely 
autobiographical character of this story leaves no doubt as to the identity 
of this disciple with the author. The same is the case with the confidential 
and entirely personal details which are given respecting the relation of 
Peter to him at the last supper (xiii. 24-27), and of the story of his last 
conversation with Jesus following upon His appearance in Galilee (xxi. 19- 
22). Let us add that no one ought to have been more anxious than the 
disciple whom Jesus loved to set right the meaning of a saying which con- 
cerned him, and which was circulating in a form that was compromising 
to the dignity of Jesus. 

We say further: John, the son of Zebedee. 

In all the apostolic catalogues, John and James are named in the first 
place after Simon Peter, and this rank which is constantly assigned to them 
is justified by the peculiar distinctions which they shared with that apostle. 
How does it happen that in the fourth Gospel, in the single case in which 
the sons of Zebedee are mentioned (xxi. 2), they are placed last among the 
five apostles who are named, and thus after Thomas and Nathanael? This 
circumstance can be explained only if the author of this narrative is pre- 
cisely one of these two brothers. In the Synoptics, the forerunner of Jesus 
is constantly called: John the Baptist ; this was the title which had been 
conferred upon him not only by the Christian, but also by the Jewish tra- 
dition, as we see from Josephus (Antigq. xviii. 5. 2.): “John, surnamed Bap- 
tist, whom Herod had killed.” In our Gospel, on the contrary, he is always 
called simply John. It must naturally be inferred from this fact, that the 
author of this narrative had learned to know the forerunner before fame 
had added to his name, as an inseparable epithet, the title of Baptist, con- 
sequently from the beginning of his public activity. Then, if we have 
reasons for holding that the author himself bore the name of John, we can 
the more easily understand how he did not feel the need of giving to the 
forerunner a title suited to distinguish him from some other John, not less 
known in the Church. For the idea of a confusion between him and the 
one who had the same name with him must have been, as Hase says, 
“entirely remote from his consciousness.” Finally, there remains a de- 
cisive circumstance: it is the absence from the narrative of any mention 
both of the name of John himself, and of the names of the other members 
of his family. His mother, Salome, who is mentioned in the Synoptics 
among the women present at the crucifixion of Jesus (Matt. xxvil. 56; 
Mark xvi. 1) is not named here in the parallel enumeration (John xix. 25). 
No more is James mentioned in the scene of the calling of the first dis- 
ciples (chap. i.), where, however, a slight touch full of delicacy betrays his 


204 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


presence.! This way of proceeding is absolutely different from that of 
forgers. “The latter,” says Reuss, “make it their study to lay emphasis 
upon the names which are to serve them as a passport.”? This complete 
and consistent omission, from one end of the work to the other, of the 
names of three personages who occupied one of the first places in the com- 
pany that surrounded Jesus, does not permit us to doubt that the author 
was in a peculiar relation to all the three. 

We cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of quoting here, in closing, a 
beautiful paragraph from Hase (p. 48): “While the Apostle John is no- 
where named, there passes across the entire Gospel an unknown and, as it 
were, veiled figure, which sometimes comes forth, but without the veil ever 
being raised. We cannot believe that the author did not himself know who 
this disciple whom Jesus loved was, who at the last supper rested on His 
bosom, who with Peter followed his Master when made a prisoner, to whom 
his Master left His mother as a charge, and who, running with Peter, came 
first to the tomb. There must have existed, therefore, a peculiar relation 
between the author and this personage, and a reason, personal to himself, 
for his not naming him. Why is it not natural to think that he is him- 
- self designated by this circumlocution which included in itself the sub- 
limest contents and the whole happiness of his existence?” 


24. THE CONTRARY HYPOTHESES. 


We shall occupy ourselves here only with the hypotheses which have a 
serious character. We set aside, therefore, without discussion, fancies such 
as those of Tobler and Liitzelberger, who ascribe our Gospel, the former 
to Apollos, and the latter to a Samaritan emigrant at Edessa in Mesopo- 
tamia, about 1385. We meet, in the first place, “the great unknown” of 
Baur and his school, who is said to have written, a little before or after 
the middle of the second century, the romance of the Logos; the man 
whom Keim calls “the most brilliant flower which followed the age of the 
apostles.” One thing strikes us, at the first glance, in this hypothesis: it 
is precisely this title of unknown which the critics are obliged to give to 
the author of such a work. Every one knows the mediocrity of the per- 
sonages and writers of the second century, as compared with those of the 
first. To the epoch of creative production that of tame reproduction had 
succeeded. What is that Epistle of Clement of Rome, to which Eusebius 
adjudges the epithets great and wonderful (érict0A pweyaan te Kai Bavuacia)? 
A good, pious letter, such as an ordinary Christian of our day would write. 
Polycarp and Papias are in no way superior to Clement. Ignatius sur- 
passes them in originality; but what strangeness and what eccentricity ! 
Hermas is of the most oppressive dullness. The Epistle to Diognetus 
shows a certain superiority in a literary point of view; but as to the 
thoughts, and even as to what it has of a striking character in the expo- 


1 Chap. i. 42: “Andrew first finds his own other disciple, also himself, sought his bro- 
brother Simon.” This strange form is only ther, but found him only at a later moment. 
explicable by the understood idea that the 2 Théol. johannique, p. 100. 


THE AUTHOR—THE CONTRARY HYPOTHESES. 205 
sition of them, it rests absolutely on the epistles of Paul and the fourth 
Gospel. If what is borrowed from these writings is taken away from it, it 
falls back into the general mediocrity. And yet'in the midst of this period 
of feebleness there rises a unique man, whose writings have so original a 
character that they form a class wholly by itself in the entire body of 
Christian and human literature; this man does not live as a hermit ; he 
takes, according to Baur, an active part in the conflicts of his time; he 
pronounces the word of pacification respecting all the questions which 
disturb it; in an incomparable work, he lays the foundation of the Chris- 
tianity and of the wisdom of future ages,—and this man, this “flower of 
his age” no one has seen blooming; the Church, the witness of his life 
and work, has forgotten even the trace of his existence. No one can tell 
where this extraordinary star rose and set. In very truth, a strange 
history! The critics say, it is true: “Are not also the author of the book 
of Job, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews “great unknown” 
persons? We answer: The remote antiquity from which the first of these 
works comes, remains for us buried in profound darkness; what a differ- 
ence- from that second century of the Church, respecting which we possess 
so many and so detailed points of information! The Epistle to the He- 
brews is only a simple theological treatise, an important and original 
writing, no doubt; but what a difference as compared with a work con- 
taining a history, in many respects new, of Jesus, that chief of all subjects 
to the view of the Church! The author of the one is lost in the splendors 
of the apostolic period ; while the author of the other ought to shine as a 
star of the first magnitude in the badly-lighted sky of the second century. 

Let us add that at that epoch, when the image of Jesus was fixed by 
means of three universally disseminated narratives which were already 
distinguished from every other writing of the same kind, a pseudo-John 
would have carefully guarded himself against compromising the success 
of his fraud, by deviating from the generally received history of Jesus. 
Renan rightly says: “A forger, writing about the year 120 or 130 [how 
much more in the period from 180-160!] a gospel of imagination, would 
have contented himself with treating the received story after his own 
fancy, as the apocryphal gospels do,.and would not have overturned from 
the foundation what were regarded as the essential lines of Jesus’ life.” 
Or, as Weizsiicker also observes, “He who could have written this Gos- 
pel in order to introduce into the Church certain ideas, would never have 
ventured to invent an historical basis so different from that which the 
prevailing traditions presented.”* The author who, with a sovereign and 
magisterial authority, has modified, rectified, completed the Synoptical 
narration, cannot have been a mere unknown person; he must have felt 


1Vie de Jésus, 13th ed., pp. lxxv.-Ixxvi. 

2 Jahrb. fiir deutsche Theologie, 1859, p. 698.— 
Reuss says, in the same line: “Is it to be 
believed that a forger, if he had desired to 
pass for one of the first disciples, would have 
dared to deviate so many times from the Syn- 


optical narratives with respect to generally 
known facts, at the risk of immediately see- 
ing his own charged with errors and false- 
hoods?” The fact here indicated is so mani- 
fest that de Wetie himself was already struck 
by it: “A definitive critical judgment which 


206 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


himself to be recognized as a master on this ground, and assured of finding 
credence for his narrative in the bosom of the Church. 

Hase also justly calls attention to the point, that a writer removed from 
the facts and desirous of offering to the men of his time a picture of the 
person of the Logos, would not have failed, in this fictitious image, to re- 
duce the human element to a minimum and to trace the absolutely mar- 
velous history of a God, according to him only a mere earthly form ; while 
the fourth Gospel presents to us precisely the opposite phenomenon: 
“Everywhere in Jesus the most complete and tender humanity; every- 
where, under the golden breastplate of the Logos, the beating of the heart 
of a true man, whether in joy or in grief.” } 

Hilgenfeld thinks that the unknown author, in composing such a work, 
wished to bring back the churches of Asia from the Judaizing Christianity 
of the Apostle John to the pure spiritualism of St. Paul, which was origi- 
nally established in those churches. Ordinarily, the course of forgers is 
justified by saying, that they make the alleged author speak as they think 
that he would have spoken in the circumstances in which they are them- 
selves living. It is in this way that Keim also excuses the pseudo-John : 
“Our author has written in the just conviction that John would have writ- 
ten precisely so, if he were still living at his time.” Let our two critics 
put themselves in accord, if they can! According to the second, the 
author aims at continuing the Johannean work in Asia; according to the 
first, he labors to overthrow it, and that by borrowing the mask of John 
himself! This second degree of pious fraud draws very near to impious 
fraud. 

The expedient of pious fraud has been singularly abused in these last 
times, as if this device had been allowed without reluctance by the con- 
science of the Church itself. That it was frequently made use of, the facts 
indisputably prove; but that the Church ever gave its assent to it, the 
facts quite as positively deny. It was in vain for the author of the well- 
known book : The Acts of Paul and Thecla, to allege that he had composed 
that little story with a good intention and out of love for the Apostle Paul 
(id se amore Pauli fecisse); he was nevertheless obliged, after having con- 
fessed his faults, to give up his office of presbyter (convictum atque confessum 
loco decessisse). Here is what took place, according to the report of Ter- 
tullian, in a church of Asia Minor, in the second century2 And yet the 
question in the case of that writing was only of a harmless anecdote of 
which Paul was the hero, while, in the case of the fourth Gespel, the 
romance would be nothing less than a fictitious history of the person of 
the Lord! 

This mysterious X of the Tibingen criticism is in truth only an imag- 


denies to John any participation in this work, were so important, without feeling itself as- 
has against it not only the odiousness of the sured and quieted by its apostolic authority.” 


supposition of a forger, but also the improba- —Finl., 2110 g. 
bility that Christian antiquity would have ac- 1Gesch. Jesu, p. 47. 
cepted a Gospel which deviated from the 2 Tertullian, de baptismo. 


evangelical tradition respecting points which 


THE AUTHOR—THE CONTRARY HYPOTHESES. 207 


inary quantity. As soon as we place ourselves in the presence of the world 
of realities, we understand that this great unknown is no other than a 
great unrecognized one, John himself. 

It was necessary, therefore, to make trial of a name. Nicolas has pro- 
posed the presbyter John, and it is for this personage that Renan seems 
disposed, at present, to decide.’ But this hypothesis raises difficulties of 
no less magnitude than the preceding one. First of all, it cannot be sup- 
posed that such a man, an immediate disciple of Jesus and contemporary 
of John, would have tried to make himself pass for that apostle, by ex- 
pressing himself as he makes the author do in the passage xix. 385. More- 
over, with what other intention than that of disguising himself, could he 
have effaced so carefully from his narrative the names of this apostle, of 
his brother and his mother? Can sucha role be attributed to the aged 
disciple of the Lord? Finally, this pious presbyter can only have been a 
man of the second rank. Papias, in the enumeration of his authorities, 
assigns to him the last place, even after Aristion. Polycrates, in his 
letter to Victor, in which he recalls to mind all the eminent men who had 
made the Church of Asia illustrious, the apostles Philip and John, Poly- 
carp of Smyrna, Thrasias of Eumenia, Sagaris of Laodicea, Melito of 
Sardis, makes no mention of this personage. “We must therefore,” says 
Sabatier rightly (p. 195), “leave him in the shade and in the secondary 
rank where the documents set him before us. He is of no assistance for 
the solution of the Johannean question.” 

And what do Reuss, Sabatier, Weizsicker and others do? They take 
refuge in a sort of chiaroscuro. Not being able to deny the exactness, 
the precision, the historical superiority of the information on which our 
Gospel rests, and, on the other side, being thoroughly determined not to 
acknowledge the authenticity of the discourses of Jesus, they revert to an 
anonymous author, and are satisfied with finding in him one of the mem- 
bers of the school of Ephesus, a disciple of the apostle, who has mingled the 
tradition emanating from him with Alexandrian wisdom. But can this 
demi-authenticity suffice? Is it not, first of all, contrary to the testi- 
mony of the author himself, who, as we have seen, declares himself, in 
his epistle, a personal witness of the facts, and, in the Gospel, a witness 
of the facts, and the disciple whom Jesus loved? Is it not contrary, fur- 
thermore, to the testimony of his colleagues, the other members of the 
same school, who attest with one accord, xxi. 24, that the witness redac- 
tor is no other than the disciple whom Jesus loved? The more we 
find ourselves forced to carry back the composition of this work even 
to the epoch of John himself, the more are we obliged to acknowledge 
the improbability of the supposition of a fraud. It must have been 
concerted and executed, not by an individual only, but by the whole 
community who surrounded John. This supposition, which has so little 
probability, is, moreover, irreconcilable with the admirable originality of 
the discourses of Jesus. In fact: either these discourses are the work of 


1 LZ’ Eglise chrétienne, 1879. 


208 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


the Apostle John, and, in that case, there is no longer any reason to con- 
test the Johannean composition of all the rest of the work; or they are 
the work of an anonymous disciple of this apostle, and, in that case, it is 
necessary to apply here what Sabatier says with reference to the hypothe- 
sis of the presbyter John: that “the disciple remains infinitely greater 
than he who served him as a patron.” And how can we apply with any 
probability to an Ephesian disciple of John all that multitude of details 
by which we have proved the Jewish origin, the Palestinian home, the 
characteristics of contemporary and witness, of the author of this Gospel 
narration. The master might indeed have handed over to a disciple-redac- 
tor the great lines of the narrative; but that multitude of particular and 
minute details which distinguish this representation from one end to the 
other, can only be explained if the redactor and the witness are one and 
the same person. 

We conclude by saying, with B. Weiss, that every hypothesis which is 
opposed to the authenticity strikes against even greater difficulties than 
the traditional opinion. Keim proudly says: “Our age has set aside the 
judgment of the ages.” But is the school of Baur “our age”? And 
were it so, no age is infallible. There is quite enough of one proclaimed 
infallibility in our days, without adding also one of the left to that of the 
right. 





CHAPTER THIRD. 
THE PLACE OF COMPOSITION. 


Ir John is indeed the author of the Gospel, and if this apostle fulfilled 
the second part of his apostleship in Asia Minor, nothing is more prob- 
able than the fact of the composition of this Gospel at Ephesus. This is 
the unanimous tradition of the primitive Church (see pp. 88 ff.); and 
that region is certainly the one in which we can most easily picture to 
ourselves the rise of such a work. <A mass of details prevent us from 
thinking that it was composed for Palestinian readers. To what purpose 
to translate for the ancient Jews Hebrew terms, such as Rabbi, Messiah, 
and Siloam, to mark the term Bethesda as a Hebrew name, and to explain 
Jewish usages (i. 39, 42; iv. 25; v.2; ix. 7; ii.6; xix. 40, etc.)? Other 
points naturally direct our thoughts towards a Greek country: first, the 
language; then the complacency with which the author points out cer- 
tain facts in the ministry of Jesus which have reference to the Greeks, as 
that ironical question of the Jews: “ Will he go to those who are dispersed 
among the Greeks?” (vii. 30), or the request of the Greeks who, shortly 
before the Passion, desired to converse with Jesus (xii. 20). Itis in an 
Hellenic sphere that these recollections would have their complete appro- 
priateness. But there were Greek churches elsewhere than in Asia 
Minor; so some scholars have thought of different countries: Wittichen, 
of Syria; Baur, of Egypt. Very well! even independently of the tradi- 
tion, we think that there would still be cause for making our choice in 


4 


THE OCCASION AND AIM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 209 


favor of Asia Minor. This country, says Renan, “was at that time the 
theatre of a strange movement of syncretic philosophy ; all the germs of 
Gnosticism existed there already.” We easily understand from this fact 
the use of the term Logos, which alludes to the discussions which were 
probably raised in such a theological and religious centre. Is it not, 
moreover, in this country that the influence of the Johannean Gospel 
makes itself quite peculiarly felt during the whole course of the second 
century? And is not the heresy against which the first Epistle of John 
seems especially to be directed that of Cerinthus, who taught at Ephesus 
in the latest period of the apostle’s life? Let us add, that it is to the 
churches of Asia Minor that the epistles of St. Paul are addressed, which 
treat the subject of the person of Christ from precisely the same point of 
view as the fourth Gospel; we mean the Epistles to the Colossians and the 
Ephesians. It was in these regions, no doubt, that human speculations 
tended to lower the dignity of Christ, and that the churches had the 
most need of being enlightened on this subject. These indications seem 
to us sutficient, and even decisive. 





CHAPTER FOURTH. 
THE OCCASION AND AIM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 


THE tradition is not as unanimous on this point, as on the preceding 
ones. The statements of the Fathers agree undoubtedly in declaring that, 
if John determined to write, it was solely at the instance of those who 
surrounded him. In the Muratorian Fragment, it is said that “John was 
exhorted to write by his fellow disciples and by the bishops.” Clement of 
Alexandria, states that he didit “at the instigation of the leading men 
and under the inspiration of the Spirit.”' Eusebius expresses himself 
thus: “The apostle, being urged, it is said, by his friends, wrote the things 
which the first evangelists had omitted.”? Finally, Jeronre, in his em- 
phatic style, declares that “he was constrained by almost the whole 
body of the bishops of Asia, and by deputations from numerous churches, 
to write something more profound respecting the divinity of the Saviour 
and to soar upwards even to the Word of God.”’* This circumstance, 
attested in so many ways, is interesting in that it accords with what we 
know of the essentially receptive character, and the absence of outward 
initiative, which distinguished the Apostle John. But the foreign impulse 
which induced him to take up his pen must itself have been called forth 
by some external circumstance; and the following is that which naturally 
presents itself to the mind. John had for along period taught by the 
living voice in those churches. When the Synoptics reached those regions, 
his hearers noticed and appreciated the differences which distinguished 


\IIpotparévra vmrd tov yvwpinwv, mvevmate 2H. E. iii. 24. 
Oeopopyevra (Eus. H. £. vi. 14). 3 Comment. in Matth. iv. De vir. illustr. c. 9. 
14 


210 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


the accounts given by their apostle from these other narrations; and it 
was the impression produced by this discovery which, no doubt, occasioned 
the solicitations that were thereafter addressed to him. This explanation is 
confirmed by the testimony of Clement. “ John, the last, seeing that the 
external things (corporeal) had been described in the Gospels (the Synop- 
tics), at the instigation of the leading men . . . composed a spiritual Gos- 
pel.” Eusebius also says that “ when Matthew, Mark and Luke had each 
published his Gospel, these writings having come into the hands of all, 
and into John’s hands, he approved them, . . . and that, being urged by 
his friends, he wrote . . .” (see above). These friends of John, who had 
induced him to write, were undoubtedly the depositaries of his book and 
those who took charge of its publication ; and it was they also who, in ac- 
quitting themselves of this duty, furnished it with the postscript which 
has accompanied it throughout the whole world and has reached even to 
us (xxi. 24). 

But what aim did the apostle especially propose to himself in acceding 
to this desire? Here the ancient and modern writers differ. The author 
of the Muratorian Fragment does not seem to admit any other intention 
in the evangelist than that of instructing and edifying the Church. John 
had, according to him, the office of relating; the other apostles present 
(Philip, Andrew?) that of criticising. These expressions imply a purely 
historical and practical aim. 

If, however, the Synoptical Gospels were already in the hands both of the 
author and of the readers, it is impossible that the new narrative should 
not have been designed to complete, or in certain respects to correct the 
earlier narratives. Else, to what purpose draw up a new one? So 
several of the Fathers do not hesitate to set forth this second aim, which 
is closely connected with the first. Eusebius declares that the apostle 
wrote the things which were omitted by the first evangelists, and, quite 
specially, that he supplied the omission of that which Jesus had done at 
the beginning of His ministry; then he adds that “if Matthew and Luke 
have preserved for us the genealogy of Jesus according to the flesh (yevea- 
Aoyia), John has taken as his starting-point His divinity (@zoAoyia).” 
“This,” he adds, “ was the part which the Divine Spirit had reserved for 
him as the most excellent of all” (iii. 24). Clement of Alexandria gives a 
very elevated and altogether spiritual import to John’s intention of com- 
pleting the Synoptics: “As the corporeal things were described in the 
Gospels, he was solicited to write a spiritual Gospel,” that is to say, a Gos- 
pel fitted to set forth, by means of the discourses of Jesus preserved in 
this narrative, the spirit of the facts which are related by the Synoptics. 

To this historico-didactic aim some Fathers add the intention to combat 
different errors which were beginning to come to light at the close of the 
first century. This polemical aim Irenzeus attributes, if not to the whole 
Gospel as is frequently said, at least to the prologue: ‘“ John, the Lord’s 
disciple, wishing to root out the seed which was scattered abroad in the 
hearts of men by Cerinthus, and already before him by the Nicolaitans 

. , and to lay down in the Church the rule of truth, began thus”? {iii. 


THE OCCASION AND AIM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 211 


11,1). Jerome expresses himself almost in the same way: “ As John was 
in Asia and the seed of the heretics, such as Cerinthus, Ebion and others 
who deny that Christ has come in the flesh, was already multiplying .. . , 
he replied to his brethren who solicited him, that he would write if all 
fasted and prayed to God with him, which was done. After which, the 
revelation by which he was filled broke forth in this prologue: In the be- 
ginning was the Word.” (1bid.) Some modern writers have laid hold 
upon these suppositions, or have added new ones to them. Erasmus, Gro- 
tius and Hengstenberg adhere to the idea of a polemic against Cerinthus. 
Lessing, de Wette and others think, with Jerome, that it is especially the 
Ebionites whom the author had in mind. Semler, Schneckenburger and 
Ebrard believe that he had the Docetae in view; Grotius, Storr and 
Ewald; the disciples of John the Baptist. 

Finally, the modern school, rejecting with a sort of disdain the differ- 
ent aims which we have just indicated, and thinking to rise to a higher 
conception of our Gospel, ascribe to it a purely speculative aim.!_ Lessing 
had already declared that John had saved Christianity—which would, 
without him, have disappeared as a Jewish sect—by teaching a loftier 
conception of the person of Christ.2, Whence had he drawn this new 
notion of the Christ? Lessing did not enter into an explanation as to 
this point, through prudence no doubt. Modern criticism has undertaken 
to give the explanation in his place. Liicke thinks that John proposed 
to himself to raise the simple faith of the Church, threatened by the 
double heresy of Ebionitism and Gnosticism, to the state of Gnosis, of 
higher knowledge. Reuss attributes to the author of this work no other 
aim than that of publishing his own “ evangelical theology founded on the 
idea of the divinity of the Saviour” (p, 29). Hilgenfeld, as we have seen, 
maintains that pseudo-John wrote in order to raise again in Asia Minor 
the standard of Paulinism, which had been overthrown and supplanted by 

the Judaic-Christianity of John. According to Baur, everything is ficti- 
tious, except some Synoptical materials, in this work which was designed 
to solve all the burning questions of the second century, apparently with- 
out touching them. The author brings Gnosis into credit in the Church 
by introducing the theory of the Logos into it; he moderates the Mon- 
tanist exaltation ; he resolves the question of the Passover at the expense 
of the churches of Asia, but in a way favorable to the other churches; he 
reconciles the two parties—the Pauline and the Judaic-Christian; and 
finally succeeds in founding the one and universal Church after which 
Christianity aspired from its origin; he consummates the apostolic work. 

Our task is to examine these various conceptions and to discern the 
portion of truth or of error which each one of them may contain. 

Our Gospels propose to themselves—all four of them—a single aim, 
that of giving rise to faith and strengthening it, by presenting to it histori- 
cally its supreme object, Jesus Christ. But each one does this in its own 


1 Keim: “The evangelist is truly much too 2 Neue Hypothese tiber die vier Evangelisten, 
great to pursue the historical aim.” Lachmann’s ed., vol. xi. 


DAB BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


way,—that is to say, each one presents this object to the Church under a 
different aspect. Matthew demonstrates, with a view to the Jews and by 
means of the agreement between the history and the prophecies. Luke 
expounds, by setting forth for the Gentiles the treasures of the universal 
divine grace. Mark depicts, by making the Wonderful One live again as 
the witnesses beheld Him. If John relates, it is no more than in the other 
cases, merely for the purpose of relating. Altogether like the others, he 
relates for the sake of strengthening the faith of the Church, first in the 
Messiahship, then in the divinity of Jesus. This is what he declares in the 
often-quoted passage xx. 30, 31, where he himself gives an explanation 
respecting the aim of his book: to show in Jesus the Messiah (the Christ) 
first, and then the Son of God, to the end that every one may find in 
Him eternal life. 

This declaration indicates nothing else than that historical and practical 
aim, which the author of the Muratorian Fragment implicitly ascribes to 
our Gospel; and its contents are fully confirmed by the contents of the 
book itself. How, indeed, does the author set about this? He relates 
the history of the development of his own faith and that of the other 
apostles, from the day when the two disciples of John the Baptist recognized 
in Jesus the Christ (chap. i.), even to the day when Thomas worshiped 
Him as his Lord and his God (chap. xx.). Here are the starting-point 
and the goal. The narrative included between these two limits only leads 
from the one to the other; and this fact alone is sufficient to enlighten 
us with respect to its aim. John wishes to present anew for his readers 
the path which his own faith had gone over in the company of Jesus; he 
wishes by the entire series of facts and teachings which have enlightened 
himself, to enlighten the Church; he wishes to glorify in its view the 
divine object of faith by the same means by which Jesus was glorified to 
his own view: by beholding and hearing the Word made flesh. In 
expressing ourselves thus, we do nothing but paraphrase the words of 
John himself at the beginning of his first epistle (i. 1-4), and comment upon 
that expression : in presence of his disciples, in the passage of the Gospel 
where he explains himself respecting his aim (xx. 30). 

But by reason of the very fact that the history traced by him was 
already set forth in three works which he possessed and which his readers 
possessed, he inevitably places himself in connection with those earlier 
narratives. And herein is the reason why he gives up relating the totality 
of the facts, as if his redaction were the first or the only one. In the 
declaration xx. 80, 81, he expressly reminds us of the fact that “Jesus did 
many other things in the presence of His disciples which are not written 
in this book.” It is natural also, as a consequence, that where he finds in 
those narratives gaps which seem to him of some importance, he should 
seek to supply them, or that, if some facts do not seem to him to be 
presented in a full light, he should endeavor to make the true rays fall 
upon them. As we have said, John certainly did not write for the purpose 
of completing, but he often completed or corrected, in passing, and without 
losing sight of his aim: to display the earthly glory of the Son of God to 


THE OCCASION AND AIM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 213 


the view of faith. It is thus that he omits the Galilean ministry, abund-— 
antly described by his predecessors, and devotes himself particularly to 
the visits to Jerusalem, where the glory of the Lord had shone forth in 
an indelible manner for his heart, in the struggle with the power of 
darkness concentrated in that place. This intention of completing the 
earlier narratives, whether from an historical point of view, as Eusebius 
thought, or ina more spiritual relation, as Clement of Alexandria declared, 
is therefore perfectly well-founded in fact; we mention it as a secondary 
aim and, to express it in a better way, as a means subservient to the prin- 
cipal aim. Reuss thinks that this combination of certain secondary 
aims with the principal one “ only betrays the weakness of these hypoth- 
eses.” But is there in existence a single historical work, which really 
pursues only one end, and which does not allow itself, occasionally, to 
work towards some secondary result? Thiers, surely, did not write the 
history of the Consulate and the Empire with the purpose of complet- 
ing earlier narratives. But will he refuse, when occasion calls, to notice 
particularly the facts which his predecessors may have omitted, or to 
correct those which, according to him, have been presented inexactly or 
incompletely? It is not, then, as “slaves of the most vulgar patristic 
tradition ” that we maintain, as Reuss says, “so sorry a thesis.”? It is 
because of the facts, the undeniable facts, respecting which Reuss himself, 
in his last work, has found himself at length compelled to open his eyes,’ 
that we continue to maintain this view. 

We persist even in a third opinion, no less opposed to the view of this 
critic. We maintain the truth, within certain limits, of the polemic aim 
attributed to our Gospel by several Fathers, and by a considerable num- 
ber of modern scholars. The first epistle of John incontrovertibly proves 
that the author of our Gospel lived in a region in which many false doc- 
trines had already arisen in the bosom of the Church. We are perfectly 
in accord with Keim and many others in recognizing that the principal 
heresy combated in this epistle was that of Cerinthus, known by the 
Fathers as the adversary of John at Ephesus. He taught that the true 
Christ, the Son of God, was not that poor Jew, the son of Joseph, called 
Jesus, who had died on the cross, but a celestial being who descended upon 
Him at His Baptism, who took Him temporarily as an organ, but who left 
Him to return to heaven before the Passion. Nothing gives a better 
account, than this teaching, of the polemic of 1 John ii. 22: “ Whoisa 
liar, but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?” Comp. also iv. 1-3. 
Now, can it be denied that the central word of our Gospel: ‘‘ The Word 
became flesh” cuts short this error by affirming, together with the fact 
of the incarnation, the organic and permanent union of divinity and 
humanity in the person of Jesus Christ? This same expression set aside, 
on the one hand, the ordinary heresy of the Ebdionites, who, without fall- 
ing into the subtleties of Cerinthus, simply denied the divinity of Christ, 
and, on the other, the Gnostic error, perhaps existing already in some, of 


1 Hist. de la théol. chrétienne, II. p. 312. 2See the note quoted, p. 75. 


214 BOOK III THE ORIGIN. 


a divine Christ who had assumed nothing of humanity but the appear- 
ance. John thus placed a rock in the midst of the Church against which 
the waves of the most opposite false doctrines would have to break. 
This was an indirect polemic, the only one which was in harmony with an 
historical work, but one to which the more direct polemic of the epistle 
gave completeness and precise definition. 

This epistle of John also does not allow us to deny, in certain passages 
of the Gospel, the intention to repel the claims of the disciples of John 
the Baptist, who from the first were ranked among the adversaries of 
the Lord. Where the apostle says, 1 Ep. v.6: “This is He that came 
by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water 
and blood,” is it not beyond dispute that he means to set aside the pre- 
tended Messiahship of John the Baptist, whom his disciples announced as 
the Christ, though he had offered to the world only the symbolic purifica- 
tion of the baptism of water, and not the real purification through the 
expiatory blood? If from this evidently polemical passage we come back 
to the declarations of the Gospel : “ He [John] wasnotthe light; but he came 
to bear witness to the light ” G. 8); “ Whoart thou?” ‘And he confessed 
and denied not, but confessed: I am not the Christ” (i. 19, 20); “ And his 
disciples came to him and said unto him: Behold, He to whom thou 
hast borne witness, He baptizeth! ... John answered: Ye are my wit- 
nesses that I said unto you: I am not the Christ” (ili. 26-28),—it will 
be necessary for us, nevertheless, to yield to the evidence and acknowl- 
edge that John had in view in these words ‘and these stories early dis- 
ciples of the forerunner who, impelled by jealous hatred of Christ and 
of the Gospel, went so far as to pronounce their old master to be the 
Messiah.! 

The polemic aim, as a secondary aim, seems to us, therefore, to be 
justified by the facts. And what, indeed, could be more natural? When 
we establish a truth, especially a truth of the first importance, we estab- 
lish it for itself, surely, and in consideration of its intrinsic importance; 
but not without desiring to set aside, at the same time, the errors which 
might supplant it or paralyze its beneficent effects. 

There is but one aim, among those which have been pointed out, which 
we find ourselves forced to exclude absolutely; it is—we repeat it to the 
great offence of Reuss—the speculative aim, the only one which this critic 
allows. Let us explain. In the opinion of Reuss and many others, the 
fourth Gospel is intended to cause a new theory to prevail in the Church 
respecting the person of Jesus, which the author had personally formed 
through identifying Christ with the divine Logos, with which he had 
become acquainted through the teaching of the Alexandrian philosophy. 
We have shown that the facts, when seriously inquired into, are not in 


1 Apollos (Acts xviii.) and the twelve disci- towards Jesus; there are also facts reported 
ples of John (Acts xix.) did not goasfaras by the Synoptics; comp. Matt. ix. 14 and the 
this, surely. But it is not only the fact re- parallels, and perhaps even xi. 2 ff., since the 


lated in John iii. 25 ff., which shows us the disciples must, by their statements, have 
secret hatred of a part of John’s disciples, called forth that procedure on John’s part. 


THE OCCASION AND AIM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 


215 


accord with this view, which, moreover, contradicts the author’s own 
declaration (xx. 30, 31). For in that passage he does not speak of his 
intention to elevate faith to the condition of speculative knowledge, but 
simply of his desire to strengthen faith itself by presenting to it its object, 
Jesus the Messiah and Son of God, in His fullness and conformably to all 
the signs by which He had caused His matchless glory to shine forth in 


His own presence and in that of His disciples. 


There is no place in such 


a programme for a Christ who is only the fruit of the metaphysical specu- 


lations of the evangelist. 


Moreover, faith is never, in our Gospel, any- 


thing else than the assimilation of the testimony (1.7); and the testimony 


relates to an historical fact, not to an idea. 


We may easily picture to 


ourselves Thiers writing the history of Napoleon with the design of dis- 


playing the greatness of his hero ; 


we may also picture him to ourselves 


as occasionally completing and correcting the narratives preceding his 
own, or as indirectly justifying the political and financial measures of the 
great Monarch, by alluding to false theories which were spread abroad 


respecting these questions. 


But what the historian certainly would never 


have done, would be to make use of the person of his hero as a mouth- 
piece for disseminating in the world any theory whatever which pertained 
to himself, and to attribute to him with this aim acts which he had not 
performed or discourses which he had never spoken.! 

To the end of confirming the theological and speculative aim attributed 


by him to our Gospel, Reuss asks 


“af this is not the book which served 


as the foundation and starting point for the formulas of Nicsea and Chal- 


cedon”’ (p. 33). 
the texts of John. 


I answer: No; for the subject of those formulas was not 
It was the fact itself of the incarnation, of the union 


-of the divine and human in the person of Christ, respecting the mode of 
which an understanding was sought for. Now, this fact is not taught only 


in the fourth Gospel. 


It is taught, as we have seen, in the Epistles of St. 


Paul (Col.i., Phil. ii., 1 Cor. viii. and x., etc.), in the Epistle to the Hebrews 


(chaps. i. and ii.),in the Apocalypse, in the Synoptics themselves. 


The 


Johannean Gospel has discovered the expression which best sets forth the 
union of the divine and human in Christ; but that union itself forms the 


basis of all the writings of the New Testament. 


It was not, therefore, the 


fourth Gospel, it was the Christian fact, which constrained the Fathers of 
Nicea and Chalcedon to search out formulas fitted to give an account of 


1JIn my first edition (I., p. 140), I expressed 
myself as follows: “The only aim which is 
positively excluded by what we have just 
gathered from the author’s declaration (xx. 
30, 31), is the speculative or didactic aim, the 
design of satisfying the understanding by 
giving to Christian dogma a new develop- 
ment.” Reuss quotes this statement, sup- 
pressing the words: “The intention of satis- 
Sying the understanding.” Now it is precisely 
these omitted words which explained what I 
here understood by a didactic aim. It is very 
clear that in narrating John proposed to him- 


self to teach; the sole question is whether 
this instructive narrative had as its aim to 
confirm faith, as he claims himself and as I 
claim also, or was made with a view to satisfy 
the understanding. To suppress these last 
words, is to render my thought unrecogniza- 
ble and absurd. In my second edition, I had 
already, to avoid all that was equivocal, en- 
tirely suppressed in this sentence the term 
didactic, and said: “The only aim excluded 

., is the philosophical or speculative aim.” 
(I., p. 360). 


216 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


/ 
this contrast, which makes the supreme grandeur of Christianity, at the 
same time that it is its greatest mystery. 

I take pleasure in closing the study of this subject with the following 
lines from B. Weiss, in which I find my own opinion fully expressed : 
“To set forth the glory of the divine Logos as he had beheld it in the 
earthly life of Jesus (i. 14), as it had more and more magnificently revealed 
itself in conflict with unbelieving and hostile Judaism, and as it had led 
receptive souls to a faith ever more firm, to a contemplation ever more 
blessed,—this is what the evangelist desires. This fundamental idea of 
the narrative is in no degree detrimental to its historical character, because 
it is derived from the facts themselves which had been a living experience 
to the author, and because he confines himself to the demonstration of 
their realization in the history.” ? 


Soon after the destruction of Jerusalem, the Apostle John, freed from 
all duty to his own people, came to Asia Minor to settle there. There the 
magnificent plantations which were due to the labors of the Apostle Paul 
were flourishing. But the prophecy of that same apostle: “I know that 
after my departure grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing 
the flock” (Acts xx. 29), began to be fulfilled. An apostolic hand was 
needed to direct these churches. Around Ephesus was spread out the 
fairest field of Christian labor. We have already said, with a great writer : 
“The centre of gravity of the Church was no longer in Jerusalem; it was 
not yet in Rome; it was in Ephesus.” Moreover, this city was not only 
the great commercial entrepot between Asia and Europe, but also the 
centre of a rich and active intellectual exchange between the religious and 
philosophical movements of the Orient and occidental culture. It was 
the rendezvous of the orators of all schools, of the partisans of all systems. 

On such a theatre the Palestinian apostle must have grown daily, not, 
doubtless, in the knowledge of the person and work of Jesus, but in the 
understanding of the manifold relations, sympathetic or hostile, between 
the Gospel and the different tendencies of human philosophy. Those 
Christian populations to which St. Paul had opened the way of salvation 
by instructing them with respect to the contrast between the state of sin 
and the state of grace, and by showing them the means of passing from 
the one to the other, John now introduced into the full knowledge of the 


1We do not return here to the aims set 
forth by Baur and Hilgenfeld. We think that 
the remarks, pp. 205 ff., may be sufficient. 

2 Introduction to the Commentary on the Gos- 
pel of John, p. 41. Among the recent hypoth- 
eses, we will further indicate, as an especially 
curious specimen, the system set forth by 
Noack in his work: Aus der Jordan-Wiege 
nach Goljgotha, 1870: Jesus, the son of Mary 
and a Samaritan soldier, even in consequence 
of this dishonorable birth, came to regard 
God as his father. He lived ina continual 
state of ecstasy which he maintained by fac- 
titious means,—fasting, for example. After 


e 


having kept himself at this artificial eleva- 
tion, when he was no longer able to continue 
thus he sought death, and the one who aided | 
him in the realization of this desire, and 
became accessory to this last act of his life 
was—Judas. He was the disciple whom Jesus 
loved; he was the author of the fourth Gospel, 
which was afterwards changed, but whose 
primitive sense Noack has re-established. 
Jesus died on Gerizim whither he had retired 
with his seven disciples, and where, by the 
aid of Judas, he fell into the hands of his 
enemies and was set free from life. 


THE OCCASION AND AIM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 217 


person of the Saviour Himself; he spread out before their eyes a great 
number of striking facts which, for one reason or another, tradition had 
left in obscurity, and many sublime teachings which had been deeply 
engraved on his heart, and which he alone had preserved; he described 
the relations, full of love and condescension, which the Lord had sustained 
towards His own friends, and the proofs which He had given them, in 
their intimate association, of His divine greatness and His filial relation to 
the Father. All these elements of the knowledge of Christ, which he 
brought with him, gain a new value through the connection in which they 
were placed, in such a region, with the speculations of all sorts which 
were there current. 

The day came, after many years no doubt, when the churches said to 
themselves that the apostle, who was the depositary of such treasures, 
would not live always, and did not belong to them alone; and, measuring 
the distance between the teaching which they had enjoyed and that which 
they found recorded in the existing Gospels, they requested John to com- 
mit to writing what he had related tothem. He consented, and he opened 
his work with a preamble in which, putting his narrative in connection 
with the efforts of human wisdom of which he was daily a witness, he 
fixed with a firm hand the central fact of the evangelical history, the 
incarnation, and reminded every reader of the vital importance of the 
history which he was about to read: The Christ, the subject of this narra- 
tive, would be for him /ife—as for the disciples—if he received Him; death 
—as for the Jews—if he rejected Him (John i. 1-18). 

At a later time, the first Hpistle of the same apostle proceeded from his 
apostolic working in the same churches, in which writing he addresses 
himself as a father to mature man, to young men and to children, and in 
which he makes allusion in the very first lines to the testimony which he 
bears unceasingly among them respecting that great fact of the incarna- 
tion which he has, as it were, seen with his eyes and handled with his hands. 
Some have been disposed to find in ver. 4: “And we write unto you” 
(comp. li. 14, 21, 26, etc.), an allusion to the composition and sending of 
the Gospel. We do not think that we are authorized by the context to 
apply these expressions to any other work than the epistle itself. 

The two small epistles were issued in the same surroundings. They seem 
to us, indeed, to belong to the same author. Independently of the iden- 
tity of style, what other person than John could have designated himself 
simply by this title: The Elder (6 xpeoBirepoc), without adding to it his 
name? An official presbyter of the Church of Ephesus could not have 
done this, since he had colleagues, elders as well as himself; and if this 
word is taken here in the sense which it has in the fragment of Papias: 
an immediate disciple of the Lord, no other than the Apostle John could 
appropriate to himself this name in so absolute a way and as an exclusive 
title. 

Finally, it was no doubt still later, during a temporary exile and under 
the impression of the recent persecution by Domitian, that John composed 
his last work: the Apocalypse, in which, beholding, as if from the summit 


218 BOOK III. THE ORIGIN. 


of a mountain, the century which had passed away and those which were 
to follow, he completes the idea of the Christ come by that of the Christ 
coming again, and prepares the Church for the prolonged conflicts and for 
the final crisis which are to precede His return.! 

One fact is fitted to excite the reflection of thinking men. St. Paul, the 
founder of the churches of Asia Minor, cannot fail to have left his type of 
doctrine deeply impressed on the life of those churches. And yet the 
Pauline imprint is, as it were, effaced in all the theological literature of 
Asia Minor in the second century. And this disappearance is by no means 
the effect of a weakening, of a decay: there is a substitution. There is the 
appearance of a new imprint, of equal dignity at least with that which pre- 
ceded it,—the trace of another influence no less Christian, but of a different 
character. Another equally powerful personality has passed that way, and 
given a peculiar and altogether new stamp to the Christian life and thought 
of those countries. This phenomenon is the more remarkable, since the 
history of the Church of the West presents an entirely opposite one. Here 
the Pauline type continues; it reigns without a rival even to the third and 
fourth centuries; it is found anew at every moment in the conflicts of a 
purely anthropological character which agitate this portion of the Church. 
And when it is gradually effaced, it is not in order to give place to another 
quite as elevated, quite as spiritual, but it is by a way of gradual enfeeble- 
ment and a process of growing materialization and ritualism. 

This grand fact ought to be sufficient to prove that the two Johannean 
books, which are the documents of the new type impressed on the churches 
of Asia—the fourth Gospel and the first Epistle—are not the works of a 
Christian of second rank, of some unknown disciple, but that they proceed 
from one of the peers of the apostle to the Gentiles, from one of those 
disciples who had drunk from the first source, from an immediate and 
peculiarly intimate heir of Christ. 

We well understand what stays a certain number of excellent minds, at 
the moment of closing in the tribunal of their own consciousness the acts 
of this great process by a decision favorable to the apostolic origin of our 
Gospel. They are afraid that, by recognizing in Christ the appearance of 
a divine being, they will lose from Him the true man. This anxiety will 
vanish away as soon as they shall have substituted .for the traditional no- 
_ tion of the incarnation the true Biblical notion of that supreme fact. From 
the truly Scriptural point of view, indeed, there are not in Christ two oppo- 
site and contradictory modes of being, which move together side by side in 
one and the same person. What the apostles show us in Him is a human 
mode of existence substituted, by the voluntary humiliation of the Saviour 
of men, for His divine mode of existence,—then transformed, by a holy 
and normal development, in such a way as to be able to serve as an organ 
for the divine life and to realize the original glory of the Son of God. And 
let us not forget that this transformation of our human existence into a 


1 See, for the reasons which do not allow us than this, my Etudes bibliques, 3d ed., vol. IL., 
to place the writing of the Apocalypse earlier pp. 325-330. 


THE OCCASION AND AIM OF THE FOURTH GOSPEL. 219 


glorified humanity is not accomplished in Christ alone ; it is accomplished 
in Him only to the end of its realization through Him in all those who 
unite themselves to Him by faith: “To all who received Him gave he 
the power to become children of God, even to those who believe on His 
name; and [indeed] the Word became flesh” (i. 18, 14). If the Son for 
a time abandons the divine condition in order to descend into our human 
mode of being, it is to impel us to that upward movement which, from the 
day of His incarnation, He impresses, even in His own person, upon the 
history of humanity, which He communicates, from the day of Pentecost, 
to all believers, and the end of which is to be: God all in all, as its starting- 
point was: God all in one. 

The domain of being passes infinitely beyond that of thought—not of 
absolute thought, but of ours. Do we not see, even in our human life 
which is so limited, the inspirations of love outrunning infinitely the cal- 
culations of the understanding? How much more when the question is 
of the inspirations of the divine love as related to the thoughts of the 
human mind. 

To accept the living gift of eternal love by letting it descend through 
faith into the sphere of human life, is to accomplish three equally salutary 
things. It is to dethrong man in his own heart; for the Son of God, by 
voluntarily humbling Himself, impels us to the sacrifice of self (Phil. 11. 5 
ff.). It is to open heaven to him; for such a gift is an indissoluble bond 
between the heart of God and that of every man who accepts it. It is to 
make the believer the eternal dwelling-place of God; for Christin him is 
God in him. By this means, God reigns. 

But suppress this gift by refusing or lessening it,—and this is the end for 
which those are laboring who make the fourth Gospel a theological treat- 
ise instead of a history,—the human sphere shuts in again upon itself; 
immediately man raises himself erect; he feeds no longer upon anything 
except himself; God withdraws. Man assumes the throne and reigns 
here on earth. 7 

The thought of the gift of the only-begotten Son is not the fruit of 
human speculation; it bears in itself the seal of its divine origin. God 
alone can have had this thought, because God alone can love thus. 

Let us enter now, with this certainty, upon the study of the pages in 
which this great fact of the divine love has been distinctly revealed on 
earth; and may those pages themselves speak with a louder voice than 
any pleader, and the moment come when they shall no more need an 
advocate ! 


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ENTRODUCTION, 





Arrrrthe General Introduction contained in the first part of this volume, 
it only remains for us, in the Special Introduction to the Commentary, to 
treat of the plan of the Gospel and of the most important documents in 
which the text of this writing has been preserved to us. 





CHAPTER FIRST. 
THE PLAN OF THE GOSPEL. 


THERE is a marked difference between the exegesis of the Fathers and 
modern works on the Gospel of John. With the former the thought of a 
plan, of a systematic arrangement, seems almost to have no existence, 
s completely is the historical character of the story assumed. The nar- 
rative is regarded as the simple reproduction of the history. It is no 
longer so in the modern conception. The agency of a governing idea is 
made to appear in the story. According to the view of which Baur’s 
work is still the most remarkable expression, the idea plays even so deci- 
sive a part in this evangelical composition, that it not only determines its 
arrangement, but furnishes the substance of the story so far that, accord- 
ing to this critic, fact, as such, is almost annihilated, and that the allegori- 
cal exposition, the name of which until now recalled the worst days of 
exegesis, is again become the true method of interpretation. The fourth 
Gospel, a thoroughly systematic work, isas independent of real history as 
the Ethics of Spinoza can be of sensible reality. 

This reversal of the point of view has been brought about gradually. 
The works of Lampe, de Wette, Schweizer and Baur seem to me to be the 
noteworthy points in this scientific elaboration." 

Lampe was the first, according to Liicke, to propose a general division 
of the Gospel. It was still very imperfect. Placed between a prologue 


1 For this exposition we are much indebted to the work of Luthardt, Das Joh. Evang. 2d ed., 


i. p. 200-222. 
yyA | 


pan INTRODUCTION. 


(i. 1-18) and an epilogue (xx. 80-xxi. 25), the narrative is subdivided into 
two parts: A. The public ministry of the Lord, i. 19-xii. 50. B. The last 
acts of His life, xiii. 1-xx. 29. Lampe had thus put his finger on one of 
the principal articulations of the Gospel. All those who, since his day, 
have effaced the line of division between ch. xii. and xiii. seem to me to 
have retrograded in the understanding of John’s work. 

Eichhorn made no change in this division. He merely designated the 
two principal parts of the narrative in a different way: 1. The first, i. 
19-x1i. 50, proves that Jesus is the promised Messiah ; 2. The second, 
xilil.-xx., contains the account of the last days of His life. Here was no 
real improvement. What Eichhorn indicates as the contents of the first 
twelve chapters is really applicable only to the first four; and the subjects 
of the two parts, thus designated, are not logically co-ordinate with each 
other. 

Before Eichhorn, Bengel! had attempted to found the division of the 
Gospel on another principle. After having ingeniously marked the cor- 
respondence between the initial week (i. 19-ii. 11) and the final week 
(xii. 1-xx. 31), he divided the intermediate history according to the jour- 
neys to the feasts: Passover, ii. 13; Pentecost (according to Bengel) v. 
1; Tabernacles, vii. 2. But this arrangement evidently rests on a too ex- 
ternal order of events; since it has the disadvantage of effacing the divi- 
sion, distinctly marked by the Evangelist himself and already pointed out 
by Lampe, between chs. xii. and xiii. 

Bengel was, nevertheless, followed by Olshausen, who assumed, accord- 
ing to this principle of division, the following four parts; 1. i—vi.; 2. 
Vil.-xl.; 3. xii—xvii.; 4. xvili-xxi. Licke himself, in his first two 
editions, despaired of reaching a more profound plan, and contented 
himself with endeavoring to improve the division which is founded on 
this principle. ) 

De Wette, first of all, discerned and set forth the unfolding of a single 
idea in our Gospel. The glory of Christ,—such is, according to him, the 
central thought of the entire work: 1. The first chapter sets forth the 
idea in a summary way ;—2. The first part of the narrative (ii—xii.) ex- 
hibits it to us as translated into action in the ministry of Jesus, and that: 
A, by particular examples (ii—vi.); B, by the preparation of the catastro- 
phe during the last sojournings of Jesus in Judea (vii.—xii.) ;—8. The 
glory of the Lord manifests itself in all its splendor in the second part of 
the narrative (xili.-xx.), and that: A, inwardly and morally, in His suf- 


1 Gnomon, N. T., 1742. 


PLAN OF THE GOSPEL. 223 


ferings and death (xiii—xix.); and B, outwardly and sensibly, by the 
triumphant fact of His resurrection (xx.). 

This grand and beautiful conception, by means of which de Wette has 
certainly made an epoch in the understanding of our Gospel, governed 
exegesis for a certain period. Liicke yielded to its influence in his third 
edition; but he introduced into this plan a subdivision which must not 
be lost sight of. It is the separation between chs. iv.and v. Until ch. iv., 
indeed, the opposition to Jesus does not become distinctly noticeable. 
From ch. v., onward it is the governing element in the narrative, and goes 
on increasing up to ch. xii. 

Baumgarten-Crusius, taking advantage of the conception of de Wette 
and of the subdivision introduced by Liicke, presented the following ar- 
rangement: 1. The works of Christ, i-iv.; 2. His struggles, v.-xii.; 3. His 
moral victory, xiii—xix.; 4. His final glory, xx. This was de Wette’sidea, 
better formulated than it had been by de Wette himself. It was the first 
altogether rational division of the entire contents of our Gospel. Almost 
all the principal articulations of the narrative were established and 
pointed out: that between chs. iv. and v.; that between chs. xi. and xiii. ; 
finally, that between xix. and xx. 

This division, however, only took account of the divine and objective 
factor of the narrative, if we may so speak,—Christ and His manifestation. 
But there is another element in John’s narration, the human, subjective 
factor—the conduct of men towards the Lord on occasion of His reve- 
lation, the faith of some and the unbelief of others. 

Alexander Schweizer demanded a place for this human element in the 
arrangement of the narrative. He accorded to it even the decisive part, 
and this while especially laying emphasis on the side of unbelief. He 
adopted the following plan, which brings out precisely the leading articu- 
lations that we have just indicated. 1, The struggle makes itself known 
in the distance; i-iv.; 2. It breaks forth in all its violence, v.-xii.; 3. The 
denouement, xiiixx. Understood in this way the Gospel becomes 
a drama, and assumes a tragic interest. But in the conduct of men 
towards the Lord, unbeliefis only one side. Does not the element of faith 
remain too much in the background in this conception of Schweizer? 
The factor thus neglected could not fail to obtain its revenge. 

Before coming to this point which was easy to be foreseen, we ought to 
mention some remarkable works which -appear to us to connect them- 
selves, if not historically, at least in principle, with the points of view 
already indicated. Like de Wette and Baumgarten-Crusius, Reuss makes 


2294 INTRODUCTION. 


the general arrangement of the Gospel rest upon the revelation of Christ.! 
He assumes three parts: 1. Jesus reveals Himself to the world, 1.-xii.; (A) 
first, enrolling, i—iv.; (B) then, selecting, v.-xii. 2. He reveals Himself to 
His own, xiii.-xvii., endeavoring to cause the speculative ideas, expressed 
in a dogmatic or polemical form in the first part, to penetrate their hearts, 
and to transmute these ideas into their inmost life. Up to this point the 
order is logical, and in this brief form of words are comprehended many of 
the ideas fitted to throw light upon the progress of the work of Christ in our 
Gospel. But here a difficulty presents itself, which arises from the gen- 
eral point of view at which Reuss takes his stand with regard to the work 
of John; the rational division is exhausted. There is no third term 
which can be logically placed beside the world and the believers. And yet 
the Gospel is not ended, and a place must be assigned to the three chap- 
ters which still remain. Reuss makes of them a third part, which he 
entitles: “‘The denouement of the two relations previously established ;” 
Xvlii-xx. It is difficult to understand how the narrative of the death and 
resurrection of Christ can undo the knot formed by the twofold relation 
of Jesus to the world and believers. Here is the reply of this author: 
“Tn that Jesus remains dead for the unbelievers, and rises victorious for 
the believers.”’ If in a matter of this kind a clever phrase were sufficient, 
one might declare oneself satisfied. But can Reuss be so himself? Must 
he not perceive that this purely historical denouement is not consistent 
with a speculative Gospel, an ideal work such as his Gospel of John is? 
By this course we must reach the point of seeing in these last historical 
facts nothing but a religion or a system of ethics in action. And indeed 
how does Reuss close his analysis of the Gospel? By these words: “It 
is thus that the history, even to the end, is the mirror of religious truths.” 
What! the events of the death and resurrection of the Saviour placed in 
the same rank with the metaphysics of John! But there remains no 
other way for Reuss to make of the Gospel a homogeneous whole, and 
logically to co-ordinate the third part with the two others. We see at 
what a price this higher conception must be purchased, according to 
which the reflections of John on the person of Christ form the substance of 
the fourth Gospel! 

Ebrard returns to the plan of Bengel, and once more bases the order of 
our Gospel upon the feast-journeys. But he attaches a more profound 
meaning to this apparently quite external principle of division. He 


1 Hist. de la Théol. chrét., 2d ed. t. ii., pp. 392-394. Die Geschichte der heil Schr. N. T., 5th ed., 
1874, 2 221. 


PLAN OF THE GOSPEL. 225 


justly remarks that the journeys of Jesus to Judea are the natural turning 
points of the history, since, Jerusalem being the central point of opposition, 
each visit of Jesus to that capital, instead of being a step towards His glori- 
ous coming, became one towards the catastrophe. Nevertheless, we have 
already seen, and we shall see still further, the insufficiency of this division. 

As de Wette had made everything rest upon the objective element, the 
manifestation of Jesus’ glory, and as Schweizer had made especially con- 
spicuous one of the two subjective factors, unbelief, it was natural that an 
interpreter should lay hold of the other, faith. This is what Baur has done. 
He sees in our Gospel the (ideal) history of the development of faith. 
Baur consecrated to this task the resources of a mind most sagacious and 
most fully determined not to recoil at the presence of any obstacle which 
the text presented to him; and he has thus powerfully contributed to 
demonstrate the unity of John’s work. He divides the Gospel into nine 
sections, which, however, the prologue being set aside and certain second- 
ary divisions passed without notice, can be reduced to five: 1. The first 
manifestations of the Word, and the first symptoms of faith and unbelief 
which resulted therefrom, i-vi.; 2. The (dialectic) victory of faith over its 
opposite, unbelief, vii.-xii.; 3. The positive development of faith, xii1.—xvil. 
Having reached this point, Baur meets the same difficulty as Reuss. How 
to pass from idea to history, from the dialectic development of faith to 
the positive facts of the death and resurrection of the Saviour? The idea 
demands nothing further. This is the way in which Baur continues; 4. 
The death of Jesus appears as the work of unbelief; 5. His resurrection, 
as the consummation of faith. Such is the meaning of xvili-xx. But, 
from this author’s point of view, this last part remains, nevertheless, a 
superfetation, as in the case of Reuss. The Passion and Resurrection are 
facts of too weighty a character to make it possible for them to have their 
place seriously assigned in the account of the dialectic development of 
faith,and to be made mere landmarks on the road which leads from the 
objection of Nathanael (ch. i.) to the ery of faith given by Thomas (ch. xx.). 
We must either idealize the fourth Gospel to its very end, or, by a retro- 
active conclusion, starting from the truly historical character of the last 
part, must recognize also that of the preceding parts.! 


1 We may see here the difficulty presenting _late itself into fact? The pure idea has no 
itself, at a particular point, which attaches right to go out of itself, in order to trans- 
everywhere to the philosophical (Hegelian) form itself into a rea! world. Only the 
view on which the theology of Baur rests. In __ world exists, and it is necessary to give it a 
virtue of what logical necessity does the place in the system. 
idea pass out of its pure existence to trans- 


15 


226 INTRODUCTION. 


Luthardt accepted almost wholly the results of the work of Baur in re- 
gard to the special point with which we are now concerned. Only he 
justly lays down as the basis of the development of faith the historic reve- 
lation of Christ, so properly emphasized by de Wette. The Son displays 
His glory; faith springs up, but at the same time unbelief awakes; and 
soon Jesus is unable to manifest further the divine principle which is in 
Him, except in conflict with the hostile elements which surround him. 
Nevertheless, in the midst of this conflict faith gathers strength among 
the disciples, and the moment arrives when Jesus, after having broken 
with the people and their rulers, gives Himself entirely to the faith of 
His own followers and impresses upon it the seal of completeness. <Ac- 
cordingly, Luthardt supposes the following three parts: 1. Jesus begins to 
reveal Himself as Son of God, i.-iv.; 2. Jesus continues to give testimony 
to Himself, while contending with Jewish unbelief, v.-xil.; 3. Jesus gives 
Himself completely to the faith of His own, xiii-xx. 

Luthardt, in the footsteps of Baur, seems to me more successfully than 
any one else to have penetrated into the spirit of the book and into the 
inner thought which directed the course of the narrative. And yet the 
defective point in the plan which he proposes is obvious; it is found in 
the last section. How are we to find a place for the account of the Pas- 
sion in the third section, entitled: Jesus and His own? Luthardt here 
mingles in one group elements which are altogether heterogeneous. 

Meyer’s division appears to me to be rather a retrograde step than an 
advance. On the one hand, it raises secondary parts to the position of 
principal parts; for example, in the first eleven chapters, which Meyer 
divides into four sections: 1. First revelations of the glory of the Son, i. 1.- 
ii. 11; 2. Continuation of this revelation in the presence of growing be- 
lief and unbelief, ii. 12-iv. 54.; 8. New revelations and progress of unbelief, 
v.-vi.:4. Unbelief having reached its culmination, vii—xi. On the other 
hand, Meyer unites quite distinct parts in one, when he joins together 
chaps. xii.-xx. in one group, entitled: 5. The supreme manifestation of 
the glory of Jesus before, in, and after the Passion. 

Arnaud? has returned to the division of Bengel, Olshausen and Ebrard, 
according to the feast-journeys. Thus, between the prologue and the res- 
urrection, he points out five parts corresponding with the five journeys 
indicated by the evangelist: 1. ii. 18, (Passover); 2. v., (a feast not desig- 
nated); 3. vii. 2, (Tabernacles); 4. x. 22, (Dedication); 5. xii. 1, (Pass- 
over). In addition to the disadvantage already pointed out, of effacing 


1 Commentaire sur le. N. T., t. ii. 1863. 


PLAN OF THE GOSPEL. 22k 


the resting point of the narrative which is clearly marked by the evange- 
list at the end of ch. xii., this division has the further one of making an 
outside matter of that entire portion of the narrative,—so important 
nevertheless,—which precedes the first feast-journey, i. 19-ii. 12. 

Lange discovers seven sections in the narrative: 1. The welcome given 
to Christ by the friends of the light, i. 19-iv. 54; 2. The conflict between 
Christ and the elements of darkness, v. 1-vii. 9; 3. The continually in- 
creasing fermentation, vii. 10-x. 21; 4. The complete separation between 
the heterogeneous elements, x. 22-xili. 80; 5. The Lord among the 
friends of the light, xiii. 31-xvil. 26; 6. The Lord in the midst of His 
enemies, a conqueror in outward defeat, xviii. 1-xix. 42; 7. The victory 
accomplished, xx. This division seems to me a movement backward, 
rather than an advance. 

F. de Rougemont, in his translation of Olshausen’s Commentary, 1844, 
has traced the plan, which, so far as relates to the distinction and arrange- 
ment of the parts, seems to me to approach most nearly to the truth: 1. 
Jesus attracts to Himself the souls which do the truth, i-iv.; 2. He re- 
veals Himself to the world which rejects Him, v.-xii.; 3. He manifests 
Himself fully to His disciples, xiii.-xvii.; 4. After having accomplished 
everything, He dies, xvili—xix.; 5. He rises from the dead and becomes 
through the Holy Spirit the source of life for believers, xx. The only de- 
fect in this arrangement appears to me to lie in the designation of the 
contents of certain parts and in the absence of a distinct logical relation 
established between them. 

The foregoing review has made evident, in succession, the three princi- 
pal factors in the narrative of our Gospel: 1. Jesus and His manifesta- 
tion; 2. Faith; 8. Unbelief; or to state it more precisely, the manifestation 
of Jesus as Messiah and as Son of God; the birth, growth, and completing 
of faith in the disciples; the parallel development of the national unbelief. 
De Wette, Schweizer and Baur have shown us in their plans the most re- 
markable examples of three divisions founded solely or mainly on one of 
these factors. But we have seen the impossibility of making either one 
or another part of the narrative find its place in the frame-works pro- 
posed by these three men. This fact has an easy explanation, if our Gos- 
pel is a work of a really historical character. A purely rational frame- 
work applied to history must always retain something of artificiality, and 
betray its insufficiency on some side. Fact must always go beyond the 
idea, because it includes the incalculable element of freedom. Let us, 
then, renounce synthetical divisions which are more or less connected 


228 INTRODUCTION. 


with the opinion that the fourth Gospel is a work essentially speculative, 
and, without bringing to this question any preconceived idea, let us allow 
the narrative to act upon us and reveal to us its own secret. It seems to 
me that we shall, without difficulty, discern five groups which have a 
natural gradation and which the efforts already indicated have succes- 
sively brought to light. 

1. i. 19-iv. 54: Jesus reveals Himself as the Messiah. With this funda- 
mental facts are connected, on the one side, the birth and the first growths 
of faith; on the other, the first scarcely perceptible symptoms of unbelief. 

2. v.-xii.: The national unbelief develops itself rapidly and powerfully, 
and that on the foundation of the growing revelation of Jesus manifest- 
ing Himself ever more clearly as the Son of God; at the same time, 
there is wrought out, subsidiarily, the development of faith in the disci- 
ples, by means of those very struggles. 

3. xlii-xvii.: Faith develops itself and reaches its highest point of 
strength and light in the disciples during the last hours which they spend 
with their Master; and this development is wrought by means of the last 
revelations of Jesus, and in consequence of the expulsion of the faithless 
disciple in whose person unbelief had gained a foothold, even in the bosom 
of the apostolic college. 

4, xviii.-xix.: The national wnbelief consummates its work by the mur- 
der of the Messiah, while the calm radiance of the glory of the, latter 
penetrates that gloomy night, and the silent growth of faith continues 
in the few disciples whose eyes are still open to receive these divine 
splendors. 

5. xx. (xxi.): The Resurrection, that supreme revelation of Jesus as the 
Son of God, completes the victory of faith over the last remnants of un- 
belief in the company of the Twelve. 

Exegesis will show whether this summary of the narrative is in con- 
formity with the text and the spirit of the writing. If it is, the three 
principal elements, which we have pointed out are met with again, and 
are developed simultaneously and face to face in all parts of the narrative, 
but with this difference, that the first, the revelation of Jesus, forms the con- 
tinuous basis of the narrative, and that the two others unfold themselves 
alternately, the one with an ever clearer brightness, the other in more and 
more sombre colors, on this permanent basis. To sum up: From i. 18- 
xx. 29 we see Jesus revealing Himself continuously as the Christ and the 
Son of God; under the influence of this growing manifestation, faith is 
born and unbelief awakes, i.-iv.; the latter gets the mastery in the midst 


PLAN OF THE GOSPEL. 229 


of the nation, v.-xii.; the former attains its relative perfection in the last 
conversations of Jesus with His disciples, xiii.—xvii.; finally, unbelief is 
consummated, xviii—xix.; and faith reaches its completeness, xx. (xxi.). 

There is in this arrangement nothing systematic, nothing factitious. 
It is the photography of the history. If exegesis proves that this plan, 
at once so natural and so profound, is indeed that of this book, we shall 
find in this fact an important confirmation of the truly historical charac- 
ter and the seriously practical aim of our Gospel. 

Of the plans which have been proposed since the publication of this 
commentary, we mention only the following : 

That of Milligan and Moulton! is absolutely the same with the one 
which we have just sketched, with the exception of the last two parts, the 
Passion and the Resurrection, which they combine in a single one under 
this title: the apparent victory and real defeat of unbelief. It does not 
seem to us that this isan advance. The element of faith is thereby too 
far effaced. 

Westcott? accepts the grand division of Reuss: revelation of Christ to 
the world (i.-xii.); revelation of Christ to the disciples (extending this 
latter even to the end) xiii.-xx. But it isnot possible to place the story 
of the Passion under the general title of the revelation to the disciples. 

In 1871, in the Zeitschrift fiir wissenschaftliche Theologie, Honig, presented 
the following plan: The manifestation of the Logos in the person of 
Jesus—this is the general idea. It unfolds itself in three phases: 1. ivi. : 
the manifestation of the Logos; 2. vii.—xii. : the selection between the oppo- 
site elements ; 3. xili-xx.: The catastrophe resulting from this selection 
and issuing in the victory of the Logos. But we do not altogether see the 
reason of the opposition thus established between the first two parts. 
The selection between the opposite elements has begun from the first 
chapter; and the revelation of Jesus continues after chap. vi., as before. 
The same is the case in the last part. The revelation of the Logos re- 
mains even to the end the groundwork of the narrative, and that as the 
principle of ‘a selection the description of which also fills the whole 
book. 

As on a day in spring the sun rises in a serene sky; the ground, moist- 
ened by the snows, absorbs greedily his warm rays; everything which is 
susceptible of life awakens and revives; nature is in travail. Neverthe- 
less, after some hours vapors rise from the moist earth; they unite and 
form an obscure canopy; the sun is veiled; the storm threatens. The 


1 Popular Commentary, Edinburgh, 1880. 2 The Gospel according to John, London, 1882. 


230 INTRODUCTION. 


plants under the impulse which they have received, nevertheless accom- 
plish their silent progress. At length, when the sun has reached the 
meridian, the storm breaks forth and rages; nature is abandoned to 
destructive forces; it loses for a time the star which gives it life. But at 
evening the clouds are scattered ; the calm returns, and the sun reappear- 
ing with a more magnificent splendor than that which accompanied its 
rising, casts on all these plants—children of his rays—a last smile and a 
sweet adieu; thus, as it seems to us, the work of St. John unfolds itself. 
This plan, if it is real, is not the work of theological reflection ; it is the 
product of history, long meditated upon. Conceived in the calmness of 
recollection and the sweetness of possession, it has nothing in common 
with the combinations of metaphysical effort or the refined calculations 
of ecclesiastical policy, except what a criticism which is foreign to the 
spirit of this book tries to ascribe to its author. 





CHAPTER SECOND. 
THE PRESERVATION OF THE TEXT. 


THE text of our Gospel has come down to us in three sorts of documents ; 
Manuscripts, ancient Versions and citations of the Fathers. 


t 
The Manuscripts. 


The manuscripts (MSS.) are divided as is well-known, into two great 
classes: those which are written in uncial letters, called majuscules (Mjj.), 
and those in which we find the rounded and cursive writing in use since 
the tenth century of our era, the minuscules (Mnn.).!. The text of our 
Gospel is contained, in whole, or in part, in 31 Mjj. and about 500 Mnn. 
which are now known. 

I. The majuscules, of which the most ancient have acquired in some 
sort an individual value in critical science, can be divided into three 
groups: 1. The vetustissimi, 7. e. those which date from the fourth and fifth 
centuries, eight in number. 2. The vetustiores, going back to the sixth 
and seventh centuries, sixin number. 3. The vetusti, or simple veterans, 
which proceed from the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries, seventeen in 


1 We shall not speak here of the Evangelis- epistles which were appointed to be regularly 
taria and Lectionaria, containing only the _ read in public worship. 
eollection of the portions of the gospels and 


THE PRINCIPAL DOCUMENTS. 231 


number. They are designated, since Wetstein’s time, by means of the 
capital letters of the Latin, Greek or even Hebrew alphabets.’ 

The first group at present includes four MSS., more or less complete, 
and four documents more or less fragmentary. 


1. Cod. Sinaiticus (x); at St. Petersburg; discovered by Tischendorf, Feb. 4th, 
1859, in the monastery of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai; dating, according to this 
scholar, from the first part of the fourth century; according to others, Volkmar 
for example, from the end of the fourth or the beginning of the fifth century ; 
written probably at Alexandria; retouched by several correctors. It contains 
our Gospel without any lacuna. Published by Tischendorf, Leipsic, 1863. 

2. Cod. Vaticunus (B); dating, according to Tischendorf, from the middle of the 
fourth century; according to most, earlier than the preceding and the most 
ancient of all; probably written in Egypt; containing our Gospel without any 
lacuna; published by Tischendorf, Nov. Testam. Vaticanwm, Lipsie, 1871. 

3. Cod. Ephraemi (C), No.9 of the Imperial Library of Paris, rescriptus ; accord- 
ing to Tischendorf, of the first part of the fifth century; written probably in 
Egypt; retouched in the sixth and ninth centuries. In the twelfth century, the 
text of the New Testament was effaced to make room for that of the works of 
Ephrem, a father of the Syrian Church. The ancient writing has been restored 
by chemical means, but this manuscript presents still considerable lacunae. Of our 
Gospel, only the following eight passages have been recovered : i. 1-41; ili. 33-v. 
16; vi. 38-vii. 3; viii. 84-ix. 11; xi. 8-46; xiii. 8-xiv. 7; xvi. 21-xvili. 36; xx. 
26 to the end of the Gospel. 

4. Cod. Alexandrinus (A); at London; of the second half of the fifth century ; 
written probably at Alexandria. One lacuna only in our Gospel: vi. 50—viil. 52. 

5. Seven palimpsest fragments (I) found by Tischendorf in Egypt; dating from 
the fifth and sixth centuries, and in John containing some passages of chaps. iv., 
<b. Xik, XV, KVL. anu <x, 

6. Fragments brought from an Egyptian monastery (1°); at London; dating 
from the fourth or fifth century, according to Tischendorf; containing in John 
some verses of chaps. xiii. and xvi. 

7. A palimpsest fragment (Q); of the fifth century (according to Tischendorf )g 
found in the Wolfenbiittel Library; containing in our Gospel the two following 
passages: xil. 3-20; xiv. 3-22. 

8. Some fragments of a Cod. Borgianus (T); at Rome; fifth century (Tischen- 
dorf ), containing, with the Egyptian translation, called the Sahidic, on the opposite 
page, the two passages: vi. 28-67 ; vii. 6—vili. 31. 


The second group is more meagre. It includes only one manuscript, 
and five fragments, or collections of fragments. 


9. Cod. Cantabrigiensis (D); at Cambridge; of the middle of the sixth century 
(Tischendorf); although presenting certain Alexandrian forms, it was, no doubt, 
written in the West, and probably in Southern Gaul (see Bleek, Hinl., 3d ed., publ. 


1 We shall employ the signs adopted by Tischendorf in his eighth and last edition, Vol. L., 
1869, and Vol. II., 1872. 


232 | INTRODUCTION. 


by Mangold, p. 816). Parallel with the Greek text a Latin translation is found, 
earlier than that of Jerome. Two large lacunae in our Gospel: i. 16-iii. 26; xviii. 
13-xx. 13. 

10. A palimpsest fragment (P); at Wolfenbiittel ; of the sixth century ; contain- 
ing three passages of our Gospel; i. 29-41; ii. 18-25; xxi. 1-11. 

11. Fragments of a splendid manuscript (N), four leaves of which are found at 
London, two at Vienna, six at Rome, thirty-three at Patmos; of the end of the 
sixth century (Tischendorf); containing of John’s Gospel only xiv. 2-10; xv. 
15-22. 

12. Fragments obtained by Tischendorf from the Porphyric Library (0 ¢ and 8) ; 
of the sixth century ; passages from chaps. vi. and xviii. 

13. Some fragments (T°); at St. Petersburg; of the sixth century; passages 
from chaps. 1., ii. and iv. of our Gospel. 

14. Marginal annotations (F*) in the Cod. Coislinianus of the Epistles of Paul 
(H—202 of the National Library of Paris); containing some verses of John from a 
text of the seventh century (v. 35, and vi. 53, 55). 


The third group is the most considerable; it contains eleven mante 
scripts, more or less complete, and fragments of six others. 


15. Cod. Basileensis (EF); at Basle; of the eighth century; it appears to have 
been used in public worship in one of the churches of Constantinople; it contains 
the entire Gospel of John. 

16. The beautiful Cod. of Paris (L); of the eighth century; it wants only xxi. 
15 to the end. 

17. Fragments of a Cod. in the Barberini Library (Y); of the eighth century ; 
containing, of our Gospel: xvi. 8-xix. 41. 

18. Cod. Sangallensis (A); written in the ninth century by the Scotch or Irish 
monks of the monastery of St. Gall; complete, with the exception of xix. 17-85. 
This Cod. contains an interlinear Latin translation, which is neither that of Jerome 
nor the version anterior to this Father. 

19. Cod. Boreeli (F) at Utrecht; of the ninth century; containing the portion 
of our Gospel from i. 1—xiii. 34; but with numerous lacunae. 

20. Cod. Seidelii (G); brought from the East by Seidel; at London; of the ninth 
or tenth century; two lacunae: xviii. 5-19, and xix. 4-27. 

21. A second Cod. Seidelii (H); at Hamburg; of the ninth or tenth century ; 
some lacunae in chaps. ix., x., xviii. and xx. 

22. Cod. Kyprius (K); at Paris; of the ninth century; brought from the island 
of Cyprus to the Colbert Library; complete. 

23. The Cod. of des Camps (M); at Paris; of the ninth century; a gift to Louis 
XIV. from the Abbé des Camps in 1706; complete. 

24, Fragments of a Cod. from Mount Athos (O); at Moscow; of the ninth cen- 
tury ; containing i. 1-4, and xx. 10-13. 

25. A fragment belonging to the Library of Moscow (V); of the ninth century ; 
containing i. 1—vii. 39. 

26. A Cod. brought from the east by Tischendorf (IT); at Oxford and St. Peters- 
burg; ninth century; containing iv. 14—viii. 3, and xv. 24—-xix. 6. 

27. A Cod. brought by the same from the East (A); at Oxford; ninth century; 
complete. 


THE PRINCIPAL DOCUMENTS. 233 


28. Fragments of a Cod. (X) in the University Library at Munich; containing 
passages from chaps. 1., li., Vli.--xvi. 

29. A Cod. brought from Smyrna by Tischendorf (Il); ninth century; com- 
plete. ! 
30. A Cod. of the Vatican (S) ; of the year 949; complete. 
31. A Cod. at Venice (U); of the tenth century ; complete. 


It is well known that the oldest of these MSS. bear almost no trace of 
accentuation, punctuation, or separation between words and _ periods. 
These different elements were only gradually introduced into the text; and 
herein we have one of the means which are employed in estimating the 
age of the manuscripts. To these elements of the text, therefore, we should 
not allow any sort of authority. 

II. Of the five hundred minuscules deposited in the various libraries of 
Europe, a large number have not yet been collated. Although they are 
all of more recent origin than the majuscules, many of them occasionally 
offer interesting readings. 

us 
B. The Ancient Versions. 


The translations (Vss.) have the disadvantage of not directly furnishing 
the text of the New Testament, but leaving it to be conjectured. Never- 
theless, they may render important service for the criticism of the text, 
especially when the question is as to the omission or interpolation of words 
and passages, and the more so as some of them are much earlier than our 
most ancient manuscripts. 

There are two of them which, for critical importance, surpass all the 
others; the ancient Syriac translation called Peschito, and the ancient Latin 
translation to which the name Jtala has been given from a passage in 
Augustine. 

I. Peschito (Syr.). 

This translation (whose name apparently signifies the simple, the faith- 
ful!) goes back, according to the common opinion, as far as the second 
century of our era; according to Westcott and Hort, it must in its present 
form be placed between 250 and 350. It seems to have had, at first, an 
ecclesiastical destination. It is what its name indicates, faithful without 
servility. The principal edition, according to which it is cited by Tischen- 
dorf, is that of Leusden and Schaaf, 1709 and 1717 (Syr. sch-). Cureton 
published in 1858, from a Syriac manuscript of the fourth century, dis- 


1 Tischendorf has a different view. See Bleek, Finl., 3d ed., p. 729, and J. B. Glaire, Intr. 
hist. et. crit., 1862, t. — p.. 187. 


234 INTRODUCTION. 


covered in an Egyptian convent, fragments of a Syriac translation of the 
Gospels, which more recently have been still further increased by some 
others. They contain the following parts of John: i. 1-42; ii. 6-vii. 
87; xiv. 11-28 (Syr. cur-), Another Syriac version exists, which was made 
at the beginning of the sixth century ; it is called the Philowenian transla- 
tion (Syr. P-). It is absolutely literal. 

Il. Ltala (It.). 

Much earlier than St. Jerome, probably even from the middle of the 
second century, there existed a Latin translation of the New Testament. 
It certainly came from proconsular Africa, where the Greek language was 
less widely extended than in Italy. It was servile to excess and of an ex- 
treme rudeness, but it existed in very varied forms. We possess several 
copies of these ancient Latin versions, either in the bilingual manuscripts 
—the Cod. D, for example, which contains the Latin translation designated 
by d—or in particular manuscripts, such as the Vercellensis, of the fourth 
century, (a); the Veronensis, of the fourth or fifth century, (b); the Colber- 
tensis, of the eleventh century, (c), etc. 

Near the end of the fourth century St. Jerome revised this primitive 
translation, according to ancient Greek manuscripts. This new version, 
the Vulgate (Vg.) has been preserved to us in several documents of a high 
antiquity, but quite different from each other; thus the Cod. Amiatinus 
(am.), and the Fuldensis (fuld.), both of the sixth century. 

Among the other ancient translations, the most interesting for critical 
use are the three Egyptian versions; the fragments of the Sahidic transla- 
tion (Sah.), in the dialect of Upper Egypt; the Coptic translation (Cop.), in 
that of Lower Egypt, and the Baschmuric translation (Bas.), in a third dia- 
lect, which the younger Champollion supposed to be that of Fayoum (of 
John, only iv. 28-53). What gives these versions a special interest is, first, 
their date (the third, or even, according to Bishop Lightfoot, the second 
century), and, then, their intimate relation to the text of our most ancient 


Greek manuscripts. 
1B BE 


C. The Fathers. 


The quotations from the New Testament in the writings of the Fathers 
have, with reason, been called “fragments of ancient manuscripts.” Only 
it must be remembered that very frequently the Fathers cite merely from 
memory andaccordingthe sense. But their citations, nevertheless, remain 
in a multitude of cases an important critical means of establishing the 
condition of the text at an epoch to which our MSS. do not go back. The 


THE PRINCIPAL DOCUMENTS. | 235 


most important are Irenzeus (Ir.), Clement of Alexandria (Clem.), Tertul- 
lian (Tert.), Origen (Or.), Chrysostom (Chrys.). The readings of the here- 
tics have, also, a certain value, particularly for the Gospel of John, those 
of Heracleon, a Gnostic of the second century, of the school of Valentinus; 
he is the author of the oldest commentary on this writing. Origen has 
preserved for us some parts of this interesting work. 


D. The Text in general. 


These suggestions, as much abridged as possible, will be sufficient to 
place the readers in a condition to comprehend the portion of our com- 
mentary which relates to the criticism of the text, and to render accessible 
to them the eighth edition of Tischendorf, in the notes of which the result 
of the immense labors of that scholar is concentrated. 

Since the time of Bengel, it began to be established that the critical 
documents have a tendency to group themselves, in case of variants, 
after a more or less regular manner. Thus, in the Epistles of Paul, 
if we run over several pages of a list of variations, together with an indi- 
cation of their respective authorities, it will be sufficient to lead us to 
remark very soon that the documents separate themselves frequently into 
three more or less fixed groups. In the Gospels, these opposing camps 
tend, rather, to reduce themselves to two. But the conflict is permanent. 
It is natural to suppose that these two or three groups of manuscripts rep- 
resent the different forms of text which were spontaneously formed in 
the principal regions of the Church from the second and third centuries. 
As the writings of the N. T. were copied by hand in Syria, in Greece, in 
Asia Minor, in Egypt, in the Roman province of Africa and in Italy, why 
should not various readings have been introduced, and then perpetu- 
ated and fixed in each of these regions where the Church flourished? 
Three principal original homes of our textual documents have up to these 
most recent times been admitted, and as a consequence three principal 
courses of variations: 1. Egypt, with its great manufacture of manu- 
scripts at Alexandria; 2. The West, particularly Italy and proconsular 
Africa, with the two centres, Rome and Carthage; 3. Palestine and 
Syria, whose capital, Antioch, was superseded from the beginning of the 
fourth century by the new capital of the world, Byzantium; and with 
these three ecclesiastical regions the three principal families of manu- 
scripts are made in greater or less degree to correspond : 1. The Alerandrian 
group, composed especially of B. C. L., then also of x and finally A, 
although these last two, especially the second, partake in large measure of 


236 INTRODUCTION. 


other texts:' 2. The Western or Greco-Latin group, including principally 
the Majuscules which are a little less ancient, D. F. G., ete., whose 
Western origin is easily recognized by the Latin translation which accom- 
panies the Greek text; 3. The Byzantine or Syrian group, containing 
nearly all the later Majuscules of the eighth, ninth and tenth centuries 
and almost all the Minuscules. To the first the Egyptian Versions 
belong; to the second the Old Latin Version, the Itala; to the third the 
Syriac Version, named Peschito. The most ancient Syriac translation of 
which Cureton recovered fragments, reproduces especially the Alexan- 
drian text. Among the Fathers, Clement of Alex. and Origen present 
more the Alexandrian readings; the Latin Fathers, the Western readings ; 
Chrysostom and Theodoret, the Byzantine readings. Although criticism 
‘and exegesis appear, more and more, disposed openly to prefer the Alex- 
andrian text, the documents pertaining to which are evidently the most 
ancient, to the two others, yet there is no denial of all authority to these 
last two. Tischendorf, in particular, in his seventh ed., and up to the 
discovery of the Sinaitic MS., believed that he ought to readmit into the 
text many Byzantine readings, which he had before set aside. 

But Hort and Westcott, after immense labors, have arrived at quite a 
different view of the history of the text;? and one which, if it should 
come to be accepted, would modify completely this earlier mode of judg- 
ing. According to them we must distinguish, on one side, the Syrian or 
Byzantine text and, on the other, three texts anterior to that. The first 
dates only from the earliest part of the fourth century, while the forma- 
tion of these last goes back even to the second century. They are: 1. 
The Alexandrian text; 2. The Western text; and 3. A text which they 
call neutral, that is to say, which has neither the Alexandrian peculiarities, 
nor the Western peculiarities; which consequently approaches most 
nearly to the Apostolic text. This last has been preserved for us in the 
most faithful manner in the Vatican MS., then, in a less degree of purity, 
in the Sinaitic, so that, where these two manuscripts are in accord, there 
is scarcely any room for discussion, even when all the other authorities 
are on the other side. As for the Syrian text, it is a simple compilation, 
made by means of the three others, which does not have any reading 


1 The Egyptian origin of all these manu- in a private library in Vienna, present all the 
scripts has received a recent confirmation readings peculiar to the manuscripts indi- 
through the study of two fragments (Luke cated. See the account by Karl Wessely in 
Vii. 36-44; x. 38-42) belonging to an Evange- the Wiener-Studien of 1882. 
listarium of Lower Egypt (of the sixth cen- 2 The New Testament. Introduction, 1881. 
tury). These fragments which were found 


THE PRINCIPAL DOCUMENTS. Dot 


which is original and of a date anterior to the three preceding ones. Its 
own readings are only the product of a work of revision cleverly accom- 
plished at the end of the third century. There is, therefore, no reason to 
take the least account of this text, even when the others are not in agree- 
ment. It is absolutely without authority. Thus the revolution begun by 
Mill and Bentley, continued by Griesbach, Lachmann, Tischendorf and 
Tregelles, is at last consummated. The Byzantine text, which, under the 
name of Received Text, had reigned as sovereign from the time of 
Erasmus to the eighteenth century, has received its complete and final 
dismissal. 

Let me be allowed, however, not to accept this verdict as a sentence 
without appeal. I can hardly believe that the Church in Syria, the first 
established in a heathen country, did not preserve a text for itself, as well 
as the other countries of Christendom, and that it was obliged to borrow 
wholly from foreign documents the text of its official translation, the 
Peschito. Iam not ignorant that the Syriac of Cureton, which seems to 
present a more ancient text than that of the Peschito, approaches more 
nearly to the Alexandrian. And more learned persons than myself give 
up the attempt to explain, with our present means, the relation between 
this text and that of the Peschito. But how can we believe that such a 
man as Chrysostom would have adopted that of the Peschito for the pur- 
pose of making it the foundation of his sermons, if that text had been 
only the product of a quite recent compilation, not resting on any sort of 
local authority.! To these reasons is to be added that which exegetical 
experience appears to me to furnish. As there are cases where in my 
opinion the Greco-Latin text is certainly preferable to the. so-called 
neutral text of B and&, and in general to the reading of all the others, 
there are also cases, and in considerable numbers, where the texts called 
ante-Syrian by Hort and Westcott are decidedly inferior, when weighed 
in the balance of the context, to the Byzantine readings. Meyer himself 
is obliged to acknowledge this very frequently. 

I ask, then, simply that we should keep the protocol open, that the 
documents should not be used according to an altogether external and 
mechanical method, and that in each particular case the casting vote 
should be accorded to exegetical good sense and tact.2 


1See the development of these reasons in in this view with the most learned and one 
the Revue théologique of Montauban: Une of the most sagacious among the American 
nouvelle édition du N. T., 1882, i. critics, Ezra Abbot, the recent loss of whom 
2I am happy to find myself in agreement science deplores. See his excellent article on 


238 INTRODUCTION. 


THE TITLE OF THE GOSPEL. 


This title appears in the MSS. in different forms. The simplest is that 
which we find in® BD: xaré Iwdvyy (according to John). The majority 
of the Mjj. and x (at the end of the book): evayyéduov xara "Iwavyny, Gospel 
T. R., with a large number of Mnn.: 78 xara ’I. evayy., 
Stephen’s third edition adds aysov (holy) 
before evayy., with several Mnn. Some Mnn. read: éx7vow x. I. evayy. The 


according to John. 
The Gospel according to John. 


Vss. vary also: evang. Johannis (Syr.); ev. per Joh. (Goth.); ev. secundum 
Joh. (Cop.); ev. sanctum preedicationis Joh. preeconis (according to cer- 
tain edd. of the Syriac). 

All these variations seem to prove that this title did not proceed from 
the hand of the author or the editors of the Gospel. Had it belonged 
originally to the body of the work, it would be the same, or nearly the 
same, in all the documents. It was doubtless added when the collection 
of the Gospels was made in the churches, which formation of a collec- 
tion was brought about more or less spontaneously in each locality, as is 
shown by the different order of our four Gospels and of the New Testa- 
ment writings in general in the canons of the churches. The differences 
in the titles are, doubtless, explained by the same cause. 

But what is the exact sense of this formula: “according to John?” From 
the time of the Manichean Faustus (Augustine, contra Faustum, xxxii. 2) 
even to our day, scholars have been found who have given to «ard, accord- 
ing to, avery broad sense: Gospel drawn up according to the type of 
preaching of Matthew, John, etc. It is thus that Reuss (Gesch. der heil. 
Schr. N. T., 177) and Renan (Vie de Jésus,, p. xvi.),! appear to understand 
the word. The result of this would be that these four formulas, instead 
of attesting the fact of the composition of our Gospels by the four men 


the variantin John i.18 in the Unitarian 
Review, June, 1875. This is what he says of 
our ancient Alexandrian manuscripts: “All 
these documents, or the greater part of them, 
often agree in readings which are either 
clearly false or exceedingly improbable or 
very doubtful.” Thereupon he gives a list 
of passages for which I would, from my own 
exegetical experience, substitute the follow- 
ing, borrowing some examples from his list: 
Matt. xxvii. 49 (the Alex. addition taken 
from John xix. 34)—Mk. vi. 22 (avrov for av7js) 
—Luke i. 17 (tpogeAévoetat instead of mpoed- 


évoetat}—John i. 18 (deds instead of vids). 
Acts xii. 25 (eis ‘Iep. instead of ad ‘Iep.)—xx. 
28 (rov deov instead of rod cvpiov)—Rom. v. 1. 
(€xwnev instead of é€xouev)—1 Cor. ix. 10 (the 
Western reading only admissible)—xiii. 3 
(xkavxyjowuar!)—Jas. i. 17—2 Pet. ii. 13, ete. 
In all these cases, as in many others which 
I omit, it seems to me that a sound exegesis 
cannot hesitate. 

1“ These formulas merely signify that these 
were the traditions which proceeded from 
each one of these apostles, and which were 
clothed with their authority.” 


THE TITLE OF THE GOSPEL. 239 


designated in the titles, would, on the contrary, exclude it. But no one in 
the primitive church ever dreamed of assigning other authors to these four 
writings than those who are named in the titles; the thought of those who 
formulated these titles cannot therefore, have been that which is thus 
ascribed to them. Moreover, this sense of according to cannot be at all 
suitable to the second or the third Gospel; since Mark and Luke have 
never been regarded as the founders of an independent personal tradition, 
but only as the redactors of narrations proceeding from Peter and Paul. 
The title of these two writings should therefore have been: Gospels ac- 
cording to Peter and according to Paul, if the word according to had really 
had in the thought of the authors of the titles, the meaning which the 
learned authorities whom we are opposing give to it. The error of these 
authorities arises from the fact that they give to the term Gospel a sense 
which it did not have in the primitive Christian language. In that lan- 
guage, in fact, this word did not at all designate a book, a writing relating 
the coming of the Saviour, but the good-tidings of God to mankind, that 
is to say, that coming itself; comp. e. g. Mark 1.1; Rom. i. 1. The 
meaning of our four titles, then, is not: ‘Book compiled according to 
the tradition of,” but: “The blessed coming of Jesus Christ, related by 
the care or the pen of. . .” We find the preposition xaré frequently em- 
ployed as it is here, to designate an author himself; so in Diodorus Sicu- 
lus, when he calls the work of Herodotus “The history according to 
Herodotus (7 xa’ ‘Hp. ioropia)” or in Epiphanius (Haer. viii. 4), when he 
says ‘The Pentateuch according to Moses (} xaté Moioéa revrdrevyoc).” 
Reuss presents by way of objection the title of the apocryphal Gospel, 
evayy. kata Ilérpov. But it is very evident that the one who wished to make 
this Gospel pass under the name of Peter intended to attribute the redac- 
tion to this apostle, and so gave to the word according to the same sense 
which we give. As for the well-known phrases evayy. cata rode dad. aroo- 
téaovc, kad’ ‘EBpaiove, kat’ Alyurriovc (according to the twelve Apostles, the 
Hebrews, the Egyptians), itis clear that «ard designates, in these cases, 
the ecclesiastical circle from which these writings were supposed to pro- 
ceed, or that in the midst of which they were current.) 


1 We think we may understand thatin the which weread on page 14, Reuss intended to — 
passage of his work WHistoire évangélique, retract his former explanation. 


jeg at ele Olea Ou) 
Bel) 


EAcH evangelist begins his book in a manner appropriate to the aim of 
his narrative. Matthew proposes to prove the right of Jesus to the Mes- 
sianic throne. He opens his story with His genealogy. Mark desires 
quite simply to collect memorials fitted to give a comprehension of the 
greatness of the personage whose active work he describes; he throws 
himself in mediam rem, by relating, without an exordium, the beginning 
of the public ministry of John and of Jesus. Luke proposes to write a 
history in the proper sense of the word: he introduces his narrative, after 
the manner of the Greek historians, by a preface in which he gives an 
account of his sources, his method, and his aim. The prologue of John 
is likewise in close connection with the aim of his narrative. We shallbe 
brought to the understanding of this fact by the study of this remarkable 
passage which has exercised so decisive an influence on the conception of 
Christianity even to our own day. 

How far does this prologue extend? Only to ver. 5, answers Reuss. 
The words: There was a man called John, in ver. 6, are the beginning of 
the narrative ; this is continued in ver. 14, by the mention of the incarna- 
tion of the Word; in ver. 19 by the account cf the ministry of the Bap- 
tist, and finally with ver. 35 it reaches the ministry of Jesus. 

But a glance at the whole passage vv. 6-18 shows that this arrangement 
does not correspond with the thought of the evangelist. The appearance 
of the Messiah is already mentioned before ver. 14; since vv. 11-13 
directly relate to it; then, if the narrative had really commenced with 
the mention of John the Baptist in ver. 6, why should his testimony be 
placed much later (in ver. 15)? The quotation made in ver. 15 comes 
either too early, if it should be placed in its historical situation which 
will be exactly described in vv. 27, 30, or too late, if the author wishes to 
connect it with the mentioning of the appearance of the forerunner in 
_ ver. 6. No more can we understand, on Reuss’ view, the appropriateness 
of the religious reflections contained in vy. 16-18, which would strangely 
interrupt the narrative already begun. It is evident that ver. 18 forms 
the pendant of ver. 1, and thus closes the cycle which is opened by 
that verse. The narrative, then, does not begin till ver. 19, and vy. 1-18 
form a whole of a peculiar character. 

What is the course of the ideas expressed in this preamble? For it is 
clear that we do not have here a mere pious effusion without any fixed 
plan. 

240 


CHAP. I. 1-18. 241 


Liicke supposes two parts: The first, vv. 1-5, describing the primordial 
existence of the Logos; the second, vv. 6-18, tracing summarily His his- 
torical appearance. This division does not explain the two-fold mention 
of the historical appearance of the Word ver. 11 (came) and ver. 14 (was 
made flesh). It is alleged, no doubt, that the fact is taken up, the 
second time, more profoundly than the first. But if the progress is to be 
historical, this does not solve the difficulty. 

Olshausen and Lange suppose three sections: 1. vv. 1-5, The primor- 
dial activity of the Logos; 2. vv. 6-13, His activity during the course of 
the Old Covenant ; 3. vv. 14-18, His incarnation ; then, His activity in the 
Church. There would be here an historical plan which is complete and 
rigorously followed. But the question is whether the idea of this progress 
is truly derived from the text, or whether it is not imported into it. In 
vy. 6-8 John the Baptist is named alone; there is no indication that he is 
intended to represent all the prophets, and still less the Old Covenant in 
general. Besides it would be necessary, according to this plan, to refer 
the coming of the Logos, described in ver. 11, to the revelations of the 
Old Covenant, and its regenerating effects which are spoken of in vy. 12, 
18, to the spiritual blessings bestowed upon faithful Jews before the coming 
of Christ. Now it is manifest that the terms employed by John reach far 
beyond any such application. 

Luthardt and Hengstenberg, rejecting the idea of an historical progress, 
suppose a series of cycles which have each of them reference to the 
totality of the Gospel-history, but reproducing it under different aspects. 
The first, vv. 1-5, embodies ina summary way, the activity of the Logos 
up to His coming in the flesh, comprehending therein the general unsuc- 
cessfulness of His ministry here on earth. The second cycle, vy. 6-18, 
takes up the same history again, calling to mind especially the part of the 
forerunner, with the purpose of coming thereby to the fact of the Jewish 
unbelief. The third, finally, vv. 14-18, decribes a third time the work of 
Jesus Christ, and that from the point of view of the extraordinary bless- 
ings which it has brought to believers. This plan certainly approaches 
more nearly to the truth than the preceding ones. Nevertheless, it would 
be a quite strange procedure to open a narrative by making a threefold 
summation of it. Moreover, if these three cycles are really intended to 
present each time the same subject, how does it happen that they have 
points of departure and ending-points which are altogether different. 
The starting point of the first is the eternal existence of the Logos; that 
of the second, the appearance of John the Baptist (ver. 6); that of the 
third, the incarnation of the Logos (ver. 14). The first ends in the unbe- 
lief of the world (ver. 5); the second, in the Israelitish unbelief (ver. 11) ; 
the third, in the perfect revelation of God in the person of the Son (ver. 
18). Three paragraphs beginning and ending so differently can scarcely 
be three summaries of the same history. 

Westcott divides into two parts: I. The Logos in His eternal existence 
(ver. 1); II. The Logos in His relation to the creation (vv. 2-18). This 
second part contains three subdivisions: 1. The fundamental facts (vv. 2- 

16 


242 PROLOGUE. 


5); 2. The historical manifestation of the Word in general (vv. 6-13). 
8. The incarnation as the object of individual experience (vv. 14-18). 
This subdivision presents a fair progress, but the great disproportion 
between the two principal parts does not prepossess one in favor of this 
outline. And its chief difficulty is that of not sufficiently setting in relief 
the central idea, the fact of the incarnation of the Logos, and of estab- 
lishing between the coming of Christ in general and His coming as the 
object of individual experience, a distinction which is scarcely natural 
and is not sufficiently indicated in the text. 

The Commentary of Milligan and Moulton proposes the following plan: 
1. The Word in Himself and in His general manifestations (vv. 1-5); 2. The 
Word appearing in the world (vy. 6-18); 8. The Word fully revealed by 
His incarnation (vv. 14-18). But the difference between the last two 
parts does not distinctly appear. 

Gess! supposes four parts: 1. The primordial relation of the Logos to 
God and to the creation (vv. 1-4); 2. The behavior of the darkness 
towards Him (vv. 5-18); 3. His dwelling as Logos incarnate among 
men (vy. 14, 15). 4. The happiness which faith in Him procures (vv. 16-18). 
There would be, according to this view, a correspondence between the 
first and the third part (the Logos before and after the incarnation) and 
in the same way also between the second and the fourth (unbelief and 
faith). This arrangement is ingenious. But does it correspond well with 
the divisions which are marked in the text itself, especially so far as the 
last part is concerned? It seems not. Besides, it would appear that the 
Logos before His incarnation met nothing but unbelief, and as incarnate 
nothing but faith, which is certainly not the evangelist’s thought. 

Let us mention finally the arrangement presented by Diisterdieck ; 1. 
The Logos and the critical nature of His appearance (vv. 1-5); 2. The 
Logos from His divine existence down to His historical appearance (vy. 
6-13); 8. The Logos since His historical appearance, as the object of ex- 
perience and of the testimony of the Church. This plan is broad and 
simple. But where do we find in the prologue the mentioning of the Old 
Covenant which answers to the second part? The person of John the 
Baptist is mentioned on account of his personal role, and not as the rep- 
resentative of the entire Israelitish epoch. Besides, no account is given, 
according to this course, either of the double mention of the appearance 
of the Logos (vv. 11, 14), or of the quotation of the testimony of John 
the Baptist, in ver. 15. 

In spite of the criticism of which the arrangement of the prologue 
which I have proposed has been the object, I can do no otherwise than 
reproduce it here, as that which, according to my view, corresponds most 
exactly with the thought of the evangelist. It is summed up in these 
three words: the Logos, unbelief, faith. The first part presents to us the 
eternal and creative Logos, as the person who is to become in Jesus Christ 
the subject of the Gospel-history (vv. 1-4). The second describes human 


1 Christi Person und Werk (2d ed.), in the volume: Das apostolische Zeugniss, p. 662 f. 


CHAP. I. 1-14. 243 


unbelief with reference to Him, as it was realized in the most tragic man- 
ner in the midst of the people best prepared to receive Him (vv. 5-11). 
Finally, the third glorifies faith, by describing the blessedness of those who 
have recognized in Christ the Word made flesh, and have thus gained re- 
entrance into the communion with the Logos and recovery of the life and 
the truth which man derived from Him before he separated himself from 
Him (vv. 12-18). 

We shall see, by studying the Gospel, that these three fundamental ideas 
of the prologue are precisely those which preside over the arrangement 
of the entire narrative, and which determine its grand divisions. 

It is undoubtedly difficult, to tell whether we must assign to ver. 5 its 
place in the first or in the second passage. This verse is the transition 
from the one to the other, and, at the foundation, it appertains to both. 
The twelfth and thirteenth verses occupy an analogous position between 
the second and the third passage. Let us notice, however, that at the 
beginning of ver. 12 a dé (but) is found, the only adversative particle 
of the prologue. The apostle seems to have wished, by this means, to 
mark clearly the opposition between the picture of unbelief and that of 
faith. This is a point which seems to me not to be taken into account 
by the numerous interpreters who, like Weiss and Gess, connect vv. 12, 
18, with the second part, in order to begin the third at ver. 14; this cir- 
cumstance induces us rather to begin the third part (that of faith) at 
ver. 12. 

As the overture of an oratorio causes all the principal themes to be 
sounded which will be developed in the sequel of the work, and forms a 
prelude thus to the entire piece, so John in this preamble has brought out 
at the outset the three essential factors of the history which he is going 
to trace: the Logos, then the unbelief and the faith of which his appear- 
ance has been the object. 

The general questions to which this passage gives rise will be treated in 
an appendix following upon the exegesis. 


FIRST SECTION. 
Tue Logos. I. 1-14. 


It would be difficult not to recognize in these first verses an allusion to 
the beginning of Genesis. The first words of the two writings manifestly 
correspond with each other. The beginning of which John here speaks 
can only be that which Moses had made the starting-point of his narra- 
tive. But, immediately afterwards, the two sacred writers separate from 
each other. Starting from the fact of the creation, Moses descends the 
stream of time and reaches the creation of man (ver. 26). John, having 
started from the same point, follows the reverse course and ascends from 
the beginning of things to eternity. It is because his end in view is more 
remote and because in order to reach farther he must start from a point 
farther back. The Jewish historian has in view only the foundation of 


244 PROLOGUE. 


the theocratic work in Abraham, while the evangelist would reach the 
redemption of humanity by Jesus Christ. To find Him who shall be the 
agent of this second creation, instead of descending the course of things, 
he must ascend even beyond the beginning of the first creation. 

At ver. 1, John finds in eternity the subject of the history which he is 
going to relate, the Logos; at ver. 2, he takes his place with Him at the 
beginning of time; in the 3d verse, he shows Him to us codperating in the 
work of creation, which is the condition of that of Redemption; finally, 
in the 4th verse, he unveils the relation which from all time has existed 
between that divine being and humanity, down to the moment when He 
Himself appeared as a member of this race. 

Ver. 1. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and 
the Word was God.| These three propositions follow each other like 
oracles; they enunciate, each of them, one of the features of the great- 
ness of the Logos before His coming in the flesh. The ascending progres- 
sion which binds them together is indicated, after the Hebrew manner, by 
the simple copula kai, cai, and, and. The év apyf, in the beginning, mani- 
festly is a reproduction of the first word of Genesis (beréschith). It 
therefore naturally designates the beginning of the existence of created 
things. Some Fathers applied it to that divine wisdom which the book of 
Proverbs describes as the principle of the universe; but nothing could 
justify such an extraordinary sense. Several modern writers, such as 
Olshausen, de Wette, Meyer, understand by this beginning eternity. In fact, 
eternity is, not the temporal beginning, but the rational principle, of 
time. And itis in this sense that the word apyf seems to be taken in 
Prov. viii. 28: ‘In the beginning, before creating the earth,” perhaps 
also in1 Johni.1: “That which was from the beginning (a7’ apyje).” 
Indeed, as Weiss observes,’ the absolute beginning can be only the point 
from which our thought starts. Now such a point is not found in time, 
because we can always conceive in time a point anterior to that which 
we represent to ourselves. The absolute beginning at which our minds 
stop can therefore only be eternity a parte ante. It is none the less true, 
however, that, as this same author acknowledges, the allusion to Gen. 1. 1 
determines the word apy4 as the temporal beginning of things. But if 
the notion of eternity is not found in the word itself, itis nevertheless 
implied in the logical relation of this dependent phrase to the verb 7, was 
(see farther on; comp. Keil). The Socinians, in the interest of their 
doctrine, have applied this word apy to the beginning of the Gospel 
preaching, as Mk.1.1; Luke i.2. This sense is evidently incompatible 
with all that follows; no one any longer defends it at the present day.— 
The imperfect 7, was, must designate, according to the ordinary meaning 
of this tense, the simultaneousness of the act indicated by the verb with 
some other act. This simultaneousness is here that of the existence of the 
Word with the fact designated by the word beginning. “ When everything 


1L and Gregory of Nyssa read o before 2 Lehrbuch der biblischen Theologie, 4th ed., 
Geos. p- 619. 


CHAP. I. l. 245 


which has begun began, the Word was.” Alone then, it did not begin; 
the Word was already. Now that which did not begin with things, that is 
to say, with time, the form of the development of things, belongs to the 
eternal order. Reuss objects, it is true (Hist. de la théol. chrétienne, p. 439), 
that, “if we infer from these words the eternity of the Word, we must 
infer also from the beginning of Genesis the eternity of the world.” This 
argument is without value. Since in Genesis we do not have the 
imperfect was, but the perfect definite created. When John passes to the 
act of creation (ver. 3), he also abandons the imperfect to make use of 
the aorist (éyévero). The notion of eternity, as we have seen, is not in the 
term in the beginning, but only in the relation of this term to the imperfect 
was. The term Word, no less than the term in the beginning, serves to 
recall the narrative in Genesis ; it alludes to the expression: and God said, 
repeated eight times, which is as it were the refrain of that magnificent 
poem. All these sayings of God John gathers as if into one single, living 
word, endowed with intelligence and activity, from which emanates each 
one of those particular orders. At the foundation of all those spoken 
divine words, he discovers the divine speaking Word. But while those 
resound in time, this exists above and beyond time. The idea of this first 
proposition is, therefore, that of the eternity of the Logos. 

The salient word of the second proposition is the preposition zpéc, 
which, with the objective word in the accusative, denotes the movement 
of approach towards the object or the person serving to limit it. The 
meaning is, therefore, quite different from what it would have been, if 
John had said werd, in the society of, or civ, in union with, or év, in the 
bosom of, or rapa, near to (xvii. 5). This preposition is chosen in order to 
express under a local form, as the prepositions in general do, the direction, 
the tendency, the moral movement of the being called the Word. His 
aspiration tends towards God. The form, apparently incorrect, by which 
John connects a preposition of motion (towards) with a verb of rest (was), 
signifies that this motion was His permaneni state, that is to say, His 
essence. Comp. 2 Cor. v. 8; Gal. i.18. This use of the preposition zpéc 
has evidently no meaning except as it is applied to a personal being. We 
believe that we hear in this an echo of that plural of Genesis which 
indicates intimate communion (i. 26): “ Let ws make man in owr image.” 
So in the 18th verse the term Son will be substituted for Word, as Father 
will take the place of God. It is not of abstract beings, of metaphysical 
principles, that John is here pointing out the relation, but of persons. 
The end to which the Logos incessantly tends is rdv Oedv, God (with the 
article); God is thereby designated as a being complete in Himself, inde- 
pendently of the Word Himself. It is not the Logos who makes Him 
God, even though He is inseparable from His Logos. Hence it results 
that the existence of the Logos rests on another principle than that of a 
metaphysical necessity. The idea of this second proposition is that of 
the personality of the Logos and of His intimate communion with God. 
But thus there is found lying in the Divine existence a mysterious duality. 
This duality is what the third proposition is designed to resolve. 


246 PROLOGUE. 


In this third proposition we must not make 6eé¢ (God) the subject, and 
6 Adyoc (the Word) the predicate, as if John meant to say: And God was 
the Word. John does not propose in this prologue to explain what God 
is, but what the Word is. If the word @edc (God), although the predicate, is 
placed at the beginning of the proposition, it is because in this word is 
contained the progress of the idea relatively to the preceding proposition. 
An anonymous English writer’ has recently proposed to place a period ? 
after 7v was, and to make 6 Adyor, the Word, the subject of ver. 2. The mean- 
ing would thus be: “The Word was in relation with God and was God.” 
Then would follow in ver. 2: “And this Word (6 Adyog oiroc) was in the 
beginning with God.” He has not perceived that the threefold repetition 
of the word 6 Adyoc, the Word, in these three first propositions was inten- 
tional, and that this form has a peculiar solemnity; comp. the similar 
repetition of the word xécuoc, ver. 10 and iii. 17. We find here the same 
grammatical form as in iv. 24 (zveiua 6 Oedc), where the predicate is also 
placed at the beginning of the clause. The word éedc, God, is used without 
an article, because it has the sense of an adjective and designates, not the 
person, but the quality. Undoubtedly we must guard against giving it, for 
this reason, the meaning divine, which is the signification of the word 6eioc. 
The apostle does not mean to ascribe to the Logos that which this adjec- 
tive would express, a quasi-divinity, a condition intermediate between God 
and the creature. This idea would be incompatible with the strict 
monotheism of the Scriptures. The Logos is something different from 
the most perfect of men or the most exalted of angels; He partakes of 
Gedrnc (deity). It is when this proposition is thus understood, that it 
answers its purpose, that of bringing back to unity the duality posited in 
God in the preceding clause. The idea contained in the third proposition 
is thus that of the essential divinity of the Word. 

To the plenitude of the divine life, therefore, there appertains the exist- 
ence of a being eternal like God, personal like Him, God like Him; but 
dependent on Him, aspiring towards Him, living only for Him. And 
this being it is whom John has recognized in that Jesus whom he knew 
as the Christ, and who is to be the subject of the following narrative 
(ver. 14). 


We have given to the word Logos the meaning Word, and not reason which it 
ordinarily has with the Greek philosophers. This word signifies two things: 1, 
the reason, as being by its very nature in the line of manifestation ; and 2, the 
word, as the instrument of the reason. But the first of these two meanings is 
foreign to the N. T. Besides, it is excluded in this passage by the relation to 
Gen. i.1. We cannot therefore, as has sometimes been attempted, give to this 
word here the philosophical sense of divine reason and apply it to the conscious- 
ness which God has of Himself. Storr and others have taken it in the sense of 
6 Aéywr, he who speaks, the supreme interpreter of the thought of God; others 
(Beza, etc.) in that of 6 Aeyduevoc, the one announced, the one promised. These two 
senses are grammatically inadmissible. Hofmann and Luthardt, with the desire 


1The Prologue of St. John’s Gospel (Plymouth). 


CHAP. I. l. 247 


of removing from John’s Prologue every element of philosophical speculation, 
have taken this word in the sense which the expression Word of God ordinarily has 
in the N. T.: the message of salvation. According to Hofmann, Jesus is thus 
designated because He is the true subject of all the divine messages ; according to 
Luthardt, as being the personified proclamation, the message and the messenger 
identified. But what becomes of the allusion to Gen. i. 1, according to these two 
views? Then, in the following verses the work of creation is spoken of, not that 
of redemption. Finally, if the term Word had this sense, could the proposition 
of ver. 14: the Word was made flesh, be any longer understood? Is it allowable 
to suppose that John meant thereby: The contents or the agent of the gospel 
proclamation was made flesh ?. The fact is that Jesus did not become these contents 
or this agent except as following upon and by means of the incarnation. The 
anonymous English writer of whom we spoke, who evidently belongs to a party 
professing the Unitarian (anti-Trinitarian) doctrine, gives to the word Logos the 
sense of divine declaration. This is, in fact, the divine decree proclaimed as a 
command which produced the universe (vv. 1-5), then the prophetic revelations 
(vv. 6-13), finally, the Christian redemption (ver. 14). All personality of Jesus 
anterior to His earthly appearance is thus eliminated from the text of John. But 
how, with this sense of the term Word, is the 7, was, of ver. 1 to be explained ? 
The declaration of the divine will is not eternal ; éyévero must have been used, as 
in ver. 3; since this is an historical fact. No more comprehensible are the 
second and third propositions of ver. 1. They would signify, according to this 
view, that the creative command has relation to God (7péc¢), in the sense that the 
creation is designed to reveal God, and other strange ideas of the same kind. 
Beyschlag, and several others after him, recognized clearly in ver. 1 the idea of 
the eternity of the Logos; but they deny to this being personality and would see 
in Him only an abstract principle, pre-existing in the divine understanding, and 
which is realized in time in the person of Jesus Christ. To this sense the 
Socinian explanation comes, according to which the Logos pre-existed only in the 
divine decree ; also that of Ritschl and his school, which reduces the pre-existence 
of Christ to the eternal election of His person as the agent in the establishment of 
the kingdom of God on earth. Exegetically speaking, all these explanations 
come into collision with the second and third propositions of our verse, which, as 
we have seen, both of them imply the personality of the Logos. They are 
equally in contradiction to the words of Jesus, reported by our evangelist, from 
which he has also himself derived the idea formulated in this Prologue,—particu- 
larly that of vi. 62: “ When ye shall see the Son of man ascending where he was 
before,” vili. 58: “Before Abraham was, I am,” xvii. 5: “Restore to me the 
glory which I had with thee before the world was.” Either Jesus used this lan- 
guage or the evangelist ascribed it to Him. In the first case, Jesus gave a false 
testimony respecting His person, even as the Jews accused Him of doing. In the 
second, the apostle allowed himself to make Him speak according to his own 
fancy, and this on a subject of capital importance. For ourselves, we regard 
both of these suppositions alike morally impossible. Meyer has modified the 
preceding view by supposing that the Logos, essentially impersonal, assumed 
the character of a person at the moment of creation and for the purpose 
of performing that act. This view has no basis in the text of the Prologue and 
none in the rest of the Scriptures. The three 7, was, of ver. 1 much rather 
indicate a permanent condition and one identical with itself. Finally, Neander 


248 PROLOGUE. 


saw in the Logos the organ by which God reveals Himself, as in the Holy Spirit 
he saw the force by which He communicates Himself. We do not contest the 
relative truth of this conception; we only find it incomplete. And for this reason : 
The second proposition of ver. 1 shows us the Logos turned primordially, not 
ad extra, towards the world in order to reveal God, but ad intra towards God 
Himself. The Logos reveals God to the world only after being immersed in God. 
He interprets in time the revelation of God which he receives or rather which 
He Himself is eternally. 

To the divine essence, then, there appertains a being who is for God that which 
the word is for the thought, that which the face is to the soul. A living reflection 
of God within, it is He who reveals Him outwardly. This relation implies at 
once the most intimate personal communion and the most perfect subordination. 
How can these two facts be reconciled ? Only on one condition: That this eter- 
nal existence of the Logos is a matter, not of metaphysical necessity, but of the free- 
dom of love. “God is love.” Now what He is, He is altogether, freely and essen- 
tially. It is the same with the Logos. His existence is a matter of eternal essence, 
and of free divine will, or, what unites these two ideas, of moral necessity (comp. 
xvii. 24). It becomes one to remember that word of Christ Himself: “No one 
knoweth the Father except the Son” (Luke x. 22 ; Matt. xi. 27), and that other 
word of the Apostle Paul: “We see now only darkly and as in a mirror; then we 
shall know as we have been known.” (See further the General Considerations on 
the Prologue, at the end of ver. 18.) 


Ver. 2. “ This Word was in the beginning with God.”—With this Logos 
which John has in a manner just discovered in eternity, he takes his place 
at that beginning of time (ver. 1) from which he went backward even to 
what was before time, and now he comes down the course of the ages, to 
the end of showing the Logos operating in the history of the world as the 
organ of God, before the moment when He is Himself to appear on the 
earth. The pronoun oiroc, this Logos, reproduces more particularly the 
idea of the third proposition of ver. 1: this Word-God; but the apostle 
joins with it that of the first two, in such a Way as to resume in this verse 
the substance of the three propositions of ver. 1, and thus to explain the 
part of Creator which he is about to ascribe to the Logos in ver. 8. There 
is, therefore, no contrast in the pronoun odroc to any other being whatever, 
as Meyer supposes, and as the translation of Rilliet would indicate: “Jt is 
he who was...” The allusion to the account in Genesis in the words: 
with God, is no less evident here than in ver. 1; comp. Gen. 1. 26 (let us 
make, ... ourimage, . . . our likeness). 

Ver. 3, “All things were made through Him, and not one of the things which 
exist’ was made without Him.”—The work of creation was the first act of 
the divine revelation ad extra. The preposition dvd, through, does not lower 
the Logos to the rank of a mere instrument. For this preposition is often 
applied to God Himself (Rom. xi. 86; Gal. i. 1; Heb. ii. 10). Neverthe- 


1D, some Fathers and some Gnostics read asCDL It. Vulg., place a period after ev and 
ovdev (nothing), instead of ovde ev (not even one connect o yeyovev (that which has been made) 
thing).—The Gnostics, Heracleon, Ptolemy, with the following clause. 
etc., the Alex. Fathers, Clem., Orig., as well 


CHAP. I. 2, 3. 249 


less it has as its object to reserve the place of God beside and above the 
Logos. This same relation is explained and more completely developed 
by Paul, 1 Cor. viii. 6: “We have but one God, the Father from whom 
(éx) are all things, and we are for him (eic); and one Lord, Jesus Christ, 
through (6:4) whom are all things, and we are through him.” So, then, no 
being has come into existence without having passed through the intel- 
ligence and will of the Logos. But, also, the Logos derives everything 
from the Father, and refers everything to the Father. This is what is at 
once indicated by 0:4, through, which leaves room for é« with relation to 
the Father.—The word zéyvra, all things, differs from ra zdyvra all the things, 
in that the second phrase can designate a particular totality which must 
be determined according to the context (comp. 2 Cor. v. 18), while the first — 
indicates the most unlimited universality —The term yiveo#a, to become, 
forms a contrast with eiva, to be, in vy. 1, 2; it indicates the passage from 
nothing to existence, as opposed to eternal existence; comp. the same 
contrast, vili. 58: Before Abraham became, I am. 

The second proposition repeats in a negative form the idea which is 
affirmatively stated in the first. This mode of expression is frequently 
found in John, especially in the first Epistle; it is intended to exclude any 
exception. The reading ovdév, nothing, instead of oidé év, not even one thing, 
is not sufficiently supported. It is, undoubtedly, connected with the 
explanation which places a period immediately after this word év (see on _ 
ver. 4)—Some modern writers, Liicke, Olshausen, de Wette, Biwmlein, sup- 
pose that by this expression: Not even one thing, John meant to set aside 
the Platonic idea of eternal matter (#27). But eternal matter would not 
be a év, one thing; it would be the foundation of everything. It is no less 
arbitrary to claim, as has been claimed, that in this passage the apostle 
aims to make the world proceed from an eternally pre-existing matter. 
Where in the text is the slightest trace of such an idea to be found? Far 
from holding that a blind principle, such as matter, co-operated in the 
existence of the universe, John means to say, on the contrary, that every 
existence comes from that intelligent and free being whom he has for this 
reason designated by the name Word. There is not an insect, not a blade 
of grass, which does not bear the trace of this divine intervention, the seal 
of this wisdom.—‘‘ The foundation of the universe,” as Lange says, “is 
luminous.” It is the Word! 

We have, in the translation, joined the last words of the Greek phrase: 
& yéyovev (which exists) to ver. 8, and not, as many interpreters, to ver. 4 
(see on that verse). These words seem, it is true, to mak a useless repe- 
tition in connection with the verb éyévero (became). This apparent repeti- 
tion has been explained by a redundancy peculiar to the style of John. 
But it must not be forgotten that the Greek perfect is, in reality, a present, 
and that the sense of 4 yéyovev is consequently, not: nothing of what has 
come to be, has come to be without Him; but nothing of what subsists, 
of what now is (yéyove), came to be (éyévero) without Him. There is here, 
therefore, neither redundance nor tautology. The apostle here has noth- 
ing to do with theological speculation; his aim is practical. He has in 


} 


250 PROLOGUE. 


view the redemptive work (ver. 14); he wishes to make it understood 
that He who is become our Saviour is nothing less than the divine and 
personal being who was associated with God in the work of creation. But 
the Word has not been the organ of God simply for bringing all beings 
from nothing into existence; it is He, also, who, when the world is once 
created, remains the principle of its conservation, and of its ulterior devel- 
opment, both physical and moral. 

Ver. 4: “In Him there was life,' and the life was the light of men.”? A 
large number of authorities join with this verse the words 6 yéyovev (that 
which subsists), which we have united with the preceding verse ; so already 
the Gnostic Heracleon, then Origen, the Syriac versions, the MSS. A C D 
(* B, have no punctuation), and the Latin Fathers. Several modern edi- 
tors (Wetstein, Lachmann, Westcott, etc.), do the same. On this view, we 
can translate in three ways. Either, with Cyril of Alexandria: ‘That - 
which exists ... there was life in him” (in that existing being); or: 
“That which exists in him was living” (placing the comma after air@) ; 
or finally: “ That which exists, had life (was living) in him” (the comma 
before aiv}). The first meaning is grammatically forced; the thought, 
moreover, is an idle one. Of the other two constructions, the simplest, 
the one also which gives the most natural meaning, is certainly the sec- 
ond. For the idea which needs to be determined and explained by the 
defining words év aire (in him), is not the subject, that which subsists, which 
is made sufficiently plain by ver. 38, but the predicate was life. This last 
interpretation, however, is also inadmissible. With this meaning, John 
would have said, not: was life (a far too strong expression), but: “ had life 
in him.” The expression (wy éyev is familiar to him in the sense of par- 
ticipating in life (iii. 15, 16; v. 24; vi. 47, etc.). The words 6 yéyovev, there- 
fore, cannot in any way belong to ver. 4; and the subject of the first propo- 
sition of this verse is, consequently, the word (w#, life: “ Life was in Him.” 
But what meaning is to be given to these words? Must we, with Weiss, 
apply the term life to the life of the Logos Himself. The Logos had life, 
as unceasingly in communication with the Father (ver. 1). But why re- 
turn to the description of the nature of the Logos, already described in 
vv. 1, 2, and after His first manifestation, the act of creation, had already 
been mentioned? Weiss answers that, as vv. 1, 2, had prepared the way 
for the mentioning of the creative work (ver. 3), ver. 4 returns to the 
nature of the Logos in order to prepare for that which is about to be said 
in ver. 5 of His illuminating activity. But this alleged symmetry between 
ver. 4 and ver. 1 is very forced. There is constant progress, and no going 
backward. It is an altogether simple course to regard ver. 4 as continuing 
the description of the work of the Logos. The world, after having received 
existence through Him (ver. 3), gained in Him the life which it enjoyed. 
There is here a double gradation: first, from the idea of existence to that 
of life, then from “through Him” to “in Him.” Compare an analogous 


1S D, It. plerique; Syreur>; read eorw (there 2 B omits in the text rwv avOpwrwv (of men), 
is), instead of nv (there was). afterwards supplied in the margin. 


CHAP. I. 4. | 251 


double gradation in Col. i. 16,17: “ All things have been created through 
Him (6¢ abrob extra)... ; and they subsist in Him (év aito ovvéornxe).” 
Life, indeed, is more than existence. It is existence saturated with force, 
existence in its state of normal progress towards the perfect destination of 
being. And this first gradation is connected with the second : It is through 
the Logos that the world exists ; it is in intimate relation with Him (“in 
Him ”) that it receives the life-giving forces by means of which it subsists 
and is developed. With the same meaning, Gess says: “The creation has 
not been abandoned by the Logos subsequently to the act of creation ; 
but He penetrated it with forces which were able to make it prosper, make 
it move onward with success.” Some interpreters apply the term life here 
solely to the physical life (Calvin, etc.) ; others, to the spiritual life (Origen, 
Hengstenberg, Weiss). But this distinction is out of place in this passage. 
For, as the question in hand is as to what the Logos was for created beings, 
it follows from this fact that He communicates life to each one of 
them in a different measure, and in a form appropriate to its aspirations 
and capacities; to some, physical life only ; to others, that life, and besides 
one or another degree of the higher life, Thus, the want of the article 
before the word fof (life), is very fully explained; the purpose being to 
leave this word in its most unlimited and most variously applicable sense. 
The reading éor (és), instead of jv (was), in the Sinaitic and Cambridge 
manuscripts, has been wrongly adopted by Tischendorf, in his eighth edi- 
tion; it is incompatible with the 7 of the following clause. It is, un- 
doubtedly, a correction arising from the interpretation of those who con- 
nect the words 4 yéyove with ver. 4; since this perfect yéyove, being in sense 
a present, demands in the verb of the principal clause the present (is), and 
not the imperfect (was). 

To what moment of history must we refer the fact declared in this 
proposition? Hengstenberg and Briickner think that the question is of a 
purely ideal relation; the first, in this sense: “The Logos must one day 
(at the moment of His incarnation) become the life, that is to say, the 
salvation of the world;” the second: “The Logos would have been the life 
of the world, had it not been for sin, which has broken the bond between 
the world and Him.” But these two explanations violate the sense of the 
word was, which must express a reality, as well as the was in vv. 1, 2. 

In the first editions of this Commentary, suffering myself to be guided 
by the connection between ver. 8 and ver. 4, I referred ver. 4, with Meyer, 
to the time which immediately followed the creation, to that moment of 
normal opening to life when the Word, no longer meeting any obstacle to 
His beneficent action in nature and in humanity, poured forth abundantly 
to every being the riches of life; these words designated thus the para- 
disaical condition. In this way, ver. 4 answered to Gen. ii., as ver. 3 to 
Gen. i, and ver. 5 to Gen. iii. (the fall). The two imperfects was, in this 
verse, are in harmony with this view. I am obliged, however, to give up 
this view now, in consequence of a change which I have felt compelled, 
since the second edition, to make in my interpretation of ver. 5 (see on 
that verse). If the 5th verse is referred, as I now refer it, not to the fall 


252 PROLOGUE. 


and the condition which followed it, but to the appearance of the Logos 
at His coming in the flesh, and to the rejection of Him by mankind, the 
interval between ver. 4 (Paradise) and ver. 5 (the rejection of Christ) 
would be too considerable to be included in the simple «ai, and, at the 
beginning of ver.5. We must therefore necessarily extend the epoch 
described in ver. 4 to the whole time which elapsed from the creation 
(ver. 3) to the coming of Christ (ver. 5). During all that period of the 
history of humanity, the world subsisted and was developed only by virtue 
of the life which was communicated to it by the Logos. The Logos was, 
as Schaff says, “the life of every life.” Not only all existence, but all 
force, all enjoyment, all progress in the creation were His gift. 

The meaning of the second proposition naturally follows from that 
which has been given to the first. If, as Weiss thinks, the first referred to 
the life which the Logos possesses in Himself, the second would signify 
that this same Logos, in so far as He possesses the spiritual life through 
the perfect knowledge which He has of God, became the light of men by 
communicating it to them. But John does not say in ver. 4 that the 
Logos was Himself the light of men; he makes the light proceed from 
the life which the Logos communicated to them. And this is the reason 
why he limits the word Jie in the second proposition by the article: That 
life, which the world received from the Logos become light in men, it 
opened itself in them and in them alone, in virtue of their inborn apti- 
tudes, in the form of light. 

Light, with John, is one of those extremely rich expressions which it is 
difficult accurately to define. It does not designate an exclusively moral 
idea, salvation, as Hengstenberg thinks, or holiness, the true mode of being, 
as Luthardt says; for in these two senses it could not be sufficiently distin- 
guished from life. No more is it a purely intellectual notion: reason 
(Calvin, de Wette), for John could not say, in this sense: God is light, (1 Ep. 
1.5), In this last passage, John adds: “ And there is in him no darkness.” 
If he means by this last term moral evil, the depravity of the will 
uniting with it the inward falsehood, the darkening of the intelligence 
which results from it, the light will be, to his thought, moral good, holi- 
ness, together with the inward clearness, the general intuition of the 
truth which arises from a good will; let us say: the distinct consciousness 
of oneself and of God in the common sphere of good, the possession of 
the true view-point with respect to all things through uprightness of heart, 
holiness joyously contemplating its own reality and thereby all truth. 
This inward light is an emanation of the life, of the life as moral life. 
Here is the explanation of the objective phrase: of men; for men alone, 
as intelligent and free beings, as moral agents, are capable of the enjoy- 
ment of such light. This word would certainly have a very natural 
application to the primitive state of man in paradise. But it can be 
extended to the human condition in general, even after the fall. God has 
continued to reveal to man “the end and the way ” (Gess). From exist- 
ence, as it appeared in man, determined by the consciousness of moral 
obligation, there has sprung up in all times and in all places a certain 


CHAP. I. 5. 253 


\ 

light concerning man, concerning his relations with God, concerning God 
Himself, and concerning the world; comp. as to the Jews vil. 17, and as 
to the Gentiles x. 16; xi. 52; so also in Paul: Rom. i. 19, 21; 1 Cor. i. 21; 
Acts xiv. 17. The various forms of worship and the indisputable traces 
of a certain moral sense, even among peoples the most degraded, are the 
proofs of this universal light emanating from the Logos. All the rays of 
the sentiment of the beautiful, the true and the just which have illumi- 
nated and which ennoble humanity, justify the expression of John (comp. 
ver. 10). It is this fundamental truth which was formulated by the 
Fathers (Justin, Clem. Alex.) in their doctrine of the Adyoo oreppyarixdc. 
There is nothing more contrary to the idea of an original dualism which 
Baur and his school ascribe to John, than this expression: ef men, which 
embraces all humanity without any distinction. 


SECOND SECTION. 
UNBELIEF. [., 5-11. 


This Logos, light of the world, appears in the world buried in the 
darkness of sin; He is not recognized and is rejected (ver. 5). And yet 
God had taken all precautions to prevent such a result (vv. 6-8). But 
the impossible is realized (vv. 9-11). 

Ver. 5: “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness apprehended 
it not.” —What, then, is this darkness (cxoria) which all at once fills the 
scene of the world created and enlightened by the Word? It is impossi- 
ble, with some interpreters of Baur’s school, to think of eternal darkness, 
of a kingdom of evil co-eternal with that of good. Ver. 3 is positively 
opposed to this: everything that is, without exception, is the work of the 
Logos. But John, as vv. 3,4 have proved, wrote for readers who were 
acquainted with the account in Genesis. We must also explain ver. 5 
according to this account. The darkness of which the evangelist speaks 
is the subjection to sin and falsehood in which humanity lives in consequence 
of the fact of the fall, narrated in Gen. iii. As the Logos was the principle 
of life and light for the world, moral obscurity invaded it, as soon as 
humanity had ceased to live in Him (ver. 3); there was darkness. The 
Logos, however, none the less perseveres in His office of illuminator (ver. 4), 
and He ends by appearing Himself on this theatre which He has never 
ceased to enlighten. Formerly, I referred the present ¢aiver, it shines, to the 
beneficent action of the Logos before His incarnation : this is the thought 
which I have just shown to be contained in the second clause of ver. 4. 
This view approaches the explanation of de Wette, who refers «the ¢gaivec, 
shines, to the revelations of the O. T., and that of the interpreters who 
_apply it to the moral light granted to the heathen by means of reason and 
- conscience. Three reasons have made me give up this explanation: 1. 
The present ¢aiver, shines, is only naturally explained, especially in con- 


1B and 5 Mnn. read avtov (the Logos) instead of auto (the light). 


254 PROLOGUE. 


trast to the two past tenses of ver. 4, if we refer it to a present fact; now 
this fact contemporaneous with the moment when the evangelist writes 
can only be the earthly appearance of Christ and of the Gospel proclama- 
tion which perpetuates the glory of it here on earth. 2. The very strik- 
ing parallel passage, 1 Ep. ii. 8: “ Because the darkness is passing away, 
and the true light already shineth ” (67 ¢aiver), can apply only, according 
to the context, to the Gospel era, and it thus determines the meaning of 
the same expression in the Prologue. 3. The truly decisive reason, to 
my view, is the significant asyndeton between ver. 5 and ver. 6. The absence 
of a logical particle most frequently indicates, in Greek, a more emphatic 
and more developed reaffirmation of the thought already expressed. 
Now, it does not appear to me possible to interpret otherwise this form 
of expression in this passage. The historical fact so abruptly introduced 
in ver.6 by the words: “There appeared a man.... ,” can only be 
thus mentioned with the design of giving through history the proof of the 
thought declared in ver. 5; and as the development which opens at ver. 
6 and closes in ver. 11 relates wholly to the rejection of Christ by Israel, 
it follows that the second part of ver. 5, the theme of this development, 
can only relate to this same fact. Thus the gaive:, shines, is understood by 
Ewald, Hengstenberg, Luthardt, Weiss. Some interpreters think that the act 
of shining can apply to the action of the Logos alike before and during 
His earthly life; so Olshausen, Meyer, Westcott,—the last writer extending 
the meaning of the present shines from the moment of the creation even 
to the consummation of things. But the two modes of illumination, inter- 
nal and external, which would be thus attributed to the Logos here, are 
of too heterogeneous a nature to make it possible to unite them in the 
same term. We have, moreover, already seen that the present shines 
cannot naturally apply to the time which preceded the incarnation. 

The xai, and, simply indicates the calm continuity of the work of the 
Logos throughout these different stages ; the office which He accomplished 
in the depths of the human soul (ver. 4) has ended in that which He has 
just accomplished as Messiah in the midst of the Jewish people (vy. 5-11). 
Weiss and Gess object to this explanation, that it forces us to give to the word 
7d gac, the light, a different sense in ver. 4 and ver. 5: there, the light as a 
gift of the Logos; here, the light as being the Logos Himself. But in ver. 
4 the question is of a light emanating from the life, and consequently 
impersonal, while in #er. 5, John speaks of the light as visibly and per- 
sonally present. This, then, is his meaning: that that moral good the 
ideal of which the Logos caused to shine in the human soul, He has 
come to realize in Himself here on earth, and thus to display it in all its 
brightness (ver. 5). John uses this notion of light with great freedom. 
We find the same two senses united in the same verse in viii. 12: “I am 
the light of the world ”—this is the sense of the light in our ver. 5—and 
“ He that followeth me shall have the light of life’”—this is the sense of 
the word in ver. 4. The active form g¢aive:, shines, is purposely employed 
rather than the middle ¢aiverac, which would signify : appears, shows itself. 
John means, not that it has appeared, but that from this time forward it 


CHAP I. 5. 255 


pours forth its brilliancy in the darkness of humanity, striving to dissipate 
the darkness. 

The second part of ver. 5 is explained in two opposite ways, according 
~ to the two opposite meanings which are given to the verb, xaréAaBev. This 
verb, which signifies to lay hands on, to seize, may denote a hostile act : 
to seize in order to restrain, to overcome, or a friendly act: to seize in 
order to appropriate to oneself, to possess. The first of these meanings is 
that which the ancient Greek interpreters (Origen, Chrysostom, etc.), adopt : 
for along time abandoned, it is now again preferred by some modern 
writers (Lange, Weiss, Westcott); ‘“ And the darkness did not succeed in re- 
straining, in extinguishing this light.” In favor of this meaning the ex- 
pression in xii. 35 is cited: “ Walk while you have the light, lest the dark- 
ness overtuke you (kata4éBy in the hostile sense).”’ But even in that pass- 
age, the meaning of this verb is not overcome; Jesus speaks of the night, 
not as restraining the day, but as overtaking the traveler who started on his 
journey too late. This single example which is cited, therefore, is not 
really one. Besides, this meaning is excluded by the context when prop- 
erly understood. We have seen that the asyndeton between vv. 5 and 6, 
implies a very close relation of thought between them. Now, this rela- 
tion exists only as ver. 5 states a fact which already refers, like all that 
which follows, to the development of unbelief, not of faith. This it is 
which prevents us from translating: “and the darkness did not restrain 
it.’ In order to find in what follows the evidence of a similar idea, we 
must pass beyond the entire development of vv. 6-11, and proceed to dis- 
cover it in the fact mentioned in vv. 12,13: “To all those who received 
him . ..;” which is, of course, impossible, and the more so as ver. 12 is 
connected with ver. 11 by the adversative particle dé, Besides, if the apos- 
tle wished to express the idea which is attributed to him, he had for this 
purpose the very natural word «aré yew, to check, to repress : comp. Rom i. 18. 
It is fitting, therefore, to apply to the word here the other meaning which 
is the prevailing one throughout the whole New Testament. Comp. Phil. 
iii. 12, 13 (to attain the end) ; 1 Cor. ix. 24 (to lay hold of the prize) ; Rom. 
ix. 80 (to obtain the righteousness of faith). In the same sense it is also 
used in Sirach xv. 1-7: xaratauBavew oogiay (to attain to wisdom). I lay 
stress only on the passages where the verb is used, as it is here, in the 
active. The sense of comprehend in which it is taken in the middle (Acts 
iv. 13; x. 84; Eph. ii. 18) rests also on the meaning of the verb which 
we here adopt. John means, accordingly, that the darkness did not suffer 
itself to be penetrated by the light which was shining in order to dissipate it. 
To understand this somewhat strange figure, we must recall to mind the 
fact that the word darkness here denotes, not an abstract principle, but 
living and free beings, corrupted humanity. Understood in this sense, 
this second proposition is the summary statement which is developed in 
the following passage, vv. 6-11; it has its counterpart in the second prop- 
osition of ver. 11. The choice of the slightly different term tapéAa3ev 
received (ver. 11), in order to express nearly the same idea as karéAaPev of 
ver. 5, will be easily explained. The «ai, and, which joins this proposition 





256 PROLOGUE. 


to the preceding one, takes the place, as is often the case, of a dé, but. 
John presents the course of things, not from the point of view of the 
changing conduct of mankind towards God, but from that of the faithful 
and persevering conduct of the Logos towards mankind. The aorist karé- 
aaBev stands out in relief on the general basis of the present ¢aiver, as a 
particular and unique act, an attitude taken once for all. To the view of 
the evangelist, the refusal of the mass of mankind to allow themselves to 
be enlightened by the Gospel is already an accomplished fact. Comp. the 
saying of Jesus in iii. 19, which is, as it were, the text from which are derived 
the present words: “The light is come into the world, and men: loved the 
darkness rather than the light, because their works were evil.” The apos- 
tle passes now to the account of the manner in which this decisive moral 
fact stated in ver. 5 was accomplished and how it was consummated in Is- 
rael. And that he may make the gravity of it thoroughly apprehended, 
he begins by calling to mind the extraordinary means which God adopted, 
in order, as it would seem, to render it impossible, vy. 6-8. 

Ver. 6. “ There appeared a man sent from God; his name was John.”— 
The forerunner is not mentioned here as representing, either the whole of 
the Jewish economy, or prophetism in particular, as is thought by the 
interpreters who endeavor to find an historical plan in the Prologue. The 
apostle speaks of the forerunner only with respect to his personality and 
from the point of view of his relation to that of the Saviour.—The mention 
of the forerunner in this place with such particularity is, as Weiss observes, 
characteristic of the Apostle John, to whom the Baptist had served as a 
guide to conduct him to Christ.—The word éyévero, became, appeared, points 
to an historical fact, and might thus form a contrast with the verbs 7», was, 
which in ver. 1 designated the eternal existence of the Word; but between 
them the two 7 of ver. 4 have intervened. The word av@pwroc, a man, 
might also be the antithesis to the divine subject who has alone been 
brought forward up to this point; yet there is nothing which indicates 
this with sufficient positiveness.—The analytic form éyéveto areota/pévoc 
sets forth the importance of the person of John in a better way than the 
simple areordan, which would have reference only to his mission. He was 
the first prophetic person raised up by God since a time long past. On 
the word sent, comp. iii. 28: “Because I am sent before him,” as well as 
Mal. iii. 1, from which passage this expression is certainly drawn. The 
name John (God shows grace) marked the character of the era which was 
about to open. Yet it is not for this reason that the evangelist mentions 
the name here. He means simply to say: “This man,of whom I speak 
to you, is the one who is known by you all under the name of John.” It 
is remarkable that our evangelist uses simply the name John, without 
adding the epithet Baptist, which had early become inseparable from this 
name, as we see from the Synoptics, and even from the J ewish historian, 
Josephus. Does not Meyer reasonably conclude from this omission (In- 
trod. p. 81), that the author of our Gospel must have known the forerun- 


1“ John surnamed the Baptist.” Antiq. xviii. 5, 2. 


CHAP. I. 6—8.° 257 


ner otherwise than through the general tradition of the Church? If he 
had really known him before the public voice had given him this title, 
it was very natural that he should designate him simply by his name. 
Credner thought that, inasmuch as the title Baptist served in the Church to 
distinguish the forerunner from another person of the same name (John 
the apostle), the latter omitted the title in order that he might not attract 
attention to himself by the contrast; an ingenious observation, but, per- 
haps, less well-founded than the preceding. After having introduced this 
personage, the author describes his role: 

Ver. 7. “ This one came as a witness, to bear witness to the light, that all might 
believe through him.”—The pronoun oiroc, this one, sums up all the state- 
ments of the preceding verse, as oiroc of ver. 2 summed up all those of 
ver. 1. The verb 726, came, indicates a more advanced step than the 
éyéveto, appeared, of ver. 6; the entrance of John upon his public activity. 
—This character of witness has such importance, in the view of the evan- 
gelist, that he presents it, the first time, without an object: as a witness or 
(more literally), for testimony; the second time, with an indication of the 
object of the testimony. The first expression makes prominent the quality 
of witness in itself (in contrast to the superior dignity of the personage 
who is to follow). The second completes the idea of this testimony. 

This idea of testimony is one of the fundamental notions of our Gospel. 
It is correlative to and inseparable from that of faith. Testimony is given 
only with a view to faith, and faith is impossible except by means of 
testimony. The only faith worthy of the name is that which fastens itself 
upon a divine testimony given either in act or in word. Testimony 
resembles the vigorous trunk of the oak; faith, the slender twig which 
embraces this trunk and makes it its support. But did the light need to 
be attested, pointed out? Does not the sun give its own proof of itself? 
Certainly, if the Word had appeared here below in the glory which belongs 
to Him (the form of God, Phil. ii. 6), the sending of a witness would not 
have been necessary. But He was obliged to appear enveloped in a thick 
veil (the flesh, ver. 14); and, in the condition of blindness into which sin 
had plunged man (ver. 5, the darkness), he could not recognize Him except 
with the help of a testimony. The evangelist adds: That all might believe 
through him; evidently: Believe on Christ through John, and not on God 
through Christ, as Grotius and Ewald thought. The question in this verse 
is not of the office of Christ, but of that of John. When the critics of 
Baur’s school charge our author with setting up, in agreement with the 
Gnostics, two kinds of men, of opposite origins and destinies, the psychical 
and the pneumatical, they seem to be forgetful of these words: “That all 
might believe through him.”—We find here a new indication of the part 
which the forerunner had played in the development of the writer’s own 
faith. To the affirmation of the fact, John adds, as in ver. 8, a negative 
proposition, designed to exclude every opposite idea. 

Ver. 8. “ He was not the light ; but [he came] to bear witness to the light.”— 
The emphasis is not, as Meyer and Weiss think, on the verbal idea, was, 
but on the subject He, in contrast with the other personage (ver. 9). 

17 


258 PROLOGUE. 


Hence the choice of the pronoun éxeivoc, which has always with John a 
strongly emphatic and even oftentimes exclusive sense. It is in vain, as 
it seems to me, that Weiss denies this special use of the pronoun éxeivo¢ in 
our Gospel. In a multitude of cases, this commentator is obliged to have 
recourse to veritable feats of skill in order to maintain that this pronoun 
always designates a subject or an object which is more remote, in opposi- 
tion to one that is nearer; comp. e. g.i.40; v. 39; vil. 45, and many 
other passages which we shall notice, and where the sense which is claimed 
by Weiss is not applicable. The iva, in order that, depends, according to 
Meyer and Weiss, on an 7492 (came) understood, or it is even, according to 
Luthardt, independent of any verb, as often in John (ix. 3; xii. 18; xv. 
25). But this independence can never be other than apparent; a purpose 
must always depend on some action. And it is unnatural to go very far 
in search of the verb 720e, came, while the verb 7, was, can easily take 
the sense of “was there” (aderat) and serve as a point of support for the 
in order that ; comp. vii. 89, where Weiss himself renders 7 by aderat. 

It appears to me scarcely admissible that by this remark John desires 
simply to set forth the absolute superiority of Jesus to John the Baptist, 
(Meyer, Hengstenberg); or that, as Weiss thinks, we have here again a point 
merely describing the experience of the author himself as an old disciple 
of the forerunner. The negative form is too emphatic to be explained 
thus, and the analogous passages i. 20; iii. 25 ff., compared with Acts xiii. 
25, and with the remarkable fact related in Acts xix. 3, 4, lead us rather 
to suppose a polemic design in opposition to persons who attributed to 
the forerunner the dignity of Messiah (comp. Introd. pp. 218, 214). 

The testimony of John should have opened the door of faith to all, and 
rendered unbelief impossible. And yet the impossibility is realized, and 
even under the most monstrous form. This is what is developed in vv. 
9-11. 

Ver. 9. “ The true light, which enlightens every man, came into the world.” 
T think I must positively decide for this interpretation, making the parti- 
ciple épyésuevov, coming, the predicate of the verb 7, was: was coming, for : 
came. This analytic form implies an idea of continuance. At the mo- 
ment when John bore witness of the light, it was in course of coming; it 
was properly coming; thus Bengel, Liicke, de Wette, Weiss, Westcott. This 
verse, thus understood, leaves to the expression to come into the world the 
ordinary, and in some sort technical, sense which it has in John G19: oy, 
14; ix. 39; xviii. 37, etc.). Some interpreters, while adopting the same 
construction, refer this term: came into the world to the long coming of 
the Logos through the ages, by means of His revelations during the 
whole course of the Old Covenant (Keim, Westcott). But this sense would 
lead, as we shall see, to a tautology with the first proposition of the fol- 
lowing verse. Other meanings given to 7 épyéuevov by Tholuck: “He 
was going to come,” and by Luthardt, “ He was to come,” are hardly nat- 
ural. Meyer, with some ancient and modern interpreters (Origen, Chry- 
sostom, Augustine, Calvin, Beza, etc.), adopts an entirely different construc- 
tion; he joins the épyéuevov with the substantive dvdpwrov: “ which 


CHAP, ft. 9, 10. 259 


enlightens every man coming into the world.” In this case 1d ¢éc, the light, 
is taken as the subject of 7», which is translated in the sense of aderat 
‘was present.” “The true light, which enlightens every man coming 
into the world, was present;” or 7d ¢é¢is made the predicate of jv, by 
giving to this verb as its subject a gc to be supplied from the preceding 
verse: “This light (to which John bore witness, ver. 8) was the true light 
which enlightens every man coming into the world.” The uselessness of 
this appended phrase, which is self-evident, has been often alleged against 
this connection of épyéuevov, coming, with the substantive every man ; but 
wrongly, as I showed in my first edition, where I adopted this explana-. 
tion. For these words thus understood would signify that the light of the 
Logos is a divine gift which every man brings with him when he is born, 
—that the matter in question is, accordingly, an innate light. This idea, 
however, is not lost in the other construction; it is still found in the 
words: which enlightens every man. The two constructions of 7, either in 
the sense of was present, or by supplying with it a subject derived from the 
preceding verse, are not very natural. Finally, the logical connection 
with ver. 8 is closer with the first meaning: John came to testify of the 
light (ver. 8): for at that very moment it was on the point of appearing 
in the world (ver. 9). In my second edition, I attempted a third, or even 
a fourth construction, by attaching the participle épyéuevor, not to Fv, nor 
to dvdpwrov, but to gwrife, to enlighten, making it a sort of Latin gerundive: 
“which enlightens every man by coming (itself) into the world.” But this 
use of the participle can scarcely be justified by sufficient examples. 

The word adndiwédc, veritable, appears here for the first time. It is one 
of the characteristic terms of John’s style. Of twenty-eight passages in 
which we meet with it in the N. T., twenty-three belong to John, nine in 
the Gospel, four in the first Epistle, and ten in the Apocalypse (Milligan). 
It is also used in the classics. It designates the fact as the adequate real- 
ization of the idea. It contrasts, therefore, not the true with the false, 
but the normal appearance with the imperfect realization. The light of 
which John speaks, consequently, is characterized by it as the essential 
light, in opposition to every light of an inferior order. The expression: 
which enlightens every man, if applied to the Gospel revelation, would 
designate the universalistic character of the Gospel; the present enlightens 
would be that of the idea. It is more natural, however, to find here 
again the notion which was expressed in ver. 4: the Logos, as the internal 
light, enlightening every man, illuminating him by the sublime intuitions 
of the good, the beautiful and the true. The term every man gives again 
a formal contradiction to the assertion of Baur’s school which makes John 
a dualistic philosopher. 

The Logos when coming into the world did not arrive there as a 
stranger. By profound and intimate relations with humanity, He had 
prepared for His advent here on earth, and seemed to be assured of a 
favorable reception : 

Ver. 10. “ He was in the world and the world had been made by Him, and 
the world knew Him not.” A contrast is evidently intended between the 


260 PROLOGUE. 


first words of this verse and the last words of ver. 9. This contrast is the 
occasion of the asyndeton. ‘The Logos came into the world” (ver. 9); 
“and yet he had long been there ” (ver. 10a); “ and also the world was His 
work” (ver. 10b). The first two propositions set forth that which is 
incredible, apparently impossible, in the result which is stated in the third 
(10c): “and the world did not know him.” Weiss regards the being in 
the world (10a) as the consequence of coming into the world indicated in 
ver.9. But the asyndeton between the two verses 9 and 10 does not suit 
this logical relation (see Keil); and, in this case, to what fact does the 
expression: “He was in the world” refer? It must necessarily be to a 
fact posterior to the birth of Jesus. This is held, indeed, by de Wette, 
Meyer, Astié, Weiss, and others; they apply the first proposition (10a) to 
the presence of Jesus in Israel at the moment when John the Baptist was 
carrying on his ministry, and the third (10) to the ignorance in which 
the Jews still were at that moment of the fact—so important—of the pres- 
ence of the Messiah; so, in the same sense, where John himself says to 
them (ver. 26): “There is present in the midst of you one whom you do not 
know.” Ido not believe it possible to suggest a more inadmissible inter- 
pretation. In the first place, that ignorance in which the people then 
were with regard to the presence of the Messiah had nothing reprehen- 
sible in it, since this presence had not yet been disclosed to them by the 
forerunner; it could not therefore be the ground of the tone of reproach 
which attaches to this solemn phrase: “ And the world knew him not!” 
Then, the imperfect would have been necessary: “ And the world was not 
knowing him,’ and not the aorist, which denotes an accomplished and 
definite fact. Moreover, it would be necessary to give to the word world. 
an infinitely narrower meaning than in the preceding clause, where it 
was said: “and the world (the universe) had been made by him.” 
Finally, how are we to justify the juxtaposition of two facts so heterogene- 
ous as that of the creation of the world by the Word (10b) and that of His 
presence, then momentarily unknown, in Israel! There is no harmony 
between the three clauses of this verse except by referring the first and the 
third to facts which are no less cosmic and universal than that of the crea- 
tion of the world, mentioned in the second. Thisis the reason why we do 
not hesitate to refer the first to the presence and action of the Logos in 
humanity before His coming in the flesh, and the third to the criminal 
want of understanding in humanity, which, in its entirety, failed to 
recognize in Christ the Logos, its creator and illuminator, who had 
appeared in its midst. This return backward to that which the Logos is 
for the universe (comp. ver. 3), and especially for man (comp. ver. 4), is 
intended to make conspicuous the unnatural character of the rejection of 
which He was the object here on earth. The world was His work, bear- 
ing the stamp of His intelligence, as the master-piece bears the stamp of 
the genius of the artist who has conceived and executed it ; He was filling 
it with His invisible presence, and especially with the moral light with 
which He was enlightening the human soul ... and behold, when He 
appears, this world created and enlightened by Him did not recognize 


CHAP. I. 11. 261 


Him! One might be tempted to apply the words: “ did not know him,” 
to the fact indicated in Rom. i. 21-23; Acts xiv. 16; xvii. 80; 1 Cor. i. 21, 
the voluntary ignorance of the heathen world with respect to God as 
revealed in nature and conscience. In that case we should be obliged to 
translate: “had not known him,” and to see in this sin of the heathen 
world the prelude to that of the Jewish world, indicated in the following 
verse. But the non-recognition and rejection of the Logos as such cannot 
be made a reproach to the world before His personal incarnation in 
Jesus Christ. The matter in question, then, is the rejection of the Logos 
in His earthly appearance. This general and cosmic rejection was 
already regarded by Jesus as a consummated fact in the time of His min- 
istry (ili. 19; xv. 18); how much more must it have seemed so at the 
moment when John was writing! The Church formed among mankind 
only an imperceptible minority, and this proportion between the true 
believers and the unbelievers has remained the same in all times and in 
all places. 

The masculine pronoun airév, him, refers to the neuter term 70 ode¢, the 
light, which proves that aizvod also must be taken as masculine. This 
grammatical anomaly arises from the fact that the apostle has now in view 
the light in so far as it had personally appeared in Jesus. This is, like- 
wise, the reason why he substitutes the word vw knew, for xaréAaBe laid 
hold of (ver. 5), although the idea is fundamentally the same. One lays 
hold of a principle, one recognizes a person. 

The failure to recognize the Logos as He appeared in Jesus is stated at 
first, in the third proposition of ver. 10, in an abstract and summary 
way as a general fact. Then, the fact is described in ver. 11 under the 
form of its most striking historical and concrete realization. 

Ver. 11. “ He came to His own and they that were His own received Him 
not.” <A relation of gradation might be established between this verse and 
the preceding, if this verse were applied to the rejection of the natural 
revelation by the heathen: “ And there was something still worse!” But 
the asyndeton is unfavorable to this sense, which we have already refuted. 
It leads us rather to find here a more emphatic reaffirmation of the fact 
indicated in ver. 10: ‘The world did not know Him.” . Yes; that rejec- 
tion took place, and where it seemed the most impossible—in the dwell- 
ing-place which the Logos had prepared for Himself here below! The 
words His home, His own, by setting forth the enormity of the Jewish 
crime, characterize it as the climax of the sin of humanity. The word 
726e, came, refers to the public ministry of Jesus in Israel. Ta idva, liter- 
ally : His home (comp. xix. 27). Before coming to the earth, the Logos 
prepared for Himself there a dwelling-place which peculiarly belonged to 
Him, and which should have served Him as a door of entrance to the rest 
of the world. Comp. Ex. xix. 5, where Jehovah says to the Jews: “ You 
shall be my property among all peoples,” and Ps. exxxv. 4: “ The Lord hath 
chosen Jacob for Himself.” Malachi had said of Jehovah, in describing the 
Messianic advent as His last appearance: “And the Lord whom ye seek 
shall suddenly come to His temple; behold, he cometh” (iii. 1). But this 


262 PROLOGUE. 


door was closed to Him, and even by those who should have opened it to 
Him: oi idvor, His own, His servants, the dwellers in His house, which He 
had Himself established. In the same way as 7a id:a His home designates 
Canaan together with the entire theocratic institution, oi idvoc, His own, de- 
signates all the members of the Israelitish nation. Paul also calls them 
oixeior, members of the household, domestici, familiares, in contrast with févo 
and xéporxor, strangers and sojourners. Never, it seems, had the Jews bet- 
ter deserved that title of honor from Jehovah, “ His people,” than at the 
moment when Jesus appeared. Their monotheistic zeal and their aver- 
sion to idolatry had reached at that epoch the culminating point. The 
nation in general seemed to form a Messianic community altogether dis- 
posed to receive “ Him who should come,” asa bride welcomes her bride- 
groom. The word raparayBdvew, receive to oneself (xiv. 3), well expresses 
the nature of the eager welcome which the Messiah had a right to expect. 
That welcome should have been a solemn and official reception on the 
part of the whole nation hailing its Messiah and rendering homage to its 
God. Ifthe home prepared had opened itself in this way, it would have 
become the centre for the conquest of the world. Instead of this, an un- 
heard of event occurred. Agamemnon returning to his palace and falling 
by the stroke of his faithless spouse—this was the tragic event par excel- 
lence of pagan history. What was that crime in comparison with the 
theocratic tragedy! The God invoked by the chosen nation appears in 
His temple, and He is crucified by His own worshipers. Notice the 
finely shaded difference between the two compound verbs, katahapu Paver, 
to apprehend, ver. 5, which corresponds with the light as a principle, and 
raparzauBdverv, to welcome, which characterizes the reception given to the 
master of the house. Respecting the «ai, and, the same observation as in 
vv.5 and 10. The writer has reached the point of contemplating with 
calmness the poignant contrast which the two facts indicated in the two 
propositions of this verse present. 

Two explanations opposed to that which we have just been developing 
have been offered. Some interpreters, Lange, for example, refer the 
coming of the Word indicated in this verse, to the manifestations of Jeho- 
vah and the prophetic revelations in the Old Testament. Others, as Reuss, 
while applying the words “ He came,” just as we do, to the historical 
appearing of Jesus Christ, think that the ido, His own, are not the Jews, 
but “men in general, as creatures of the pre-existent Word” (Hist. de la 
théol. chrét t. II., p. 476). Reuss even describes the application of the 
words ra idva, of idvor, to the Jews, as “a strange error of the ordinary exe- 
gesis.” He is, however, less positive in his last work; he merely says: 
“An interpretation may be maintained according to which there is no 
question here of the Jews. So far as the first view is concerned, it is ex- 
cluded by the word 726, He came, which can only designate, like the same 
word in ver. 7, an historical fact, the coming of Christ in the flesh. We 
shall see, moreover, that the following verses cannot be applied to the time 
of the Old Covenant, as must be the case according to the sense which 
Lange gives to ver. 11. Reuss’ interpretation seems to him to be required, 


SHAY. tc Et: _ 263 


first, by a difficulty which he finds in the 600, all those who, of ver. 12, if by 
His own, of ver. 11, the Jews are to be understood—we shall examine this 
objection in its proper place—and then, by the general fact that, accord- 
ing to our Gospel, “there are no special relations between the Word and 
the Jews as such.” We believe that we can prove, on the contrary, that 
the fourth Gospel, no less than the first, establishes from the beginning to 
the end an organic relation between the theocracy and the coming of 
Christ in the flesh. The following are some of the principal passages 
which do not allow us to question this: ii. 16, “The house of my Father ;” 
iv. 22, “Salvation is from the Jews ;” v. 39, “The scriptures bear witness 
of me;” v. 45-47; viii. 85, 56; x. 2,3; xii. 41; xix. 36,37. All these say- 
ings are incompatible with the thought of Reuss and prove that the ex- 
pressions His abode, His own, are perfectly applicable to the land of Israel 
and the ancient people of God. 


THIRD SECTION. 
Farrn, I. 12-18. 


The appearance of the Word, therefore, did not succeed in scattering the 
darkness of mankind and overcoming the resistance of Israel as a nation. 
Nevertheless, His mission could not fail. At the moment when the peo- 
ple which He had prepared for Himself turns away from Him, a family 
of believers, divinely begotten, appears and clusters about Him. This is 
the contrast pointed out by vv. 12 and 13. Ver. 14a explains the regen- 
erating power of this faith: it is that its object is nothing less than the 
absolutely unique fact of the incarnation of the Word. And the sequel 
proves that this fact, wonderful as it is, is nevertheless certain ; certain, be- 
cause He was beheld with rapture by eye-witnesses, to whose number the 
author belongs (ver. 14b); —certain, because He was pointed out by a 
divine herald, who had received the mission to proclaim Him (ver. 15); 
certain, because He is an object of experience for the whole Church, which 
through all the heavenly gifts which it receives from this unique man, 
called Jesus Christ, verifies in Him all the characteristics of the Divine 
Logos (vv. 16-18). This triple testimony of eye-witnesses, of the official 
witness, and of the Church itself is the immovable foundation of faith. 
This third part of the Prologue, then, is indeed the demonstration of the 
certainty and the riches of faith. The majority of the commentators 
make this third part begin only at ver. 14, with the words: “And the 
Word was made flesh.” But this way of separating the sections has two 
serious difficulties: 1, vv. 12, 13 become a dragging appendage to the 
preceding section into which they do not enter logically, since the domi- 
nant idea of that section is the unbelief which the Logos encountered here 
on earth; and 2, this third mention of the coming of the Word (comp. 
vv. 5 and 11), not having any introduction, has somewhat of an abrupt 
and accidental character. It is quite otherwise when vv. 12, 18 are joined 
with the following section, which treats of faith. They form the antithe- 


264 PROLOGUE. 


sis to ver. 11 and thus the transition from the first to the second section 
of the Prologue. Thus the third and principal mention of the fact of 
the incarnation is occasioned by the expression of the idea of faith in vy. 
12, 18. 

Ver. 12. But,! to all those who received Him, to them He gave the power 
of becoming children of God, to those who believe on His name.—dAé, but, 
expresses not merely a gradation, but an opposition. This is con- 
firmed by the antithesis of the verb éafov, received, to ob rapé2aBor, 
did not welcome (ver. 11); as well as by that of the subject éc0 (literally, 
as many as there are who), to oi idwo., His own (ver. 11). This last term 
designated the nation as a body; the pronoun dco indicates only individ- 
uals. By its official representatives, the nation, as such, refused to wel- 
come Jesus; from that moment faith took on the character of a purely 
individual and, so to speak, sporadic act. This is expressed by the pro- 
noun éc0, all those who. But the éco are not, therefore, only the few 
members of the Jewish people who did not share the national unbelief; 
they are all believers (roig muctetovow ver. 12b), whether Jews or Greeks, 
whom John contemplates as united into one family of the children of 
God (jusig ravrec, we all, ver. 16). Reuss (Hist. de la théol. chrét. t. ii., p. 
475) thinks that if the term His own (ver. 11), designates the Jews, and 
not men in general, we must also conclude from this fact that the beliey- 
ing éco are only Jews. But John does not say éc0 é avray, all those | 
Jrom among them, but: all those who, in general. When the Messiah is 
once rejected by unbelieving Israel, there is henceforth only humanity, 
and in it individual believers or unbelievers. This substitution of indi- 
vidual faith for the collective and national welcome of the chosen people, 
which was wanting, is precisely that which occasions, in this verse, the 
use of the simple verb éAaPor, received, instead of the compound rapéraBov, 
welcomed (ver. 11). The compound had in it something grave and solemn, 
which was suited to an official reception, such as the Israelitish authori- 
ties should have given in the name of the entire theocratic nation joy- 
ously introducing its divine King into His palace, the temple at Jerusalem; 
while the simple Aauf8dve, which signifies to take, to seize in passing and, 
as it were, accidentally, is perfectly apposite to the notion of individual 
faith. In this verse, therefore, John substitutes, in the same manner as 
St. Paul does in all his epistles, the great idea of Christian individualism, 
with its universal and human character, for Jewish nationalism, with the 
narrow particularism in which it remained confined. By marking the 
contrast (dé, but) between the unbelief of the Israelite nation and the faith 
of individual believers, whoever they may be, Jews or heathen, the apostle 
would succeed in making the greatness of the blessings understood of 
which the rebellious people were deprived, although they had been called 
first of all to enjoy them. Through rejecting the Word, they were deprived 
of a participation in the life of God which He brought in Himself. In 
fact, this divine guest, the Logos, conferred on those who received Him 


1Aé is omitted by D and some Fathers. 


CHAP. I. 12. 265 


two privileges worthy of Himself: first, a new position in relation to God, 
and then, by reason of this position, the power to participate in His 
divine life. 

The word éovoia, authority, competency, denotes more than a simple pos- 

sibility, and less than a power properly so called. What is meant is a 
new position, that of being reconciled, justified, which the believer gains 
through faith, and through this it is that he receives the power of asking 
for and receiving the Holy Spirit, by means of which he becomes a child 
of God. The expression réxvov Geov (child of God), which is used by John, 
includes more than vidg (son), which is used by Paul. The meaning of 
this latter word does not go beyond the idea of adoption (viobecia), the right 
of sonship which is accorded to the believer, while the word réxvov (child), 
from rixrew (to beget), implies the real communication of the divine life. 
Comp. Gal. iv. 6: “ Because ye are sons, God sent forth the Spirit of His Son 
into your hearts ;”” a sentence which is equivalent to saying: “ Because you 
are sons (vioi)—by adoption—God has made you children (réxva) by regen- 
eration.” This érz (because), of Paul, expresses precisely the relation of 
the idea contained in the word éfovocia in John. How can Hilgenfeld ven- 
ture, in the face of the word yevéc6a: (become), to impute to John the dual- 
istic system, according to which the children of God are such by nature, 
and before all faith in the historical Christ! 

The idea of child of God, in the concrete sense in which it here appears, 
is foreign to the Old Testament. The words father and child, in the rare 
cases in which they are there employed (Ps. ciil. 13; Is. lxii. 16; Jer. xxxi. 
20; Hos. xi. 1), express only the sentiments of affection, tenderness, com- 
passion. This observation is sufficient to set aside the opinion of the in- 
terpreters, who, like Lange, with the purpose of reserving the idea of 
the incarnation for ver. 14, refer these verses 12 and 18 to the faithful ones 
of the Old Covenant. The expressions receive the Word and become children 
of God are far too strong to be applied to the Israelitish saints and would 
be in flagrant contradiction to the declaration of Jesus (Matt. xi. 11, 12); 
and to the reflections of John himself (i. 17 and vii. 39). 

The figurative, and consequently, somewhat vague, term receive, required 
to be explained, precisely defined; for the readers must know accurately 
the means by which they may place themselves among the number of the 
bcot (all those who). Hence the appended phrase: roi¢ miorebovow . . . , (to 
those who believe on His name). To believe—this is the means of the Aau Paver, 
the mode of this individual reception. Only, instead of connecting this 
explanation with the verb, they received, the author unites it with the per- 
sons of the dc (to those who). “It is one of the peculiarities of John’s 
style,” Luthardt observes, to define the moral condition by means of which 
an act is accomplished, by an explanatory appendix added to one of the 
words which depend on the principal verb. As a point of style, this is 
perhaps heavy; but as an expression of thought, it is forcible. See the 
same construction in iii. 13; v.18; vii. 50, etc. We have sought to give 
the force of this turn in the translation. The relation between these two 
acts, to receive and to believe, is a close one; the first is accomplished by the 


266 PROLOGUE. 


very fact of the second. But why, then, is an act of faith necessary for 
the reception of the Word? Because His divine character is hidden from 
sight by the veil of the flesh which envelops it. It can only be discerned, 
therefore, by a perception of a moral nature. Made attentive by the tes- 
timony, the man fixes his gaze upon Christ, and, discerning in Him the 
divine stamp of holiness, he surrenders himself personally to Him. This 
is faith. : 

The object of faith, as here indicated, is not the Logos; it is His name. 
The name, the normal name of the being, is the true expression of His 
essence, the perfect revelation of His peculiar character. This name is 
thus the means which other beings have of knowing Him, of forming 
their idea of His person. Hence it is that this idea is sometimes called 
the name, in a relative and secondary sense, as in the prayer: Hallowed be 
thy name. In our passage, John means: those who believe in the revela- 
tion which He has given of Himself, as Logos, who have discerned under 
the veil of the flesh the manifestation of that divine being, the only-begotten 
Son (vv. 14, 18), and have, because of this perception, surrendered them- 
selves to Him. After having thus explained the term received, the apostle 
develops in ver. 15 the idea of the expression children of God. 

Ver. 13. “Who were born,' not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of 
the will of man, but of God.” It seems, at the first glance—because of the 
past verb: who were born—that the apostle places regeneration before faith, 
which is, of course, impossible. But, as Meyer rightly observes, the rela- 
tive oi (who), does not refer to the words roi¢ mcretovew (those who believe), 
but, by a constructio ad sensum, to the neuter substantive réxva Oeot (children 
of God). Ver. 13 unfolds this term: children of God, first in a negative re- 
lation, by means of three cumulative phrases which have a somewhat 
disdainful and even contemptuous character. Does John mean there- 
by to stigmatize the false confidence of the Jews in their character as 
children of Abraham? This does not seem to me probable. Three ex- 
pressions to set forth the idea of the theocratic birth would be useless. 
Besides, the Prologue has too lofty a flight, too universal a bearing, to 
admit of so paltry a polemic. John means rather to set forth with empha- 
sis the superiority of the second creation which the Logos comes to 
accomplish on the foundation of the first. There are two humanities, one 
which propagates itself in the way of natural filiation ; the other, in which 
the higher life is communicated immediately by God Himself to every 
believer. It is, therefore, ordinary birth, as the basis of natural human- 
ity, which John characterizes in the first three expressions. The first 
phrase: not of blood, denotes procreation from the purely physical point 
of view; the blood is mentioned as the seat of natural life (Lev. xvii. 1). 
The plural aivétov has been applied either to the duality of the sexes, or 


1 Treneeus cites this passage three timesin reading—that of our text—to a falsification of 
the form: Qui natus est, etc., applying these Gnostic (Valentinian) origin. But the re- 
words, thus, to Christ Himself; and Tertul- ceived reading is found in all our critical 
lian so firmly believes in the authenticity of documents without exception. 
this reading, that he attributes the opposite 


CHAP. 1. 13, 14. 267 


to the series of human generations. It should rather be interpreted as 
the plural yéaé:, in the words of Plato (Legg. x., p. 887, D): ére év yanage 
rpedouevo-—the plural suggesting the multiplicity of the elements which 
form the blood (see Meyer). The two following phrases are not subordinate 
to the first, as St. Augustine thought, who, afier having referred the latter 
to the two sexes, referred the two others, the one to the woman and the 
other to the man. The disjunctive negative, neither ... nor (oire . . . ote), 
would be necessary in that case. The last two expressions designate, like 
the first, the natural birth; but this, while introducing, in the one phrase, 
the factor of the will governed by the sensual imagination (the will of the 
flesh), in the other, that of a will more independent of nature, more 
personal and more manlike, the will of man. There is a gradation in 
dignity from one of these terms to the other. But, to whatever height 
the transmission of natural life may rise, this communication of life- 
power cannot pass beyond the circle traced out at the first creation—that 
of the physico-psychical life. That which is born of the flesh, even in the 
best conditions, is, and remains flesh. The higher, spiritual, eternal life 
is the immediate gift of God. To obtain it, that divine begetting isneeded 
by which God communicates His own nature. The limiting phrase, é« 
Geov (of God), contains, in itself alone, the antithesis to the three preceding 
phrases. By its very conciseness it expresses the beauty of that spiritual 
birth which is altogether free from material elements, from natural attrac- 
tion, from human will, and in which the only codperating forces are God 
acting through His Spirit on the one side, and man’s faith on the other. 

But how are we to explain the virtue of this faith which fits the man to 
be begotten of God? Does it have in itself, in its own nature, the secret 
of its power? No, for it is only a simple receptivity, a AauBavecv, receive: 
its virtue comes from its object. The apostle had already intimated this 
by the words: “who believe on His name;” and he now expressly 
declares it: 

Ver. 14. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us—and we 
beheld His glory, a glory as of the only-begotten Son coming from the presence 
of the Father—full! of grace and truth. The connection between this verse 
and the preceding, which is involved in kai, and, is expressed in the 
following thought: If faith can make of a man born of the flesh a child 
of God, it is because it has for its object the Word made flesh. The coming 
of Christ upon earth in the flesh had been already mentioned in ver. 11, 
from the point of view of its relation to Israel, and of the unbelief by 
which it had been met. John proclaims again the great fact, the subject 
of his narrative, from the point of view of all mankind, and as the object 
of the faith of the Church. There is, therefore, no tautology in this repeti- 
tion. It even reflects very faithfully the phases of the development of 
faith in the heart of those who were formerly Jews, like John and the 
apostles. They first witness the appearance of the Messiah in Israel 

) 


1D and some Fathers read: wAnpy (agree- _— cording to a variant wAnpovs ??) to be referred 
ing with dogav), and Augustine: pleni (ac- to unigeniti. 


268 PROLOGUE. 


(to His own) ver. 11, and they see Him ignominiously rejected. But far 
from joining in this rejection, they receive Him as the promised Messiah, 
and through their faith in Him find the privileges of adoption and regen- 
eration (vv. 12, 13). Then sounding in all its depths the object of a faith 
which is capable of effecting such wonders, they cry out: “This is the 
Word who has been made flesh!” The idea of the national Messiah was 
thus gradually transformed in them into that of the Son of God, the 
Saviour of mankind. The kai, and, is not, therefore, here a simple con- 
necting copula. How, indeed, can we connect with one another by an 
and or an and also two ideas which are as unlike as those of 13b and 14a: 
‘They are born of God,” and (and also): “the Word became flesh.” We 
do not think that the thought of the evangelist is any more successfully 
apprehended by paraphrasing this «ai, as Luthardt does, “and to tell the 
whole truth,” or, as Briickner, ‘‘and in these circumstances.” The paraphrase 
of Weiss-Meyer: “ And this is the way in which faith in Him was able to 
take form and produce such happy fruits . . . . ,” amounts to nearly the 
same thing with our own explanation, which was already that of Chry- 
sostom, Grotius, etc. The emphasis is not on the subject: the Word ; this 
noun is repeated (instead of the simple pronoun) only with the purpose 
of better emphasizing the contrast between the subject and the predicate 
became flesh. The Word to which everything owes its existence, which 
created us ourselves, became a member of the human race. The word 
flesh properly denotes, in its strict sense, the soft parts of the body, as 
opposed either to the hard parts, the bones; thus when it is said, “ Flesh 
of my flesh, bone of my bones” (Gen. ii. 23),—or to the blood (vi. 4). 
From this more restricted sense, a broader one is derived: the entire body, 
regarded from the view-point of its substance, the animated matter ; so 
1 Cor. xv. 39. Finally, as the flesh is properly the seat of physical sensi- 
bility, this word, by metonomy, often designates the entire human being, 
in so far as he is governed in his natural state by sensibility with respect 
to pleasure and pain. “ For also they are but flesh,” is said of men before 
the deluge, Gen. vi. 3. Comp. John xvii. 11; Ps. lxv.1; Rom. iii. 20: all 
flesh, no flesh, for: every man, no man. Undoubtedly, the desire of enjoy- 
ment and the dread of suffering are not in themselves criminal instincts. 
They are often the precious means by which man escapes from a multi- 
tude of losses and injuries of which he would otherwise not be conscious. 
Still more: without this double natural sensibility, man would never be 
able to offer to God anything but “sacrifices which cost him nothing.” 
He could not himself become “a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God” 
(Rom. xii. 1), and thereby fulfill his noblest destiny, that of glorifying God 
by the sacrifice of himself. But, on the other hand, it cannot be denied 
that in these two natural propensities lies the possibility of temptation 
and sin. Human nature in this critical condition: such is the form of 
existence which the Word has consented to take for himself. The 
expression became flesh, accordingly signifies, first of all, that the Word 
left the immaterial state of divine being to assume a body, and to confine 
Himself, like the creature, within the limits of time and space. But the 


CHAP. I. 14. 269 


word flesh expresses much more than this. Since the work of Zeller 
(Theol. Jahrb. 1842), the Tiibingen school makes John say that the Logos 
borrowed from humanity only the material body, while He Himself filled, 
in Jesus, the office of the spirit in every other man (the old theory of 
Apollinaris). But John does not dream of any such thing. We have 
just proved that the word flesh often designates the entire human person 
(spirit, soul and body, 1 Thess. v. 23). This is certainly the case in this 
passage. The expression: “the Word became body,” would have no 
meaning. It would have been necessary to say: took a body. Jesus 
sometimes speaks in our Gospel of His soul, and of His soul as troubled 
(xii. 27). It is related of Him that He groaned or that He was troubled 
in His spirit (xi. 83; xiii. 21), that He gave up His spirit (xix. 30); all this 
implies that the Logos does not play the part of the spirit in the person 
of Jesus. The spirit of Jesus is, as in every man, one of the elements of 
the human nature, like the soul and the body. It follows from this that 
the flesh denotes, in our passage, complete human nature. Consequently, 
this term flesh is not intended to describe merely the visibility or corporeity 
of Jesus (de Wette, Reuss, Baur), or even the poverty and weakness of His 
earthly manifestation (Olshausen, Tholuck). It designates the reality and 
integrity of the human mode of existence into which Jesus entered. In 
virtue of this incarnation, He was able to suffer, to enjoy, to be tempted, 
to struggle, to learn, to make progress, to love, to pray, exactly like us ; 
comp. Heb. ii. 17. The phrase avépwro¢ éyévero, became man, would have 
expressed nearly the same idea; only it would have described Jesus as a 
particular personality, as a definite representative of the human type, and 
it might have been imagined that this man had reserved for Himself an 
exceptional position in the race. The term flesh, which denotes only the 
state, the mode of existence, more clearly affirms the complete homoge- 
neity between His condition and ours. Moreover, Jesus does not hesitate 
to apply to Himself the word dv§pwroc, man, John vili. 40; and the name 
by which in preference to all others He described Himself, was Son of 
man (see on i. 52). 

The word which fills the interval between the subject, the Word, and the 
predicate, flesh, is the verb éyévero, became. The word become, when it has 
a substantive for its predicate, implies a profound transformation in the 
subject’s mode of being. Thus ii. 9: “The water became wine” (70 tdwp 
olvov yeyernuévov). When a person is in question, this word become, with- 
out implicating his identity, indicates that he has changed his condition; 
for example, in the expression: The king become a shepherd. Baur and 
Reuss affirm that, in the evangelist’s thought, the Logos, though becom- 
ing flesh, remained in possession not only of His consciousness, but also 
of His attributes as Logos. He clothed Himself, indeed, with a body, 
according to them, but as if with a temporary covering. “This incarna- 
tion was for Him only something accessory ” (Reuss, ii., p. 456). “Yet this 
scholar cannot help saying (p. 451): “There is nothing but the word be- 
come which positively affirms that, in coming, He changed the form of 
His existence.” Certainly! And we affirm nothing more, but nothing 


270 PROLOGUE. 


less. The word become shows, indeed, that this change reached even the 
foundation of the existence of the Logos. This natural sense of the word 
become is not invalidated by the expression 7s come in the flesh, 1 John iv. 
2,in which Reuss finds the affirmation of the preserving of His original 
nature with all its attributes, but which really involves only the continuity 
of His personality. The personal subject in the Logos remained the same 
when He passed from the divine state to the human state, but with the 
complete surrender of all the divine attributes, the possession of which 
would have been incompatible with the reality of the human mode of 
existence. And if He ever recovers the divine state, it will not be by 
renouncing His human personality, but by exalting it even to the point 
where it can become the organ of the divine state. This, as it seems to 
us, is the true Christological conception, as it appears in the Scriptures 
generally, and in our passage in particular. 

The content of John’s declaration, therefore, is not: Two natures 
or two opposite modes of being co-existing in the same subject; but a 
single subject passing from one mode of being to another, in order to 
recover the first by perfectly realizing the second. The teaching of John, 
as thus understood, is in complete harmony with that of Paul. That 
apostle says, indeed, Phil. ii. 6-8: “He who was in the form of God... . 
emptied (divested) Himself, having taken the form of a servant and having 
become like to men;” and 2 Cor. viii. 9: “Though He was rich, He 
became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich.” These passages 
express, in a form which is completely independent of that of John, a con- 
ception which is identically the same: The incarnation by means of a 
divesting (xévwovc). We shall see that the whole Gospel history, and 
especially the picture of Jesus which is traced by our evangelist, accords 
perfectly, notwithstanding all the contrary assertions of Reuss, with the 
thesis of the Prologue as thus understood. 

After having entered the human life, the Word took up His abode there 
and appropriated it to Himself even to the end; this is expressed by the 
following clause. The word oxyvoir, literally, to dwell in a tent, contains, 
according to Meyer, Reuss, etc., an allusion to a technical word in the 
religious philosophy of the later Jews, Shechinah (the dwelling-place), which 
denoted the visible forms by which Jehovah manifested His presence in 
the midst of His people. We might see thus in this word oxyvoiv, to live 
in a tent, especially with the limiting phrase év juiv, among us, an allusion 
to the Tabernacle in the wilderness, which was, as it were, the tent of 
Jehovah, Himself a pilgrim among His pilgrim people. To this con- 
formity between the sort of habitation which Jehovah had and that of His 
people answers the complete community in the mode of existence between 
the incarnate Word and men, His brethren. Perhaps, these allusions are 
somewhat refined and John’s thought is merely that of comparing the 
flesh of Jesus (His humanity) to a tent like ours (2 Cor. v. 1). This word 
oxyvoov, to camp, denotes, in any case, all the familiar relations which He 
sustained with His fellow-men ; varied relations like those which a pilgrim 
sustains towards the other members of the caravan. It is as if John had 


CHAP. I. 14. yeg 


said: “We ate and drank at the same table, slept under the same roof, 
walked and journeyed together; we knew Him as son, brother, friend, 
guest, citizen. Even to the end, He remained faithful to the path on which 
He entered when He became a man.” This expression, therefore, calls to 
mind all the condescension of that divine being, who thus veiled His 
majesty in order to share in the existence of the companions of His journey. 
—The limiting phrase év juiv, among us, does not refer to men in general, 
nor even to the Church in its totality. In connection with the word oxyvowr, 
to live in a tent, and with the following phrase, we beheld, it can only desig- 
nate the immediate witnesses of the earthly existence of Jesus, who 
sustained towards Him the familiar relations comprised in the notion of 
lifein common. The expression of the general feeling of the Church will 
come later, vv. 16-18. 

According as this spectacle presents itself to the thought of the evange- 
list, and assumes, in the words among us, the character of the most 
personal recollection, it becomes to him the object of delightful contempla- 
tion. The phrase is broken. The word us, of the limiting phrase, suddenly 
becomes the subject, while the subject, the Word and His glory, passes 
into the position of the grammatical object: “And we beheld His glory.” 
How easily may this change of construction be understood in the writing 
of an eye-witness! We observe the reverse change in the first verses of 
1 John: “ That which we have heard, that which we beheld of the Word 
of life. .., for the life was manifested and we have seen it, this it is which we 
declare unto you.” Here, the apostle begins with the impression received 
—it is a letter—to pass from this to the fact itself. But in the Gospel, where 
he speaks as a historian, after having started from the fact, he describes 
the ineffable joy which the witnesses experienced in this sight. The word 
Geacba (to behold), is richer than épay (to see, to discern); it is the restful 
seeing, aS Luthardt says, with an idea of satisfaction, while to dpav attaches 
rather the idea of knowledge. Baur, Keim, Reuss, apply this word behold 
here to a purely spiritual act, the inward sight of Christ which is granted 
to every believer; comp. 1 Ep. ii. 6: “ He that sinneth hath not seen him ;” 
and 2 Cor. iii. 18. We may understand the design of this interpretation. 
These critics refuse to recognize in the evangelist a witness, and yet they 
would not wish to make him an impostor. This expedient, therefore, 
alone remains. But this expedient involves inextricable difficulty, as we 
have shown in the Introduction (pp. 201-202). How could there be a 
' question here of the glorified Christ, as an object of the spiritual contem- 
plation of believers ? Are we not at the opening of the narrative of the 
earthly life of Christ, at the moment when the coming of the Logos in 
the flesh and His condescension towards the companions of His earthly 
career have just been pointed out? To attributeto the word behold in such 
a context a purely spiritual sense, is to set at nought the evidence. 
Undoubtedly, the witnesses had more than the sight of the body. This 
beholding was an internal perception. But the first was the means of the 
second. 

The object of the beholding was the glory of the Word. The glory of 


272 PROLOGUE. 

God is the beaming forth of His perfections before the eyes of His 
creatures. This glory is really unique; every glory which any being 
whatsoever possesses is only the participation in some measure of the 
splendor which is sent forth by the perfection of God Himself. The glory 
which the witnesses of the earthly life of the Logos beheld in Him could 
not be tne splendor which He enjoyed in His pre-existent state. For this 
glory Jesus asks again in xvii. 5: “And now, Father, glorify thou me 
with thyself, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was.” 
One does not ask again for what one still possesses. Reuss claims that it 
is only “the most arbitrary harmonistic,” which can ascribe to John the 
idea that the Logos divested Himself of the divine attributes when he 
became incarnate (Théol. johann., p. 120). But as for this harmonistic, it 
is John himself who suggests it in the prayer of Jesus which we have just 
quoted, and this is in full harmony with Paul (Phil i. 6 ff). What must 
we understand, then, by that glory of Jesus, of which John here speaks, 
and which is not that of the pre-existent Logos? In Chap. i1., ver. 11, after 
the miracle of Cana, John says: “And he manifested his glory.” We 
might conclude from this that, as Weiss thinks, the earthly glory of the 
Logos consisted in the works of omnipotence, as well as in the words of 
omniscience, which the Father gave Him to do and to utter. Neverthe- 
less, in chap. xvii. 10, Jesus says: “I am glorified in them,” and this 
expression leads us to a more spiritual idea of the glory which He pos- 
sessed here on earth. Even in our verse, the words : full of grace and truth, 
describe the Word and give us a much more moral notion of His glory 
than the explanation of Weiss implies. The essential character of this 
earthly glory of the Logos was, as it appears to me, the stamp of sonship 
impressed upon the whole human life of Jesus, the intimate communion 
with the Father which so profoundly distinguished His life from every 
other. Jesus puts us upon the right path when, before uttering the 
words: “I am glorified in them,” He says (xvii. 10): ‘‘ All things that are 
mine are thine, and all things that are thine are mine.” Such a relation 
with God is the most complete glory which can irradiate the face of a 
human being. It comprehends, of course, all the manifestations of such 
a relation, thus works of power, words of wisdom, the life of holiness and 
charity, all of divine grandeur and beauty, that the disciples beheld in 
Jesus. This explanation agrees with that of John himself in the follow- 
ing words: “A glory as of the only-begotten from the Father.” The con- 
junction oc, as, does not certainly express here a comparison between 
two similar things, but, as is often the case, the absolute agreement 
between the fact and the idea : a glory as (must be) that of the Son com- 
ing from the presence of the Father. Weiss urges against this explanation 
the absence of the article tov, of the, before the words: only-begotten Son 
and Father ; and further, the most natural sense of oc, as, which is that 
of comparison. He translates accordingly, “A glory like to that of an 
only-begotten Son coming from a father,” in the sense that every only 
son inherits the rank and fortune of his father. Thus in this case it was 
seen that God had conveyed all His glory to Jesus. But this explanation 


CHAP. I. 14. 213 


would imply that every father, who has an only son, possesses also a great 
fortune to convey to him, which is by no means true. The absence of the 
article, which leads Weiss to an explanation which is so forced, is much 
better explained by the fact that the terms only Son and Father are 
treated here as proper names, or at least as substantives designating single 
beings of their kind (Winer’s Grammar, 218). Indeed, the Father in 
question is the Father, in the absolute sense, the one from whom every one 
who is called father in heaven and on earth derives his paternal character 
(Eph. ii. 15); and this only Son is the only one, not merely as the sole son 
of this father, but inasmuch as He is the absolute model and prototype of 
every one who among the sons of men bears the name of only son. With 
reference to d¢, as, used to indicate the complete agreement of the fact 
with the idea, comp. the quite similar é¢ in Matt. vil. 29; 1 Cor. v. 3; 2 
Cor. ii. 17; Gal. iii. 16, etc. The glory of the incarnate Logos was 
undoubtedly, therefore, a humbler glory than that of his pre-existent state, 
but a glory which, nevertheless, marked Him as united to God by the bond 
of an unparalleled filial intimacy. There was seen in Him, as never in 
any man, the assurance of being loved paternally by God, of the power of 
asking everything of Him with the certainty of being heard, and at the 
same time the most perfect filial fidelity towards Him. This unique 
glory of the Word made flesh the apostle describes, when he charac- 
terizes the entire earthly manifestation of the Word by that last stroke of 
his pencil: Full of grace and truth. We refer these words to the principal 
subject of the whole sentence, the Word. This is the simple and correct 
construction of the nominative 7Afpyc, full; it is also that which gives the 
best sense. Undoubtedly, this adjective might be made a nominative 
absolute, with Grotius, Meyer, Luthardt, Weiss and others, by referring 
it either to dogav: “glory full of grace ...” (hence the reading zAjpy in 
D), or rather to airod of him, “ His glory, His who was full of grace... ” 
(hence the reading pleni in Augustine). But these explanations, which are 
grammatically possible, appear to me to misconceive the true movement 
of the sentence. Carried away by the charm of the recollection, the evan- 
gelist interrupted the historical description of the relations which the 
Word sustained to those who surrounded Him; he now takes up again the 
picture which remained unfinished,—not that a parenthesis must be sup- 
posed including the words from «ai to rarpé¢; there is no deliberate inter- 
ruption ; the ardor of feeling caused the break in the sentence, which is 
now completed. In the Old Testament, the two essential features of the 
character of God were grace and truth (Ex. xxxiv. 6): “abundant in grace 
and truth.’ These are also the two features which, in John’s view, dis- 
tinguished the human life of the Word made flesh, and which served to 
reveal to Him His filial relation to the Father. Grace: the divine love 
investing the character with affableness towards friends, with condescen- 
sion towards inferiors, with compassion towards the wretched, with pardon 
towards the guilty; God consenting to give Himself. And as it is from 
grace that life flows forth, the Word became anew for believers, by reason 
of this first characteristic, what He had been originally for the world (ver. 
18° 


or 


274 PROLOGUE. 


4), the source of life. The second feature, truth, is the reality of things 
adequately brought to light. And, as the essence of things is the moral 
idea which presides over the existence of each one of them, truth is the 
holy and good thought of God completely unveiled; it is God revealed. 
Through this attribute the incarnate Word also became anew what He 
originally was, the light of men (vv. 4,5). By these two essential attri- 
butes of Jesus’ character, therefore, the witnesses of His life were able to 
recognize in Him the only Son coming from the presence of the Father. 
Their feeling was this: This being is God given, God revealed in a human 
existence. 

Asa man who has made an important discovery recalls with satisfac- 
tion the suggestions which caused the first awakening of his thought and 
set his mind on its way forward, so from this experience, which he had 
had, the apostle transports himseif to the decisive moment when he heard 
the first revelation, of the fact of the incarnation. Not understood 
at the beginning, but afterwards made clear. For it is to this divine fact 
that the word of the forerunner which he is about to cite refers. John 
detaches this testimony from the historical situation in which it was de- 
clared, and which will be expressly recalled in ver. 80; and he makes use 
of it, at this time, simply with a didactic purpose, confirming by its means 
the capital fact of the incarnation, set forth in ver. 14. Itis the second 
testimony, that of the official divine herald, following after that of the 
eye-witnesses. 

Ver. 15. John bears witness of him, and cries, saying :! This is he of whom 
I spoke when I said,? He who comes after me hath preceded me, because he was 
before me.” The present, bears witness is ordinarily explained by the perma- 
nent value of this testimony; but perhaps it is due rather to the fact that 
the author transports himself in a life-like way backward to the moment 
when he heard this mysterious saying coming from such lips; he seems 
to himself to hear it still. The perfect «éxpaye is always used in Greek in 
the sense of the present: he cries; this declaration was made with the 
solemnity of an official proclamation. According to the reading of B. C. 
and Origen, we must, in order to give sense to these words: it was he who 
spake, put them in a parenthesis, as Westcott and Hort do, and thus ascribe 
to the evangelist the most inept of repetitions. See where these critics 
lead us by the critical system which they have once for all adopted! The 
reading of 8 is equally inadmissible. According to ver. 30, the forerun- 
ner uttered this saying on the next day after the deputation of the Sanhe- 
drim had officially presented to him the question relating to his mission. 
After having expressly declined the honor of being the Messiah in the 
presence of these delegates, he had added in mysterious words, that that 
personage was already present and was immediately to succeed him, al- 
though in reality He had been already present before him (vv. 26, 27). 
The next day, he made this declaration again before the people, but this 


1S D> omit Aeywr. omits these words and adds os after EpXoMevos 
2B. C. Or. (once) read o evrwy (he who spake) (he who cometh after me was the one who was, 
instead of ov ezov (of whom I spake). & etc.). 


CHAP. I. 15. 275 


time designating Jesus positively as the one of whom he had spoken on 
the preceding day, and adding an explanation with reference to that pre- 
vious existence which he attributed to Him as compared with himself 
(ver. 30). This second more full declaration the evangelist quotes in ver. 
15; because it was the first which referred personally and intelligibly to 
Jesus,—Jesus not being present on the previous day. It may be asked 
why there is this slight difference between the cited declaration and that 
of ver. 15, that there John the Baptist says oiré¢ éo71, “this 7s he,” while, 
in ver. 15, the evangelist makes him say: oito¢ 7, “ this was he.” The 
first form seems more in harmony with the immediate presence of the 
one to whom the testimony refers: “This is he of whom I was saying 
yesterday ... You see him there!” This form perfectly suits the origi- 
nal testimony. The form: This was, might have been also suitable in the 
Baptist’s mouth. It only called up the fact that it was He of whom he 
had thought on the preceding day, when speaking as he had done. But 
it proceeds rather from the evangelist; for it is natural from the stand- 
point more remote from the fact, at which he now is. 

The testimony here reproduced by the apostle has a paradoxical cast in 
harmony with the original character of John the Baptist: “He who fol- 
lows me has preceded me.” There was something in the apparent con- 
tradiction of these two verbs to excite the attention and stimulate the 
mental activity of those to whom the saying was addressed. Many inter- 
preters, as if making a point of depriving this saying of what in fact gives 
it its point, have assigned to the word has preceded me the sense of has 
surpassed me (Chrysostom, Tholuck, Olshausen, de Wette, Liicke, Luthardt). But 
what is there surprising in the fact that he who comes afterward should be 
superior to the one who goes before him? Is it not so in ordinary life? 
Does not the herald precede the sovereign? A platitude, therefore, is 
ascribed to John the Baptist. Hofmann has felt this. And instead of re- 
ferring one of these verbs to time and the other to dignity, he applies them 
both to dignity, in this sense: ‘ He who was at first inferior to me (who 
went behind me as my disciple) has become my superior (goes before me 
now as my master).” But Jesus was never in the position of a disciple 
with relation to John, and no more did He become his master. Besides, 
the words peifov and éAdoowv would have presented themselves much more 
naturally for the expression of this idea. Let us remember that the evan- 
gelist has as his aim to prove by the testimony of the forerunner the dig- 
nity of the Logos incarnate, which is attributed to Jesus; now it is pre- 
cisely the temporal sense which is adapted to this aim, and if one of the 
two prepositions refers to time, the other must refer to it also: for the 
apparent contradiction of the two terms is what gives this saying all its 
meaning. “He who ismy successor preceded me” (Luther, Meyer, Biuwm- 
lein, Weiss, Keil, etc.). My successor: as to the Messianic work; Jesus ap- 
peared on the stage after John. And yet He was before Him. How so? 
By His presence and activity in the whole period of the Old Covenant. 
The Christ really preceded His forerunner in the world; comp. xii. 41; 
1 Cor. x. 4, and the passage in Malachi (iii. 1), where John the Baptist 


276 PROLOGUE. 


found this idea, as we shall see. The perfect yéyove does not mean existed, 
but was there (in fact); comp. vi. 25. 

On repeating this enigmatical word on the next day, John added to it 
the phrase which should give a glimpse of the solution of the enigma: 
because he was before me, or more literally, “ my first.” Here also, many 
refer the word first to superiority of rank, not of time, (Chrysostom, Beza, 
Calvin, Hofmann, Luthardt); but the imperfect was is opposed to this 
sense; is would have been necessary. Objection is made to the tautology 
between this proposition and the preceding one, if both refer to time. 
But it is forgotten that there is a difference between yéyove, which places 
us on the ground of history: was there, and 7, was,;which refers to the 
essence of the Logos, to the eternal order to which He by nature belongs. 
He did not pass from nothingness into being, like His forerunner. If He 
preceded the latter on the field of history, it was because, in reality, He 
belonged to an order of things superior to that of time. Many interpre- 
ters (Meyer, Béumlein), who take the word /irst in the same sense as our- 
selves, say that the superlative zpéroc¢ is put here for the comparative zpé- 
tepoc, anterior to, and they cite as an example xv. 18. But John avoids the 
comparative because it would refer to the relation of two.persons, who 
both belonged to the same order of things, and consequently might be 
compared with each other. Now it is not so in this case; and any com- 
parison isimpossible. Jesus is not only anterior to John; He is, speak- 
ing absolutely, first with relation to him and to everything that is in time. 
Hence the expression: my first. And such, indeed, is also the meaning 
in xv.18. For Jesus was not merely persecuted before the disciples, as 
their equal; He it is who in them is the real object of the persecution. 
This last clause contains, accordingly, the solution of the apparent con- 
tradiction presented by the two preceding clauses. It was possible for 
Him to be the predecessor of His forerunner, since He appertains to the 
eternal order. 

It is alleged that John the Baptist cannot have uttered such a saying, 
which already implies knowledge of the divinity of the Messiah, a knowl- 
edge which was developed only afterwards in the Church. It is the 
evangelist, then, who puts it into his mouth (Strauss, Weiss, de Wette), or 
who, at least, modifies in this way some expression which he had heard 
from his mouth, and in which the forerunner proclaimed the superior 
dignity of Jesus (Weiss). On the other hand, Liicke, Meyer, Briickner and 
others, defend the historical accuracy of this saying. And, in fact, the pre- 
existence of the Messiah already forms a part of the teaching of the Old 
Testament; comp. Is. ix. 5; Micah v. 1; Dan. vii. 18, 14. Bertholdt, in his 
Christologia Judxorum, p. 131, has demonstrated the presence of this idea 
in the Rabbinical writings. It is found in the book of Enoch and in the 
fourth book of Esdras (Schtirer, Lehrb. der N. T. Gesch., 2 29, 3). Far 
from having borrowed it from the Christians, the Jewish theology turned 
away from it rather, in its struggle with Christianity (Schurer, ibid.). If 
this saying were, either in whole or in part, a composition of the evange- 
list; it would be sufficient for him to place it in his Prologue; he would 


CHAP. 1. 16. 277 


not allow himself to return to it again twice in the course of the following 
narrative, in order to point out the historical situation in which John had 
uttered it, fixing exactly the place, the moment, the occasion (vv. 26, 27, 
30), and marking the progress in its terms from one occasion to the other. 
Besides, the original and enigmatical form in which it is presented would 
be enough to guarantee its authenticity. In this respect, it offers a full 
analogy to the indisputably authentic saying of the forerunner in iii. 30. 
Let us not forget that there was in the Old Testament a passage which, 
more than any other, contained, as it were, the programme of John the 
Baptist’s mission, a passage which he must have read again and again, and 
which was the text of the declaration which occupies our attention. It 
is Mal. iii. 1: “ Behold, I send my messenger before me, and he prepares 
my way.” If the Messiah sends His messenger before Him, that is, in 
order Himself soon to follow him, and if this sending consists in a birth, 
it is clear that the Messiah must necessarily exist before His successor. 
Simple common sense forces upon us this conclusion, which John the 
_ Baptist well knew how to draw. Finally, even independently of all this, 
the forerunner had received special revelations, instructions relative to 
his mission: ‘‘ He who sent me to baptize with water, he said to me;”’ thus 
he expresses himself, alluding to a direct communication, a sort of the- 
ophany which had been granted to him (i. 33). It is impossible, therefore, 
that, with the vision of the baptism to crown this special prophetic prepa- 
ration, he should not have had his eyes open to understand fully the 
superior dignity of the One whom God Himself saluted with the title of 
His well-beloved Son. 

The evangelist has made us hear the testimony of the immediate wit- 
nesses of the life of Christ (ver. 14), then, that of the herald sent to pre- 
pare the way for Him (ver. 15); it only remains for him to formulate that 
which comes forth from the experience of the whole Church, 

Ver. 16. “ And! of his fullness we have all received, and grace for grace.” 
By that first feature of the divine character, grace, the Church recognized 
in Jesus the Word made flesh. The two words, ydpcc (grace), and rAjpopya 
(fullness), closely connect this sentence with the last words of ver. 14. 
The experience which the Church has had,has come to set the seal upon 
the testimony of those who surrounded Jesus when onearth. Since Hera- 
cleon and Origen, many (Luther, Melanchthon, etc.), have made ver. 16 the 
continuation of John the Baptist’s discourse (ver. 15). And it is possible 
that from this explanation the reading ér: (because), arose, which the Alex- 
andrian authorities, Origen, and some other documents substitute for «ai 
(and) read by T. R. at the beginning of the verse. The we all of ver. 16, 
which implies the existence of the Church, in any case excludes the sup- 
position that John the Baptist is still speaking in ver.16. As to dr: (because), 
if it were the true reading, it would be necessary to make it relate either 
to the testimony of the apostles in ver. 14, or to that of the Baptist in ver. 


! Instead of cat, which is the reading of in 8%, B CD LX, Italia, Cop. Some Mnn and 
T.R.withA EFGHITAATI, Syrevr,; Syrsch, ; some Fathers, in particular Origen (3 times). 
Syr.; Itliq,; and most of the Mnn., or is read 


278 PROLOGUE. 


15. The first reference is not possible, since it would force us to make ver. 
15 a simple parenthesis, which is inadmissible ; the second is no more pos- 
sible; since it would be necessary in that case to refer this because, as 
Weiss attempts to do, not to the contents of John’s testimony (ver. 15), but 
to the very act of the testimony, and thus to the verb he testifies: ‘“ John 
testifies thus of Jesus, because indeed we have all received ...” A con- 
nection which is, grammatically and logically speaking, more unnatural 
cannot be imagined. Nothing is more natural, on the contrary, than the 
connection through xai (and) in the T. R.; this and expresses very simply 
the addition of the third testimony, that of the Church, to the two others. 
This reading, therefore, is certainly the true one; it is found already in the 
oldest Syriac version, the Curetonian Syriac. The other is due to Hera- 
cleon’s false interpretation, which was followed by Origen. 

The word zAfpweua which properly denotes that which serves to fill an 
empty space, refers to the inexhaustible fullness of grace and truth by 
which the person of the Logos is filled and with which it overflows. This 
word rAfpwoua is used here in the most simple and natural way, in the 
same sense as in Rom. xv. 29 (rAgpoua ebioyiac, fullness of blessing), and 
without the least analogy to the mythological sense, which the Gnostics 
of the second century gave to it in their systems. In the words we all 
are included all the believers mentioned in ver. 12, the Church already 
extended through every country of the East and the West at the time 
when John wrote this Prologue. The verb: we have received is left without 
an object. The question at first is not of such or such a gift received, 
but only of the act of receiving. ‘We have all drawn, richly drawn from 
this invisible source.” The witnesses had beheld (ver. 14); the Church 
has received. In the following words, John states precisely what it has 
received. First, grace—that first sign by which it had recognized in Him 
the divine Logos; then, truth ; this second sign will be noticed in vv. 17; 
18. The xai, and, signifies here: “and this is the way.” The words 
“grace for grace” are ordinarily translated “grace wpon grace.” That 
would simply mean, grace added to previous grace. But, with this sense, 
would not John rather have used the preposition é7zi (Phil. ii. 27)? In 
the following verse, grace is opposed to the law. It must, therefore, be 
supposed that John has this antithesis already present to his mind, and 
that this is the reason why he seeks to bring out with emphasis in ver. 16 
the peculiar character of the grace. Under the rule of the law each new 
grace must be obtained at the cost of a new work. In the economy of 
grace which faith in the Word made flesh opens, the gift already received 
is the one title to the obtaining of a new gift: “‘To him who hath, more 
is given.” There is enthusiasm in this paradoxical formula which exalts 
the system of grace by setting it in such complete opposition to that of 
the law. No one defends any longer, at the present day, the explanation 
of the ancient Greek interpreters, who thought they saw here the supply- 
ing the place of the gift of the Old Coverrant by the superior gift of the 
New Covenant. The following verse, where grace, as such, is opposed to 
the law, would be sufficient to exclude such an interpretation. That of 


CHAP. I. 17. 279 


Calov, who imagined he could see here the grace of salvation replacing the 
happy state which man possessed before the fall, is still more unfortunate. 

Ver. 16 describes grace ; ver. 18 will describe truth ; ver. 17 which con- 
nects them, unites grace and truth: 

Ver. 17. “ For the law was given by Moses ; grace and truth came by Jesus 
Christ.’ John, who had reached the light of the new revelation through 
the preparatory system of the old, could not fail to point out in this Pro- 
logue, at least summarily, the relation between the two; and he does it 
naturally in this place, where the mention of the two divine gifts obtained 
through Jesus Christ summons him toa comparison with those which 
the ancient people of God had received, especially with the law. The for 
refers to the idea of grace, which has been so forcibly expressed in ver. 
16: “grace upon grace; for the legal system has given place henceforth 
to that of free grace which is, at the same time, that of truth.’ We meet 
again, in this verse, the parallel construction peculiar to the Hebrew; a 
Greek writer would not have failed to mark the antithesis between the 
two clauses of this verse by the particles wév and dé. The office of the 
law is to command and to demand; the pectiliarity of grace, the essence 
of the Gospel, is to offer and to give. The law connects salvation with a 
work which it exacts; Christ gives gratuitously a salvation which is to 
become the cause of works. Now this whole manifestation of grace fully 
reveals at last the trwe character of God, which remained veiled in the 
law, and consequently it reveals truth which is the perfect knowledge of 
God. Bengel explains the opposition between the law and the two fol- 
lowing terms by this ingenious formula: lex tram parans el umbram habens ; 
but perhaps this is the mark of Paul rather than of John. Weiss makes 
grace consist in the revelation of truth; that is to say, of God as love. 
Keil, in the opposite way, makes the truth of God consist in the revela- 
tion of His grace, which is more true. But John seems to me rather to 
place these two gifts in juxtaposition and to regard them as distinct from 
each other; grace is God possessed; truth is God known. These two 
gifts are joined together, but they are distinct. So John, after having 
developed the first in ver. 16, sets forth the second in ver. 18. 

The term was given, £6607, recalls the positive and outward institution of 
the law, its official promulgation. The expression came, literally became, 
suits better the historical manifestation of grace and truth in the person 
and in the ministry of Jesus Christ. Moses may disappear; the law given 
by him remains. But take away Jesus Christ, and the grace and truth 
manifested in Him disappear. “John,” says Bengel on this point, “ chose 
his expressions with the strictness of a philosopher.”. Let us rather say, 
with the emphatic precision which is the characteristic of inspiration. 

It is at this point of the Prologue that the apostle introduces, for the 
first time, the name so long expected, Jesus Christ. He descends gradually 
from the divine to the human: the Logos (ver. 1), the only-begotten Son 
(ver. 14), finally, Jesus Christ, in whom the heavenly world fully assumes 
for us life and reality. The apostle now passes to the second character- 
istic of the divine glory of Jesus Christ: truth, ver. 18. 


280 PROLOGUE. 


Ver. 18. “ No one has ever seen God ; the only-begotten Son,! who is in the 
bosom of the Father, he has revealed him to us.”—The absence of a particle 
between vv. 17 and 18 is the proof of a very intimate relation of thought 
or feeling between the two. The second becomes thus, as it were, an 
energetic reaffirmation of the preceding. And in fact, what is this truth 
born for the earth in the person of Jesus Christ, according to ver. 17, if it 
is not the perfect revelation of God described in ver. 18?—The true knowl- 
edge of God is not the result of philosophical investigation; our reason 
can seize only some isolated rays of the divine revelation shed abroad in 
nature and in conscience. It does not succeed in making of them a 
whole, because it cannot ascend to the living focus from which they ema- 
nate. The theocratic revelations themselves, which were granted to the 
saints of the Old Covenant, contained only an approximate manifestation 
of the divine being, as the Lord caused Moses to understand, at the very 
moment when He was about to make him behold something of His glory: 
“Thou shalt see my back; but my face shall not be seen” (Ex. xxxiii. 
23). This central and living knowledge of God which is the only true 
knowledge, and which has as its symbol sight, was not possessed by any 
man, either within or outside of the theocracy, not even by Moses. The 
word God is placed at the beginning, although it is the object, because it 
is the principal idea. One can know everything else, not God! The per- 
fect éopaxe, has seen, denotes a result, rather than an act, which would be 
indicated by the aorist: “ No one ts in possession of the sight of God, and 
consequently no one can speak of Him de visu.” The full truth does not 
exist on earth before or outside of Jesus Christ; it truly came through 
Him. The Alexandrian reading God only-begotten, povoyevig Oedc, Or, ac- 
cording to x, the (6) only-begotten God, long since abandoned, has found in 
Hort? a learned and sagacious defender, who has gained the assent of two 
such scholars as Harnack* and Weiss. The received reading has been 
defended, with at least equal erudition and skill, by the American critic, 
Ezra Abbot, in an article in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct., 1861, and in a more 
recent essay in the Unitarian Review, 1875. The result of these studies 
with reference to the external testimonies, is: 1. That the two readings 
must have already co-existed in the second century. It is probable that 
both of the two are found already in Irenvus. The received reading was 
read in the Jtala and by Tertullian; the other, that of the Alexandrian 
authorities, by Clement of Alex.;5 2. That the latter is found only in the 


UT. R. reads o povoyeryns vios (the only-be- 
gotten Son) with 24 Mjj., from the fifth to the 
tenth cent, AE FG...XTA 4, ete, 
almost all the Mnn. It. Syreur.; Syrhare,; Iren. 
(twice), Orig. (once), Tert., Eus. (six times), 
Athan. (four times), the emperor Julian 
(twice) Chrys., Theod., etc. The reading 
Hovoyerns Geos (No povoy. 8.) (God only-begot- 
ten) is found in & B C L 33 Syrseb, Ir. (once), 
Clem. (twice), Orig. (twice), Epiph. (three 
times).—D has a vacancy here. 

* Two dissertations on povoyevns Beds, Cam- 


bridge, 1875. 

3 Schiirer’s Literatur-Zeitung, 1876, No. 21. 

4 Sixth ed. of Meyer’s Commentary. 

5 It has been wrongly believed that among 
the witnesses for the latter reading, the Val- 
entinian Ptolemy could be ranked, in accord- 
ance with a fragment from this Gnostic 
quoted by Ireneeus (i. 8, 5). It does not fol- 
low from this quotation that Ptolemy read in 
his copy @eds instead of vids, nor that the 
quotation refers to John i. 18. (See Keil, p. 
101.) 


CHAP. I. 17, 281 


Fyyptian documents (Fathers, versions and manuscripts), and that the 
documents of all other countries present the received reading; thus for 
the West, the Jtala, Tertullian and all the Latin Fathers without exception, 
—the only exception which has been cited, that of Hilary, is only appar- 
ent, as Abbot proves :—in Syria and Palestine, the ancient Syriac transla- 
tion of Cureton, Eusebius, Chrysostom, Theodoret, etc.; and, what is more 
surprising, in Egypt Athanasius himself, the most inflexible defender of 
the divinity of Christ. Does it not seem to follow from this, that the 
Alexandrian reading is due to a purely local influence, which goes back 
even to the second century? As to internal reasons, as favoring the Alex- 
andrian reading, stress may be laid upon its unique and wholly strange 
character; for it is said to be more improbable that it should be replaced 
by the received reading, which has a more simple and common character, 
than that the contrary could have taken place. But it may also be asked 
whether a reading which does not find its counterpart in any writing of 
the New Testament, and in any passage of John himself, does not become 
by reason of this fact very suspicious. To account for its rejection it is 
enough that an explanation be given as to how it may have originated 
and been introduced, and Adbot does this by reminding us how early 
readings like the following were originated : the Logos-God, which is found 
in the second century in Melito and Clement of Alexandria, and the 
epithet Gcordkoc, mother of God, given to Mary. Hence, readings like these: 
the body of God, instead of the body of Jesus, John xix. 40, in A; or all were 
waiting for God, instead of all were waiting for Him (Jesus), Luke viii. 40, in 

; or the Church of God which He purchased with His own blood, instead of 
the Church of the Lord, etc. (Acts xx. 28),inx and B. It is curious that it 
is precisely these same two MSS., which especially support the reading 
God, instead of Son, in our passage. It would be difficult, on the other 
hand, to explain the dogmatic reason which could have substituted here 
the word Son for God. The Arians themselves, as Abbot has well shown, 
had no interest in this change; for they were able to make use of the 
Alexandrian reading to prove that the word God could be taken in a 
weakened sense, and designate a divine being of second rank, inferior to 
the Father; it was for them the best means of getting rid of the word God 
applied to the Word in ver. 1. So Athanasius himself does not hesitate 
to use the received reading; as for ourselves, we cannot hesitate. The 
absence of any parallel to the Alexandrian reading and its very pro- 
nounced doctrinal savor seem to us, independently of external criticism, 
sufficient reasons for rejecting it. It is true that Hort and Weiss urge 
against the received reading the article 6, the, before the title only-begotten 
Son, for the reason that Jesus, not having been yet called by this name 
in the Prologue, could not be thus designated with the definite article. 
This objection falls to the ground through the true explanation of 
ver. 14, where the words only-begotten Son cannot denote an only-begotten 
Son in general, as Weiss will have it, and can only be applied to the 
Word made flesh. Moreover, even without this preceding expression, no 
reader, when reading the words: “The only-begotten Son has revealed 


282 PROLOGUE. 


him to us” could for an instant doubt concerning whom John meant 
to speak. 

The character of complete revelator ascribed here to Jesus is explained 
by His intimate and personal relation with God Himself, such as is 
described in the following words: who is in the bosom of the Father. The 
participle 6 ov, who is, is connected in a very close logical relation with 
the following verb: He has revealed. As Bdumlein says, it is equivalent to 
ore Ov, inasmuch as He is; thereupon rests His competency to reveal.— 
The figure which John employs might be derived from the position of 
two nearest guests at a banquet (xiii. 23); but it seems rather to be 
borrowed from the position of ason seated on his father’s knees and 
resting on his bosom. It is the emblem of a complete opening of the 
heart; he who occupies this place in relation to God must know the most 
secret thoughts of the Father and His inmost will. The word xéAzog, 
bosom, would by itself prove that the mystery of the Son’s existence is a 
matter, not of metaphysics, but of love, comp. xvii. 24: “Thou didst love 
me before the foundation of the world.” The omission of the words 6 év 
in § is a negligence condemned by all the other MSS. Must we, with 
Hofmann, Luthardt and Weiss, refer the words: ‘ who isin the bosom of the 
Father.” to the present glorified condition of Jesus? But the heavenly 
state which Jesus now enjoys cannot explain how He was able to reveal 
the Father perfectly while He was on the earth. We must then, in that 
case, refer the revealing act of Jesus to the sending of the Holy Spirit on 
the day of Pentecost, which is implied by nothing in the text. Or is John 
thinking especially of the divine condition of the Logos before His 
coming to the earth? But that would be to say, that the knowledge of 
God which Jesus communicated to men was drawn from the recollections 
of His anterior existence. We cannot admit this. In fact, everything | 
which Jesus revealed on earth concerning God passed through His human 
consciousness (see on ili. 18, vi. 46). I agree, therefore, in opinion rather 
with Liicke, that this present participle 6 oy, who is, refers to the perma- 
nent relation of the Son to the Father through all the stages of His 
divine, human and divine-human existence. He ever presses anew with 
an equal intimacy into the bosom of the Father, who reveals Himself to 
Him in a manner suitable to His position and His work at every moment. 
The form eic KéArov, instead of év xéArw (the prep. of motion, instead of 
that of rest), expresses precisely this active and living relation. The 
bosom of the Father is not a place, but a life; one is there only in virtue 
of a continual moral act. If John substitutes ei¢ here for xpéc of ver. 1, 
this arises simply from the difference between the object «éaroc, the bosom, 
which denotes a thing, and the object 6d», God, which designated a 
person. The word tov rarpéc, of the Father, is not merely a paraphrase 
of the name of God; this term is chosen in order to make the essential 
contents of the revelation brought by the Son understood. He manifested 
God as Father, and for this He did not need to give speculative teaching ; 
it was enough for Him to show Himself as Son. To show in Himself the 
Son, was the simplest means of showing in God the Father. Thus, by His 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 283 


filial relation with God, Jesus has initiated earth into the most profound 
secret of heaven, a secret which the angels themselves perchance did not 
yet sound completely. Outside of this revelation of the divine character, 
every idea which man forms of God is incomplete or imaginary—in a 
certain measure, an idol, as John says (1 Ep. v. 20). The pronoun ékeivoc, 
he, has here, as ordinarily in John, a pregnant and even exclusive sense: 
“he and he alone!” It is impossible to explain the use of this pronoun, 
as Weiss would do, by the contrast with a nearer subject, which would be 
the Father Himself. The employment of the word éyyeic@a to explain, to 
make known, is often explained by the technical use of it which was made 
by the Greeks, with whom it denoted the explanation of divine things by 
men charged with this office, the é&yytai. The simplicity of John’s style 
hardly harmonizes with this comparison, which, besides, is not necessary 
in order to the explanation of the word. The apostle uses it absolutely, 
without giving it any complement. It is to the act, rather than its object, 
that he desires to draw attention, as in the first clause of ver. 16 (we have 
received): “He has declared; really declared!” Every one understands 
what is the object of this teaching: God first, then in Him all the rest. To 
reveal God, is to unveil everything. 

With this 18th verse we evidently come back to the starting-point of the 
Prologue, to the idea of ver. 1. Through faith in Christ as only-begotten 
Son, the believer finds again access to that eternal Word from whom sin 
(the darkness, ver.5) had held him apart. He obtains anew, in the form of 
grace and truth (vv. 16-18), those treasures of life and light, which the 
Word has spread abroad in the world (ver. 4). Sin’s work is vanquished ; 
the communion with heaven is re-established. God is possessed, is known; 
the destiny of man begins again to be realized. The infinite dwells in the 
finite and acts through it; the abyss is filled up. 

At the same time, these last words of the Prologue form, as Keil says, 
the transition to the narrative which is about to begin. How did Jesus 
Christ reveal the Father? This is what the story to which the apostle 
passes from ver. 19 onward is to relate. 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PROLOGUE. 
I. THE PLAN. 


Three thoughts sum up this remarkable passage and determine its pro- 
gress: The Logos (vv. 14); the Logos unrecognized (vv. 5-11); the Logos 
received (vv. 12-18). Between the first and second subjects ver. 5 forms 
the transition, in the same manner as vv. 12,13 form that between the 
second and third. Finally, the last verses of the Prologue bring back the 
mind of the reader to the first words of the passage. 

This plan seems to us the only one which is harmony with the apostle’s 
thought. We shall convince ourselves of this by recognizing, in the 
sequel of this study, the fact that the entire narrative is founded upon 


284 PROLOGUE. 


the three factors which have been indicated and that its phases are deter- 
mined by the appearance, and the successive preponderance of these three 
essential elements of the history. 


II. THE INTENTION OF THE PROLOGUE. 


There are three very different ways of viewing this subject. 

1. The Tiibingen School think that the author proposed to himself to 
acclimate in the Church the doctrine of the Logos. Finding that specu- 
lative idea in the systems of his time, he wished to build the bridge 
between the Church and the reigning philosophy. And as, in his whole 
narrative, he had no other aim except to realize this design by illustrating 
this dominant idea of the Logos, by means of certain acts and discourses 
more fictitious than real, he did not hesitate to inscribe at the beginning 
of his book the great thought which forms its synthesis—namely, that of 
an eternal being intermediate between the infinite God and the finite 
world. 

If it is so, it must be acknowledged that the theorem of the Logos is 
the end of the work, and that the person of Jesus is nothing more than 
the means. Is this, indeed, the meaning of this Prologue? Who can 
think, in comparing ver. 1 and ver. 14, that the second of these verses is 
there for the sake of the first, and not the reverse? No; the author does 
not wish to take us on a metaphysical walk in the depths of Divinity, in 
order to discover there the being called Logos; he wishes to make us feel 
all the grandeur and all the value of the person and work of Jesus Christ, 
by showing us in this historical personage the manifestation of the divine 
Logos. It is not the fact of the incarnation (ver. 14) which is at the ser- 
vice of the thesis of the Logos (ver. 1) ; it is this thesis which prepares the 
way for the account of this capital fact of human history. By nothing is 
the opposition between the speculative intention which Baur ascribes to 
the Prologue (as to the whole Gospel) and the real aim of this passage, 
better indicated, than by the explanation which that scholar is obliged to 
give of ver. 14. To that verse, which is the centre of the whole passage, 
Baur gives an altogether subordinate place. John does not mean that 
the Logos becomes incarnate, but simply that Heis made visible by a kind 
of theophany. This fact, according to Baur, has no value for the accom- 
plishing of salvation; it serves only to make us perceive more clearly all 
its sweetness. This explanation is sufficient to show the contradiction 
between the thought of the Tiibingen professor and that of the evan- 
gelist. 

II. Reuss avoids such an exaggeration; he understands that the histor- 
ical person of Jesus is the end and that the theory of the Logos can, in 
any case, be only ameans. The author, in possession of the Gospel faith, 
seeks to give a rational account to himself of his new belief, and for this 
purpose he undertakes to draw, outside of the Gospel, from the contem- 
porary philosophy an idea capable of becoming for him the key of Jesus’ 
history, and of raising his faith and that of his readers to the full height 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 285 


of religious speculation. Our Prologue is the initiation of the Church into 
the true Gnosis. This is also the result of Liicke’s study. To explain the 
Prologue thus, whether one wills it or not, is to give up the authenticity 
of the entire work. For it is impossible to ascribe to an apostle of Jesus 
such an amalgam of contemporary metaphysics with the conception of 
the person of his Master. So the author of this explanation has ended, 
after much hesitation, by placing himself in the ‘number of the adversa- 
ries of the authenticity. By a fatality he was obliged to come to this 
point. There was, indeed, for the Apostle John, if he was really desirous 
to deposit in a written work the theory of the Logos, which had thrown a 
clear light for him upon his own faith, a simple means of establishing for 
the Church this new view. It was that of setting it before the Church in 
an epistle; there was no need of using for this purpose the means—very 
equivocal in a moral point of view—of a Gospel narrative. 

Reuss regards the procedure which he attributes to the author as uncon-: 
scious on his part and, consequently, as innocent. But the fact that the 
author all along avoids putting the word Logos into the mouth of Jesus, 
clearly proves that he acted with reflection, and that he had the conscious- 
ness of not having this name from the lips of Him to whom he applied 
it. As to the innocence of this matter, history has passed judgment, and 
its judgment is severe. History says, indeed, that among all the writings 
of the New Testament, the Gospel of John and particularly the Prologue 
have especially contributed to establish in the Church Jesus-worship, that 
is to say—from the standpoint of those who think after this manner—a 
remnant of paganism. Julian the Apostate could well say: “This John 
who declared that the Word was made flesh must be regarded as the 
source of all the evil.”! This is the result of John’s speculative desires; 
he has thrown into the Gospel the leaven of idolatry, corrupted the wor- 
ship in spirit and truth, and even troubled at its source the purity of the 
Christian life, for eighteen centuries. Only at the present day does the 
Church awake from this long infatuation of which he was the author, and 
return to a sound mind. Thus so far as he is concerned has the Master’s 
promise been verified: “‘ He who heareth you, heareth me!” 

When we penetrate the thought of the Prologue we see clearly that the 
doctrine of the Logos is not to the author’s mind superimposed upon his 
faith, but that it forms the foundation and essence ofit. If Jewish unbelief 
with regard to Jesus was something so monstrous, it is because He was not 
only the Messiah, but the Word who had come into the midst of His 
own. If the faith of the Church is so great a privilege for itself, it is 
because, by uniting it with Jesus, it puts the Church again in communica- 
tion with the divine source of life and light, with the Word Himself. This 
Logos-idea, then, belongs to the essence of John’s faith; it is no longer 
for him a means, as Reuss claims, but an end, as Baur would have it. 

III. This idea was simply a result. It was evolved for John from the 
sum of his reflections on the person of Jesus. He himself describes to 


1 Cyril, contra Julianum. 


286 PROLOGUE. 


us in ver. 14 the way in which this work was accomplished in him. The 
Son of God was revealed to him in the person of Jesus through the glory 
full of grace and truth which distinguished this man from every other 
man; and he inscribed this discovery at the beginning of his narrative, 
in order that he might make the reader understand the decisive import- 
ance of the history, which was about to pass under his eyes; here is not 
one of those events which we leave after having read it, that we may 
pass on to another: “These things have been written, that you may 
believe, and that believing you may have life” (xx. 81). The question in 
this history is of eternal life and death; to accept, is to live; to reject, is 
to perish. This is the nota bene by which John opens his narrative and 
guides the reader. 
But why employ so singular a term as Logos? 


III. THe IDEA AND TERM Locos. 


We have here to study three questions: 1. Whence did the evangelist 
derive the notion of the Logos? 2. What is the origin of this term? 
3. What the reason of its use? Having discussed these questions in the 
Introduction (pp. 178-181), we will notice here only that which has a 
special relation to the exegetical study which we are about to undertake. 

1. First of all we establish a fact : namely, that the Prologue only sums 
up the thoughts contained in the testimony which Christ bears to Him- 
self in the fourth Gospel. Weiss! mentions two principal points in which 
the Prologue seems to him to go beyond the testimony of Christ: 1. The 
notion of the Word by which John expresses the pre-historic existence of 
Christ ; 2. The function of creator which is ascribed to Him (ver. 8). 

Let us for a moment lay aside the term Logos, to which we will return. 
The creative function is naturally connected with the fact of the eternal 
existence of the Logos in God. He who could say to God: “ Thou didst 
love me before the creation of the world,” certainly did not remain a stranger 
to the act by which God brought the world out of nothing. How is it 
possible not to apply here the words of v.17: “As the Father ... I also 
work,” and v. 19, 20: “The Father showeth the Son all that he doeth 

. ,’ and: “Whatsoever things the Father doeth, these docth the Son in 
like manner.” Add the words of Gen. i. 26: “Let ws make man in our 
image,” to which John certainly alludes in the second clause of ver. 1 of 
the Prologue. All the other affirmations of this passage rest equally on 
the discourses and facts related in the Gospel; comp. ver. 4: “In Him was 
life... ,” with vy. 26: “As the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given 
to the Son to have life in himself;” ver. 9: “ There was the true light,” 
with viii. 12 and ix. 5: “I am the light of the world . . . He that followeth me 
shall have the light of life;” ver.7: “ John came to bear witness,” with i. 84: 
“And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the Son of God,” and 
ver. 83: “ Ye have sent unto John, and he hath borne witness to the truth ;” 


1 Johanneischer Lehrbegriff, 1862. 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. . 287 


what is said of the presence and activity of the Logos in the world in 
general (ver. 10), and in the theocracy in particular (to His home, Iis own, 
ver. 11), previous to His incarnation, with what Jesus declares in chap. x. of 
the Shepherd’s voice which is immediately recognized by His sheep, and this 
not only by those who are already in the fold of the Old Covenant (ver. 8), 
but also by those who are not of that fold (ver. 16), or what is said of the 
children of God scattered throughout the whole world (xi. 52); the opposition 
made in the Prologue (ver. 18) between the fleshly birth and the divine 
begetting, with the word of Jesus to Nicodemus (iii. 6): “ That which is 
born of the flesh is flesh; that which is born of the Spirit is spirit ;” the notion 
of Christ’s real humanity, so earnestly affirmed in the Prologue (ver. 14), 
with the perfectly human character of the person and affections of the 
Saviour in the whole Johannean narrative; He is exhausted by fatigue 
(iv. 6); He thirsts (iv. 7); Le weeps over a friend (xi. 85); He is moved, even 
troubled (xi. 383, xii. 27); on the other hand, His glory, full of grace and 
truth, His character as Son who has come from the Father (vy. 14-18), with 
His complete dependence (vi. 388 f.), His absolute docility (v. 30, etc.), 
His perfect intimacy with the Father (v. 20), the divinity of the works 
which it was given Him to accomplish, such as: to give life, to judge (v. 
21, 22); the perfect assurance of being heard, whatsoever He might 
ask for (xi. 41, 42); the adoration which He accepts (xx. 28); which He 
claims even as the equal of the Father (v. 23); the testimony of John the 
Baptist quoted in ver. 15, with the subsequent narrative (i. 27, 80); the gift 
of the law, as a preparation for the Gospel (ver. 17), with what the Lord 
says of His relation to Moses and his writings (v. 46, 47); ver. 18, which 
closes the Prologue with the saying in vi. 46: “ Not that any one hath seen 
the Father, except He thatis from the Father, He hath seen the Father ;” the terms 
Son and only-begotten Son, finally, with the words of Jesus in vi. 40: “ This is 
the Father’s will, that He who beholds the Son ... ;” ili. 16: “ God so loved 
the world, thut He gave His only-begotten Son,” and iii. 18: “ Because he hath 
not believed on the name of the only-begotten Son of God.” It is clear: the 
Prologue is an edifice which is constructed wholly out of materials furnished 
by the words and the facts of Jesus’ history. It contains of what is pecu- 
liar to John only the idea and term Logos applied to His pre-existent state. 
It is certainly this term, used in the philosophical language of the time, 
~which has led so many interpreters to transform the author of the Pro- 
logue into a disciple of Philo. We shall limit ourselves here to the men- 
tioning of the essential differences which distinguish the God of Philo from 
the God of John, the Logos of the one from the Logos of the other. And 
it shall be judged whether the second was truly at the school of the first. 

1. The word 2éyoc, in John, signifies, as in the whole Biblical text, word. 
In Philo, it signifies, as in the philosophical language of the Greeks, 
reason. This simple fact reveals a wholly different starting-point in the 
use which they make of the term. 

2. In Philo, the existence of the Logos is a metaphysical theorem. God 
being conceived of as the absolutely indeterminate and impersonal being, 
there is an impassable gulf between Him and the material, finite, varied 


288 PROLOGUE. 


world which we behold. To fill this gulf, Philo needed an intermediate 
agent, a second God, brought nearer to the finite; this is the Logos, the 
half-personified divine reason. The existence of the Logos in John is not 
the result of such a metaphysical necessity. God is in John, as in all the 
Scriptures, Creator, Master, Father. He acts Himself in the world, He 
loves it, He gives His Son to it; we shall even see that it is He who 
serves as intermediate agent between men and the Son (vi. 37, 44), which 
is just the opposite of Philo’s theory. Ina word, in John everything in 
the relation of the Logos to God is a matter of liberty and of love, while 
with Philo everything is the result of a logical necessity. The one is the 
disciple of the Old Testament interpreted by means of Plato and Zeno ; 
the other, of the same Old Testament explained by Jesus Christ. 

3. The office of the Logos in Philo does not go beyond the divine facts 
of the creation and preservation of the world. He does not place this 
being in any relation with the Messiah and the Messianic kingdom. In 
John, on the contrary, the creating Logos is mentioned only in view of 
the redemption of which He is to be the agent; everything in the idea of 
this being tends towards His Messianic appearance. 

4. To the view of Philo, as to that of Plato, the principle of evil is 
matter; the Jewish philosopher nowhere dreams, therefore, of making the 
Logos descend to earth, and that in a bodily form. In John, on the con- 
trary, the supreme fact of history is this: “ The Logos was made flesh,” and 
this is also the central word of the Prologue. 

The two points of view, therefore, are entirely different, and are even in 
many respects the antipodes of each other. Nevertheless, we notice in 
Philo certain ideas, certain terms, which establish a relation between him 
and John. How are we to explain this fact ? 

The solution is easy: it is not difficult to find a common source. John 
and Philo were both Jews; both of them had been nourished by the Old 
Testament. Now three lines in that sacred book converge towards the 
notion of an intermediate being between God and the world.’ 1. The ap- 
pearances of the Angel of the Lord (Maleach Jehovah), of that messenger 
of God, who acts as His agent in the sensible world, and who some- 
times is distinguished from Jehovah, sometimes is identified with 
Him; comp. e.g. Gen. xvi. 7 with ver. 13; again, Gen. xxxii. 28 with 
Hos. xii. 4, 5. God says of this mysterious being, Exod. xxi. 21: 
“My name (my manifested essence) is in him.” According to the 
Old Testament (comp. particularly Zech. xii. 10, and Mal. iii. 1), this 
divine personage, after having been the agent of all the theophanies, is to 
consummate His office of mediator by fulfilling here on earth the func- 
tion of Messiah. 2. The description of Wisdom, Prov. vill. 22-31; un- 
doubtedly this representation of Wisdom in Proverbs appears to be only 
a poetic personification, while the Angel of the Lord is presented as a real 
personality. 3. The active part ascribed to the Word of the Lord. This 
part begins with the creation and continues in the prophetic revelations 


1See Introd. p. 177. 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 239 
comp. Ps. evii. 20; exlvii. 15, and Is. lv. 11, where the works accomplished 
by this divine messenger are described. 

From the time of the Babylonish captivity, the Jewish doctors united 
these three modes of divine manifestation and activity in a single concep- 
tion, that of the permanent agent of J ehovah in the sensible world, whom 
they designated by the name of Memra (Word) of Jehovah (WVI81")." 
It cannot be certainly determined whether these Jewish learned men 
established a relation between this Word of the Lord and the person of 
the Messiah? 

This idea of a divine being, organ of the works and the revelations of 
Jehovah in the sensible world could not, therefore, fail to have been 
known both by John and by Philo. This is the basis common to the two 
authors. But from this starting-point their paths diverge. John passing 
into the school of Jesus, the idea of the Word takes for him a historical 
significance, a concrete application. Hearing Jesus affirm that He is be- 
fore Abraham; that the Father loved Him before the creation of the world, 
. .. he applies to Him this idea of the Word which in so many different 
ways strikes its roots into the soil of the Old Testament, while Philo, living 
at Alexandria, becomes there the disciple of the Greek philosophers, and 
seeks to interpret by means of their speculations and their formulas the 
religious ideas of the Jewish religion. We thus easily understand both 
what these two authors have in common, and what distinguishes them and 


even puts them in opposition to each other. 


1 Introd. pp. 177, 178.—Along with this ex- 
pression the terms Shekinah (habitation) and 
Jekara (splendor) are used in the Targums, or 
Chaldaic paraphrases of the O. T. The two 
oldest, those of Onkelos and Jonathan, were 
generally regarded as dating from the mid- 
dle of the first century of our era. Recent 
works seem to bring the redaction of them 
down to the third or fourth century; but 
only the redaction. For a great number of 
points prove that the materials go back to the 
apostolic times. We have even proofs of the 
existence of redactions going back as far as 
the time of John Hyreanus. With the Jews 
everything is a matter of tradition. The re- 
daction in a case like this is only “the com- 
pletion of the work of ages.” Comp. Schirer, 
Lehrb. d. neutest. Zeitgesch. pp. 478, 479. 

2Perhaps in Palestine there was, from the 
early times, more inclination to blend to- 
gether the notion of the Word and the Mes- 
sianic idea, than at Alexandria. There is in 
the book of Enoch (of the last part of the 
second century before Jesus Christ) and in 
one of the very parts of it which are almost 
unanimously recognized as the oldest, a re- 
markable passage, which, if the form in 
which we have it is the exact reproduction of 
the original text, would allow no further 
doubt on this point. The Messiah is there 


19 


represented (chap. xc. 16-38) as a white bull, 
which, after having received the worship of 
all the animals of the earth, transforms all 
these races into white bulls like itself; after 
which the poet adds: And the first bull “ was 
the Word, and this word was a powerful ani- 
mal which had great black horns on its head 
[the emblem of the divine omnipotence]” 
... It is thus that Dillmann in his classic 
work on this book, translates these words. 
Comp. the remarkable article of M. Wabnitz, 
Rev. de Théolog. July, 1874. The Messianic 
application of this passage cannot be doubted 
(see Schtirer, Lehrbuch der neutest. Zeitgesch., 
p- 568). There seems, then, clearly to be an 
indication here of the relation established in 
Palestine, from the time anterior to Jesus 
Christ, between the divine being called 
Memra or Word and the person of the Mes- 
siah. There is no doubt of the Palestinian 
origin of the Book of Enoch. The Book of 
Wisdom, which was composed at Alexandria 
a century before Jesus Christ, speaks of Wis- 
dom, personifying it with great emphasis. 
But it is impossible to discover here (even in 
chap. vii.) the notion of a real personality, or 
to recognize in the representation of the 
persecuted just man in chap. ii. the least al- 
lusion to the person of the Messiah. 


290 . PROLOGUE. 


II. With respect to the term Word, frequently used, as it already was, 
in the Old Testament, then employed in a more theological sense by the 
Jewish doctors, it must have presented itself to the mind of John as very 
appropriate to designate the divine being in the person of his Master. 
What confirms the Palestinian, and by no means Alexandrian, origin of 
this term, is that it is used in the same sense in the Apocalypse, which is 
certainly by no means a product of Alexandrian wisdom; comp. Acts 
xix. 13: “ And his name was the Word of God.” Philo, as he laid hold of 
this Jewish term Logos, in order to apply it to the metaphysical notion which 
he had borrowed from Greek philosophy, could not do so without also 
modifying its meaning and making it signify reason instead of word. This 
is what he did in general with regard to all the Biblical terms which his 
Jewish education had rendered familiar to him, such as archangel, son, 
high-priest, which he transferred to speculative notions according to the 
method by which he applied the word ange’s to the ideas of Plato. 

We see, therefore: it is the same religion of the Old Testament, which, 
developed on one side in the direction of Christian realism, on the other in 
that of Platonic idealism, produced these two conceptions of John and of 
Philo, who differ even more in the central idea than they resemble each 
other in that which envelops it. 

In applying to Jesus the name Word, John did not dream, therefore, of 
introducing into the Church the Alexandrian speculative theorem which 
had for him no importance. He wished to describe Jesus Christ as the 
absolute revelation of God to the world, to bring back all divine revelations 
to Him as to their living centre, and to proclaim the matchless grandeur 
of His appearance in the midst of humanity. 

III. But can the employment of this extraordinary term on his part have 
occurred without any allusion to the use which was made of it all about 
him in the regions where he composed his Gospel?! It seems to me 
difficult to believe this. Asia Minor, particularly Ephesus, was then the 
centre of asyncretism in which all the religious and philosophical doctrines 
of Greece, Persia and Egypt met together. It has been proved that in all 
those systems the idea of an intermediate divine being between God and 
the world appears, the Oum of the Indians, the Hom of the Persians, the 
Logos of the Greeks, the Memar of the Jews.2. If such were the surround- 
ings in the midst of which the fourth Gospel was composed, we easily 
understand what John wished to say to all those thinkers who were specu- 
lating on the relations between the infinite and the finite, namely: ‘That 
connecting link between God and man, which you are seeking in the 
region of the idea, we Christians possess in that of reality, in that of 
history; we have seen, heard, touched this celestial mediator. Listen and 
believe! And by receiving Him, you will possess, with us, grace wpon 
grace.” In introducing this new term into the Christian language, there- 
fore, John had the intention, as Neander thought, of opposing to the empty 


1 Comp. Introd., p. 180 f. (We take our position on the general results 
2Comp. Baumlein, Versuch die Bedentung of this essay, with pretending to vouch for 
des joh. Logos zu entwickeln, Tubingen, 1828. all its particular citations.) 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 291 


idealism on which the cultivated and unchristian persons around him 
were feeding, the life-giving realism of the Gospel history which he was 
proposing to set forth.! 


IV. Tue TruTH AND IMPORTANCE OF THE TEACHING OF THE PROLOGUE 
RESPECTING THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST. 


If the Prologue is the summary of the testimonies which Jesus bore to 
Himself in the course of His ministry, the teaching of John in this 
passage can no longer be regarded as the last term of a series of phases 
by means of which the Christological conception passed into the midst of 
the Church; it is at once the most normal and the richest expression of 
the consciousness which Jesus had of His own person. Renan is not 
indisposed to accept this result. Only in this estimation of Himself which 
Jesus allowed Himself to indulge, he sees the height of self-exaltation. 
But this explanation is incompatible with the moral character of Jesus. 
If He overrated Himself even to folly, how are we to understand that 
inward calm, that profound humility, that unalterably sound judgment, 
that so profoundly true appreciation of all the moral relations, whether 
between God and man, or between man and man, which Renan himself 
recognizes in Him? The kingdom of truth and holiness which has come 
from the appearance of Jesus is enough to set aside the suspicions of His 
modern biographer and to decide in the evangelist’s favor. 

The critic might limit himself to calling in question the historical accuracy 
of the discourses which John puts into the mouth of Jesus. But we think 
that we have demonstrated the full confidence which we are obliged to 
accord to them (Introd., pp. 98-184). They cannot be separated from 
the facts with which they are closely connected, and these facts are as 
well, not to say better, guaranteed than those of the Synoptics (Introd., 
pp. 68-93). 

Reuss urges, as an objection, a contradiction between the Prologue, in 
which the perfect equality of the Father and Son (such as ecclesiastical 
orthodoxy professes) is taught, and the authentic words of Jesus in the 
Gospel, starting from the idea of the subordination of the Son. The 
exegesis of the Prologue has proved that this contradiction does not exist, 
since subordination is taught in the Prologue, as clearly as in the discourses. 
Let us recall the expressions: “he was with God,” ver. 1; “the only-begotten 
Son,” ver. 14; “who is in the bosom of the Father,” ver. 18; these expressions 
imply subordination as much as any saying related in the Gospel. Reuss’ 
mistake is that of wishing by all means to identify the conception of the 
Prologue with the Nicene formulas. 

Baur?* does not believe in the possibility of reconciling the notion of the 
incarnation with that of the miraculous birth taught in the Synoptics. 
But if we take this expression, became flesh, seriously,—as Baur does not— 
the alleged contradiction 1s solved of itself. As in this case the subject of 
the Gospel hisory is not longer, as Baur claims, the Logos continuing in 


'Gesch. d. Pflanzung d. christl. Kirche, ii. p. 2 Hist. de la théol. chrét., IL., p. 440 f. 
549. . 8 Theol, Jahrb. 1844, Lil., p. 24 £. 


292 PROLOGUE. 


His divine state, but a true man, the fact of a real birth of this man, 
whether miraculous or natural, becomes a necessary condition of his 
human existence. 

The most serious objection is derived from the difficulty of reconciling 
the pre-existence of Christ with His real humanity. Thus Liicke,' while 
fully recognizing that there is something dangerous in the rejection of the 
pre-existence, thinks, nevertheless, that this dogma implies a difference of 
essence between the Saviour and His brethren, which seriously compro- 
mises both His character as Son of man, and His redemptive function. 
Weizsticker takes his position at the same point of view? He acknowledges 
that the communion of the Son with the Father is not simply moral; that 
Jesus did not gain His dignity as Son by His fidelity; but that it is, much 
rather, the presupposition of all that He did and said; that His moral 
fidelity maintained this original relation, but did not produce it; that, it 
is the unacquired condition of the consciousness which He had of Him- 
self. On the ather hand, he maintains that the superior knowledge which 
Christ possessed, could not be the continuation of that which He brought 
from above; for that origin would take away from it the progressive 
character, limited to the task of each moment, which we recognize in it 
and which makes it a truly human knowledge. And, as for the moral 
task of Jesus, it would also lose its truly human character; for where 
would be the moral conflict in the Son, if He still possessed here below 
that complete knowledge of the divine plan which He had had eternally 
in the presence of the Father? There are; therefore, in the fourth Gospel 
according to this critic, two Christs placed in juxtaposition: the one, truly 
man, as Jesus Himself teaches in harmony with the Synoptics; the other, 
divine and pre-existent—the Christ of John. In attempting to resolve 
this difficulty, we do not conceal from ourselves that we are entering upon 
one of the most difficult problems of theology. What we shall seek after, 
in the lines which follow, is not the reconciliation of Scripture with any 
orthodoxy whatever, but the agreement of Scripture with itself. 

The Scriptures, while teaching the eternal existence of the Word, do 
not, by any means, teach the presence of the divine state and attributes 
in Jesus during the course of His earthly life. They teach, on the con- 
trary, the complete renouncing by Jesus of that state, with a view to His 
entrance into the human state. The expression: the Word was made flesh 
(i. 14), speaks of the divine subject only as reduced to the human state ; 
it does not at all, therefore, suppose the two states, divine and human, as 
co-existent in Him. The impoverishment of Christ of which Paul speaks 
2 Cor. viii. 9, and His voluntary emptying of Himself described in Phil. i1. 
6, 7, have no meaning except as we see in this renunciation of the divine 
state and the entrance into the human mode of existence two facts which 
were coincident. The Gospel history confirms these declarations. Jesus 
does not on earth any longer possess the attributes which constitute the 
divine state. Omniscience He does not have. He Himself declares His 


1 Vol. L., p. 378. 2 Jahrb. fiir deutsche Theol. VII. 4, p. 639 and 655-664. 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 293 


ignorance on a particular point (Mark xiii. 82). In our Gospel, also, the 
expression: “ When he heard that the Jews had cast him out. . . ” (ix. 35), 
proves the same thing. In general, every question put by Him would 
have been only a pretence, if He had still possessed omniscience. He 
possessed a superior prophetic vision, undoubtedly (John iy. 17, 18); but 
this vision was not omniscience. And I donot think that the facts by any 
means confirm the opinion of Weéizsdcker, that John’s narrative ascribes 
to Jesus a knowledge which was a reminiscence of His heavenly knowl- 
edge. The exegesis will show that Jesus never enunciated anything what- 
soever which did not pass through His human consciousness. No more 
does He possess omnipotence. For He prays and is heard (xi. 42); as for 
His miracles, it is the Father who works them on His behalf (v. 36). He 
is equally bereft of omnipresence. He rejoices in His absence at the time 
of the sickness of Lazarus (xi. 15). His love, perfect as it is, is neverthe- 
less not divine love. This is immutable; but who will maintain that 
Jesus in His cradle loved as He did at the age of twelve, and at the age 
of twelve, as He did on the cross? Relatively perfect, at each given 
moment, His love increased from day to day, both in intensity and with 
reference to voluntary self-sacrifice, and in extent and with reference to 
the circle which it embraced, at first His family, then His people, then 
the whole of mankind. It was a truly human love. For this reason, St. 
Paul says: “ The grace of one man, Jesus Christ” (Rom. v. 15). His holi- 
ness was, also, a human holiness; for it was realized at every moment 
only at the cost of astruggle, through renouncing lawful enjoyment and 
the victory over the no less lawful dread of pain (xii. 25, 27; xvii. 19 a.). 
This holiness is so human that it is to pass into us and become ours (xvii. 
19b.). All these texts clearly prove that Jesus did not possess, while on 
earth, the attributes which constitute the divine state. And, indeed, how 
could He otherwise terminate His earthly career by asking back again 
the glory which He had before His incarnation (xvii. 5)? 

Can we conceive of such an emptying of Himself on the part of a divine 
being? Keil, while acknowledging that there is here a problem which 
has not yet been solved, thinks that the emptying of the divine attributes 
took place through the very fact of the entrance of the subject who pos- 
sessed them into a more limited nature. Steinmeyer, likewise says: The 
very fact of the entrance into a material body had the effect of reducing 
to the condition of latency the qualities which befit an absolute person- 
ality. We might carry back to this idea the saying of Paul (Phil. ii.7) : “ He 
divested himself (emptied), having taken the form of a servant,” by making 
the act expressed in the participle having taken the antecedent and con- 
dition of that which is expressed by the finite verb: “ he divested himself.” 
But we may also conceive of the act of voluntary divesting as preceding 
the entrance into the human state, and as being the condition of it. And 
it is rather to this idea, as it seems to me, that the passage in Philippians 
leads us. However this may be, Scripture does not, by any means, teach 
that He came to earth with His divine attributes—a fact which implies 
that He had renounced not only their use, but also their possession. 


294 PROLOGUE. 


Even the consciousness of His anterior existence as a divine subject 
would have been incompatible with the state of a true child and with a 
really human development. The word which He uttered at the age 
of twelve years (Luke ii. 49) is alleged; but it simply expresses 
the feeling which Jesus had already at that age of being entirely 
devoted to the cause of God, as a well-disposed son is to the interests 
of his father. With a moral fidelity like His, and in the permanent 
enjoyment of a communion with God which sin did not impair, the 
child could call God His Father in a purely religious sense, and without 
resulting in a consciousness within Him of a divine pre-existence. 
Certainly the feeling of His redemptive mission must have developed 
itself from his early age, especially through the experience of the con- 
tinual contrast between His moral purity and the sin by which He saw 
all those who surrounded Him affected, even the best of them such as 
Joseph and Mary. The only one in health in this caravan of sick persons 
with whom He made His journey, He must early have had a glimpse of 
His task as physician and have inwardly consecrated Himself wholly to 
it. But there is in the Gospel history not a word, not an act attributed to 
Jesus which leads us to suppose in the child or the youth the conscious- 
ness of His divine nature, and of His previous existence. It is to the 
apocryphal gospels that we must go to seek this contra-natural and anti- 
human Jesus. It was, if we mistake not, on the day of His baptism, 
when the moment arrived at which He was to begin to testify of Himself, 
of what He was for God and of what God was for Him and for the world, 
that God thought it fit to initiate Him into the mystery of His life as Son 
anterior to His earthly existence. This revelation was contained in the 
words: “ Thou art my Son,” which could not refer only to His office as 
Messiah, since they were explained by the following words: “In thee I 
am well-pleased.” He recovered at that time that consciousness of Son- 
ship which He had allowed to become extinguished in Him, as at night, 
as we surrender ourselves to sleep, we lose self-consciousness; and He 
was able from that moment to make the world understand the greatness 
of the gift which was made to it and of the love of which He was the 
object on God’s part. 

The following, therefore, as it seems to me, are the constituent elements 
of this mysterious fact : 

1. As man was created in the image of God and for the divine likeness, 
the Logos could, without derogation, descend even to the level of a human 
being and work out His development from that moment in truly human 
conditions. 

2. Receptivity for the divine, aspiration towards the divine, being the 
distinctive feature of man among the other natural beings, the essential 
characteristic of the life of the Logos made man must be incessant and 
growing assimilation to the divine in all its forms. 

3. This religious and moral capacity of the Logos having entered into 
human existence is not to be measured by that which each particular 
man possesses. Through the fact of His miraculous birth, He reproduces 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 295 


not the type of a determinate father, but that of the race itself which He 
represents a second time, as it had been represented the first time by the 
father of all mankind. In Him, therefore, is concentrated the aspiration 
of the whole race, the generic and absolute receptivity of humanity for 
the divine. Hence the incomparable character of this personality, to 
which all are forced to render homage. 

4. Having arrived at the consciousness of His eternal relation to God, 
the Logos can only aspire to recover the divine state in harmony with the 
consciousness which He has of Himself; but, on the other hand, He is 
too closely connected with humanity to consent to break the bond which 
unites Him to it. There remains, therefore, only one thing: to raise 
humanity with Himself to His glory and thus to realize in it the highest 
thought of God, that which St. Paul calls “the purpose of the wisdom of 
God for our glory” (1 Cor. ii. 7), the elevation of man, first, to communion 
with Christ, and then, in Him, to the possession of the state of the Man- 
God. ‘This is the accomplishment of the eternal destiny of believers, as 
St. Paul also states it in Rom. viii. 29, 30. 

The course of the development of the earthly life of Jesus is easily 
understood when we place ourselves at this point of view. By His birth 
as a member of the race, as Son of man, humanity finds itself replaced in 
Him at its normal starting-point; it is fitted to begin anew its development, 
which sin had perverted. Up to the age of thirty, Jesus accomplishes this 
task. He elevates humanity in His own person, by His perfect obedience 
and the constant sacrifice of Himself, from innocence to holiness. He is 
not yet conscious of Himself; perhaps, in the light of the Scriptures, He 
begins to have a presentiment of that which He is in relation to God. 
But the distinct consciousness of His dignity as Logos would not be com- 
patible with the reality of His hwman development and with the accom- 
plishment of the task assigned to this first period of His life. This task 
being once fulfilled, the conditions of His existence change. A new work 
opens for Him, and the consciousness of His dignity as well-beloved Son, 
far from being incompatible with the work which He has still to accom- 
plish, becomes the indispensable foundation of it. Indeed, in order to 
bear witness of God as Father, He must necessarily know Himself as Son. 
The baptism is the decisive event which opens this new phase.! Meeting 
the aspirations and presentiments of the heart of Jesus, the Father says 
to Him: “ Thou art my Son.” Jesus knows Himself from this moment as 
the absolute object of the divine love. He can say now what He could 
not have said before: “ Before Abraham was, I am.” This consciousness 
of His dignity as Son, the recompense for His previous fidelity accom- 
panies Him everywhere from this hour. It forms the background of all 
His manifestations in acts and words (see Weizsicker’s fine passage, 


1 Since the time when the Gnostics falsified significance in the personal development of 
the meaning of the baptism by making it the | the Lord (see Christ et ses témcins, 7¢, 8¢, and 
epoch of the descent of the divine ASon upon 9¢ lettres; t. i., pp. 229-296; particularly, pp. 
the man Jesus, de Rougemont is the first 250-255). 
who has ventured to give to this fact its full 


296 PROLOGUE. 
pp. 120, 121). Heaven is opened to Him and He testifies of what He sees 
there. 

The baptism, however, while giving to Jesus His consciousness of Sonship, 
did not give back to Him His state of Sonship, His form of God. There is 
still an immense disproportion between that which He knows Himself to 
be and that which He really is. Herein, especially, there is for Him the 
possibility of temptation: “Jf thou art the Son of God...” Master of 
all, He disposes of nothing, and must at every moment address Himself 
with a believing and filial heart to the paternal heart of God. It is only 
through the resurrection and the exaltation which follows it, that His posi- 
tion is placed on the level of the consciousness which He has of Himself, 
and that He recovers the divine state. Henceforth, all the fullness of the 
divinity dwells in Him, and that humanly, and even, as Paul says, bodily 
(Col. 11.9). Finally, ten days after His personal assumption into the divine 
glory, He begins from the day of Pentecost to admit believers to a par- 
ticipation in His state of sonship. He thus prepares the day on which, by 
His Parousia, He will consummate outwardly their participation in His 
glory, after having re-established in them the perfect holiness which was 
the basis of His own exaltation. Living images of the Logos from our 
creation, we shall then realize that type of divine-human existence which 
we at present behold in Him. Such was the divine plan, such was the 
last wish of Jesus Himself (John xvii. 24): “Father, I will that where I am, 
they also may be with me.” 

The true formula of the incarnation, according to our Gospel, would, 
therefore, be the following: That filial communion with God which the Logos 
realized before His incarnation in the glorious and permanent form of the divine 
life, He has realized in Jesus since His incarnation in the humble and progres- 
sive form of human existence. 

The school of Baur think that they discover an essential difference be- 
tween John’s conception and that of Paul respecting this point. The 
latter could have seen in the pre-existent Christ only the prototypic man, 
but not a divine being. This view is rested upon 1 Cor. xv. 47 : “The first 
man, derived from the earth, is earthy; the second man is from heaven.” 
But this conclusion, which is founded upon no other passage, has really no 
support in this one. The whole fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians has 
an eschatological bearing, for it treats of the resurrection of the body. 
The words cited, therefore, apply to the now glorified Christ, and not to 
the pre-existent Christ; this is also proved by the words which immedi- 
ately follow: “As is the earthly (Adam), such are they also that are earthly 
. (men in their present state): as is the heavenly (Christ), such are they also 


1 We would not wish to make Gess jointly 
responsible with us for all the ideas which we 
here express. We are aware that on some 
points we are not entirely in accord with him. 
But the view which we present is neverthe- 
less, in general, that which he has developed 
in his fine work, Lehre von der Person Christi, 


1856, which I had the honor of reviewing at the 
time of its appearance, in a series of articles, 
Revue chrétienne, 1857 and 1858. The first two 
volumes of the second edition have been 
already published. Let us hope that the 
closing part of the work will soon appear. 


GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS. 297 


that are heavenly (the believers risen from the dead). For as we have borne 
the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” Cer- 
tainly, Paul does not mean to say that we shall bear the image of the 
pre-existent Christ, but that of the Christ as man raised from the dead 
and glorified. Even the term second (man) would be sufficient to prove 
this; since the pre-existent Christ would be the first Adam, the Adam 
Kadmon of Jewish theology. The idea which Baur finds in this passage 
is, moreover, incompatible with two other expressions of the same epistle, 
in which two divine functions, the creation of the universe and the lead- 
ing of Israel through the wilderness, are ascribed to the pre-existent Christ 
(vili. 6 and x. 4). These functions surpass the idea of a mere heavenly 
man. 

When Paul calls Christ “the image of the invisible God,” “the first-born 
before every creature,” the one “in whom all things have been created 
and all things subsist”? (Col. i. 15, 16), he says exactly what John says, 
when he calls Him the Word (the image of the invisible thought), and when 
he adds: “All things were made by Him, and nothing which has been 
made was made without Him.” The two terms, image and Word, express, 
under two different figures, the same notion : God affirming with an affirm- 
ation which is not a simple verbum volens, but a living person, all that He 
thinks, all that He wills, all that He loves that is most perfect, giving thus 
in this being the word of His thought, the reflection of His being, the end 
of His love, almost His realized ideal. Let us picture to ourselves an artist 
capable of giving life to the master-piece of his genius, and entering into 
personal relation with this child of his thought ; such is the earthly rep- 
resentation of the relation between God and the Word. This word is 
divine; for the highest affirmation of God cannot be less than God Him- 
self. It is eternal; for God cannot have begun at any time to affirm Him- 
self. It is single; for it is His absolute saying, the perfect enunciation of 
His being, consequently His primordial sovereign utterance, in which are 
included, in advance, all His particular sovereign utterances which will 
re-echo successively in time. It is, accordingly, this Word who, in his 
turn, will call forth all beings. They will be His free affirmation, as He is 
Himself that of God. He will display in the universe, under the forms 
of space and time, all the riches of the divine contents which God has 
eternally included in Him. The creation will be the poem of the Son to 
the glory of the Father. 

This notion of the Word, as a creative principle, has the greatest im- 
portance as related to the conception of the universe. The universe rests 
thereby on an absolutely luminous basis, which secures its final perfection. 
Blind and eternal matter, fatal necessity, are banished from a world which 
is the work of the Word. The ideal essence of all things is absolutely 
protected by this view.! 


1See Lange, Leben Jesu, iv. pp. 553-556. We by the view which we have just set forth 
do not think it necessary here to treat of the touching the fact of the incarnation. Pre- 
questions which are raised, with regard to cisely because the existence of the Son is a 
the internal relations of the divine persons, matter of love, and not of necessity (as with 


298 PROLOGUE. 


The notion of the person of Christ which is contained in the Prologue 
is of decisive importance for the Church. 

If the supreme dignity ascribed to Jesus is denied Him, however worthy 
of admiration this Christ may be, humanity may and should always 
“look for another ;” for the path of progress is unlimited. The gate thus 
remains open for one who comes afterward: “I am come in my Father’s 
name, and ye receive me not; another shall come in his own name, and 
him ye will receive” (v. 48). 

But if in Jesus the Word was really made flesh, there is no higher one 
to be looked for. The perfect revelation and communication of God are 
accomplished; eternal life has been realized in time; there is nothing 
further for every man but to accept and live, or to reject and perish. 

We understand, therefore, why John has placed this preamble at the 
head of his narrative. Faith is not. faith—that is to say, absolute, without 
reserve—except so far as it has for its object that beyond which it is impos- 
sible to go. 


Philo), there is nothing, when the Word 
descends to the world to become Himself one 
of the beings of the universe, to prevent the 
Father’s ability to enter directly into relation 
with the world, and to exercise in it the func- 
tions of creator and preserver which He 


ordinarily exercises by the intermediate 
agency of the Word. No doubt, the Word 
has life in Himself and communicates it to 
the world, but because the Father has given 
Him this privilege; thus everything pro- 
ceeds always from the Father (John y. 26). 


HIRST PARE. 





FIRST MANIFESTATIONS OF THE WORD.—BIRTH OF FAITH.— 
FIRST SYMPTOMS OF UNBELIEF. 


I. 19-IV. 54. 


As compared with the two parts which are to follow, of which one 
specially traces out the development of unbelief (v.—xii.), the other, that of 
faith (xiii—xvii.), this First Part has a character which may be called 
neutral. It serves as the starting-point for the two others. It contains 
the first revelations of the object of faith and unbelief, of Jesus as Son of 
God. Jesus is declared to be the Messiah. and Son of God by John the 
Baptist; a first group of disciples is formed about Him. His glory beams 
forth in some miraculous manifestations within the circle of His private 
life. Then He inaugurates His public ministry in the temple, at Jerusa- 
lem. But this attempt having failed, He limits Himself to teaching, while 
performing miracles and collecting about Himself adherents by means of 
baptism. Finally, observing that, even in this more modest form, His 
activity gives umbrage to the dominant party at Jerusalem, He withdraws 
into Galilee, after having sowed by the way the germs of faith in Samaria. 
This summary justifies the title which we give to this First Part, and the 
more general character which we ascribe to it as compared with those 
which follow. 

The evangelist himself seems to have wished to divide it into two cycles 
by the distinctly marked correlation between the two remarks, ii. 11 and 
iv. 54, which are placed, one at the end of the story of the wedding at 
Cana: “ This was the beginning of Jesus’ miracles which took place at Cana in 
Galilee ; and He manifested His glory, and His disciples believed on Him ;” 
the other, which closes this whole Part, after the healing of the nobleman’s 
son, “Again, Jesus did this second miracle when He came from Judea into 
Galilee.” By the manifest correlation of these two sentences the evangelist 
calls attention to the fact that there were, in this first period of Jesus’ 
mihistry, two sojournings in Judea, each of which terminated with a re- 
turn to Galilee, and that both of these returns were alike marked by a 
miracle performed at Cana. This indication of the thought of the histor- 
ian should be our guide. Accordingly, we divide this Part into two cycles 
—the one comprising the facts related i. 19-ii. 11; the other, the narra- 
tives ii. 12-iv. 54. In the first, Jesus, introduced into His ministry by 

299 


300 FIRST PART. 


John the Baptist, fulfills it without as yet going out of the inner circle 
of His first disciples and His family. The second relates His first steps in 
His public ministry. 


FIRST CYCLE. 
jae SB Fae 6 


This cycle comprises three sections: 1. The testimonies borne by John 
the Baptist to Jesus, i. 19-37; 2. The first personal manifestations of Jesus 
and the faith of His first disciples, 1. 88-52; 38. His first miraculous sign, 
il. 1-11. The facts related in these three sections fill a week which forms, 
as Bengel has remarked, the counterpart of the final Passion-week. The 
one might be called the week of the betrothal of the Messiah to His peo- 
ple; the other the time of the absolute rupture long since announced by 
Jesus: ‘‘ When the bridegroom shall be taken away, then shall the friends of 
the bridegroom fast.” jf 


FIRST SECTION. 
I. 19-37. 
THE TESTIMONIES OF JOHN THE BAPTIST. 


These testimonies are three in number and were given on three succes- 
sive days (see vv. 29, 35, “the neat day). These three days, eternally 
memorable for the Church, had left on the heart of the evangelist an in- 
effaceable impression. On the first he had heard that solemn declaration 
made before a deputation of the Sanhedrim: The Messiah is present! 
(ver. 26); and this word, no doubt, had thrilled him as it had the multi- 
tude who were there. The next day, the forerunner, pointing out Jesus, 
had changed his first declaration into that still more important one: 
Behold Him! and faith in Jesus, prepared for on the preceding day, had 
illuminated with its first ray the heart of John and that of the Baptist’s 
hearers. Finally, on the third day, by repeating his declaration of the 
day before, the Baptist evidently meant to say: Follow Him ! John imme- 
diately leaves the Baptist, to attach himself to the new Master whom he 
points out to him. 

Why did the author make the first of these three days the starting-point 
for his narration? If his intention was to make us witness the opening, 
not only of his own faith and that of the apostles, but of faith itself in the 
midst of mankind, he could not choose another starting-point. The 
Messiah announced, then pointed out, then followed ; this coy is the 
normal beginning of such a narrative. 


I—First Testimony: vv. 19-28. 


In unfolding in the Prologue the contents of faith, the apostle had 
adduced two testimonies of John the Baptist (vv. 6-8 and ver. 15); the 
second contains, as Baur well says, “the idea of the absolute pre- 


CHAP. I. 19. 301 


existence of the Messiah,” and consequently the true thought of the 
author—that of the divinity of Christ. But when was the testimony, 
cited at ver. 15, given? This is what the apostle proceeds to relate. 

Ver. 19. “ And this is the testimony which John gave when' the Jews sent? 
priests and Levites from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou?” It is quite 
strange to see a narrative beginning with the word and. This fact is 
explained by the relation which we have just indicated between ver. 19 
and ver. 15. What gives an especial importance to this declaration of 
John the Baptist, is its official character. It was uttered in presence of a 
deputation of the Sanhedrim, and as a reply to a positive inquiry emanat- 
ing from that body, the religious head of the Jewish nation. The San- 
hedrim, of whose existence we find the first traces only in the times of Anti- 
pater and Herod (Josephus, Antiq. xiv. 9, 4), was undoubtedly the continua- 
tion or renewalof a very ancient institution. Weare reminded of the tribunal 
of the seventy-two elders established by Moses (Num. xi. 16). Under 
Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. xix. 8), mention is also made of a supreme tribunal 
sitting at Jerusalem and composed of a certain number of Levites, priests 
and fathers of Israel. Comp., perhaps, also Ezek. vill. 11 f., “seventy men 
of the elders of Israel.” In Maccabees (1 Macc. ib eo Mace. 1. Ov 
44, etc.), the body called yepovsia, senate, plays a part analogous to that of 
these ancient tribunals, yet without the possibility of establishing a historic 
continuity between these institutions. At the time of Jesus, this senate, 
called Sanhedrim, was composed of 71 members, including the president 
(Tract. Sanhedr. i. 6). These members were of three classes: 1. The 
chief-priests (apytepeic), a term which probably designates the high-priests 
who had retired from office, and the members chosen from the highest 
priestly families ; 2. The elders of the people (xpeoBirepor, apyovtec tov Aavv), 
aterm which undoubtedly comprehends the other members in general, 
whether lay members or Levites; 3. The scribes (ypaypareic), a term desig- 
nating especially the experts in the law, the jurists by profession. The 
high-priest was ez-officio the president. The Sanhedrim had up to this 
time closed its eyes to John the Baptist’s work. But observing that things 
were daily taking a more serious turn, and that the people were beginning 
even to ask themselves whether John were not the Christ (comp. Luke ii. 
15), they felt at length that they must use their authority and officially 
present to him the question respecting his mission. Jesus alludes to this 
step (v. 33); afterwards, He Himself answered a similar inquiry with a 
refusal (Matt. xxi. 23 f.). The Mishna says expressly: “The judgment of 
a tribe, of a false prophet and of a high-priest belongs to the tribunal of the 
seventy-one.” Sanh. i.5. We meet here, for the first time, the title, “the 
Jews,” which plays an important part in the fourth Gospel. This name, 


1Origen reads rote (then) once, elsewhere Sanhedrim had an elective president and 
ote (when). vice-president (the Nasi and the Av-Beth- 

2B. C. Italia Syr. and other Vss. add after Din), seems now to have been thoroughly re- 
ameatetAav: mpos avtov (to him), words which _—futed by Kuenen and Schiirer. See Schtrer’s 
A X place after Aevetas. Lehrbuch der Zeitgesch., 3 23. 

3 The old opinion, according to which the 


3802 FIRST PART. 


by its etymology, properly designates only the members of the tribe of 
Judah; but after the return from the captivity it is applied to the whole 
people, because the greater part of the Israelites who returned to their own 
land belonged to this tribe. It is in this general sense that we find it in 
ii. 6, “After the Jews’ manner of purifying ;” ii. 138, “ The passover of the 
Jews,” iii. 1, “ One of the rulers of the Jews.” In this purely political sense, 
this term may even include the Galileans (vi.52). But the name has most 
frequently in our Gospel a religious coloring. It designates the nation as 
an unbelieving community, which, in the majority of its members and 
through its authorities, had rejected the Messiah. This particular sense is 
explained by the history ; for the focus of the hatred and rejection of Jesus 
was found at Jerusalem and in Judea. This unfavorable sense attached to 
the name the Jews in our Gospel, has been adduced for the purpose of 
proving that the author of this book could not have been himself of 
Jewish origin! But after the fall of Jerusalem the Jewish nation had 
ceased to exist as a political body; this name of Jews thus became a 
purely religious title; and as John himself belonged to a different religious 
community, it is quite natural that he speaks of them as people who were 
henceforth foreigners to him. The Jewish-Christian author of the Apoca- 
lypse expresses himself still more severely with respect to his old fellow- 
countrymen, when he calls them “the Synagogue of Satan” (iii. 9); and 
Mark, in spite of his Jewish origin, also designates them by this word, the 
Jews, absolutely as John does (vii. 3). The words: from Jerusalem depend, 
not on the substantive the Jews, but on the verb sent. The design of this 
limiting phrase is to make the solemnity of the proceeding appear; it had 
an official character, because it emanated from the centre of the theocracy. 
Levites were joined with the priests. It has been often supposed that they 
merely played the part of bailiffs. But, in several passages of the Old 
Testament (2 Chron. xvii. 7-9; xxxv. 3; Neh. villi. 7), we see that it was 
the Levites who were charged with instructing the people in the law, from 
which fact Hengstenberg has, not without reason, concluded, that the 
scribes, so frequently mentioned in the New Testament, generally belonged 
to this order, and that it is in this character, and consequently as members 
of the Sanhedrim, that some of their number figured in the deputation. 
The question which they address to John the Baptist relates to the expec- 
tation, prevailing at that epoch in Israel, of the Messiah and of the extra- 
ordinary messengers who, according to the popular opinion, were to 
precede His coming. ‘“ Who art thou?” signifies in the context, Art thou 
one of these expected personages, and what one? We shall see in ver. 25 
what embarrassment this question was preparing for John, in case he re- 
fused to declare his title. 

Origen thought that with the second clause of ver. 19 (re azéore:dev) a 
new testimony of John the Baptist began. The first was, according to 
him, that of ver. 15 f, to which ver. 19a refers. Consequently, he appears 


1 Fischer, Tiibingen Zeitschrift, 1840, and so Hilgenfeld. We have refuted this objection in 
the Introd. 


CHAP. I. 20, 21. 303 


to have read rére,-then, instead of re (when). To complete this series of 
misconceptions, he only needed to find further on a third testimony 
addressed to a new deputation; he succeeded in this through his interpre- 
tation of ver. 24 (see on that verse). Cyril and some modern writers begin 
with the when of ver. 19 a new sentence, of which the principal clause is 
found in ver. 20: “ When the Jews sent... . he declared.” But the «ai, 
and, before the verb dyoddynce, he declared, renders this construction inad- 
missible. The particle «ai, and, is never in John the sign of the apodosis, 
not even in vi. 57. The words rpé¢ airév, to him, which are added by a 
portion of the Alexandrian authorities, and which two Mjj. place after 
Aevirac, are probably interpolated. Meyer and Weiss wrongly make kat 
dpoadynoe, and he declared, depends on ére, when; this construction makes 
the sentence a dragging one. It is better to translate: “And this is the 
testimony ... (ver. 19) . . . and he declared.” 

Ver. 20. “And he confessed, and denied not, and confessed :' I am not the 
Christ.” ? Before pointing out the contents of the response of John the 
Baptist, the evangelist sets forth its characteristics: it was ready, frank, 
categorical. The first he confessed, indicates spontaneity, eagerness. By 
the negative form: he denied not, the evangelist means to say he did not 
for an instant yield to the temptation which he might have had to deny. 
The second he confessed is added in order to connect with it the profession 
which is to follow. This remarkable form of narrative (comp. i. 7, 8) 
seems to us, whatever Weiss may say of it, to be more naturally explained 
if we suppose an allusion to people who were inclined to give to the per- 
son of John the Baptist an importance superior to his real dignity. 
According to the reading of the Alexandrian authorities and Origen, we 
must translate: “ Jt is not J who am the Christ (éyo ov« eiui).” This reply 
would have been suitable, if the question had been, “ Js it thou who art 
the Christ?” But the question is merely, “ Who art thou?” and the true 
response is consequently that which is found in the T. R. following the 
Byzantine authorities: “Iam not the Christ (ov« eiwi éyo),” that is, “Iam 
indeed something, but not the Christ.” 

Ver. 21. “And they asked him: what then?*® Art thou* Elijah? And he 
said Iam not. Art thow the prophet? And he answered, No.” Some inter- 
preters understand the question ré obv (what then ?) in the same or nearly 
the same sense as the preceding: “If thou art not the Christ, what art 
thou then?” But the two following questions: “ Art thou Elias ...?” 
would imply ric rather than ri in this sense. De Wette sees in these words 
an adverbial expression: “ What then!” This sense is pointless. We 
must, rather, supply éori, with Meyer: ““What then is the case? What 
extraordinary thing, then, is happening?”’ This form of question betrays 
impatience. There was, indeed, in the unprecedented behavior of John 
the Baptist something which seemed to indicate an exceptional condition. 


1D omits cat, and & Syrer Or. the second Mjj. Syrseh and T. R. place ov« ecu before eyw. 
Kat whodoynoev. 3B reads ov ovv te (what art thou then?), 
2~¢ A BCL XA Itplerique Cop. Or. (3 times) instead of re ovy (what then ?) 
read eyw ove emt, while I A and 9 other 4S B L reject ov after eu. 


304 FIRST PART. 


Malachi had announced (iv. 5) the coming of Elijah as the one preparing 
for the great Messianic day, and we know from Justin’s Dialogue with 
Trypho the Jew, that, according to a popular opinion, the Messiah was 
to remain hidden until he had been pointed out and consecrated by this 
prophet. Several passages of the Gospels (Matt. xvi. 14; Mk. vi. 15) prove 
that there was, besides this, an expectation of the reappearance of some 
other prophet of the ancient times, Jeremiah for example. Among these 
expected personages, there was one who was especially called the prophet. 
Some distinguished him from the Messiah (John vii. 40, 41); others con- 
founded him with the Messiah (vi. 14). The question was, evidently, as 
to the personage announced by Moses (“a prophet like unto me”’), in the 
promise in Deut. xviii. 18. Of course, the people did not picture to them- 
selves a second Elijah or a new Moses in the spiritual sense, as when the 
angel says of John the Baptist (Luke i. 17), “He shall go in the spirit and 
power of Elijah.” It was the person himself who was to reappear in flesh 
and bones. How could John the Baptist have affirmed, in this literal 
sense, his identity with the one or the other of these ancient personages? 
On the other hand, how could he enter into the domain of theological 
distinctions? Besides, this mode of discussion would be scarcely in 
accordance with his character. His reply, therefore, must be negative. 
Vv. 22, 23. “ They said then to him, Whoart thou ? that we may givean answer 
to those who sent us. What sayest thou of thyself? 23. He said, Iam a voice 
crying in the wilderness : Make straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet 
Isaiah.” The deputies have now exhausted the suppositions which were 
furnished by the accepted Messianic programme of their time. Nothing 
remains for them but to propose to John again the question which shall 
make him abandon the negative attitude to which he is limiting himself: 
“Who art thou?” that is to say, “ What personage art thou?” For his ex- 
traordinary conduct must be occasioned by an exceptional mission. John 
replies to it by a passage from Isaiah, which contains at once the explana- 
tion asked for and the guarantee of his mission. The sense of the pro- 
phetic passage is this: Jehovah is on the point of appearing in order to 
manifest His glory. At the moment which precedes His appearance, 
without the appearing of any person on the scene, a voice is heard which 
invites Israel to make straight the way by which the Lord is to come. The 
question in this description is not of the return from the captivity, but of 
the Messianic appearance of Jehovah. As in the East, before the arrival 
of the sovereign, the roads are straightened and leveled, so Israel is to 
prepare for its divine King a reception worthy of Him; and the function 
of the mysterious voice is to engage her in carrying out this work of prep- 
aration, lest the signal grace of which she is to be the object may turn into 
judgment. John applies to himself so much more willingly these words 
of Isaiah, because it fully accords with his desire to put his own person into 
obscurity and to let nothing but his message appear: “A voice.” The 
words in the wilderness can be referred, in Hebrew as in Greek, either to 
the verb to cry, or to the verb to make straight. As regards the sense, it 
amounts to the same thing, since the order sounds forth in the place where 


CHAP, I, 22—24, 30d 


it is to be executed. The reference to the preceding verb is more natural, 
especially in the Greek. The wilderness designates in the East uncultivated 
lands, the vast extents of territory which serve for pasturage, and which 
are crossed by winding paths, and not by roads worthy of a sovereign. 
Such is the emblem of the moral state of the people; the royal way by 
which Jehovah is to enter is not yet prepared in their hearts. The feeling 
of national repentance is still wanting. ‘The sojourning of the forerunner 
in the wilderness indicated clearly, through this literal conformity to the 
prophetic emblem, the moral accomplishment of the prophecy. Does the 
formula of citation, “as said,” also belong to the reply of the Baptist? Or 
is it a remark of the evangelist? What makes us incline to the first alter- 
native is, that the forerunner had more need of legitimating himself than 
the evangelist had of legitimating him so long afterwards. To reply as 
John does was to enunciate his commission, and to declare his orders. It 
was to say, in fact, to these deputies, experts in the knowledge of the law 
and the prophets, that, if he was not personally one of the expected an- 
cient personages, his mission was, nevertheless, in direct connection with 
the approaching manifestation of the Messiah. This was all which the 
Sanhedrim and the people practically needed to know. 

The inquiry had borne, at first, upon the office of John the Baptist. The 
deputation completed it by a more special interrogation respecting the 
rite of baptism, which he is allowing himself to introduce into the theoc- 
racy without the authorization of the Sanhedrim. The evangelist pre- 
pares the way for this new phase of the conversation by a remark 
having reference to the religious character of the members of the depu- 
tation. 

Ver. 24. ‘And those who! were sent were of the Pharisees.” We translate 
according to the T. R., which is in conformity with the majority of the 
Mjj., with the Mnn., and with the greater part of the Vss. According to 
this reading, the participle arecraAuévor, sent, is defined by the article oi, the ; 
it is the subject of the sentence. The design of this remark added here 
by John is easily understood; it is to explain the question which is to fol- 
low. John likes to supply in this way, as a narrative progresses, the cir- 
cumstances, omitted at first, which serve gradually to explain it ; comp. 
i. 41, 45; iv. 80; ix. 14; xi.5, 18; xiii. 28, etc. The Pharisees were the 
ultra conservatives in Israel; no one could have been shocked more than 
they by the innovation which John the Baptist had taken it upon himself 
to make in introducing baptism. Lustrations undoubtedly formed a part 
of the Jewish worship. Itis even maintained that the pagan proselytes 
were subjected to a complete bath, on occasion of their passing over to 
Judaism. But the application of this symbol of entire pollution to the 
members of the theocratic people was so strange an innovation, that it 
must have awakened in the highest degree the susceptibility of the author- 
ities who were guardians of the rites, and very particularly that of the 
party most attached to tradition. The Pharisaic element also was the 


I~ A BCL and Orig. reject oc (the) before amerradmevor (sent). 
20 


306 FIRST PART. 


main one in the deputation which the Sanhedrim had chosen. We see 
how skillfully the plan of the examination had been laid; first of all, the 
question relative to the mission; then, that which concerned the rite ; for 
the latter depended on the former. Nothing can be more simple than 
the course of the narrative, as thus understood. This mode of explain- 
ing the intention of the remark in ver. 24 appears to me more natural 
than that of Weiss and Keil, according to which John would thereby char- 
acterize the spirit of unbelief which animated the interrogators of the 
Baptist. The fact of their unbelief not being noticed in the narrative, did 
not demand explanation. Opposed to the reading of the T. R. there 1s 
another supported by the Alexandrian authorities and by Origen, and 
adopted by Tischendorf, and Westcott and Hort, which rejects the article oi 
before émeoraduévor; the meaning is: “and they had been sent from the 
Pharisees,” or, as Origen understood it: ‘and there were persons sent 
(come) from the Pharisees,” as if the question were of another deputation 
than that of ver. 19. Neither the one nor the other of these meanings is 
possible. For the Pharisees did not form an officially constituted body, 
from which a proceeding like this which is here spoken of could have 
started. The Alexandrian reading is, therefore, indefensible, as, in this in- 
stance, Weiss and Keil themselves acknowledge. It is, probably, as is so 
frequently the case, an arbitrary correction by Origen, to serve his false 
interpretation of this whole passage, from the end of the Prologue. Weiss 
and Keil see here a mere case of negligence of a copyist arising from the 
preceding «ai, in which the oi was lost. But how many similar errors 
should we not have, in that case, in the New Testament ! 

Ver. 25. “ And they asked him and} said unto him; why baptizest thou 
then, if thou art not the Christ, nor? Elijah, nor? the prophet.” The strictest 
guardians of rites conceded, indeed, to the Messiah or to one of His fore- 
runners the right of making innovations in the matter of observances ; 
and if John had declared himself one of these personages, they would 
have contented themselves with asking for his credentials, and would have 
kept silence respecting his baptism, sufficiently legitimated by his mission. 
In fact, it seems to follow from this verse itself that, on the foundation of 
words such as those of Ezek. xxxvi. 25, 26, and Zech. xi. 1, a great 
national lustration was expected as an inauguration of the kingdom of the 
Messiah. But John the Baptist having expressly declined the honor of 
being one of the expected prophets, the deputation had the right to say 
to him: “ Why then dost thou baptize?” According to the reading of the 
T. R. nor, nor, the thought is this: “The supposition that John is the 
Christ is set aside ; there remains, therefore, no other way of explaining his 
baptism except that he is either the one or the other of the two expected 
forerunners; now he declares that he is neither the one nor the other; 
why then ... etc. This delicate sense of the disjunctive negative was not 
understood; hence, in our view, the Alexandrian reading ovdé, ovdé, nor 


1 rejects npwrncav avrov kat (the copyist after most of the Mjj. and Mnn., ovée aude is 
has confounded the two kat). read in ABC Land Orig. (6 times). 
2 Instead of ovre ovre, which the T. R. reads 


CHAP. I. 25-27. 307 
even, Which puts the three cases on a common level. The partisans of the 
Alexandrian text (Weiss, Keil, Westcott, etc.), judge otherwise. The posi- 
tion of John the Baptist, in presence of this question and after his pre- 
vious answer, became a difficult one. His interrogators, indeed, had 
counted on this result. 

Vv. 26, 27. “ John answered them saying, Yea, I baptize with water ;} in 
the midst of you® there standeth® one whom you know not; 27. He* who 
comes after me—but who was before me’—the latchet of whose sandal I am not 
worthy to loose.” This reply has been regarded as not very clear and as 
embarrassed. De Wette even thinks that it does not correspond altogether 
with the question proposed. The generally adopted explanation is the 
following: “ My baptism with water does not, in any case, encroach upon 
that of the Messiah, which is of an altogether superior nature; it is only 
preparatory for it.” John would in some sort excuse his baptism by try- 
ing to diminish it, and by reminding them that beyond this ceremony the 
Messianic baptism maintains the place which belongs to it. But, first of 
all, this would be to evade the question which was put; and the criticism 
of de Wette would remain a well-founded one. For the baptism of John 
was attacked in itself and not as being derogatory to that of the Messiah. 
Then, the words év idari, with water, should be placed at the beginning: “ It 
is only with water that I baptize,” and the baptism of the Spirit would 
necessarily be mentioned in the following clause, as an antithesis. 
Finally, it would scarcely be in harmony with the character of the Baptist 
to shelter himself under the insignificance of his office and to present his 
baptism as an inoffensive novelty. This reply, properly understood, is, on 
the contrary, full of solemnity, dignity, even threatening ; it makes appar- 
ent the importance of the present situation, into the mystery of which 
John alone, until now, is initiated. “The Messiah is present: this is the 
reason why I baptize!” Ifthe Messianic time has really come, and he is 
himself charged with inaugurating it, his baptism is thereby justified (see 
ver. 23). This feeling of the gravity of the situation and of the import- 
ance of his part is expressed in the éy#, J, placed at the beginning of the 
answer, the meaning of which, as the sequel proves, is this: ‘‘J baptize 
with water, and in acting thus I know what I do: for He is present 


who...” We have given the force of this pronoun by the affirmation 
Yea! The éyé, J, is ordinarily contrasted with the Messiah, by making 


an antithesis between the baptism of water and the baptism of the Spirit. 
But this latter is not even mentioned, and this interpretation results from 
a recollection of the words of the Baptist in the Synoptics. Hence also 
probably came the introduction of the particle dé, but (in what follows 


18 alone: ev tw vdate instead of ev vdare. 

2After weoos the T. R. reads Se (but) with all 
the authorities, except & B C L and Orig. (10 
times) who reject this word. 

3B LT» otnxer (stat); & G: eatynxe (stabat) ; 
T. R. with all the rest earnxev (stat). 

4T. R. reads after ovdate, autos eat (itis he) 
with 13 Mjj., the Mnn.,, It. Vg. Syr. Orig.(once); 


these words are rejected by § B C L T»Syreur 
and Orig. (6 times). The art. o before epxoue- 
vos is omitted by & B Orig. 

5 After epxouevos T. R. adds os eumpoabev 
pov yeyovey (who has become before me) with 
the same authorities as above; these words 
are rejected by the authorities which reject 
autos eott (it is he). 


308 FIRST PART. 


after the word yéooc), which is rightly omitted by the Alexandrian authori- 
ties. It is precisely because he knows that the Messiah is present among 
them, that he baptizes with water and that he has the right to do so. 
This reply, accompanied as it undoubtedly was, with a significant look 
cast upon the crowd, in which the mysterious personage of whom he was 
thinking could be found, must have produced a profound sensation 
among his hearers. The two readings éoryxev and orfxer, although one is 
in the perfect and the other in the present, have the same sense: 
He stands there. The important words fre these: Whom you know not. 
The word you contrasts John’s hearers, who are still ignorant, with John 
himself, who already knows. This expression necessarily assumes that, 
at the time when the forerunner was speaking, the baptism of Jesus 
was already an accomplished fact. For it was by means of that ceremony 
that, in conformity with the divine promise (ver. 83), the person of the 
Messiah was to have been pointed out tohim. In vy. 31 and 33, He Him- 
self affirms that, up to the moment of the baptism, he did not know Him. 
It is impossible, then, to place the baptism of Jesus, with Olshausen and 
Hengstenberg, on this same day or the next, with Baumlein, between ver. 
28 and ver. 29, or, with Hwald, between ver. 31 and ver. 82. Moreover, 
this testimony, whatever Weiss may say of it, is wholly different from the 
preachings of John which are reported in the Synoptics, and which had 
preceded the baptism of Jesus. The very terms which the forerunner 
here employs contain a very clear allusion to previous declarations in 
which he had announced a personage who was to follow him; this 
is especially evident if we read 6 before dzicw pov épyduevoc, “the 
one coming after me whom I have announced to you.” This testi- 
mony has an altogether new character: “The Messiah is present, 
and I know him.” This is the first declaration which refers person- 
ally to Jesus; it is for his hearers the true starting-point of faith in 
Him.. The words it is he (aizdc éorw), omitted by the Alexandrian author- 
ities, sometimes omitted and sometimes read by Origen, are not indis- 
pensable, and may have been added either by copyists who wrongly iden- 
tified this testimony with that of ver. 15 (oiro¢ 7v), or by others who wished 
to bring out better the allusion to the previous testimonies related by the 
Synoptics. 

It is otherwise with the words, who was before me, which the Alexandrian 
authorities, Origen and the Curetonian Syriac omit, but which 15 Mjj. and 
the two ancient versions, Jtala and Peschito, read. The relation between 
this testimony and that of ver. 80, which will follow, renders these words 
indispensable in ver. 27. For in ver. 30, John reproduces expressly (“ he 
it is of whom I said [yesterday]”’), the testimony of ver. 27, and not, as is 
imagined, that of ver. 15, which is itself only a quotation of our ver. 30 
(see on ver. 15). The first day, John uttered, without yet designating Jesus, 
the declaration of vy. 26, 27; the second day, he repeated it, as it is related 
in ver. 30, this time applying it to Jesus as present. Gess rightly says, “If 
the shorter reading of ver. 27 were the true one, the evangelist would refer 
in ver. 30 to a fact which had not been related by him” (i. p. 345). These 


CHAP. I. 28. 309 


words : who was before me, are, in ver. 27, a sort of parenthesis inserted by 
the forerunner: “Come after me? Yes, and yet in reality, my prede- 
cessor!” (See on ver. 15). By the expression “to loose the latchet of 
the sandals,” John means to designate the humble office of a slave. On 
the pleonasm of od and airot Bdumlein rightly says: “imitation of the 
Hebrew construction.” Philologues discuss the question whether the 
form 4dgw¢ wa implies a weakening of the sense of the conjunction ina, 
which becomes here, according to some, a simple paraphrase of the in- 
finitive (worthy to loose), so Biumlein, or whether this conjunction always 
retains the idea of purpose (Meyer). Bdumlein rests upon the later Greek 
usage and on the va of the modern Greek, which, with the verb in the 
subjunctive mood, supplies the place of the infinitive. Nevertheless, we 
hold, with Meyer, that the idea of purpose is never altogether lost in the 
iva of the New Testament; he who is worthy of doing a thing, is, as it 
were, intended to do it. 

Ver. 28. “ These things were done at Bethany,! beyond the Jordon,? where 
John was baptizing.” The notice of ver. 28 is certainly not suggested to 
John by a geographical interest; it is inspired by the solemnity of this 
whole scene, and by the extraordinary gravity of this official testimony 
given in presence of the representatives of the Sanhedrim as well as of the 
entire nation. It was, indeed, to this declaration that the expression of 
the Prologue applied: “in order that all might believe through him.” If the 
people had been ready for faith, this testimony coming from such lips, 
would have been enough to make the divine fire break forth in Israel.— 
As for the two readings Bethany and Bethabara, Origen relates that nearly 
all the ancient MSS. read Bethany, but that, having sought for a place of 
this name on the banks of the Jordan, he had not found it, while a place 
was pointed out called Bethabara (comp. Judg. vii. 24), where tra- 
dition alleged that John had baptized. It is, therefore, certain that the 
reading Bethabara was substituted for the primitive reading Bethany in a 
certain number of documents, and that it was under the influence of Ori gen; 
as the Roman war had caused a large number of ancient places to disap- 
pear even as to their names, we may easily understand the disappearance 
of Bethany at the time of Origen. We must, therefore, conclude from 
the text which is established by evidence, that there existed in the time of 
Jesus, in the vicinity of the Jordan, a place by the name of Bethany, which 
was consequently different from the city of thisname near Jerusalem. As 
there were two Bethlehems, two Antiochs, two Ramas, two Canas, why 
should there not have been, also, two Bethanies? Perhaps this name had, 
in the two cases, different etymologies. Bethany may signify, indeed, either 
place of dates, or place of poverty, etc., a meaning which suits Bethany 
near Jerusalem ; or place of the ferry-boat (Beth-Onijah), a meaning which 
would well suit the Bethany which is here in question.’ 


1The reading Byéana is found in almost BynbaBapa. 
all the Mjj.; the large part of the Mnn.; It.; 2, Syreur add morauov (the river), after 
Vg.; Cop.; Syrsch, ete. Only the Mjj. K T» TopSavev. 
YATII; some Mnn.; Syrevr read, with T. R., 3 Lieutenant Conder, in one of his reports 


310 FIRST PART. 


II. Second Testimony: vv. 29-84. 


How can we comprehend the fact that the deputies of the Sanhedrim 
left John without asking him who the person was of whom he intended 
to speak? Either they did not care to know, or they affected to despise 
the declaration of the one who spoke to them in this way. In both cases, 
here is their first positive act of unbelief. After their departure, the fore- 
runner remained with his disciples and the multitude who had been pres- 
ent at this scene; and from the next day his testimony assumed a still 
more precise character. He no longer merely said, “He is there,” but 
seeing Jesus approaching him, he cries out: “There He is.” He charac- 
terizes first the work (ver. 29), then the person of Christ (ver. 30); after- 
wards, he relates how he attained the knowledge of Him, and on what 
foundation the testimony which He gives to Him rests (vy. 31-83); finally, 
he sets forth the importance which the act that he has just performed in 
disburdening himself of such a message in their presence has for his 
hearers (ver. 34). 

Ver. 29. “ The next day he} sees Jesus coming to him, and he says: Behold 
the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” The very next day 
after the day when John had proclaimed the presence of the Messiah in 
the midst of the people, Jesus approaches His forerunner, who recognizes 
Him and declares Him to be the Messiah. The words, coming to Him, 
have troubled the interpreters. Some have understood that He came to 
be baptized, which is impossible, since the following verses (31-83), and even 
ver. 26, imply that the baptism was already accomplished. Baur thinks 
that Jesus came to John for the purpose of receiving his testimony, and 
he, of course, finds in this fact, thus understood, a proof of the purely 
ideal character of the narrative. But this detail implies simply that 
Jesus, after having been baptized, had, previously to this meeting, sepa- 
rated Himself from John for a certain time, and that after this interval 
He, on this very day, returned to the presence of His forerunner, hoping 
to find in His presence those whom God should give to Him in order to 
begin His work. And we know, in fact, from the Synoptical account, that 
Jesus, after His baptism, had withdrawn into the solitude of the desert, 
where He had passed several weeks; it was now the moment, therefore, 
when He reappeared to take up His work as Redeemer. Nothing is more 
natural than that, with this design, He should return to the presence of 
John. Was not he the one who had been sent to open the way for Him 
to Israel? Was it not at his hands that He could hope to receive the in- 
struments which were indispensable to Him for the accomplishment of 


on the discoveries of the English expedition 
in Palestine, thinks he has proved the exist- 
ence, on the east of the Jordan, of a district 
named Bethany, which already bore this name 
in the time cf Eusebius, and which, accord- 
ing to Ptolemy, extended even to the Jordan. 

1 The words o Iwavvns of the T. R., which 


are omitted in a large number of M)jj. and 
Mnn., both Alexandrian and Byzantine, and 
in several Vss. are one of those additions, es- 
pecially frequent in the Byzantine text, which 
were introduced by the necessities of reading 
in publie worship 


CHAP. I. 29. oie 


His task? Jesus Himself (x. 3) designates John as the porter who opens 
to the Shepherd the door of the sheepfold, so that He does not have to 
climb over the wall of the inclosure like the robber, but can enter without 
violence into the sheepfold. Licke also places this return of Jesus in 
connection with the narrative of the temptation. 

We may be surprised that for the purpose of designating Jesus as the 
Messiah John does not employ one of the titles which were commonly 
used for this end: Christ, Son of God, or King of Israel. The term Lamb 
of God is so original that, if it is historical, it must have its ground in 
some particular impression which the Baptist had received at the time 
of his previous meeting with Jesus. And indeed, we must remember that 
when an Israelite came to have himself baptized by John, he began by 
making confession of his sins (Matt. iii.6; Mk. i. 5). Jesus could not have 
dispensed with this preparatory act without arrogating to Himself from 
the first an exceptional position, and nothing was farther from His 
thought than this: He wished to “ fulfill all righteousness” (Matt. ii1. 15). 
What, then, could His confession be? Undoubtedly a collective confession, 
analogous to that of Daniel (Dan. ix.), or that of Nehemiah (Neh. ix.), a 
representation of the sin of Israel and of the world, as it could be traced 
by the pure being who was in communion with the perfectly holy God, 
and at the same time the tenderly loving being, who, instead of judging 
His brethren, consecrated Himself to the work of saving them. If, as we 
cannot doubt, this was the spirit in which Jesus spoke and perhaps prayed 
at that moment, we may understand that the expression which the fore- 
runner uses here to designate Him, is indeed the reflection of what he 
had experienced when hearing and seeing this unique man, who, by His 
tender sympathy and His intercession, took upon Himself the burden of 
the sin of the world. On the other hand, in order that the title of which 
the Baptist made use might be intelligible for his hearers, it was indispens- 
able that it should connect itself with some well-known word or some 
well-known fact of the Old Covenant, which was generally referred to the 
Messiah. This is implied by the article 4, the, before the term Lamb of 
God, an article which signifies the Lamb known and expected by the 
hearers. The thought which presents itself most naturally to the mind 
is that of seeing here an allusion to the Servant of the Lord described in 
Is. liii., under the figure of a lamb which allows itself ‘to be led to the 
slaughter without opening its mouth.” On the preceding day, the Baptist 
had already appealed to a saying of the same prophet (Is. xl. 3). Before 
the polemic against the Christians had driven the Jewish interpreters to 
another explanation, they did not hesitate to apply that sublime repre- 
sentation (Is. lii. 18-liii. 12) to the Messiah. Abarbanel says expressly : 
“ Jonathan, the son of Usiel, referred this prophecy to the Messiah who 
was to come, and this is also the opinion of our sages of blessed memory.” 
(See Eisenmenger, Entdeckt, Judenth, Il. Th. p. 758; Liicke, I. p. 406).* 


1Comp. Wiinsche, die Leiden des Messias, Is. lii. 13-liii. 12, Zech. ix. 9 (lowly, riding 
1870, p. 55 ff. By a multitude of Rabbinical uponan ass), and xii 10 (“on me whom they 
sayings, he furnishes proof that the passages _— pierced"), were always and unanimously re- 


312 FIRST PART. 
We need not here prove the truth of this explanation of Is. liii. and the 
insoluble difficulties in which every contrary interpretation is involved. 
The fact is sufficient for us that it was the prevalent one among the 
ancient Jews. From this it follows that the allusion of John the Baptist 
could be easily understood by the people who were present. Some 
interpreters have claimed that the term, Lamb, represents, in the mouth 
of the forerunner as well as in the book of Isaiah, only the meekness and 
patience of the just one suffering for the cause of God. Thus Gabler: 
“Here is the man full of meekness who will support patiently the evils 
which human perversity shall occasion him;” and Kuinocl: “Here is 
the innocent and pious being who will take away wickedness from the 
earth.” But these explanations do not account for the article 6, the well- 
known, expected, Lamb, and they entirely efface the manifest relation 
which the text establishes between the figure of lamb and the act of taking 
away sin. Weiss explains, almost as the preceding writers do, by empha- 
sizing the allusion to Is. liii. 7, but without finding here the least notion 
of sacrifice. This last view seems to us not defensible. The idea of sac- 
rifice is at the foundation of the whole passage Is. liii. ; comp. especially, 
vv. 10-12: “When his soul shall have offered the expiatory sacrifice 
ascham),” and: “ He shall bear their iniquities,” words to which precisely 
John the Baptist alludes in these last words: “ who takes away the sin of 
the world.” The Lamb of God designates Jesus, therefore, as realizing the 
type of the Servant of Jehovah, Is. liii., charged with delivering the world 
from sin by His sacrifice. Some interpreters, especially Grotius, Lampe, 
Luthardt and Hofmann, believe that the Baptist is thinking only of the 
sacrifices of the Old Covenant in which the lamb was used as a victim, 
specially of that of the Paschal lamb. It is, indeed, indisputable that, 
among the clean animals used as victims, the lamb was the one which, 
by its character of innocence and mildness, presented the emblem most 
suited to the character of the Messiah as John the Baptist here describes 
Him (comp. Lev. iv.32; v. 6; xiv. 12; Num. vi. 12), and that, in particular, the 
sacrifice of the Paschal lamb really possessed an expiatory value (comp. 
Ex. xii. 13). It appears to me indubitable, therefore, notwithstanding all 
that Weiss and Keil still say, that, in expressing himself as he does here, the 
forerunner is thinking of the part of the lamb, not in the daily Jewish 
worship, but in the Paschal feast. And this allusion seems to me to be 
perfectly reconcilable with the reference to that saying of Is. liii. since in 
this chapter Isaiah represents the Servant of the Lord precisely under the 


ferred to the Messiah and His expiatory suf- 
ferings. The very attempt to distinguish 
between two Messianic personages, the one 
the son of Joseph, or of Ephraim who had the 
lot of suffering, and the other the son of Judah, 
to whom is ascribed the glory, is only a later 
endeavor (from the second century, comp. 
Wunsche, p. 109) to reconcile this undisputed 
interpretation with the idea of the glorious 
Messiah. In the book, The assumption of 


Moses, written probably at the time of Jesus’ 
childhood, the author also represents the 
Messiah as passing through death with all 
mankind during the space of eight days, and 
then returning to life with the elect and 
founding His Kingdom. The idea of the 
death of the Messiah was, therefore, by no 
means strange to the popular Israelitish 
opinion at the time when John the Baptist 
spoke. 


CHAP, I. 29. 313 


figure of the lamb sacrificed as an expiatory and delivering victim. The 
complement cov, of God, is the genitive of possession, and at the same 
time of origin. In this sacrifice, indeed, it is not man who offers and 
slays, it is God who gives, and gives of His own. Comp. 1 Pet. i. 19, 20; 
Rom. viii. 32. It is remarkable that this title of Jamb;under which the 
evangelist learned to know Jesus for the first time, is that by means of 
which the Saviour is by preference designated in the Apocalypse. The 
chord which had vibrated, at this decisive hour, in the deepest part of 
John’s heart resounded within him even to his latest breath. 

Exegetes are not agreed as to the sense which the word aipwr, who takes 
away, has here. The verb aipevy sometimes signifies to raise a thing from the 
ground, to lift it, sometimes to take it away, to carry it away. For the first 
sense, comp. viii. 29 (stones); Matt. xi. 29 (the yoke): xvi. 24 (the cross). 
For the second: John xi. 89, 48, xv. 2, xvii. 15, etc., and especially 1 John 
iii. 5: “Jesus Christ appeared to take away our sins.” The second sense 
would lead rather to the idea of the destruction of sin; the first, to that 
of expiation, as in some expressions of the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. 
But if John had thought especially of expiation, he would probably have 
employed the term Paordfev, to bear, which the LXX. used in the words 
quoted from Is. ii. He is probably, therefore, thinking of the taking 
away of sin. Let us not forget, however, that, in accordance with Is. liii. 
and the Israelitish worship in general, this end cannot be attained except 
by means of expiation. In order to take away sin, it was necessary that 
Christ should begin by taking upon Himself the burden of it, to the end 
that he might be able afterwards to remove it by the work of sanctifica- 
tion. The idea of removing includes, therefore, implicitly that of bearing. 
The present participle aipwv might be referred to the zdea of the mission of 
Jesus. But it is more simple to see in it an historical present; since the 
first act of His ministry, Jesus has labored for the taking away of sin on 
earth. 

The burden to be taken away is designated in a grand and sublime way : 
the sin of the world. This substantive in the singular presents the sinful 
error of humanity in its profound unity. It is sin én the mass, in which all 
the sins of all the sinners of the world are comprehended. Do they not 
all spring from the same root? We must guard against understanding by 
duaptia, as de Wette does, the penalty of sin. This idea, “the sin of the 
world,” has been judged too universal for the Baptist’s mouth. So Weiss 
ascribes it solely to the evangelist, Reuss says: ‘We have here an essen- 
tially Christian declaration.” But in Is. lii. 13-15, it was already said that 
the sight of the suffering Servant would startle many peoples (rabbim) and 
would strike their kings with astonishment. And who, then, were these 
many individuals (rabbim) whom, according to lili. 11, this same Servant was 
to justify, after Israel had rejected Him (ver. 1)? Comp. also the wonder- 
ful prophecy, Is. xix. 24, 25, where the Assyrians, the Egyptians and Israel 
are represented as forming the three parts, perfectly equal in dignity, of 
the kingdom of God. Could Isaiah have surpassed in clearness of vision 
the Baptist, who was not only a prophet, but the greatest of the prophets? 


bf 


314 FIRST PART. 


This expression the world says no more, in reality, than that threatening 
or promise which the Synoptics put into the mouth of the forerunner: 
“Even of these stones God will raise up children to Abraham.” Let us 
also recall that first word of the Lord to Abraham (Gen. xii. 8): ‘“ All the 
families of the earth shall be blessed (or shall bless themselves) in thee.” 

The forerunner, after having described the work of Jesus, designates 
Him Himself as the one to whom, notwithstanding His humble ap- 
pearance, his declaration of the day before applies : 

Ver. 30. “ This is he! concerning whom I said: After me cometh a man who 
has preceded me, because he was before me.” ‘This saying, while applying to 
Jesus as present (this 2s he) the testimony uttered on the preceding day in 
His absence (vv. 26, 27), is designed to solve the enigma which that decla- 
ration contained: “ He who follows me was before me.” The last clause 
explains it; see on ver. 15. It is difficult to decide between the two read- 
ings zepi, in respect to, and izép, on behalf of, both of which are suitable. The 
word avgp (a man in the strength of his age) which is not found in the 
quotation of this saying in ver. 15, is suggested to the forerunner by the 
sight of Jesus present before his eyes. Licke, Meyer, Keil think that in ver. 
30 the Baptist refers, not to the testimony of the day before (vv. 26, 27), 
but to some other previous saying which is not mentioned, either in our 
Gospel or in the Synoptics. They are condemned to this absurd supposi- 
tion by their servile dependence on the Alexandrian text, which in ver. 
27 omitted the words: who has preceded me. Weiss attempts to escape this 
difficulty by making the formula of quotation: he of whom TI said, ver. 30, 
relate simply to the words: cometh after me, and not to those which follow, 
who has preceded me, an unfortunate expedient which cannot satisfy any 
one. For the emphasis, as the end of the verse shows, is precisely on the 
words which Weiss thus treats as insignificant. The systematic partisans 
of the Alexandrian text must, therefore, bring themselves to acknowledge, 
in this case also, that that text is no more infallible than the Byzantine or 
the Greco-Latin. 

But how can John the Baptist have the boldness to give such a testi- 
mony to this mere Jew, like all the rest whom he had before him there, 
and to proclaim Him as the Redeemer of men, the being whom God had 
drawn forth from the depth of eternal existence that He might give Him 
to the world? He explains this himself in vv. 31-33: 

Ver. 31. “ And neither did I know him ; but that he might be manifested to 
Israel, I am come baptizing with water? The word xayé, and neither I, placed 
at the beginning and repeated, as it is in ver. 33, has necessarily an espe- 
cial emphasis. The meaning is obvious; he has just said to his hearers: 
“ He whom you know not.” When, therefore, he adds: “ And neither did 
I know him,” it is clear that he means: “And neither did I, when he 
came to present himself to me to be baptized, know him any more than 
you now know him.” Weiss and Keil object to this meaning, that it can- 


lInstead of mepe (touching), & B C and Orig. 2B CG LPT» A Or. reject tw before 
(twice) read umép (on behalf of ). véare. 


CHAP. I. 30, 31. 315 


not be applied to the two kayo of vy. 33, 34. We shall see that this is not 
correct. According to these interpreters the “and I” signifies: “ J, for 
my part, that is, according to my mere human individuality, and inde- 
pendently of the divine revelation.” But it is this meaning which is in- 
applicable to ver. 34; and besides, it is very far-fetched. John means: I 
did not know him absolutely when he came to present himself to me; I 
did not know, therefore, that He was the Messiah. But we must not neg- 
lect to draw from this only natural meaning the important consequence 
which is implied init: that John also did not know Jesus as a man, as the Son 
of Mary; for, if he had known Him as such, it would have been impossi- 
ble for him not to know Him also as the Messiah. He could not be ignor- 
ant of the circumstances which had accompanied his own birth and that 
of Jesus. If, therefore, he did not know Jesus as Messiah, no more did he 
know Him personally. And this can be understood: having lived in the 
wilderness up to the time of his manifestation to Israel (Luke i. 80), he 
might indeed have heard the marvelous circumstances of his own birth 
and of the birth of the Son of Mary related by his parents, but without 
having ever seen Him. It must necessarily, even, have been so, in order 
to his not recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, when He presented Himself to 
Him for baptism. And it is only in this way that the testimony given by 
him to Jesus is raised above all suspicion of bias. This is the reason why 
John brings out this circumstance with so much stress by the three suc- 
cessive kayo. Here is the guarantee of the truth of his testimony. But, 
in this case, how can we explain the word which John addresses to Jesus 
in the narrative of Matthew (iii. 14): “I have need to be baptized of 
thee.” To resolve this difficulty, it is not necessary to resort to the expe- 
dient, which was found already in the Gospel of the Hebrews and which 
Liicke has renewed,—that of placing this conversation between John and 
Jesus after the baptism of the latter. We have already recalled the fact 
that, according to Matt. iii. 6 and Mk. i. 5, the baptism of John was pre- 
ceded, on the part of the neophyte, by an act of confession of sins. The 
confession which the forerunner heard proceeding from the mouth of 
Jesus might easily convince him that he had to do with a more holy being 
than himself, who had a deep sense of sin and condemned it, as he had 
never felt and condemned it himself, and could thus extort from him the 
exclamation which Matthew relates. Not knowing Jesus personally, John 
received Him as he did every other Israelite; after having heard Him 
speak of the sin of the world, he caught sight of the first gleam of the 
truth ; finally, the scene which followed completed his conviction. 

The logical connection between this clause and the following one is this: 
“And that I might bring to an end that ignorance in which I still was, 
even as you are now, is the very reason why God has sent me to baptize.” 
The Baptist’s ministry had undoubtedly a more general aim : to prepare 
the people for the Kingdom of God by repentance, or, as he has said him- 
self in ver. 22: “to make straight the way of the Lord.” But he makes 
prominent here only that which forms the culminating point of his min- 
istry, the testimony borne to the person of the Messiah, without which all 


316_ FIRST PART. 


his labor would have been useless. The article 7@ before idat: (the water) 
appears to me to have been wrongly rejected by the Alexandrian author- 
ities; there is something dramatic in it: “I am come to baptize with that 
water” (pointing to the Jordan). Without the article, there would be a 
tacit contrast between the baptism of water and another (that of the Spirit), 
which is not in the thought of the context. John now explains how that 
ignorance ceased for him on the occasion of the baptism which he began 
to solemnize by the command of God. 

Ver. 382. “And John bore witness saying : I have seen the Spirit descending 
as! a dove, and it abode* upon Him.” This declaration is introduced with 
a peculiar solemnity by the words : “And John bore witness.” Here, indeed, 
is the decisive act, as Hengstenberg calls it, the punctum saliens of the 
entire ministry of John the Baptist, his Messianic testimony properly so 
called. With what sense had John seen? With the bodily eye, or with the 
inner sense? This is to ask whether the fact mentioned here took place 
only in the spiritual world, or also in the external world. According to 
the narratives of Mark (i. 10, 11), and of Matthew (iii. 16, 17), it was the 
object of the perception of Jesus only. “And behold, the heavens were 


opened, and he saw the Spirit... ” (Matt.): “ And straightway coming 
out of the water he saw...” (Mark). In Luke the narrative is com- 
pletely objective: “Jt came to pass that ..... the heaven was opened” 


(ili. 21,22). But the narrative in Matthew makes the Baptist also partici- 
pate in this heavenly manifestation by the form of the declaration of 
God: “ This is my Son;” not as in Mark and Luke: “ Thou art my Son.” 
The divine declaration in Matthew addresses itself, therefore, not to Jesus 
who is the object, but to him who is the witness of it, namely, John. 
Now, if it was perceived simultaneously by Jesus and by John, it must 
have had an objective reality, as the narrative of Luke says. The follow- 
ing is, perhaps, the way in which we can represent to ourselves the rela- 
tion between the perception of Jesus and that of John: The divine 
communication, properly so called (the declaration of the Father and the 
communication of the Spirit), was given from God to Jesus, and the latter 
had knowledge of the fact at once by the impression which He received, 
and by a vision which rendered it sensible to him. As to John, he was 
associated in the perception of this symbolic manifestation, and thereby 
initiated into the spiritual fact, of which it was as if the covering. Thus 
the voice which said to Jesus: “ Thou art my Son,” sounded within him 
in this form: “ This is my Son.” Neander cannot admit that a symbolic 
communication, a vision, could have found a place in the relation be- 
tween Jesus and God. But this rule is applicable only to the time which 
followed the baptism. It has been wrongly concluded from the 
expression, I have seen, that, according to the fourth Gospel, the 
vision was only perceived by John, to the exclusion of Jesus. It is 
forgotten that the forerunner, in his present account, has no other aim 


1 Instead of woec which T. R. reads with 8 28 reads pevoy instead of emecver. 
Mjj.. 8 A BC and 8 Mjj. read ws. 


CHAP. I. 32. okt 


but to justify his testimony. For this purpose he does not have to speak 
of anything else than that which he has himself seen. This is the reason 
why he relates the fact of the baptism only from the point of view of his 
own perception. 

In the fact here described, we must distinguish the real gift made to 
Jesus, which is indicated by the narrative in these words: the Spirit de- 
scending and abiding upon Him; and the symbolic representation of this 
gift intended for the consciousness of Christ and for that of John: the 
visible form ‘of the dove. The heaven as we behold it with the bodily eye, 
is the emblem of the state perfect in holiness, in knowledge, in power, in 
felicity. It is, consequently, in the Scriptures the symbol of the place 
where God manifests His perfections, in all their splendor, where His 
glory shines forth perfectly, and from which the supernatural revelations 
and forces proceed. John sees descending from the sky, which is rent, 
a luminous form like a dove, which rests and abides upon Jesus. This 
symbol is nowhere employed in the Old Testament to represent the Holy 
Spirit. In the Syrian religions, the dove was the image of the force of 
nature which broods over all beings. But this analogy is too remote for 
the explanation of our passage. The words of Matt. x. 16: ‘‘ Be ye harm- 
less as doves,’ have no direct relation to the Holy Spirit. We find some 
passages in the Jewish Rabbis, where the Spirit who hovered over the 
waters (Gen. 1. 8) is connected with the Spirit of the Messiah, and com- 
pared to a dove, which hovers over its young without touching them (see 
Liicke, p.426). Perhaps this comparison, familiar to the Jewish mind, is that 
which explains for us, most naturally, the present form of the divine reve- 
lation. This emblem was admirably adapted to the decisive moment of 
the baptism of Jesus. It was a matter, indeed, of nothing less than the 
new creation, which was to be the consummation of the first creation. 
Humanity passed at that instant from the sphere of the natural or psy- 
chical life to that of the spiritual life, with a view to which it had been 
created at the first, 1 Cor. xv. 46. The creative Spirit which had of old 
brooded with His life-giving power over chaos, to draw from it a world full 
of order and harmony, was going, as if by a new incubation, to transform 
the first humanity into a heavenly humanity. But that which must here 
be observed is the organic form which the luminous apparition assumes. 
An organism is an indivisible whole. At Pentecost, the Spirit descends 
in the form of “cloven tongues (Siauepifduevac yAdooar)” which distribute 
themselves among the believers. This is the true symbol of the way in 
which the Holy Spirit dwells in the Church, distributing to each one His 
gifts according as He pleases (1 Cor. xii. 11). But at the baptism of Jesus, 
the fact is another and the emblem is different. The Spirit descends 
upon Christ in His fullness. “ God,” it is said in iii. 84, “ gives not to Him 
the Spirit by measure.” Comp. Is. xi. 1, 2, where the seven forms of the 
Spirit, enumerated in order to designate His fullness, come to rest upon 
the Messiah. We must notice, finally, the term to abide, which is a pre- 
cise allusion to the word py) in this passage of Isaiah (xi. 2). The 
prophets received occasional inspirations: the hand of the Lord was upon 


318 FIRST PART. 


them; then, withdrawing Himself, the Spirit left them to themselves. It 
was thus, also, with John the Baptist. But Jesus will not only be visited 
by the Spirit; the Spirit will dwell in Him, and will even one day be 
poured forth from Him, as if from His source, upon believers; this is the 
reason why in ver. 33 the idea of abiding is placed in. close connection 
with that of baptizing with the Holy Spirit. The reading dcei emphasizes 
more strongly even than the simple oc the purely symbolic character of 
the luminous appearance. The yzévov of the Sinaitic MS. is a correction 
arising from the kataBaivoyv which precedes. The proposition is broken 
off designedly (kai guecvev), in order to make more fully apparent the idea 
of abiding, by isolating it from what precedes. The construction of the 
accusative éx’ aizévy, upon Him, with the verb of rest to abide, springs 
from the living character of the relation, (comp. ver. 1 and 18). But had 
John the Baptist properly interpreted the vision? Had he not ascribed 
to it a meaning which it did not have? This last possible doubt is 
answered by the fact related in the following verse. 

Ver. 33. “And neither did I know him; but he who sent me to baptize with 
water, he said tome: The man on whom thou shalt see the Spirit descend and 
abide, is he who baptizeth with the Holy Spirit.” Not only was a sign given 
(ver. 832); but this sign was that which had been promised, and the mean- 
ing of which had been indicated beforehand. No human arbitrariness can, 
therefore, mingle itself with this testimony which John renders to Jesus. 
Kayo: And I repeat it to you: When He presented Himself, I did not know 
Him any more than you now know Him. Ihave then placed here nothing 
of my own. The expression 6 zéupac, He who sent me, has something solemn 
and mysterious in it; John evidently means to designate thereby God Him- 
self who had spoken to him in the desert and given him his commission. 
This commission included: 1. The command to baptize; 2. The promise 
to reveal to him the Messiah on the occasion of the baptism; 3. The indi- 
cation of the sign by which He should be manifested to him; 4. The com- 
mand to bear testimony to Him in Israel. The emphatic resumption of 
the subject by the pronoun éxezvoc, he, with its meaning which is so emphatic 
in John, makes prominent this idea: That everything in this testimony 
proceeds from Jehovah, and Jehovah only. Weiss, who is not willing to 
acknowledge the special and commonly exclusive sense which this pronoun 
has in the fourth Gospel, thinks that it serves here to place God, as the 
more remote subject, in contrast with Jesus, as the nearest object. But to 
what purpose mark a contrast between Jesus and God? The pronoun 
indisputably signifies: “He and not another.” The sign had been 
announced by God Himself. The words é9’ éy av (on whom), indicate the 
most unlimited contingency : Whoever he may be, though he be the poor- 
est of the Israelites. The act of baptizing with the Holy Spirit is indicated 
here as the peculiar work of the Messiah. By the baptism of water, 
John gives to the repentant sinner the pledge of pardon and the promise 
of sanctification; by the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Messiah realizes 
this last promise, and accomplishes thereby the highest destiny of the 
human soul. — 


CHAP. I. 33. 319 


The Gift made to Jesus in the Baptism. 


Vv. 32, 33, suggest an important question: Did Jesus really receive any- 
thing at His baptism? Meyer denies this, alleging that this idea has no 
support in our Gospel, and that, if the Synoptics say more, it is because 
they contain a tradition which had been already altered. The real fact was 
solely the vision granted to John in view of the testimony which he was to 
render to Jesus. This vision was transformed by tradition into the event related 
by the Synoptics. The idea of the real communication of the Holy Spirit to Jesus 
would be incompatible with that of the incarnation of the Logos. Liicke and 
de Wette think, also, that Jesus received nothing new at that moment. John was 
only instructed, by means of the vision, as to a permanent fact in the life of Jesus, His 
communion with the Holy Spirit. Neander, Tholuck and Ebrard think that there 
was simply progress in the consciousness which Jesus had of Himself. Baumgarten- 
Crusius, Kahnis, Luthardt, Gress, allow a real communication, but only with refer- 
ence to the task which Jesus had to fulfill, that of His own ministry, and of the 
communication of the Holy Spirit to other men. The opinion of Meyer, as well 
as that of Liicke, sacrifices the narrative of the Synoptics, and even that of John 
to a dogmatic prejudice; for John saw the Spirit not only abiding, but descending, 
and this last feature must correspond to a reality, as well as the other. The view 
of Neander is true, but inadequate. There was certainly wrought, at that moment, 
a decided advance in the consciousness of Jesus, as is indicated by the fact of the 
divine address: Thou art my Son ; but the symbol of the descent of the dove must also 
correspond to a real fact. Finally, the view which admits an actual gift, but only 
in relation to the public activity of Jesus, appears to me superficial. In a life so 
completely one as that of Jesus, where there is nothing purely ritual, where the 
external is always the manifestation of the internal, the beginning of a new activity 
supposes a change in His own personal life. 

When we lay hold of the idea of the incarnation with the force with which it is 
apprehended and presented by Paul and John (see ver. 14, and the Appendix to 
the Prologue), when we recognize the fact that the Logos divested Himself of the 
divine state, and that He entered into a really human state, in order to accom- 
plish the normal development originally assigned to every man, there is nothing 
further to prevent us from holding that, after having accomplished the task of the 
first Adam on the pathway of free obedience, He should have seen opening before 
Him the sphere of the higher life for which man is destined, and that, as the first 
among the violent who take the kingdom of heaven by force, He should have 
forced the entrance into it for Himself and for all. Undoubtedly, His entire 
existence had passed on under the constant influence of the Holy Spirit which had 
presided over his birth. At every moment, He had obeyed this divine guide, and 
each time this docility had been immediately rewarded by a new impulse. The 
vessel was filled in proportion as it enlarged, and it enlarged in proportion as it 
was filled. But to be under the operation of the Spirit is not to possess the Spirit 
(xiv. 17). With the hour of the baptism, the moment came when the previous 
development was to be transformed into the definite state, that of the perfect stuture 
(Eph.iv. 13). “ First, that which is psychical,” says Paul, in 1 Cor. xv. 46, “ after- 
wards that which is spiritual.” If the incarnation is a verity, this law must apply 
to the development of Jesus, as much as to that of every other man. Till then, 
the Spirit was upon Him éz’ airé [rd zadiov] Luke ii. 40; He increased, under 


* 


320 FIRST PART. 


this divine influence, in wisdom and grace. From the time of the baptism, the 
Spirit becomes the principle of His psychical and physical activity, of His whole 
personal life; He can begin to be called Lord-Spirit (2 Cor. iii. 17, 18) ; life-giving 
Spirit (1 Cor. xv. 45). 

The baptism, therefore, constitutes in His interior life as decisive a crisis as 
does the ascension in His external state. The open heaven represents His initia- 
tion into the consciousness of God and of His designs. The voice: Thou art my 
Son, indicates the revelation to His inmost consciousness of His personal relation 
with God, of His eternal dignity as Son, and, at the same time, of the boundless- 
ness of divine love towards Him, and towards humanity on which such a gift is 
bestowed. He fully apprehends the name of Father as applied to God, and can 
proclaim it to the world. The Holy Spirit becomes His personal life, makes Him 
the principle and source of life for all men. Nevertheless, His glorification is 
not yet; the natural life, whether psychical or physical, still exists in Him, as 
such. It is after the ascension only that His soul and body will be completely 
spiritualized (o®ua mvevuarixdy, 1 Cor. xv. 44). 

But, it is asked, does not the gift of the Holy Spirit form a needless repetition 
of the miraculous birth? By no means; for in this latter event the Holy Spirit 
acts only as a life-giving force in the stead and place of the paternal principle. 
He wakens into the activity of life the germ of a human existence deposited in 
the womb of Mary, the organ prepared for the Logos that He may realize there a 
human development; in the same way as, on the day of creation, the soul of the 
first man, breath of the creating God, came to dwell in the bodily organ prepared 
for its abode and for its earthly activity (Gen. ii. 7). 

Some modern theologians, in imitation of some of the Fathers, think that the 
Logos is confounded by John with the Spirit. But undoubtedly every one will 
acknowledge the truth of this remark of Liicke: ‘No more could we say, on the 
one hand, ‘ The Spirit was made flesh,’ than we could say, on the other, ‘I have 
seen the Logos descend upon Jesus.’” The distinction between the Logos and 
the Spirit, scrupulously observed by John, even in chaps. xiv.-xvi., where Reuss 
thinks it is sometimes wholly effaced (Hist. de la th. chrét. ii., p. 583 f.), is the 
following: The Logos is the principle of objective revelation, and, through his 
incarnation, the culminating point of that revelation, while the Spirit is the prin- 
ciple acting internally by which we assimilate to ourselves that revelation subject- 
ively. Hence it results that, without the Spirit, the revelation remains for us a 
dead letter, and Jesus a simple historical personage with whom we do not enter 
into any communion. It is by the Spirit alone that we appropriate to ourselves 
the revelation contained in the word and person of Jesus. Thus, from the time 
when the Spirit begins to do His work in us, it is Jesus Himself who begins to 
live within us. As, through the Spirit, Jesus lived on earth by the Father, so, 
through the Spirit, the believer lives by Jesus (vi. 57). This distinction of 
offices between Christ and the Spirit is steadily maintained throughout our 
whole Gospel.! 


This solemn testimony being given, the forerunner expresses the feeling 
of satisfaction with which this grand task accomplished inspires him, yet 
1 Hilgenfeld, identifying the descent of the ing to the Valentinians), finds here a trace of 
Holy Spirit at the baptism with the coming Gnosticism. This idea has not the least sup- 


of the on Logos into the man Jesus (accord- port in the text. 


% 


CHAP. I. 34-36, 321 


so as, at the same time, to make his hearers understand that their own 
task is beginning. 

Ver. 34. “ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of 
God.” ! The éyo, J, in xayé, distinguishes, as in vy. 31, 33, him who alone 
was to see, and who also (xai) has scen, from all the others who were to 
believe on the ground of his testimony. The perfects: I have seen and I 
have testificd indicate facts accomplished once for all and abiding for the 
future. The é7, that, depends on the second verb only; the verb fo see is 
without an object; it is the act which is of importance, as the condition of 
that of testifying. The term Son of God characterizes a being as a repre- 
sentative of the divinity in a particular function. It is applied in the Old 
Testament to angels, to judges, to kings, and, finally, to the Messiah: 
“Thou art my Son ; to-day have I begotten thee” (Ps. ii. 7, 12); but there is 
a difference in the mode of representation in each case. An ambassador 
represents his sovereign, but otherwise than does the son of the latter, for 
the son, while representing the sovereign, represents in him also his 
father. Ver. 30 proves that John the Baptist takes the word Son here in 
the loftiest sense which can be attached to it; the being whose existence 
is united to that of God by an incomparable bond, and who comes to 
fulfill here on earth the function of Saviour. 


IlIl.—Third Testimony: vy. 35-87. 


Vy. 35, 36. “ On the next day, John was again standing there, and two of 
his disciples with him ; 36, and fixing his eyes upon Jesus as he passed he 
saith : Behold the Lamb of God.” Holy impressions, great thoughts, an 
unutterable expectation doubtless filled, even on the following day, the 
hearts of those who had heard the words of the forerunner. The next 
day, John is at his post ready to continue his ministry as the Baptist. 
We are not at all authorized to suppose, with de Wette, that the two disci- 
ples who were with him had not been present at the scene of the preceding 
day. Far from favoring this idea, the brevity of the present testimony 
leads us rather to suppose that John confines himself to recalling that of 
the day before to persons who had heard it. The expression é rév 
uatytov, of his disciples, intimates that he had a very considerable 
number of them. Of these two disciples, one was Andrew (ver. 40) ; it is 
difficult to suppose that the other was not the author of the narrative 
which is to follow. All the subsequent details have no special importance 
except for the one to whom they recalled the most decisive and happiest 
hour of his life. The fact that his person remains anonymous, while the 
four others who play a part in the narrative are all named, confirms this 
conclusion (Introd. p. 203). We may notice a certain difference be- 
tween this day and the day before in the relation of Jesus to John. The 
day before, Jesus came to John, as to the one who was to introduce Him 


1Instead of o wos tov Oeov, & reads o exAextos tov Oeov. It is the only document which 
presents this plainly indefensible reading. 


21 


* 


322 FIRST PART, 


to future believers. On this day, the testimony is officially given; He 
has only in a sense to receive from the hands of His forerunner the souls 
which His Father has prepared through him. Like the magnet which 
one moves through the sand to attract metallic particles, He simply 
approaches the group which surrounds the Baptist, for the purpose of 
deciding some of those who compose it to follow Him. The conduct of 
Jesus is, therefore, perfectly intelligible. It is regulated according to the 
natural course of the divine work. The Church is not torn, it is gathered, 
from the tree of the theocracy. This easiness in the course is the seal of God. 

As Jesus enters into the plan of God, John the Baptist enters into the 
thought of Jesus. A tender and respectful scruple might detain the two 
disciples near their old master. John the Baptist himself frees them from 
this bond, and begins to realize that saying, which from this moment 
becomes his motto: ‘“ He must increase, but I nust decrease.” The word 
éuBrépac indicates a penetrating look which searches its object to its 
depths (see ver. 42). The practical meaning of this new declaration of 
John was evidently this: “Go to Him.” Otherwise, to what purpose this 
repetition which adds nothing to the testimony of the day before, which, 
on the contrary, abridges it? Only this invitation is expressed in an 
indirect form, that of an affirmation respecting the person of Jesus, be- 
cause, as Luthardt says, attachment to Jesus was to be on their part an 
act of freedom based upon a personal impression, not a matter of obedi- 
ence to their old master. 

Ver. 37. “And the two disciples heard him speak’ thus, and they followed 
Jesus.” John’s word, which was an exclamation, was understood. It is 
very evident that, in the thought of the evangelist, these words: ‘And 
they followed Jesus,” conceal, under their literal sense, a richer meaning. 
This first step in following Jesus decided their whole life; the bond, appar- 
ently accidental, which was formed at that hour, was, in reality, an 
eternal bond. 


The Testimonies of the Forerunner. 


We have still to examine three questions which criticism has raised in regard 
to these testimonies. 

I. Baur and Keim? maintain that the narrative of the fourth Gospel denies, 
by its silence, the fact of the Baptism of Jesus by John; and this for the dogmatic 
reason, that it would have been contrary to the dignity of the Logos to receive the 
Holy Spirit.— Hilgenfeld himself rejects this view (inl. pp. 702 and 719): “The 
baptism of Jesus,” he says, “is supposed, not related”’ The second testimony of 
Jonn vy. 31 f., mentions it as an accomplished fact, and vv. 32, 33 imply it, since 
their meaning can only be this: “Among the Israelites who shall come to thy 
baptism, there shall be found one on whom, when thou shalt baptize him, thou 
shalt see the Spirit descend. . . . ” Holtzmann has recognized the indisputable 
bearing of this passage.* But if the fact is not related, it is simply, because, as we 


18 and B place avtov before AadovrTos. John.” 
2 Keim (I., p. 520): “The fourth Gospel is 3 Hilgenfeld’s Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol., 1872 
wholly ignorant of a baptism of Jesus by  p. 156 f. 


CHAP. I. 37. 323 


have discovered, the starting point of the narrative is chosen subsequently to the 
baptism. If the Logos-theory in our Gospel were to play the part which, in this 
case, Baur and Keim attribute to it, it would exclude from the history of Jesus 
many other facts which are related at full length by our evangelist. 

II. It has been regarded as inconceivable, that, after such a sign and such dec- 
larations, the Baptist could have addressed to Jesus, from the depths of his prison, 
this question: “Art thou he that should come, or are we to look for another” (Matt. 
xi. 3)? Strauss has derived from this proceeding of John, a ground for denying 
the whole scene of the baptism. Some of the Fathers supposed that the forerun- 
ner wished thereby only to strengthen the faith of his disciples by calling forth 
a positive declaration, on Jesus’ part, respecting His Messianic character. But 
the terms of the Synoptical account do not allow this meaning. Two circum- 
stances may be alleged which must have exercised an unfavorable influence upon 
John’s faith ; first, his imprisonment (Meyer), then the malevolent disposition of 
his disciples with regard to Jesus (ill. 26), which might have reacted at length 
on the already depressed spirit of their master. These two circumstances un- 
doubtedly prepared the way for the shaking of faith produced in John ; but they 
cannot suffice to explain it; we must add, with Bdumlein, the fact that there was 
in John, besides the prophet, the natural man who was by no means secure from 
falling. This is what Jesus gives us to understand when, in His reply, He said, 
evidently thinking of John: “Blessed is he who is not offended in me” (Matt. xi. 6 
comp. with ver. 11). Liicke has explained this fall by the striking contrast 
between the expectation, which John had expressed, of a powerful and judicial 
activity of the Messiah in order to purify the theocracy, and the humble and 
patient labor of Jesus. A comparison of the reply of the latter to the messengers 
of John (Matt. xi. 4-6) with the proclamations of John (Matt. iii. 10, 12) is 
enough to convince us of the justice of this observation. But to all this we must 
still add a last and more decisive fact. It is this: John did not for an instant 
doubt concerning the divine mission of Jesus and concerning this mission as 
higher than his own. This follows, first, from the fact that it is to Jesus Himself 
that he addresses himself in order to be enlightened, and then, from the very 
meaning of his question: “Art thou he that should come or are we to look for 
another (literally, a second)?” We must recall to mind here the prevailing 
doubt, at that time, in relation to the prophet, like to Moses, whose coming was 
to prepare the way for that of the Messiah (according to Deut. xviii. 18). Some 
identified him with the Messiah himself; comp. John vi. 14, 15: “It is of a truth 
the prophet. ... They were going to take him by force, to make him king.” 
Others, on the contrary, distinguished this prophet par excellence, from the Mes- 
siah properly so-called ; comp. vii. 40, 41. They attributed, probably, to the first 
of these personages the spiritual side of the expected transformation, and to the 
Messiah, as King descended from David, the political side of this renovation. John 
the Baptist had, at first, united these two offices in the single person of Jesus. 
But learning in his prison that the work of Jesus limited itself to working mir- 
acles of healing, to giving forth the preachings of a purely prophetic character, 
he asks himself whether this anointed one of the Holy Spirit would not have as 
His part in the Messianic work only the spiritual office, and whether the political 
restoration and the outward judgment announced by him would not be devolved 
upon a subsequent messenger; to the divine prophet, the work of pardon and 
regeneration; to the King of a Davidic race, the acts of power which were des- 


324 FIRST PART. 

tined to realize the external triumph of the Kingdom of God. This is precisely 
what the form of the question in Matthew expresses: étepov, not dAdov: a second 
(Messiah) ; not: another (as Messiah) : this expression really ascribes to Jesus the 
Messianic character, only not exclusively.'. At the foundation, this distinction 
which was floating before the eyes of the Baptist had in it nothing erroneous. It 
answers quite simply to the two offices of Jesus, at His first and second coming. 
At the first coming, pardon and the Spirit; at the second, judgment and royalty. 
The Jewish learned men were led by the apparently contradictory prophecies of 
the Old Testament, to an analogous distinction. -Buatorf (Lexic. Chaldaic. p. 1273) 
and Hisenmenger (Entdeckt, Judenth. pp. 744 f.) cite a mass of rabbinical passages 
which distinguish two Messiahs,—the one, whom they call the son of Joseph, or of 
Ephraim, to whom they ascribe the humiliations foretold respecting the Messiah ; 
the other, whom they name the son of David, to whom they apply the prophecies 
of glory. The first will make war, and will perish; for him the sufferings; the 
second will raise the first to life again and will live eternally. “Those who shall 
escape from the sword of the first, will fall under that of the second.” ‘The one 
shall not bear envy against the other, juxta fidem nostram,” says Jarchi (ad. Jes. xi. 
13). These last words attest the high antiquity of this idea. 

III. Renan (Vie de Jésus, pp. 108 f.) draws a poetic picture of the relation 
between “these two young enthusiasts, full of the same hopes and the same hates, 
who were able to make common cause and mutually to support each other.” He 
describes Jesus arriving from Galilee with “a little school already formed,” and 
John fully welcoming “this swarm of young Galileans,” even though they do not 
attach themselves to him but form a separate band around Jesus. “ We have 
not many examples, it is true,” observes Renan, “of the head of a school eagerly 
welcoming the one who is tu succeed him;” but is not youth capable of all self-ab- 
negations? Behold the romance: the history shows us Jesus arriving alone and 
receiving from John himself these young Galileans who are for the future to 
accompany Him. We can understand how there is in this story a troublesome 
fact for those who are unwilling to explain the history except by natural 
causes. 

The manner in which John the Baptist, at the height of his ascendant and his 
glory, throws himself immediately and voluntarily into the shade that he may 
leave the field free for one younger than himself, who until then was completely 
obscure, cannot be explained by the natural generosity of youth. Conscious, as he 
was, of the divinity of his mission, John could not thus retire into the shade 
except before a divine demonstration of the higher mission of Jesus. The con- 
duct of John the Baptist, as attested by our four evangelists, remains for the 
historian, who does not recognize here the work of God, an insoluble problem. 
Before closing, one word more on a fancy of Keim. This scholar alleges (I., p 


nounced (chap. 14, Latin transl. published by 
Ceriani), the coming of a supreme messenger, 


1 The expectation of a great prophet, who 
is not expressly designated as Messiah, may 


be proved from the work entitled The Assump- 
tion of Moses, composed in the years which 
followed the death of Herod the Great (comp. 
Wieseler, Stud. u. Kritiken, 1868, and Schirer, 
Lehrbuch, ete., p. 540). In this work, which 
contains the most faithful description of the 
spiritual state of the Jewish people at the 
very time of the birth of Jesus, there is an- 


nuntius in summo constitutus, whose hands 
shall be filled,in order to effect the deliver- 
ance of the people. Moses himself receives 
only the name of great messenger, mugnus 
nuntius (c. 18). This messenger will, there- 
fore, be the final prophet, a Moses of the 
second power; but no royal and Messianic 
title is ascribed to him. 


CHAP. I. 38, 39. 325 


525) that, in opposition to the Synoptical account (comp. especially Luke iii. 21), 
our Gospel makes Jesus the first of all the people to come to the baptism of John.! 
Where do we find in John’s narrative a word which justifies this assertion? But: 
sic volo, sic jubeo ! 

IV. We are now able to embrace the Messianic testimony of the Baptist in its 
totality. First, the calling of the people to repentance and baptism, with the 
vague announcement of the nearness of the Messiah. He comes! (See the Synoptics.) 
Then, the three days which form the beginning of the narrative of John: He is 
present! Behold Him! Follow Him! Finally, the last summons : Woe unto you, if 
you refuse to follow Him! (iii. 28-36.) This totality is so much the more remark- 
able as the particular elements of it are scattered in several writings and different 
narratives. 


SECOND SECTION. 
I. 38-52. 
BEGINNINGS OF THE WORK OF JESUS.—BIRTH OF FAITH. 


Testimony is the condition of faith. For faith is, at the outset, the ac- 
ceptance of a divine fact on the foundation of testimony. But there is 
here only an external relation between the believer and the object of faith. 
In order to become living, faith must enter into direct contact with its ob- 
ject. In the case which occupies our thought, this contact demanded 
personal manifestations of Jesus, fitted to change believers into witnesses, 
and to form a direct connection between their hearts and Jesus. This is 
precisely what the following narratives describe to us. They are divided 
into two groups; the first comprising that which relates to the three ear- 
liest disciples, Andrew, John and Peter (vv. 38-43); the second, that which 
concerns Philip and Nathanael (vy. 44-52). 


I.—First Group : vv. 388-48. 


We have just mentioned John. Almost all the adversaries of the au- 
thenticity themselves acknowledge that the author, in relating his story as 
he does here, wishes to pass himself off as one of the apostles. Even 
Hilgenfeld says: “ Andrew and an unnamed person who is assuredly 
John.” 

Vv. 88, 39. “ Then? Jesus turned and saw them following and saith unto 
them, What seek ye? 89. They said unto Him: Rabbi (which is to say, Mas- 
ter) where dwellest thou?” Jesus, hearing footsteps behind Him, turns 
about. He sees these two young men who are following Him with the de- 
sire to accost Him, but who do not venture to begin the conversation by 
addressing Him. He anticipates them: “ What seek ye?” He who thus 
interrogates them knows full well what they are seeking after. He knows 
to whom the desire of Israel and the sighing of humanity tend; He is 
not ignorant that He is Himself their object. By their answer, the disci- 


1“Das vierte Evangelium kehrt die Dinge sein.” 
um und lasst Jesum zuerst auf der Stelle 1Mjj. and 30 Mnn. omit ée. 


326 FIRST PART. 


ples modestly express the desire to speak with Him in private. The title 
Rabbi is undoubtedly quite inferior to that which the testimony of John 
had revealed to them concerning Jesus. But discretion prevents them 
for the moment from saying more. This title, at the same time, expresses 
indirectly the intention to offer themselves to Him as disciples. The 
translation of this term, which is added by the evangelist, proves that the 
author is writing for Greek readers. 

Ver. 40. “ He saith unto them: Come, and you shall see? They came* and 
saw where he abode: and they remained with him that day ; it was * about the 
tenth hour.” The disciples made inquiries as to His dwelling, that they 
might afterwards visit Him there. Jesus invites them to follow Him at 
once: “Come immediately.” This is, indeed, what the present épyeo@e in- 
dicates: the continuance of the going. | It has been said that this sense 
would require the aorist. This is an error. The aorist would signify : 
set about going. Is the reading of the Vatican MS.: ‘Come and 
you shal! see,” preferable to that of the greater part of the other docu- 
ments? We may suppose that the latter comes from ver. 47. Where 
was Jesus dwelling? Was it in a caravansary, or in a friend’s house? 
We do not know. No more do we know what was the subject of their 
conversation. But we do know the result of it. Andrew’s exclamation 
in ver. 42 is the enthusiastic expression of the effect produced on the two 
disciples. When we remember what the Messiah was to the thought of a 
Jew, we understand how powerful and profound must have been the im- 
pression produced upon them by Jesus, to the end that they should not 
hesitate to proclaim as Messiah this poor and unostentatious man. In 
the remark: “ And they remained with Him that day,” all the sweetness of a 
recollection still living in the heart of the evangelist at the moment of his 
writing, finds expression. The tenth hour may be understood in two ways : 
either as four o’clock in the afternoon; John would thus reckon the 
hours as they were generally reckoned among the ancients, beginning from 
six o’clock in the morning,—we shall see that this is the most natural in- 
terpretation in iv. 6, 52, and also in xix. 14;—or as ten o’clock in the morn- 
ing; he would, thus, adopt the mode of reckoning of the Roman Forum, 
which has become that of modern nations, and according to which the 
reckoning is from midnight. Rettig, Ebrard, Westcott, etc., think that the 
author of our Gospel reckons throughout in this way. It would give a 
satisfactory account of the expression that duy. But this expression is 
also very well explained, if the question is of four o’clock in the afternoon ; 
and that by the contrast with the idea of the mere visit which the two 
youths had thought of making. Instead of continuing a few moments, the 
interview was prolonged until the end of the day. Comp. the remarks iv. 6, 


1Vy. 38,39 (in the Greek text) are united oweoOe (you shall see). 


in our version. Ver. 40 thereby becomes ver. 3T. R. with 13 Mjj. omits the ovv (therefore) 
39, and so on. here, which is read by NA BCLX A, 
2T. R. reads céere (see), with & A and 13 4T. R. reads Se (now) after wpa with some 


other Mjj., almost all the Mnn., It. Vg. Cop., Mnn. only. 
while BC Lsome Mnn. Syr. and Orig. read 


CHAP. I. 40-42. 327 
iv. 52, xix. 14.1. This indication of the tenth hour has sometimes been 
applied, not to the moment when the disciples arrived, but that when they 
left Jesus. In this case, however, John would undoubtedly have added a 
limiting expression, such as ére a777.00v, when they departed. It is the hour 
when he found, not that when he /eft, that the author wished to indicate. 
Faith is no sooner born of testimony, than it extends itself by the same 
means : 

Vv. 41, 42. “ Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard 
John’s words and followed Jesus. 42. As the first, he? findeth his own brother 
Simon, and saith to him: We have fownd the Messiah (which means: the 
Christ).” At this point of the narrative, the author names his companion 
Andrew. It is because the moment has come to point out his relationship 
to Simon Peter, a relationship which exercised so decisive an influence on 
the latter and on the work which is beginning. The designation of An- 
drew as Simon Peter’s brother, is so much the more remarkable, since 
Simon Peter has not as yet figured in the narrative, and since the sur- 
name Peter did not as yet belong to him. This future apostle, is, there- 
fore, treated from the first as the most important personage of this his- 
tory. Let us remark, also, that this manner of designating Andrew assumes 
a full acquaintance already on the part of-the readers with the Gospel his- 
tory. Did Peter’s visit to Jesus take place on the same evening? Weiss 
and Keil declare that this is impossible, because of the expression that day 
(ver. 40), which leaves no place for this new visit. Westcott, on the con- 
trary says: “ All this evidently happened on the same day.” This second 
view, which is that of Meyer and Briickner, seems to me the only admissi- 
ble one. It follows, by a kind of necessity, from the exact enumeration 
of the days in this passage. See: the next day, vv. 29, 35, 44, and also ii. 1. 
Towards evening, the two disciples left Jesus for some moments, and Peter 
was brought by Andrew to Him while it was not yet night. 

How are we to explain the expressions “ first” (or in the first-place) and 
“his own brother”? These words have always presented a difficulty to 
interpreters. They contain, in fact, one of those small mysteries with 


1We owe to the kindness of M. André 
Cherbuliez the following points of informa- 
tion: AZlius Aristides, a Greek sophist of the 
second century, a contemporary of Polycarp, 
with whom he may have met in the streets of 
Smyrna, relates in his Sacred Discourses 
(book v.), that on his arrival in that city, he 
had, during the night, a dream in which the 
sun, rising over the public square, ordered 
him to hold, on that same day, a seance for 
declamation in the Council-hall at the fourth 
hour. This hour, according to the customs 
of the ancients, could only be ten o’clock in 
the morning,—the hour which Xenophon 
ealls that of the wA7j@ovca ayopa, when the 
whole population frequents the public square. 
So he found the hall quite full. In the first 
book, the deity having ordered him to take a 


bath, he chose the sixth hour as the most 
favorable to health. Now it was winter, and 
it was a cold bath which was in question. 
The hour was, therefore, that of noon. What 
leaves no doubt on this point, is the fact that 
he says to his friend Bassus who keeps him 
waiting: “Seest thou, the shadow is already 
turning.” The ordinary reckoning in Asia, 
therefore, was from six o’elock in the morn- 
ing. Langen has alleged in favor of the op- 
posite usage a passage from the Acts of the 
martyrdom of Polycarp (c. 7). But this pas- 
sage appears to us insufficient to prove the 
contrary of that which follows so plainly from 
the words of the Greek rhetorician. 

2Instead of the received reading mpwros, 
which is in 8% LT AA and 8 other Mjj..A B M 


T> X II some Mnn. Syr. read mpwrov,. 
$ 


328 FIRST PART. 


which John’s narrative, at once so subtle and so simple, is full. The Mjj. 
which read the adverb or the accusative zpérov, are six in number, among 
them the Vatican: “He finds his own brother /irst (or in the first-place).” 
But with what brother would he be contrasted by this first? With the 
disciples who were found later, Philip and Nathanael? But it was not 
Andrew who found these; Jesus found Philip, and Philip Nathanael. 
And yet this would be the only possible sense of the accusative or the 
adverb zpdrov, The nominative zpéroc, therefore, must necessarily be 
read, with the Sinaitic MS. and the majority of the Mjj.: “As the first, 
Andrew finds his own brother.” This might strictly mean that they both 
set about seeking for Simon, and that Andrew was the first to find him, 
because, Simon being his brother, he knew better where to seek him; 
this would ina manner explain the 7dv idwv, his own, but in a manner 
very far-fetched. As it is impossible to make this very emphatic expres- 
sion a mere periphrasis of the possessive pronoun his, the author’s 
thought must be acknowledged to have been as follows: “On leaving, 
each one of them seeks his own brother: Andrew seeks Simon, and John 
his brother James; and it is Andrew who first succeeds in finding his 
own.” The xpérov may have been substituted for rpdroc under the influ- 
ence of the four following words in ov. 

The term Messiah, that is, the Anointed, from maschach, to anoint, was 
very popular; it was used even in Samaria (iv. 25). The Greek transla- 
tion of this title, Xpuoréc, again implies Greek readers. John had twice 
employed the Greek term in the preceding narrative (vv. 20 and 25); but 
here, in this scene of so personal a character, he likes to reproduce the 
Hebrew title (as he had done at ver. 39, as he is to do again in iy. 25), in 
order to preserve for his narrative its dramatic character. If we have 
properly explained this verse, we must conclude from it that James, 
the brother of John, was also among the young Galilean disciples 
of John the Baptist, and that John is not willing to name him any 
more than he is to name himself, or afterwards to name his mother, 
xix. 2. 

Ver. 43. “ And? he brought him to Jesus. Jesus, looking upon him fixedly, 
saith, Thou art Simon, son of Jonas,? thou shalt be called Cephas (which means: 
Peter).” The pres. he finds and he says (ver. 42) were descriptive; the aor. 
he brought indicates the transition to the following act: the presentation 
of Peter. The word iu$érew denotes a penetrating glance which reaches 
to the very centre of the individuality. This word serves to explain the 
following apostrophe ; for the latter is precisely the consequence of the 
way in which Jesus had penetrated the character of Simon, and had 
discovered in him, at the first look, the elements of the future Peter. It is 
not necessary to suppose that Jesus in a miraculous way knew the names 
of Simon and his father; Andrew, in presenting his brother, must have 
named him to Jesus. Instead of Jona, the three principal Alexandrian 


18 BL reject cat (and) before nyayev. of Iwva which is read in all the other Mjj. 
2S B L Italia Cop. read Iwavyvov instead and in almost all the Vss. 


CHAP. I. 43. 329 


authorities read John. The received reading is, perhaps, a correction 
according to Matt. xvi. 17 (son of Jonas), where there is no variation of 
reading and where the name Jonas might be itself an abbreviation of 
'Iwdvvov (John), as Weiss supposes. A change of name generally marks a 
change of life or of position. Gen. xvil. 5: “ Thy name shall be no more 
Abram (exalted father), but Abraham (father of a multitude).” Gen. xxxii. 28: 
“Thy name shall be no more Jacob (supplanter), but Israel (conqueror of God, 
in honorable combat).” The Aramaic word Képha (Hebrew, Keph), 
denotes a piece of rock. By this name, Jesus characterizes Simon as a 
person courageous enough and decided enough to become the principal 
support of the new society which He is about to found. There was 
surely in the physiognomy of this young fisherman, accustomed to brave 
the dangers of his profession, the expression of a masculine energy and 
of an originating power. In designating him by this new name, Jesus takes 
possession of him and consecrates him, with all his natural qualities, to 
the work which He is going to entrust to him. 

Baur regards this story as a fictitious anticipation of that in Matt. xvi. 
18; the author, from his dogmatic standpoint hastens to show forth in 
Jesus the omniscience of the Logos. But the éuBaépac, having regarded 
him fixedly, is by no means consistent with such an intention; and as for 
the expression: “ Thou. art Peter,’ Matt. xvi., it implies precisely a pre- 
vious expression in which Jesus had already conferred this surname upon 
him. Jesus starts, in each case, from that which is, to announce that 
which is to be; here: “ Thou art Simon; thou shalt be Peter;” in Mat- 
thew: thou art Peter; thou shalt really become what this name declares. 
Availing himself of the fact that Peter is mentioned here third, Hilgenfeld 
draws up his argument as prosecutor against the author, and says: “ Peter 
is thus deprived by him of the position of the first-called!” And he finds 
here a proof of the evangelist’s ill will towards this apostle. Reuss says, 
with the same idea, “ Peter is here very expressly put in the second 
place.” But the designation of Andrew as Peter’s brother (ver. 41), before 
the latter has appeared on the scene, and the magnificent surname which 
Jesus confers upon him at first sight, while no similar honor had been 
paid to his two predecessors—are there not here, in our narrative, so 
many points designed to exalt Simon Peter to the rank of the principal 
personage among all those who formed the original company, who sur- 
rounded Jesus? And if this narrative had been invented with the pur- 
pose of depreciating Peter, in order to give the first place to John, why 
make Andrew so prominent and place him even before the latter? And 
besides, of what consequence is the order of arrival here? Does not every 
unprejudiced reader feel that the narrative is what it is, simply because: 
the event happened thus. Comp., moreover, vi. 68 and xxi. 15-19 for the 
part ascribed to Peter in this Gospel. 


A contradiction has been found between this account and that of the calling of 
the same disciples in Galilee, after the miraculous draught of fishes (Matt. iv. 18- 
22; Mark i. 16-20; Luke vy. 1-11). De Wette, Briickner, Meyer himself, regard 


330 FIRST PART. 


any reconciliation as impossible, and give preference to the narrative of the fourth 
Gospel. To the view of Baur, on the contrary, it is our narrative which is an in- 
vention of the author. Liicke thinks that the two narratives can be harmonized ; 
that of John having reference to the call of the disciples to faith, that of the 
Synoptics, to their calling as preachers of the Gospel, in conformity with the 
words: “Iwill make you fishers of men.” The first view cannot positively explain 
how the Synoptical narrative could arise from the facts related here by John and 
altered by the oral tradition. Everything is too completely different in the two 
scenes; the place: here, Judea; there, Galilee; the time: here, the first days of 
Jesus’ ministry; there, a period already farther on; the persons: in the Synoptics, 
there is no reference either to Philip or Nathanael; on the other hand, James, 
who is not named here, is there expressly mentioned; the situation; here, a 
simple meeting; there, a fishing; finally, the mode: here, a spontaneous attach- 
ment; there, an imperative summons. The view of Baur, on the other hand, 
cannot explain how the author of the fourth Gospel, in the face of the Synoptical 
tradition received throughout the whole Church, could attempt to create a new 
history in all points of the calling of the principal apostles, and a history which 
positively glorifies Jesus much less than that of the Synoptics. For instead of 
gaining His disciples by the manifestation of His power, He simply receives them 
from John the Baptist. The view of Liicke is the only admissible one (see also 
Weiss, Keil and Westcott). Having returned to Galilee (ver. 44), Jesus went 
back for a time to the bosom of His own family, which transferred its residence, 
probably in order to accompany Him, to Capernaum (Matt. iv. 13; John ii. 12; 
comp. Mark iii. 31). In these circumstances, He naturally left His disciples also 
to return to the bosom of their families (Peter was married) ; and He called them 
again, afterwards, in a complete and decisive manner when the necessities of His 
work and of their spiritual education for their future task required it. The very 
readiness with which these young fishermen followed His call at that time (Syn- 
optic account),—leaving, at His first word, their family and their work to unite 
themselves with Him, implies that they had already sustained earlier relations to 
Him. Thus the account of the Synoptics, far from excluding that of John, im- 
plies it. Let us remember that the Synoptic narratives had for their essential 
object the public ministry of Jesus, and that, consequently, these writings could 
not omit a fact of such capital importance as the calling of the earliest disciples to 
the office of preachers. The fourth Gospel, on the contrary, having as its aim to 
describe the development of apostolic faith, was obliged to set in relief the scene 
which had been the starting point of this faith. We shall prove in many other 
cases this reciprocal relation between the two writings, which is explained by 
their different points of view and aims, 


II.—Second Group: vv. 44-52, 


The following narrative seems to be contrived for the purpose of driv- 
ing to despair, by its conciseness, the one who attempts to account for the 
facts from an external point of view. Does ver. 44 express merely the 
intention of setting out for Galilee? Or does it indicate an actual depart- 
ure? Where and how did Jesus find Philip and Nathanael? Were they 
also in Judea among the disciples of John the Baptist? Or did He meet 


CHAP. I. 4446. 331 
, 
them on His arrival in Galilee ?—Evidently, a narrative like this could 
proceed only from a man pre-occupied above all with the spiritual ele- 
ment in the history which he relates, and who, in consequence, simply 
sketches as slightly as possible the external side of the facts related. This 
is the general character of the narrative of the fourth Gospel. 

Vy. 44, 45: “The neat day he* resolved to set out for Galilee, and finds 
Philip ; and Jesus says to him : Follow me. 45. Now Philip was of Bethsaida, 
of the city of Andrew and Peter.” The aorist, 70éAncev (wished), indicates 
quite naturally, a realized wish. The words: “ He wished to set out and He 
finds,” are thus, equivalent to: “Aé the moment when He decides to set 
out, He finds.” Here is the juxtaposition of propositions which is so fre- 
quent in John (Introd., p. 1385). This mode of expression is irreconcilable 
with the idea that Jesus only met Philip at a later time in Galilee; 
the latter was, therefore, in the same region with Andrew, John and: 
Peter, and for the same reason. It was of importance to Jesus to sur- 
round Himself particularly with young men who had gone through with 
the preparation of the ministry and baptism of John the Baptist. The 
notice of ver. 45, intercalated here, gives us to understand that it was 
through the intervention of the two brothers, Andrew and Peter, that 
Philip was brought into connection with Jesus. On the other hand, 
the expression: He finds, is incompatible with the idea that they had posi- 
tively brought him to Him. At the time of His setting out, Jesus prob- 
ably found him conversing with his two friends; whereupon He invited 
him to join himself to them. The words, “ Follow me,” merely signify, 
“ Accompany me on this journey.” But Jesus well knew what must re- 
sult from this union once formed; and it is impossible that this invitation 
should not have had in His thought a higher import. The verb 7/6éAycev 
(wished), denotes a deliberate wish, and leads us to inquire what was thé 
motive of the resolution, which Jesus formed, of setting out again for 
Galilee. Hengstenberg thinks that He wished to conform to the prophecies 
which announced that Galilee would be the theatre of the Messianic min- 
istry. This explanation would give to the conduct of Jesus somewhat of 
artificiality. According to others, He desired to separate His sphere of 
action from that of John the Baptist, or also to withdraw from the stat of 
the hierarchy which had just shown itself unfavorably disposed towards 
the forerunner. The subsequent narrative (ii. 12-22) appears to me to 
lead to another solution. Jesus must inaugurate His Messianic ministry 
‘at Jerusalem; but, in order to this, He desired to wait for the solemn 
season of the Passover feast. Before this time, therefore, He decided to 
return to His family, and to close, in the days which remained until the 
Passover, the period of His private life. 

Ver. 46: “ Philip finds Nathanael and says to him: We have found Him of 
whom Moses, in the law, and the prophets did write, Jesus, the son of Joseph, of 
Nazareth? Philip’s part in the calling of Nathanael is like that of Andrew in 


17. R. reads here : o Ingovs with 5 byz., and Nadaped; NA BL X: Nagaper; A: Na€apaé 
omits it with 4 of them in the following clause. e: Nagapa (see my Comment. sur Pév. de Luc., 
2T.R.wih EFGHKMUVIATN: _ 2d.ed.,t.L, pp. 107, 108. 


So2 FIRST PART. 


the calling of Peter, and that of Peter and Andrew in his own. One 
lighted torch serves to light another; thus faith propagates itself. Lu- 
thardt sets forth finely the heavy and complicated form of Philip’s pro- 
fession; those long preliminary considerations, that full and formal Mes- 
sianic certificate, which is in contrast with the lively and unconstrained 
style of Andrew’s profession (ver. 42). The same traits of character are 
met with again in the two disciples in vi. 1-18, and perhaps also in xii. 21, 
22. From the fact that Philip designates Jesus as the son of Joseph, and as 
a native of Nazareth, Strauss, de Wette, and others, conclude that the fourth 
evangelist either was ignorant of, or did not admit, the miraculous origin 
of Jesus and His birth at Bethlehem ; as if it were the evangelist who was 
here speaking, and not Philip! And that disciple, after exchanging ten 
words with Jesus, must have been already thoroughly acquainted with the 
most private circumstances of His birth and infancy! Is it Andrew and 
Peter who must have informed him of them? But whence could they 
have got the knowledge of them themselves? Or Jesus? We must sup- 
pose, then, that this was the first thing'that Jesus hastened to communi- 
cate to them: that He was not the son of the man who was said to be His 
father, that He was miraculously born! How criticism can become fool- 
ish, through its desire of being sagacious! The place where Nathanael 
was met by Jesus and His disciples, when returning to Galilee, is not 
pointed out. The most probable supposition is, that they met each other 
in the course of the journey. Philip, who was his fellow-citizen—Nathan- 
ael was also of Cana (xxi. 2)—became the connecting-link between him 
and Jesus. We may suppose that Nathanael was returning home from the 
presence of John the Baptist, or that, like all his pious fellow-countrymen, 
he was going to be baptized by him. At all events, he had just rested for 
a few moments in the shade of a fig-tree, when he met Jesus and His 
companions (comp. ver. 48). Ewald wrongly supposes the meeting to have 
taken place at Cana. The circumstantial account of the calling of Nathan- 
ael leads us to believe that he afterwards became one of the apostles : 
for this is the case with all the disciples mentioned in this narrative. It 
appears, moreover, from xxi. 2, where the apostles are distinguished from 
the mere disciples, and where Nathanael is placed among the former. As 
this name does not figure in the apostolic catalogues (Matt. x. 3; Mark 
ii. 18; Luke vi. 14; Acts i. 18), it is generally admitted that Nathanael is 
no other than Bartholomew, whose name is connected with that of Philip 
in almost all these lists. Bartholomew being only a patronymic (son of 
Tolmai or Ptolemy), there is no difficulty in this supposition. As for the 
hypothesis of Spdth, that Nathanael is a symbolic name (this word sig- 
nifies gift of God), invented by the later author to designate the apostle 
John, it is one of those fancies of the criticism of the day, which, if it 
needed any refutation, would be refuted by its insoluble inconsistency with 
2.4 cay a 

Ver. 47: “And Nathanael said unto him: Can anything good come out of 
Nazareth? Philip says to him: Come and see.” According to Meyer, 
Nathanael’s answer alludes to the reputation which the town of Naza- 


CHAP. I. 47—49. 5 9543 


reth had had for immorality; according to Liicke and de Wette, to the 
smallness of the place. But there is nothing in history to prove that 
Nazareth was a place of worse fame, or less esteemed than any other vil- 
lage of Galilee. Nathanael’s answer does not at all require such supposi- 
tions. Is it not more simple to connect this reply closely with the words 
of Philip? Nathanael, not recollecting any prophetic passage which as- 
scribes to Nazareth so important a part, is astonished; the more so, since 
Cana is only at the remove of a league from Nazareth, and it is difficult 
for him to imagine this retired village, near his own, raised all at once to 
so high a destiny. We are well aware of the paltry jealousies which fre- 
quently exist between village and village. The expression, anything good, 
signifies, therefore, in this case: “ anything so eminent as the Messiah!” 
We notice here, for the first time, a peculiarity of the Johannean narra- 
tive: the author seems to take pleasure in mentioning certain objections 
raiscd against the Messianic dignity of Jesus, to which he makes no reply 
because every reader instructed in the Gospel history could dispose of 
them on the spot (comp. vii. 27, 35, 42, etc.). At the time when John 
wrote, every Christian knew that Jesus was not actually from Nazareth. 
The answer of Philip: ‘ Come and see,” is at once the most simple and the 
most profound apologetic. To every upright heart Jesus proves Him- 
self by showing Himself. This rests on the truth expressed in ver. 9. 
(Comp. ii. 21.) 

Ver. 48. “Jesus saw! Nathanael coming to him and saysof him : Behold a true 
Israelite, in whom there is no guile.’ Nathanael is one of those upright 
hearts who have only to see Jesus in order to believe in Him; Philip is 
not mistaken. Jesus Himself, as He sees him, also signalizes in him this 
quality. Penetrating him, as He had penetrated Simon, he utters aloud 
this reflection with regard to him (rept aitov): “Behold...” We can 
make the adverb aaydéc, truly, qualify ide, Behold really an Israelite with- 
out guile;” in this case, the idea without guile is not placed in connection 
with the national Israelitish character; it is applied to Nathanael person- 
ally. But we can make the adverb aay’éc qualify the word Israelite: a 
true (truly) Israelite, and that as being without guile.” In that case, it is 
the national character, as well as that of Nathanael, which Jesus signal- 
izes, and there may be, perhaps, an allusion to the name Israel (conqueror 
of God) which was substituted for Jacob (supplanter), after the mysterious 
scene, Gen. xxxil., where the new way of struggling took the place, in the 
patriarch’s case, of the deceitful methods which were natural to him. 
However, vi. 5 and viii. 31, where the adverb qualifies the verb to be, must 
not be cited for this meaning. 

Ver. 49. “ Nathanael says to Him: whence knowest thou me? Jesus an- 
swered and said to him: Before Philip called thee, when thou wert under the 
Jig-tree, I saw thee.” This reply by which Nathanael seems to appropriate 
to himself the eulogy contained in ver. 48 has been criticised as not mod- 
est. But he wishes simply to know on what grounds Jesus, who sees him 


18 alone reads cdwyv . . . Aeyet. 


334 FIRST PART. 


for the first time, forms this judgment of him. Certainly, if we take 
account of the extraordinary effect which Jesus’ answer produced upon 
Nathanael (ver. 50), it must contain to his view the indubitable proof of 
the supernatural knowledge which Jesus has of him. Liicke thinks that 
this knowledge applies only to the inward moral state of Nathanael; 
Meyer, on the contrary, that it applies only to the external fact of his sit- 
ting under the fig-tree. But thoroughly to comprehend the relation of 
this saying of Jesus, on the one side, to his previous declaration (ver. 48), 
and, on the other, to the exclamation of Nathanael (ver. 50), it is indis- 
-pensable to unite the two views. Not only does Nathanael note the fact 
that the eye of Jesus had followed him in a place where His natural sight 
could not reach him, but he understands that the eye of this stranger has 
penetrated his interior being, and has discerned there a moral fact which 
justifies the estimate expressed by Jesus in ver. 48. Otherwise, the an- 
‘swer of Jesus does not any the more justify that estimate, and we cannot 
understand how it can call forth the exclamation of Nathanael in ver. 50, 
or be presented, in vv. 51, 52, as the first of the Lord’s miraculous works. 
What had taken place in Nathanael, at that moment when he was under 
the fig-tree? Had he made to God the confession of some sin (Ps. xxxii. 
1, 2), taken some holy resolution, made the vow to repair some wrong? 
However this may be, serious thoughts had filled his heart, so that, on 
hearing the word of Jesus, he feels that he has been penetrated by a look 
which participates in the divine omniscience. The words: before Philip 
called thee, are connected by Weiss with what follows, in this sense: “When 
thou wert under the fig-tree before Philip called thee.” But they much 
more naturally qualify the principal verb: I saw thee. And the same is. 
true of the second limiting phrase: ‘‘when thou wert under the fig-tree,” 
which refers rather to what follows than to what precedes. For the sit- 
uation in which Jesus saw him is of more consequence than that in which 
Philip called him. The construction of iz6, with the accusative (rv ov«fy), 
with the verb of rest, is owing to the fact that to the local relation there 
is joined the moral notion of shelter. J saw denotes a view such as that 
of Elisha (2 Kings v.). In Jesus,as in the prophets, there was a higher 
vision, which may be regarded as a partial association with the perfect 
vision of God. At this word, Nathanael feels himself, as it were, pene- 
trated by a ray of divine light: 

Ver. 50. “ Nathanael answered and said to him: Master, thou art the Son 
of God ; thou art the King of Israel.” By the title Son of God, he expresses 
the thrilling impression which was made within his mind by the intimate 
relation between Jesus and God, of which he had himself just had exper- 
ience. Liicke, Meyer,and most others maintain that this title is here 

equivalent to that of Messiah. They regard this as proved by the follow- 
ing expression: the King of Israel. But it is precisely this juxtaposition 
which implies a difference of meaning. At all events, if the two titles 
had exactly the same sense, the second would be joined to the first as a 


1B. L. reject cat Aeyes avtrw; N reads nat ecrev. 


CHAP. I. 50, 51. 309 


simple apposition, while the repetition of the pronoun ot, thou, and of 
the verb ¢i, art, before the second title, absolutely excludes this synonymy. 
Besides, the title which Nathanael here gives must be the vivid and fresh 
expression of the moral agitation which he has just experienced, and not, 
like that of Messiah, the result of reflection. If the latter is added after- 
wards, it is to do justice to the affirmation of Philip (ver. 46); but still, it 
can only come in the second place. In general, we believe that the 
equivalence of the term, Son of God, with that of Messiah, even in the 
form in which Weiss makes it out, who understands by Son of God the 
man well-beloved of God, never wholly corresponds with reality, In this 
passage, in particular, the title Son of God, can only be connected with 
the proof of supernatural knowledge which Jesus has just given, and con- 
sequently, it contains the feeling of an exceptional relation between Jesus 
and God. Undoubtedly, it is a vague impression; but it is, nevertheless, 
rich and full, as is everything which is a matter of feeling, even more than 
if it were already reduced to a dogmatic formula. As Luthardt observes : 
“ Nathanael’s faith will never possess more than that which it embraces 
at this moment” (the living person of Jesus), it will only be able to pos- 
sess it more distinctly. The seeker for gold puts his hand on an ingot; 
when he has coined it he has it better, but not more. The two titles com- 
plete each other: Son of God bears on the relation of Jesus to God ; King 
of Israel on His relation to the chosen people. The second title is the 
logical consequence of the first. The personage who lives in so intimate 
a relation with God can only be the King of Israel. This title is undoubt- 
edly the response to that of true Israelite, with which Jesus had saluted 
‘Nathanael, The faithful subject has recognized and salutes his King. 
Jesus feels indeed, that he has just taken the first step in a new career— 
that of miraculous signs, of which His life had been completely destitute 
up to this time; and His answer breathes the most elevated feeling of 
the grandeur of the moment. 

Ver. 51. “ Jesus answered and said to him: Because I said unto thee that} 
I saw thee under the fig-tree, thou believest ; thou shalt see? greater things than 
these.’ Since Chrysostom, most interpreters (Liicke, Meyer, etc.), editors 
and translators (Tischendorf, Rilliet), give to the words: Thow believest, an 
interrogative sense. They put into this question either the tone of sur- 
prise (Meyer) because of a faith so readily formed, or even that of reproach 
(de Wette), as if Nathanael had believed before he had sufficient grounds 
for it. I think, notwithstanding the observations of Weiss and Keil, that 
there is a more serene dignity in the answer of Jesus, if it is taken as an 
affirmation. He recognizes and approves the nascent faith of Nathanael ; 
He congratulates him upon it; but He promises him a succession of in- 
creasing miraculous manifestations, of which he and his fellow-disciples 
will be witnesses, and which from this moment onward will develop their 
nascent faith. This expression proves that from that day Nathanael re- 


1x A BGL Syr, ete. read or before 2The T. R. reads owes (Attic form). All the 
edov. Mjj. with the exception of U T read own. 


336 FIRST PART. 


mained with Jesus. Up to this point, Jesus had spoken to Nathanael 
alone: ‘‘ Thou believest . . . thou shalt see.” What He now declares, although 
also promised to him, concerns, nevertheless, all the persons present. 

Ver. 52. “And he says to him: Verily, verily, I say unto you, From this 
time onward you shall see the heaven opened and the angels of God ascending 
and descending upon the Son of man.” We meet for the first time the 
formula amen, amen, which is found twenty-five times in John (Meyer), 
and nowhere else in the New Testament. Matthew says amen (not 
repeated) thirty times. This expression amen, serving as an introduction 
to a declaration which is about to follow, is found nowhere either in the 
Old Testament, or in the Rabbinical writings. It belongs exclusively to 
the language of Jesus. Hence is the fact more easily explained that Jesus 
is Himself called the Amen in the Apocalypse (iii. 14). This word 
(coming from the Hebrew aman, firmum fuit) is properly a verbal adjective, 
jirm, worthy of faith ; it is used as a substantive in Is. xv. 16: Elohé amen, 
“the God of truth.” It also becomes an adverb in a large number of 
passages in the Old Testament, to signify: that remains sure; or: let it be 
realized! This adverb is doubled, as in St. John, in the two following 
passages: Num. y. 22: “ Then the woman (accused of adultery) answered: 
Amen, amen; Nehem. viil. 6: All the people answered: Amen, amen.” This 
doubling implies a doubt to be overcome in the hearer’s mind. The sup- 
posed doubt arises sometimes, as here, from the greatness of the thing 
promised, sometimes from a prejudice against which the truth affirmed 
has to contend (for example, John iii. 8, 5). 

The words az’ apr, from now on, are rejected by three of the ancient 
Alexandrian authorities; they were, in general, adopted by the moderns, 
and by Tischendorf himself who said in 1859 (7th ed.): cur omissum sit, 
Facile dictu; cur additum, vix dizeris. But the omission in the Sinaitic MS. 
has caused him to change his opinion (8th ed.). The rejection can be 
easily understood, as the Gospel history does not contain any appearance 
of an angel in the period which followed these first days. It would be 
very difficult, on the contrary, to account for the addition. Weiss and Keil 
allege the words of Matt. xxvi. 64. But there is no resemblance either in 
situation or thought between that passage and this one, which can explain 
such an importation; and I persist in thinking, with the Tischendorf of 
1859, that the rejection is much more easily explained than the addition. 
Jesus means to say that heaven, which was opened at the time of His 
baptism, is not closed. The communication re-established between heaven 
and earth continues, and the two regions form for the future only 
one, so that the inhabitants of the one communicate with those of the 
other; comp. Eph. i. 10 and Col.i. 20. The expression ascend and descend 
is a very clear allusion to the vision of Jacob (Gen. xxviii. 12, 13). There 
it represented the continual protection of divine providence, and of its 
invisible agents assured to the patriarch. What the disciples are about to 


18 BL It. Cop. Orig. omit an’ apr, which is read by T. R. with all the other Mjj., the 
Mnn., Syr., ete. 


CHAP. I. 52. BS Ys 


behold from now on will be a higher realization of the truth represented 
by that ancient symbol. Jesus certainly does not mean to speak of certain 
appearances of angels which occurred at the close of His life. The ques- 
tion is of a phenomenon which from this moment is to continue uninter- 
ruptedly. Most moderns, putting themselves at the opposite spiritualistic 
extreme to the literal interpretation, see here only an emblem of the 
heavenly and holy character of the daily activity of Jesus and, as Liicke 
and Meyer say, of the living communion between God and His organ, in 
which the divine forces and revelations are concentrated. Reuss says, 
with the same meaning: “Angels are the divine perfections common to 
the two persons . . .,” together with this observation: “The literal expla- 
nation would here be as poor as it is absurd.” Lwuthardt (following 
Hofmann): “the (personified) forces of the Divine Spirit.” If the expla- 
nation of the Fathers was too narrow, that of the moderns is too broad. 
There is no passage where the spiritual activity of Jesus is referred, even 
symbolically, to the ministry of angels. It is derived from the Spirit 
(ver. 82; iii. 84), or, still more commonly, from the Father dwelling and 
acting in Jesus (vi. 57). Angels are the instruments of the divine force in 
the domain of nature (see the angel of the waters, Apoc. xvi. 5; of the 
fire, Apoc. xiv.18). This expression refers, therefore, to phenomena, which, 
while taking place in the domain of nature, are due toa causality superior 
to the laws of nature. Could Jesus characterize His miracles more clearly 
without naming them? Itis also the only sense which connects itself 
with what has just passed, even at this moment, between Nathanael and 
Himself: ‘Thou believest because of this wonder of omniscience ; this is 
only the prelude of more remarkable signs of the same kind.” By this 
Jesus means the works of power of which the event that follows, the 
miracle of Cana, will be the first example (from now on). This explana- 
tion is confirmed, moreover, by the remarkable parallel, Matt. viii. 9, 10. 
It is difficult to explain why the angels who ascend are placed before those 
who descend. Is it simply owing to a reminiscence of Genesis? But there, 
there was a special reason: Jacob must understand that the angels were 
already near him at the moment when he was receiving that revelation. 
According to Meyer and Liicke, Jesus would here also mean that, at the 
moment when the “you shall see” shall take place, this relation with 
heaven shall be already in full activity. I think, rather, that the angels 
are here presented by Jesus as an army grouped around their chief, the 
Son of man, who says to one, Go, and to another, Do this. These servants 
ascend first, to seek power in the presence of God; afterwards, they 
descend again to accomplish the work. 

Were not these two allusions, one to the name of Israel (ver. 48), the 
other to the dream of Jacob, suggested by the sight of the very localities 
through which Jesus was, at this moment, passing? He was going from 
Judea to Galilee, either by the valley of the Jordan or by one of the two 
plateaus which extend along that valley on the east and the west. Now 
Bethel was on the eastern plateau, the very locality in which Jacob’s dream 
had occurred, and whose name perpetuated the remembrance of that 

22 


338 FIRST PART. 


event; on the eastern plateau Mahanaim was situated (the double camp of 
angels) and the ford of Jabbok, two places which equally recalled appear- 
ances of angels (Gen. xxxii. 1, 2 and 24 ff). It is possible that, in passing 
through these places which were classic for every Israelitish heart, Jesus 
conversed with His disciples concerning those scenes precisely which they 
recalled, and that this circumstance was the occasion of the figure which 
He makes use of at this moment. 

What are the purpose and meaning of the expression: Son of man, by 
which Jesus here describes Himself? We examine this question here 
only in its relation to the context (see the following appendix). It is 
manifest that this title has a relation to the two titles which Nathanael 
has just given to Jesus. This is intended to make His disciples sensible of 
the fact that, besides His particular relation to God and to Israel, He 
sustains a third no less essential one, His relation to the whole of 
humanity. It isto this last that this third title refers. By making this 
designation His habitual title and by avoiding the use of the title of Christ, 
which had a very marked political and particularistic hue, Jesus wished 
from the first to establish His ministry on its true and broad foundation, 
already laid by that saying of His forerunner: “who takes away the sin 
of the world.” His task was not, as Nathanael imagined, to found the 
Israelitish monarchy: it was to save the world. He did not come to 
complete the theocratic drama, but to bring to its consummation the 
history of man. 

This title, thus, completes the two others; the three relations of Jesus to 
God, to men, and to the people of Israel exhaust, indeed, His life and His 
history. | 


The Son of Man. 


Jesus designates Himself here, for the first time, by the name Son of man, and 
it is quite probable that this occasion was really the first on which He assumed this 
title. We find it thirty-nine times in the Synoptics (by connecting the parallels: 
most frequently in Matt. and Luke) ; ten times in John (i. 52; iii. 13, 14; v. 27 
(without the article); vi. 27, 53, 62; viii. 28; xii. 23, 34; xiii.31). Three 
very different opinions prevail respecting the meaning, the origin and the 
purpose of this designation. We can, however, arrange these in two principal 
classes. 

I. Some think that Jesus here borrows from the Old Testament a title in some 
measure technical, which was adapted to designate Him either as prophet—there 
would thus be an illusion to the name son of man by which God often designates 
Ezekiel, when addressing His word to him—or as Messiah, in allusion to Dan. vii. 
13: ‘“And I saw one like unto a son of man coming on the clouds of heaven.” 
This Messianic prophecy had become popular in Israel, to such an extent that 
the Messiah had received the name Anani, ‘31, the man of the clouds. It would 
thus be natural to suppose that Jesus made choice of this term as in a popular 
way designating his Messianic function; the more so, as there exists a saying of 
Jesus, in which He solemnly recalls this description of Daniel, applying it to 
Himself, Matt. xxvi. 64: “ Henceforth ye shall see the Son of man seated at the 


CHAP. I. 52. 339 


right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.” Of these two alleged 
allusions, the first cannot be sustained. For it is not as a prophet that God calls 
Ezekiel son of man, but as a creature completely powerless to perform the divine 
work of which he is inviting him to become the agent—thus, as a man. Would 
it not: be contrary to all logic to maintain that, because God on one occasion has 
called a prophet son of man, it follows that this name is the equivalent of the title 
prophet.! 

The allusion to Daniel, as the foundation of this peculiar name of Jesus, is 
admitted by almost all modern interpreters, Liicke, Bleek, Ewald, Hilgenfeld, Renan, 
Strauss, Meyer, Keil, Weiss, etc. ‘This is also, apparently, the opinion of M. 
Wabnitz. 

If the question were this: Did Jesus, in designating Himself thus, bring together 
in His own mind this name and the: as a son of man, of Daniel? it would seem 
difficult to deny it, at least as to the time when He proclaimed Himself the Mes- 
siah in reply to the high-priest before the Sanhedrim. But this is not the 
question. The point in hand is to determine whether, in choosing this title as 
His habitual name, as His title by predilection, Jesus meant to say: “I am the 
Messiah announced by Daniel.” As for myself, I think that this name is rather 
an immediate creation of His own heart, with which He was inspired by the 
profound feeling of what He was for humanity. The following are the reasons 
which impel me to reject the first view; and to prefer the second to it: 1. The 
borrowings of Jesus from the O. T. have, in general, a character of formal 
accommodation rather than that of a real imitation. The idea always springs up as 
perfectly original from His heart and mind; and if He connects it with some 
saying of Scripture, it is that He may give it support with His hearers, rather 
than that He may cite it as a source. How, then, could the name of which Jesus, 
by preference, makes use to designate His relation to humanity be the product of 
a servile imitation? If anything must have come forth from the depths of His 
own consciousness, it is this name. 2. Throughout the whole course of the Gospel 
of John, Jesus, as we shall see, carefully avoids proclaiming Himself as the Messiah, 
Xpcoréc, before the people, because He knows too well the political meaning com- 
monly attached to this term, and that the least misunderstanding on this point 
would have been immediately fatal to His work. He makes use, therefore, of all 
kinds of circumlocutions to avoid designating Himself as the Messiah: comp. viii. 
24, 25; x. 24, 25, ete. Comp. also, in the Synoptics, Luke iv. 41; ix. 21, where he 
forbids the demons and His disciples to declare Him to be the Christ. And in 
direct contradiction to this procedure, He would have chosen, for His habitual 
name, a designation to which the popular opinion had attached this sense of 
Messiah! 3. Two passages in John prove, moreover, that the name Son of man 
was not generally applied to the Messiah: xii. 34, where the people ask Jesus 
who this personage is whom He designates by the name Son of man (see the 
exegesis); and v. 27, where Jesus says that the Father has committed the judg- 
ment to Him because He is Son of man. Certainly, if this expression had here 
meant: the Messiah, the article the could not have been wanting. It was neces- 
sary, in that case, since the question was of a personage well-known and designated 
under this name. Without the article, there is here a mere indication of quality : 


1This explanation presented by Vernes, been well refuted in the article of Wabnitz, 
and up to a certain point by Weizsacker, has Revue théol., Oct. 1874, pp. 165 f. 


340 FIRST PART. 

God makes Him judge of men as having the quality of man. Besides, let us not 
forget that in Daniel judgment is exercised, not, as Renan wrongly says, by the 
Son of man, but by Jehovah Himself; and it is only after this act is wholly 
finished, that the Son of man, to whom the title is given, appears on the clouds. 
4. In the Synoptics, also, there are passages where the meaning Messiah does not 
suit the term Son of man. It is sufficient to cite Matt. xvi. 13, 15, where Jesus 
asks His disciples: “ Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am? ... And 
you, who do you say that lam?” Had this term been equivalent to Messiah, 
would not the first question contain an intolerable tautology, and would not 
Holizmann have ground for asking how Jesus, after having designated Himself a 
hundred times as Son of Man, could still propose to His disciples this question, 
“ Whom do you take me to be?” 5. The appearance of the Son of man in the 
prophecy of Daniel has an exclusively eschatological bearing. The question is of 
the glorious establishment of the final kingdom. Now one cannot comprehend 
how from such a representation, especially, Jesus could have derived the title 
of which He makes use to designate His person during the period of His earthly 
abasement. But one can easily understand that, when this title had once been 
adopted by Him for other reasons, He should have made express allusion to this 
term employed by Daniel, at the solemn moment when, before the Sanhedrim, He 
wished to affirm His glorious return and His character as judge of His judges. 
Let us add, finally, that Daniel had not said: I saw the Son of man, or even 
a Son of man, but vaguely: like [the figure of ] a son of man; and could Jesus 
have derived from such a vague expression His title of Son of man? 6. If we 
believe the common exegesis, the term Son of God had the sense of Messiah. 
Now, according to the same exegesis, this also is the meaning of the term Son of 
man, and it would follow from this that these two titles, which are evidently anti- 
thetic, would both have the same sense ?—a thing which is impossible. They do 
not, either the one or the other, properly designate the office of the Messiah, but 
rather two aspects of the Messianic personage, which are complementary of each 
other. 

II. We are led thus to the second class of interpretations, that which finds in 
this title a spontaneous expression of the consciousness which Jesus had of Him- 
self—some finding the feeling of His greatness expressed in it, and others, the 
feeling of His humiliation. 

1. There is no longer any need of refuting the explanation of Paulus and 
Fritzsche, according to which Jesus simply meant to say: This individual whom 
you see before you: homo ille quem bene nostis. Jesus would not, by so exceptional 
a term, have paraphrased more than fifty times the simple pronoun of the first 
person. 

2. Chrysostom, Tholuck and others explain this title by a deliberate antithesis to 
the feeling which Jesus had of His own essential sonship to God. To choose, as 
His characteristic name, the title of descendant of the human race, He must feel 


1 Undoubtedly, in the passage of the Book of 
Enoch (c. 37-71) the Messiah is several times 
called Son of man, but not the Son of Man; 
comp. Westcott. Besides, this passage is sus- 
pected of Christian interpolations (Oehler, 
art. Messias, in Herzog’s Encycl. (1st ed.); 
Keim, Gesch. Jesu (Il. p. 69). But in any 


case, if these passages were entirely authen- 
tic, the passages in John prove that this des- 
ignation was not yet a popular one. 

2To this impossible identification all the 
efforts tend which Keim makes to attenuate 
the difference between these two terms, II., 
p. 388. 


CHAP. I. 52. 341 


Himself a stranger by nature to that race. This explanation is ingenious: but 
only too much so for the simplicity of the feeling of Jesus. 

3. Keerl thought that Jesus meant to designate Himself thereby as the eternal 
man, pre-existent in God, of whom the Rabbis spoke, the Messiah differing from 
that heavenly man only through the flesh and blood with which He clothed Him- 
self when He came to the earth. But no others than the Scribes could have at- 
tached such a sense to this title which Jesus habitually used, and nothing in His 
teaching indicates that He Himself shared in that Rabbinical opinion. More- 
over, the term Son of man would be very ill adapted to a heavenly man. 

4, Gess expresses an analogous idea,! but less extra-Biblical. According to him, 
Jesus wished to express thereby the idea of “the divine majesty as having ap- 
peared in the form of human life.” He rests upon the passages in which divine 
functions are ascribed to the Son of man, as such ; thus the pardon of sins (Matt. 
ix. 6, and parallels), lordship over the angels (Matt. xiii. 41), judgment (Matt. 
xvi. 27, xxv. 31, John v. 27). But, if the destiny of man is to be exalted even 
to participate in the functions and works of God, there is nothing in the acts cited 
which surpasses that sublime destiny, and consequently the limits of the human 
life when it has reached the summit of its perfection. Besides, is the idea of the 
Kenosis, which Gess adopts, compatible with that of the divine majesty realized 
in Jesus—in Jesus in the form of the human life ? 

5. De Wetie and others think, on the contrary, that by this name Jesus meant 
to make prominent the weakness of His earthly state. Itseems to us that the 
words of y. 27 are altogether opposed tothissense. It is not because of the mean- 
ness of His earthly state, that the judgment is committed to Christ. 

6. Only one explanation remains for us, in itself the most simple and natural 
one, which in various forms has been given by Béhme, Neander, Ebrard, Olshausen, 
Beyschlag, Holtzmann, Wittichen, Hofmann, Westcott, Schaff, etc., which we have 
already set forth in the first edition of this work, aud which we continue to de- 
fend. Jesus meant to designate by this title, in the first place, His complete par- 
ticipation in our human nature. A son of man is not the son of such or such a 
man, but an offspring of the human race of which He presents an example; a 
legitimate representative. It is in this sense that this expression is used in Ps. 
viii. 5: “ What is man that thou art mindful of him, and the son of man that 
thou visitest him?” The same is true in the frequent addresses of the Lord to 
Ezekiel. It is also the same in Dan. vii. 13, where the being who appeared like 
a Son of man represents the human, gentle, holy character of the Messianic 
kingdom, just as the wild beasts, which preceded him, were figures of the violent, 
harsh, despotic character of earthly empires. Jesus, therefore, above all, obeyed 
the instinct of His love in adopting this designation of His person, which ex- 
pressed the feeling of His perfect homogeneousness with the human family of 
which He had made Himself a member. This name was, as it were, the theme 
of which those words of John: “the Word was made flesh,” are the paraphrase. 
But Jesus does not merely name Himself: a son of man; a true man; He names 
Himself the Son of man; He declares Himself, thereby, the true man, the only 
normal representative of the human type. Even in affirming, therefore, His 
equality with us, He affirms, by means of the article, the, His superiority over all 
the other members of the human family, who are simply sons of men; comp, 


1 Christi Zeugniss von seiner Person, 1870. 


d42 FIRST PART. 
Mk. iii. 28; Eph. iii. 5. To designate Himself thus was, indeed, to affirm, yet 
only implicitly, His dignity as Messiah. He expressed the idea, while yet avoid- 
ing the word whose meaning was falsified. Without saying: “I am the Christ,” 
He said to every man: “ Look on me, and thou shalt see what thou oughtest to 
have been, and what, through me, thou mayest yet become.” He succeeded thus 
in attaining two equally important ends: to inaugurate the pure Messianism 
separated from all political alloy, and to present Himself as the chief of a kingdom 
of God, comprehending, not only Israel, but all the human race. This is what 
has led Bohme to say ( Versuch das Geheimniss des Menschensohns zu enthiillen, 1839), 
that the design of Jesus in choosing this designation was to de-judaize the idea of 
the Messiah. 

We see with what admirable wisdom Jesus acted in the choice of this designa- 
tion, the creation of His own consciousness and of His inner life. It was His love 
which guided Him wonderfully in this matter, as it did in everything. Perhaps 
His inward tact was directed in this choice by the recollection of the most ancient 
of all the prophecies—the one which was the germ of the tree of the Messianic 
revelations: “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent’s head.” As the 
term avépwroc, man, refers equally to the two sexes, and as the woman represents 
the human nature, rather than the human individuality, the term Son of man is 
not far removed from the term seed of the woman. Jesus would designate Him- 
self, thus, as the normal man, charged with accomplishing the victory of humanity 
over its own enemy and the enemy of God.! 


THIRD SECTION. 
A 8 i OS Gin 
THE First MiIrRAcLE.—STRENGTHENING OF FAITH. 


Jesus, after having been declared by John to be the Messiah, manifested 
Himself as such to His first disciples; an utterance of miraculous knowl- 
edge, in particular, had revealed the intimate relation which united Him 
with God. He now displays His glory before their eyes in a first act of 
omnipotence; and their faith, embracing this fact of an entirely new 
order, begins to raise itself to the height of its new object. Such is (ac- 
cording to ver. 11), the meaning of this passage. 

His first miracle takes place in the family circle. It is, as it were, the 


in humanity.” Colani: ‘‘That man who is 
the Messiah, but who does not wish to desig- 
nate himself expressly as such.” Hofmann: 
“the man in whom all the history of human- 
ity must have its end.” Meander: “ He who 


1 In the idea which we have just set forth 
all the explanations of the authors mentioned 
above, who are different from one another in 
certain unimportant points, as it seems to me, 
converge. Baur: “A simple man, to whom 


cling all the miseries which can be affirmed 
of any man whatever.” Schenkel: “the rep- 
resentative of the poor.” Holtzmann: “the 
one towhom may be applied, in the highest 
degree, everything which can be said of all 
other men,” or, “the indispensable organic 
centre of the kingdom of God in humanity.” 
Wittichen: “the perfect realization of the 
idea of man, with the mission of realizing it 


realizes the idea of humanity.” Bohme: “the 
universal Messiah.” Westcott: “a true man 
and, at the same time, the representative of 
the race in whom are united the virtual pow- 
ers of the whole of humanity.” Iam aston- 
ished to see this explanation lightly set aside 
by Wabnitz in these words: “It will be de- 
sirable thus to set aside from the immediate 
historical sense of our title .. . etc.” 


CHAP. II. Il. 343 


point of connection between the obscurity of the private life, to which 
Jesus has confined Himself until now, and the public activity which He 
is about to begin. All the sweet and amiable qualities by which He has, 
until now, adorned the domestic hearth, display themselves once more, 
but with a new brightness. It is the divine impress which His last foot- 
step leaves in this inner domain; it is His royal farewell to His relation as 
son, as brother, as kinsman. 

Ver. 1: “And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee, and the 
mother of Jesus was there.” A distance of somewhat more than twenty 
leagues, in a straight line, separates the place where John was baptizing, 
from Nazareth, to which Jesus was probably directing His course. This 
journey requires three days’ walking. Weiss, Keil, and others, think that 
the first of these three days was the day after that on which Jesus had 
taken the resolution to depart (i. 44). But the resolution indicated by 
n0éAnoev has certainly been mentioned in 1. 44 only because it was executed 
at that very moment. The first day, according to the natural interpre- 
tation of the text, is, therefore, that which is indicated in 1. 44 as the 
day of departure. The second is understood; it was, perhaps, the one 
on which the meeting with Nathanael took place. On the third, the 
travelers could arrive at a quite early hour in the region of Cana and 
Nazareth. It was the sixth day since the one on which John had given 
his first testimony before the Sanhedrim (i. 19).—It is affirmed that there 
are at the present time in Galilee, two places of the name of Cana. One 
is said to be called Kana-el-Djélil (Cana of Galilee), and to be situated about 
two hours and a half to the north of Nazareth; the other is called Kefr- 
Kenna (village Cana); it is situated a league and a half eastward of Naza- 
reth. It is there, that, ever since the eighth century, tradition places the 
event which is the subject of our narrative. Since Robinson brought the first 
into vogue, the choice has been ordinarily in its favor (Ritter, Meyer) ; this is 
the view of Renan (Vie de Jésus, p. 75). Hengstenberg almost alone, has 
decided for the second, for the reason that the first, as he says, is nothing 
but a ruin, and has no stable population, capable of preserving a sure tra- 
dition respecting the name of the place. What if the name were itself 
only a fable. In any case, the situation of Kefr-Kenna answers better 


1 Robinson (Biblical Researches, ii. pp. 194, 
195, 204, f.), relates that he was guided by 
a Christian Arab named Abu Nasir, from 
Nazareth to the height of the Wely Is- 
mail, whence one has a magnificent view 
of all the surrounding regions, and that 
this Arab showed him, from that point, at 
three leagues’ distance towards the north- 
west, a place called Kana-el-Djélil, in the 
name of which he recognized the Cana of Gali- 
lee of our Gospel. On the other hand, here are 
the contents of a note which I made at Naza- 
reth itself, Sept. 26, 1872, after a conversation 
with a competent European who accompanied 
us tothe Wely Ismail. He declared to us that 


the real name of the place pointed out to Rob- 
inson is Khurbet-Cana, and that it was only 
from Arabian politeness (aus arabischer Hof- 
lichkeit), that Robinson’s guide, yielding at 
length tothe pressing questions of the cele- 
brated traveler, pronounced the desired 
name of Kana-el-Djélil, which does not at all 
exist in the region. Such is also the result 
of the work published in the Palestine Ex- 
ploration Fund, No. III, 1869, by J. Zeller, 
missionary at Nazareth, who gives a very 
precise description of the two localities in 
dispute. He shows how the Christian tradi- 
tion has always connected itself with Kefr- 
Kenna, where considerable ruins are found, 


344 FIRST PART. 


to our narrative. The date: “the third day,” covers in fact, the whole of 
the following passage, as far as ver. 11; consequently, the miracle must 
have taken place on the very day of the arrival. Now even if he did not 
arrive at Nazareth until towards evening of the third day, Jesus might still 
have repaired before night to the very near village of Kefr-Kenna—this 
would have been impossible in the case of the Cana of Robinson—or even, 
what is more probable, He reached Kefr-Kenna directly from the south, 
without having passed through Nazareth. If Nathanael was coming from 
Cana (xxi. 2) at the time when Philip met him, he might inform Jesus of 
the celebration of the wedding, and of the presence of His family in that 
place—a circumstance which induced Jesus to betake Himself thither 
directly. Let us add that the defining object of Galilee, which recurs in 
iv. 46 and xxi. 2, must have been a standing designation, intended to dis- 
tinguish this Cana from another place of the same name, situated outside 
of Galilee (comp. Josh. xix. 28, the place of this name situated on the bor- 
ders of Pheenicia). This designation would have meaning only as there 
was but one place of this name in Galilee. 

The name of the mother of Jesus is not indicated, yet not precisely 
because John supposes the name to be known to the readers by tradition. 
It might have been added, even in that case, but because it is in her char- 
acter of mother of Jesus that Mary is to play the principal part in the fol- 
lowing narrative. There is no well-founded reason to suppose, with Hwald, 
Weiss, and Renan, that Mary had already for a long time been settled 
with her sons at Cana. How, in that case, should not Nathanael, who 
was of Cana, and Jesus, have been acquainted with each other before their 
recent meeting? How should the sisters of Jesus have been still dwelling 
in Nazareth (Mk. vi. 3)? The fact that it is not said that Mary and her 
sons had repaired from Nazareth to Cana because of the wedding evi- 
dently cannot prove anything. The expressions of ver. 1, much more 
naturally imply that Mary was at Cana only because of the wedding ; (comp. 
besides, Philip’s word to Nathanael, 1. 46: “of Nazareth’). 

Ver. 2. “ Now Jesus also was bidden to the marriage, as well as His disciples.” 
There is a contrast between the imperfect, was there, which is used in 
speaking of Mary, and the aorist was bidden, applied to Jesus and His 
disciples. Jesus was bidden only on His arrival, while Mary, at that time, 
was already there. It appears from all these points that the family in 
question was quite closely related to that of the Lord; this is likewise 
proved by the authoritative attitude which Mary assumes in the following 
scene. The singular, was bidden, is owing to the fact that the disciples were 
not bidden except in honor, and, as it were, in the person, of their Mas- 
ter. Rilliet, with some commentators, translates: had been bidden. But 
when? Before going to His baptism (Schleiermacher), or later, through a 


which are altogether wanting at Khurbet- 
Cana; then, how a statement of the chroni- 
cler Seawulf (1103), and, finally, the whole 
account of Josephus (Vita, 15 and 16), corre- 
spond only with Kefr-Kenna. On the other 


side, Robinson and Raumer cite Quaresmius, 
and some other chroniclers, in favor of the 
hypothesis of Khurbet-Cana. But it is a 
certain fact that the name Krana-el-Djélil ne 
longer exists at the present day. 


PRAP. 11..2,-3: 345 


messenger? Two very improbable suppositions. Moreover, the added 
words: as well as His disciples, are incompatible with this meaning. For 
they could not have been invited before it was known that Jesus had 
disciples. 

Ver. 3. “And when the wine failed,! the mother of Jesus saith to Him : They 
have no wine.” *—The marriage feasts sometimes continued several days, 
even a whole week (Gen. xxix. 27; Judg. xiv. 15; Tob. ix. 12; x. 1). 
The failure of the wine is commonly explained by this circumstance. 
However this may be, it is scarcely possible to doubt that this failure was 
connected with the unexpected arrival of six or seven guests, Jesus and 
His disciples. The reading of the Sinaitic MS.: “And they had no more 
wine, for the wine of the wedding-feast was entirely consumed,” is evi- 
dently a diluted paraphrase of the primitive text?—What does Mary 
mean by saying toJesus: ‘ They have no wine?” Bengel and Paulus have 
thought that Mary wished to induce Jesus to withdraw and thus to give the 
rest of the company the signal todepart. The reply of Jesus would signify : 
“What right hast thou to prescribe tome? The hour for leaving has not yet 
come for me.” Suchan explanation has no need to be refuted. The expres- 
sion “my hour,” always used, in our Gospel, in a grave and solemn sense, 
would be enough to make us feel the impossibility of it. The same thing is 
true of Calvin’s explanation, according to which Mary wished “to admonish 
Jesus to offer some religious exhortation, for fear that the company might 
be wearied, and also courteously to cover the shame of the bridegroom.” 
This expression, ‘‘ They have no wine,” has a certain analogy to the mes- 
sage of the sisters of Lazarus: “ He whom thou lovest is sick.” It is cer- 
tainly a tacit request for assistance. But how does it occur to Mary to 
resort to Jesus in order to ask His aid in a case of this kind? Does she 
dream of a miracle? Meyer, Weiss and Reuss think not; for, according to 
ver. 11, Jesus had not yet performed any. Mary, thus, would only think 
of natural aid, and the reply of Jesus, far from rejecting this request as an 
inconsiderate claim, would mean: “ Leave me to act! I have in my pos- 
session means of which thou knowest not, and whose effect thou shalt see 
as soon as the hour appointed by my Father shall have struck.” After 
this, the order of Mary to the servants, “ Do whatsoever He shall say to you,” 
presents no further difficulty. But this explanation, which supposes that 
Mary asks less than what Jesus is disposed to do, is contradictory to the 
natural meaning of the words “ What is there between me and thee?’ which 
lead rather to the supposition of an encroachment by Mary on a domain 
which Jesus reserves exclusively to Himself, an inadmissible interference 
in His office as Messiah. Besides, by what means other than a miracle 
could Jesus have extricated the bridegroom from his embarrassment? 
Meyer gives no explanation of this point. Weiss thinks of friends (like 
Nathanael) who had relations at Cana, and by means of whom Jesus could 


1 reads instead of vorepnoavros orvov: Kat some documents of the IJtala (a. b. ff?) and 
Olvov OVK eElxov oTt auVEeTeAETOn O OLVOS TOU adopted by Tischendorf in the 8th ed. 
yamov eta Aeyer, a reading which is found in 2& ovvos ov« eott, instead of orvov ove exovorv. 


346 FIRST PART. 


provide a remedy for the condition of things. But even in this sense we 
cannot understand the answer of Jesus, by which He certainly wishes to 
cause Mary to go back within her own bounds, beyond which she had, 
consequently, just passed. What she wished to ask for, is therefore a 
striking, miraculous aid worthy of the Messiah. Whence can such an 
idea have come to her mind? Hase and Tholuck have supposed that Jesus 
had already wrought miracles within the limits of His family. Ver. 11 
excludes this hypothesis. Lvicke amends it, by saying that He had simply 
manifested, in the perplexities of domestic life, peculiar gifts and skill: 
one of those convenient middle-course suggestions which are frequently 
met with in this commentator and which have procured for him such 
vigorous censure on the part of Baur. It affirms, in fact, too much or too 
little. It seems to me that the state of extraordinary exaltation is forgot- 
ten in which, at this moment, that whole company, and especially Mary, 
must have been. Can it be imagined for an instant, that the disciples had 
not related everything which had just occurred in Judea, the solemn declar- 
ations of John the Baptist, the miraculous scene of the baptism pro- 
claimed by John, the proof of supernatural knowledge which Jesus had 
given on meeting Nathanael, finally that magnificent promise of greater 
things impending, of an open heaven, of angels ascending and descend- 
ing, which their eyes were going henceforth to behold? How should not 
the expectation of the marvelous—that seeking after miracles, which St. 
Paul indicates as the characteristic feature of Jewish piety—have existed, 
at that moment, in all those who were present, in the highest degree? 
The single fact that Jesus arrived surrounded by disciples, must have been 
sufficient to make them understand that a new phase was opening at that 
hour, that the time of obscurity and retirement had come to its end, and 
that the period of Messianic manifestations was about to begin. Let us 
add, finally, with reference to Mary herself, the mighty waking up of 
recollections, so long held closely in her maternal heart, the return of her 
thoughts to the marvelous circumstances which accompanied the birth of 
her son. The hour so long and so impatiently waited for had, then, at 
last struck! Is it not to her, Mary, that it belongs to give the decisive 
signal of this hour? She is accustomed to obedience from her Son; she 
does not doubt that He will act at her suggestion. If the words of Mary 
are carried back to this general situation, we easily understand that what 
she wishes is not merely aid given to the embarrassed bridegroom, but, 
on this occasion, a brilliant act fitted to inaugurate the Messianic royalty. 
On the occasion of this failure of the wine, she sees the heaven opening, 
the angel descending, a marvelous manifestation exhibiting itself and 
opening the series of wonders. Any other difficulty in life would have 
served her as a pretext for seeking to obtain the same result: “Thou 
art the Messiah: it is time to show thyself!” As to Jesus, the tempta- 
tion in the wilderness is here seen reproducing itself in its third form 
(Luke iv. 9). He is invited to make an exhibition of His miraculous 
power by passing beyond the measure strictly indicated by the provi- 
dential call. It is what He can no more do at the prayer of His mother 


CHAP. Il. 4. 7 347 


than at the suggestion of Satan or at the demand of the Pharisees. Hence 
the tone of Jesus’ reply, the firmness of which goes even to the point of 
severity. 

Ver. 4. “ Jesus saith to her: What is there between me and thee, woman ? 
My hour is not yet come.” Jesus makes Mary sensible of her incompetency 
in the region into which she intrudes. The career on which He has just 
entered, is that in which He depends only on His Father; His motto 
henceforth is: My Father and I. Mary must learn to know in her 
son the servant of Jehovah, of Jehovah only. The expression “ What is 
there between me and thee?” is a frequent one in the Old Testament. Comp. 
Judg. xi. 12; 2Sam. xvi. 10; 1 Kings xvii. 18; 2 Kings iii. 18. We even 
meet it, sometimes, in profane Greek ; thus the reply of a Stoic to a jester 
is quoted, who asked him, at the moment when their vessel was about to 
sink, whether shipwreck was an evil or not: ‘“ What is there between us 
and thee, O man? We perish, and thou permittest thyself to jest!” 
This formula signifies, that the community of feeling to which one of the 
interlocutors appeals is rejected by the other, at least in the particular 
point which is in question. Mary had, no doubt, well understood that a 
great change was being wrought in the life of her son ; but, as often hap- 
pens with our religious knowledge, she had not drawn from this grave 
fact the practical consequence which concerned her personally. And 
thus, as Bdumlein says, Jesus finds Himself in a position to reject the in- 
fluence which she presumes still to exercise over Him. The address yéivaz, 
woman, is thereby explained. In the language in which Jesus spoke, as 
well as in the Greek language, this term involves nothing contrary to re- 
spect and affection. In Dio Cassius, a queen is accosted by Augustus with 
this expression., Jesus Himself uses it in addressing His mother at a 
moment of inexpressible tenderness, when, from His elevation on the 
cross, He speaks to her for the last time, xix. 26. Here this expression, 
entirely respectful though it may be, gives Mary to understand, that, in 
the sphere on which Jesus has just entered, her title of mother has no 
longer any part to play. 

“Here for Mary,” as Luthardt well observes, “is the beginning of a 
painful education.” The middle point of this education will be marked by 
the question of Jesus, “ Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?” (Luke 
vill. 19 f.) The end will be that second address: Woman (xix. 26), which 
will definitely break the earthly relation between the mother and theson. 
Mary feels at this moment, for the first time, the point of the sword which, 
at the foot of the cross, shall pierce through her heart. After having 
made her sensible of her incompetency, Jesus gives the ground of His re- 
fusal. The words : “ My hour is not yet come” have been understood by 
Euthymius, Meyer, Hengstenberg, Lange and Riggenbach (Leben des Herru 
Jesu, p. 374), in a very restricted sense: “the hour for performing the de- 
sired miracle.” The following words of Mary to the servants, according 
to this view, would imply two things: the first, that Jesus received a little 
later from His Father an inward sign which permitted Him to comply 
with His mother’s wish; and the second, that by a gesture or a word, He 


348 FIRST PART. 


made known to her this new circumstance, This is to add much to the 
text. Besides, how could Jesus, before having received any indication of 
His Father’s will, have said: “not yet,” a word which would necessarily 
mean that the permission will be granted Him later. Finally, this weak- 
ened sense which is here given to the expression “‘my hour” does not cor- 
respond with the solemn meaning which is attached to this term through- 
out our whole Gospel. If it were desired to hold to this weakened mean- 
ing, it would be still better to give to this clause, with Gregory of Nazian- 
zum, an interrogative turn: “Is not the hour (of my emancipation, of my 
autonomy) come?” Let us remark that the expression “my hour” is here 
connected with the verb zs come, as in all the passages in John where it is 
taken in its weightiest sense: “‘ His hour was not yet come”’ (vii. 80; viil. 20, 
comp. xiii. 1); “ The hour is come” (xii. 23; xvii. 1). His hour, in all these 
passages, is that of His Messianic manifestation, especially through His 
death and through the glorification which should follow it. The analo- 
gous expression my time, vii. 6, is also applied to His Messianic manifesta- 
tion, but through the royal entry into Jerusalem. This is the meaning 
which seems to me to prevail here. Jesus makes known to Mary, impa- 
tient to see Him mount the steps of His throne, that the hour of the 
inauguration of His Messianic royalty has not yet struck. It is in His 
capital, Jerusalem, in His palace, the Temple, and not in the centre of His 
family, that His solemn manifestation as Messiah must take place (Mal. 
iii. 1: “ And then He shall enter into His temple”). This sense of the ex- 
pression “my hour” could not be strange to the mind of Mary. How 
many times, in her conversations with Jesus, she had doubtless herself 
used this expression when asking Him: Will thine hour come at last? 
That hour was the one towards which all her desire as an Israelite and a 
mother moved forward. Jesus rejects Mary’s request, but only so far as 
it has something of ambition. How often in His conversations, He replies 
less to the question which is addressed to Him than to the spirit in which 
it is put (comp. i. 19; 11.3; vi. 26). He thus lays hold of the person of 
His interlocutor even in his inmost self. Mary desires a brilliant miracle, 
as a public sign of His coming. Jesus penetrates this ambitious thought 
and traces a boundary for Mary’s desires which she should no more 
attempt to cross. But this does not prevent His understanding that along 
with this, there is something to be done in view of the present difficulty. 
Ver. 5. “ His mother says to the servants, Whatsoever he says to you,’ do it.” 
Something in the tone and expression of Jesus gives Mary to understand 
that this refusal leaves a place for a more moderate granting of the desire. 
Perhaps in this narrative, which is so summary, there is here the omission 
of a circumstance which the reader may supply for himself from what 
follows (precisely like that which occurs in xi. 28), a circumstance which 
gives occasion to the charge of Mary to the servants: ‘Do whatsoever He 
shall tell you.” How, at this moment of heavenly joy, when Jesus was 
receiving His Spouse from the hands of His Father, could He have 


1The MSS. are divided between Aeyn and Aeyer. 


CHAP. Ir. 5, 6. 349 


altogether refused the prayer of her who, during thirty years, had been 
taking the most tender care of Him, and from whom He was about to 
separate Himself forever? Jesus, without having need of any other sign 
of His Father’s will, grants to the faith of His mother a hearing analogous 
to that which, at a later time, He did not refuse to a stranger, a Gentile 
(Matt. xv. 25). If criticism has found in the obscurities of this dialogue 
an evidence against the truth of the account, it is an ill-drawn conclusion. 
This unique conciseness is, on the contrary, the seal of its authenticity.— 
By the expression: Whatsoever He says to you, Mary reserves full liberty 
of action to her Son, and thus enters again within her own bounds, which 
she had tried to overstep. 

Ver. 6. ‘ Now there were there’ six water-pots of stone, according to the usual 
manner of purifying among the Jews, containing two or three measures apiece.” 
’Exei, there, denotes, according to Meyer, the banqueting room itself. Is it 
not more natural to imagine these urns placed in the court or in the vestibule 
at the entrance of the hall? The ninth verse proves that all this occurred 
out of the bridegroom’s sight, who was himself in the room. These vases 
were designed for the purification either of persons or utensils, such as 
was usual among pious Jews, especially before or after meals (Matt. xv. 2; 
Luke xi. 38; particularly, Mk. vii. 1-4.)—Kard, not with a view to, but 
according to its natural sense, in conformity with. This preposition has 
reference to the complement tév ’Iovdaiwyv: conformably to the mode of 
purification customary among the Jews. John expresses himself thus 
because he is writing among Gentiles and as no longer belonging to the 
Jewish community. ’Avd has evidently, considering the very precise 
number six, the distributive sense (singulae), not the approximative mean- 
ing (about). The measure which is spoken of was of considerable size; 
its capacity was 27 litres (Rilliet) or even 38 (Keil) or 39 (Arnaud). The 
entire contents might, therefore, reach even to about 500 litres. [The litre 
is a measure nearly corresponding with the English quart.] This quantity 
has seemed too considerable, it has even scandalized certain critics (Strauss, 
Schweizer), who have found here an indication of the falsity of the account. 
Liicke replies that all the water was not necessarily changed into wine. 
This supposition is contrary to the natural meaning of the text; the exact 
indication of the capacity of the vessels certainly implies the contrary. 
Let us rather say that when once Jesus yields to the desire of His mother, 
he yields with all His heart, as a son, a friend, a man, with an inward joy. It 
is His first miraculous sign; it must give high testimony of His wealth, of 
His munificence, of the happiness which He has in relieving, even in 
giving gladness; it must become the type of the fullness of grace, of joy 
and of strength which the only-begotten Son brings to the earth. There 
is, moreover, nothing in the text to lead us to suppose that all the wine 
must have been consumed at this feast. It was the rich wedding gift by 
which the Lord honored this house where He with his attendants had just 


1 Kecuevac placed by T. R. after e£ accord- put after Iovdacwy in B C L, and is altogether 
ing to the majority of the MSS. and Vss., is wanting in &, 


300 FIRST PART. 


been hospitably received. Perhaps the number siz was expressly called to 
mind, because it corresponded precisely with the number of persons who 
accompanied Jesus. This gift was thus, as it were, a testimony of the 
gratitude on the part of the disciples themselves to their host; it was, at 
all events, the enduring monument of the Master’s benediction upon the 
youthful household formed under His auspices. How can criticism put 
itself in collision with everything that is most truly human in the Gospel? 
Moreover, what a feeling of lively pleasure is expressed in the following 
words! Jesus foresees the joyous surprise of His host: 

Vv. 7, 8. “Jesus says to them, Fill the water-pots with water. And they filled 
them up to the brim. 8. And he says to them, Draw out now and bear unto the 
ruler of the feast. And they bore it.” We should not understand yeyicare, 
jill, in the sense of filling up, nor allege in support of this meaning the 
words éw¢ dvw, up to the brim ; the matter thus understood has something 
repugnant in it. Either the urns were empty in consequence of the ablutions 
which had taken place before the repast, or they were beginning by 
emptying them, in order to fill them afterwards anew. The: up to the brim 
serves to make the ardor with which the work was done apparent. The 
moment of the miracle must be placed between vv. 7 and 8; since the 
transformation is presupposed as accomplished by the word now of ver. 8. 
This now, as well as the words: bear it, breathes a spirit of overflowing 
joy and even gaiety. The person here called ruler of the feast was not one 
of the guests; he was the chief of the servants: it belonged to his office to 
taste the meats and drinks before they were placed upon the table. He 
ordinarily bears in Greek the name rtpazeCoroiéc. 

Vv. 9.10. “When the ruler of the feast had tasted the water which was made 
wine—and he knew not whence it came, but the servants who had drawn 
the water knew—the ruler of the feast calls the bridegroom, 10, and says to him, 
Every one serves first the good wine, and when men have become drunken, then? 
that which is worse ; thou® hast kept the good wine until now.” The words 
idwp olvov yeyevvnuévov, the water become wine, admit of no other sense than 
that of a miraculous transformation. The natural process by which the 
watery sap is transformed every year in the vine-stock (Augustine), or that 
by which mineral waters are formed (Neander), offers, indeed, a remote 
analogy, but not at all a means of explanation. The parenthesis which 
includes the words kai oik . . . idwp presents a construction perfectly 
analogous to that of i. 10 and vi. 21-28. This parenthesis is designed to 
make the reality of the miracle apparent, by reminding the reader, on the 
one hand, that the servants did not know that it was wine which they 
were bearing, and on the other, that the ruler of the feast had not been 
present when the event occurred. Weiss makes the clause kai ov« dee 
néfev éoriv also depend on éc, and commences the parenthesis only with 
oi dé... This is undoubtedly possible, but less natural as it seems to 
me. He calls the bridegroom; the latter was in the banqueting hall. 


lInstead of nat nvéyxev, 8 B K L some 3s G A some Mnn. and Vss. read ov de 
Mnn. Cop. read ot de nveyrav. instead of ov. 
28 B L some Mnn. omit tore (then). 


CHAP. 11. 7-11. 351 


Some have desired by all means to give a religious import to the 
pleasantry of the ruler of the feast, by attributing to it a symbolic mean- 
ing; on one side, the world, which begins by offering to man the best 
which it has, to abandon him afterwards to despair; on the other, God, 
always surpassing Himself in His gifts, and, after the austere law, offering 
the delicious wine of the Gospel. There was by no means anything of this 
sort in the consciousness of the speaker, and no indication appears that 
the evangelist attached such a sense to the words. This saying is simply 
related in order to show with what entire unreservedness J esus gave 
Himself up to the common joy, by giving not only abundantly but excel- 
lently. There is here, also, one of the rays of His déga (glory). For the 
rest, it is not at all necessary to weaken the sense of evo, to be drunken, 
in order*to remove from the guests at the wedding all suspicion of intem- 
perance. This saying has a proverbial sense, and does not refer to the 
company at Cana. 

Ver. 11. “ This first! of his miracles Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and he 
manifested his glory, and his disciples believed on him.” John characterizes 
under four important relations the miracle which he has just related. 
1. This was the first, not only of the miracles performed at Cana, but of all 
the miracles of Jesus. As here was a decisive moment in the revelation 
of the Lord and in the faith of the disciples, John brings out this fact with 
emphasis. The Alexandrian authorities have rejected the article rf 
before apy4v, without doubt as being superfluous on account of rairyy. But, 
as is frequently the case with them, when desiring to correct, they spoil. 
Without the article, the attention is rather drawn to the nature of the 
miracle: “It was by this prodigy that Jesus began to work miracles.” 
By the article the notion itself of a beginning is more strongly empha- 
sized: “ That fact... was the true beginning...” The second of 
these ideas is.as thoroughly an essential element in the context, as we shall 
see, as the first is foreign to it. 2. John recalls a second time, in closing, 
the place where the event occurred. The design of this repetition cannot 
be purely geographical. We shall see, in iii. 24 and iv. 54, how anxious 
John was to distinguish between the two returns of Jesus to Galilee (i. 44 
and iv. 1-3), which had been united in one by tradition, and this is the 
reason why he expressly points out how the one and the other of these 
two returns was signalized by a miracle accomplished at Cana. Accord- 
ing to Hengstenberg, the defining words of Galilee recall the prophecy of 
Is. vill. 28-ix. 1, according to which the glory of the Messiah was to be 
manifested in Galilee. This aim would be admissible in Matthew; it 
seems foreign to the narrative of John. 3. John indicates the purpose of 
the miracle. He uses here, for the first time, the term sign (oyyeiov) which 
is in harmony with the following expression: “ He manifested His glory.” 
The miracles of Jesus are not mere wonders (répara), designed to strike 
the imagination. A close relation exists between these marvelous acts and 


1The T. R. reads with the majority of the apxnv. ABLT?A and Orig. reject this article. 
Mjj. among them &, and the Mnn., rny before 28 adds mpwrny after TadcAacas. 


so FIRST PART. 


the person of Him who performs them. They are visible emblems of 
what He is and of what He comes to do, and, as Reuss says, ‘radiant 
images of the permanent miracle of the manifestation of Christ.” The 
glory of Christ is, above all, His dignity as Son and the eternal love which 
His Father has for Him. Now this glory is, in its very nature, concealed 
from the eyes of the inhabitants of the earth; but the miracles are the 
brilliant signs of it. They manifest the unlimited freedom with which the 
Son disposes of all things, and thus demonstrate the perfect love of the 
Father towards Him : ‘“ The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things 
into His hands” (iii. 85). The expression “ His glory” makes a profound 
distinction between Jesus and all the divine messengers who had accom- 
plished like wonders before Him. In the miracles of the other divine 
messengers the glory of Jehovah is seen (Exod. xvi. 7); those of Jesus 
reveal His own, by bearing witness in concert with His words, to His filial 
position. The expression His glory contains, moreover, all of His own 
that Jesus puts into the act which He has just performed, the love full of 
tenderness with which He makes use of divine omnipotence in the service 
of His own. 4. John, finally, sets forth the result of this miracle. Evoked 
at first by testimony, faith was strengthened by personal contact with 
Jesus, its object. Now in the course of this personal relation, it makes 
such experience of the power and goodness of Him to whom it is 
attached, that it finds itself thereby immovably confirmed. Doubtless it 
will grow every day in proportion as such experiences shall multiply ; but 
from this moment it has passed through the three essential phases of its 
formation: testimony, personal contact and experience. This is what 
John expresses by the words: “And his disciples believed on him.” These 
glorious irradiations from the person of Jesus, which are called miracles, 
are, therefore, designed not only, as apologetics often assume, to strike 
the eyes of the still unbelieving multitude and to stimulate the delaying, 
but, especially, to illuminate the hearts of believers, by revealing to them, 
in this world of suffering, all the riches of the living object of their faith. 

What took place in the minds of the other witnesses of this scene? 
John’s silence leads us to suppose that the impression produced was 
neither profound nor enduring. This is because the miracle, in order to 
act efficaciously, must be understood asa sign (vi. 26), and because to this 
end certain moral predispositions are necessary. The impression of as- 
tonishment which the guests experienced, not connecting itself with any 
spiritual need, with any struggle of conscience, was soon effaced by the 
distractions of life. 


On the Miracle of Cana. 


Objections of two sorts are raised against the reality of this event: the one 
class bear on miracles in general; the other, on this one in particular. We do 
not concern ourselves with the first. Wethink there is nothing more opposed to the 
sound method—the method called experimental—than to begin by declaring, as a 
principle, the impossibility of a miracle. To say that there has never been a mira- 
cle until now,—be itso. This is a point for examination. But to say that there 


CHAP, Ir. 11, 353 


cannot be one, is to make metaphysics, not history; it is to throw oneself into the 
a priori, which is repudiated.' 

The objections which relate especially to the miracle of Cana are: 

1. Its magical character (Schweizer). The difference between the magical and 
the miraculous is, that, in the former, the supernatural power works in vacuo, dis- 
pensing with already existing nature, while in the second, the divine force re- 
spects the first creation and always connects its working with material furnished 
by it. Now, in this case, Jesus does not use His power to create, as Mary undoubt- 
edly was expecting; He contents Himself with transforming that which is. He 
remains, thus, within the limits of the Biblical supernatural. 

2. The uselessness of the miracle is made an objection. It is “a miracle of 
luxury,” according to Strauss. Let us rather say with Tholuck, “a miracle of 
love.’ We think we have shown this. It might even be regarded as the pay- 
ment of a double debt: to the bridegroom, for whom the Lord’s arrival had 
caused this embarrassment, and to Mary, to whom Jesus, before leaving her, was 
paying His debt of gratitude. The miracle of Cana isthe miracle of filial piety, 
as the resurrection of Lazarus is that of fraternal affection. The symbolic inter- 
pretations, by means of which it has been desired to explain the purpose of this 
miracle, seem to us artificial: to set the Gospel joy in opposition to the ascetic 
rigor of John the Baptist (Olshausen); to represent the miraculous transforma- 
tion of the legal into spiritual life (Luthardt). Would not such intentions betray 
themselves in some word of the text? 

3. This miracle is evencharged with immorality. Jesus, it is said, countenanced 
the intemperance of the guests. “ With the same right one might demand,” an- 
swers Lengstenberg, “that God should not grant good vintages because of drunk- 
ards.’ The presence of Jesus and, afterwards, the thankful remembrance of his 
hosts would guarantee the holy usé of this gift. 

4, The omission of this story in the Synoptics seems to the adversaries the 
strongest argument against the reality of the event. But this miracle belongs 
still to the family life of Jesus; it does not forma part of the acts of His public 
ministry. Moreover, as we have seen, it has its place in an epoch of the minis- 
try of Jesus, which, by reason of the confusion of the first two returns to Gali- 
lee, had disappeared from the tradition. The aim of John in restoring this event 
to light was precisely to re-establish the distinction between these two returns and, 
at the same time, to recall one of the first and principal landmaks of the develop- 
ment of the apostolic faith (comp. ver. 11). 

Do not a multitude of proofs demonstrate the fragmentary character of the oral 
tradition which is recorded in the Synoptics? How can we explain the omission 
in our four Gospels of the appearance of the risen Jesus to the five hundred? 
And yet this fact is one of the most solidly attested (1 Cor. xv. 6). 

If we reject the reality of the miracle as it isso simply related by the evan- 
gelist, what remains for us? Three suppositions : 

1. The natural explanation of Paulus or of Gfrérer: Jesus had agreed with a 
tradesman to have wine brought secretly, during the feast, which He caused to be 
served to the guests mixed with water. By His reply to Mary, ver. 4, He wishes to 
induce her simply not to injure the success of the entertainment which He has 


10n miracles in general, comp. Jntrod., p. Miracles of Jesus Christ,and on the Super- 
87 and the author’s Conferences on _ the natural. 


23 


304 FIRST PART. 


prepared, and the hour for which has not yet come, through an indiscretion. “The 
glory of Jesus (ver. 11), is the exquisite humanity which characterizes His 
amiable proceeding (Paulus). Or it is to Mary herself that the honor of this at- 
tention is ascribed. She has had the wine prepared, in order to offer it as a wed- 
ding present; and at the propitious moment she makes a sign to Jesus:to cause it 
to be served (Gfrérer). Renan seems not far from adopting the one or the other of 
these explanations. He says in vague terms: “Jesus went willingly to marriage 
entertainments. One of His miracles was performed, it is said, to enliven a vil- 
lage wedding” (p. 195). Weiss adopts a form of the natural explanation which 
is less incompatible with the seriousness of Jesus’ character (see above on ver 3) : 
nevertheless, he acknowledges that John believed that he was relating a miracle 
and meant to do so. But could this apostle, then, be so completely deceived re- 
specting the nature of a fact which he himself related as an eye-witness? Jesus 
must, in that case, have intentionally allowed an obscurity to hover over the 
event, which was fitted to deceive His nearest friends. The seriousness of the 
Gospel history protests against these parodies which end in making Jesus 
a village charlatan. 2. The mythical explanation of Strauss: Legend invented 
this miracle after the analogy of certain facts related in the Old Testament, 
e. g. Exod. xv. 23 ff, where Moses purifies bitter waters by means of a 
certain sort of wood; 2 Kings ii. 19, where Elisha does something similar. But 
there is not the least real analogy between these facts and those before us here. 
Moreover, the perfect simplicity of the narrative, and even its obscurities, are 
incompatible with such an origin. “The whole tenor of the narrative,” says 
Baur himself (recalling the judgment of de Wette), “by no means authorizes us to 
assume the mythical character of the account.” 3. The ideal explanation of Baur, 
Keim, etc. According to the first, the pseudo-John made up this narrative as a pure 
invention, to represent the relation between the two baptisms, that of John (the 
water) and that of Jesus (the wine). According to the second, the evangelist in- 
vented this miracle on the basis of that saying of Jesus: “Can the friends of the 
bridegroom fast while the bridegroom is with them. . . . They put new wine into 
new bottles” (Matt. ix. 15, 17). The water in the vessels represents, thus, the in- 
sufficient purifications offered by Judaism and the baptism of John. The worse 
wine, with which ordinarily the beginning is made, is also Judaism, which was 
destined to give place to the better wine of the Gospel. The delay of Jesus rep- 
resents the fact that His coming followed that of John the Baptist. His hour is 
that of His death, which substitutes for the previous imperfect purifications the 
true purification through the blood of Christ, in consequence of which is given the 
joyous wine of the Holy Spirit, ete. . . . In truth, if our desire were to demon- 
strate the reality of the event as it is simply related by John, we could not do it 
in a more convincing way than by explanations like these, which seem to be the 
parody of criticism. What! shall this refined idealism, which was the founda- 
tion and source even of the narrative, betray itself nowhere in the smallest word 
of thestory! Shall it envelop itself in the most simple, prosaic, sober narrative 
which carries conciseness even to obscurity !_ To our view, the apostolic narrative, 
by its character of simplicity and truth, will always be the most eloquent de- 
fender of the reality of the fact. 


1 We refrain here from answering Schweizer, but has withdrawn his hypothesis. (See 
who attacked the authenticity of this passage, Introd. p. 27). 


CHAP. I. 12. 355 


Before leaving this first cycle of narratives, we must further take notice 
of a judgment of Renan respecting this beginning of our Gospel (p. 109): 
“The first pages of the fourth Gospel are incongruous notes carelessly put 
together. The strict chronological order which they exhibit arises from 
the author’s taste for apparent precision.” But exegesis has shown, on 
the contrary, that if there is a passage in our Gospels where all things are 
linked together and are strictly consecutive, not only as to time, but also 
as to substance and idea, it is this one. The days are enumerated, the 
hours even mentioned: it is the description of a continuous week, 
answering to that of the final week. More than this: the intrinsic con- 
nection of the facts is so close that Baur could persuade himself that he 
had to deal with an ideal and systematic conception, presented under an 
historic form. The farther the Gospel narrative advances, the more does 
Renan himself render homage to its chronological exactness. He ends by 
taking it almost exclusively as a guide for his narration. And the begin- 
ning of such a story, whose homogeneity is evident, is nothing but an ac- 
cidental collection of “notes carelessly put together!” This, at all events, 
has little probability. 


SECOND CYCLE. 
II. 12-IV. 54. 


This second cycle is naturally divided into three sections: 1. The min- 
istry of Jesus in Judea, ii. 12-iii. 86; 2. The return through Samaria: iv. 
1-42; 3. The settlingin Galilee, iv. 48-54. We shall see that to these three 
geographical domains three very different moral situations correspond. 
Hence the varied manner in which Jesus reveals Himself and the differ- 
ent reception which he meets. 


FIRST SECTION. 
II. 12-ITT. 36. 


JESUS IN JUDEA. 


Here again, as in the preceding story, the course of the narrative is 
steadily continuous and its historical development accurately graduated. 
Jesus first appears in the temple (ii. 12-22); later He teaches in the capital 
(ii. 23-iii. 21), finally, He exercises His ministry in the country of Judea 
(ili. 22-36). 


I. Jesus in the Temple : li, 12-22. 
Ver. 12. “After this, he went down to Capernaum,' he and his mother and his 


brethren? and his disciples,s and they abode there not many days.” * From 
Cana Jesus undoubtedly returned to Nazareth. For it was the latter place 


18 B T> X Itpler,: Kadapvaovp, instead of 3 Itpler, omit «cat oc padnTar avtov (con- 
Kazepvaovyz which T. R. reads with the 19 fusion of the two avrov). 
other Mjj. 4Instead of euvewwav, A F G A Cop. read 


2B L T? Italia, Orig. omit avrov after adeAgor. - euecvev (he abode). 


306 FIRST PART. 

which He had in view when returning from Judea, rather than Cana to 
which He was only accidentally called. Weiss finds this hypothesis arbi- 
trary. He prefers to hold that the family of Mary had already before this 
left Nazareth to settle in Cana. It seems to me that this is the supposi- 
tion which merits precisely the name of an arbitrary one (see on ver. 1). 
From Nazareth Jesus and His family removed at that time to Capernaum, 
as is related also by Matthew, iv. 18: “ Having left Nazareth, He came and 
dwelt at Capernaum.” It is only necessary to recognize the fact that Mat- 
thew unites in one the first two returns to Galilee (John i. 44 and iv. 1- 
3), which John so accurately distinguishes. From his point of view, 
Weiss is obliged to see in our twelfth verse only the account of a mere 
visit, which was made by Jesus’ family from Cana to friends at Capernaum. 
But what purpose does it serve to mention a detail so insignificant and one 
which would not have had any importance? Jesus’ mother and brethren 
accompanied Him. No doubt, under the impression produced by the 
miracle of Cana, and by the accounts of the disciples, His family were 
unwilling to abandon Him at this moment. They all desired to see how 
the drama which had just opened would unfold. This detail of John’s 
narrative is confirmed by Mark vi. 3, from which it appears that the sis- 
ters of Jesus, probably already married, had alone remained at Nazareth, 
and by Mark iii. 21-31, which is most naturally explained if the brothers 
of Jesus were settled with Mary at Capernaum. As for Jesus, He had not, 
for the time, the intention of making a prolonged stay in that city. It 
was only later, when He was obliged to abandon Judea, that He fixed 
His ordinary residence at Capernaum, and that that place became His 
own city (Matt. ix. 1). We may discover in the words of Luke iv. 23 an 
indication of this brief visit, previous to His settlement in that city. Thus 
a considerable difficulty in the narrative of Luke would be resolved and 
the accuracy of his sources would be verified in respect to one of the 
points most assailed in his narrative. Capernaum was a city of consider- 
able commerce. It was located on the route of the caravans which 
passed from Damascus and from the interior of Asia to the Mediterra- 
nean. There was a custom-house there (Luke v. 27 f.). It was, in some 
sort, the Jewish capital of Galilee, as Tiberias was its Gentile or Roman 
capital. Jesus would have less narrow prejudices to meet there than at 
Nazareth, and many more opportunities to propagate the Gospel. The 
word xaréByn, went down, is due to the fact that Cana and Nazareth were 
situated on the plateau, and Capernaum on the shore of the lake! The 


1 It does not seem that authorities are near 
to an agreement on the question of the site 
of Capernaum. The old opinion named Tell 
Hum at the northern extremity of the lake. 
There are ruins there, undoubtedly, but by 
no means a copious spring of water such as 
that which Josephus mentions and to which 
he even gives the name Capernaum, Kedap- 
voun (Bell. Jud. iii. 10, 8). Keim, following 
Robinson, pleads energetically in favor of 


Khan-Minyéh, about a league south-west of 
Tell-Hum. But at that place there is no 
abundant spring, for the little neighboring 
fountain, Ain-et-Tin, which issues from the 
base of the rock a few paces from the lake, 
cannot answer to the description of Jose- 
phus, and cannot have served to irrigate the 
country. Caspari and Quandt have good 
grounds, therefore, for proposing the site of 
Ain-Mudawara, a magnificent basin of water 


CHAP. I. 12. 357 
silence preserved respecting Joseph leads to the supposition that he had 
died before this period. Before calling His disciples to follow Him defi- 
nitely, Jesus, no doubt, granted them the satisfaction of finding them- 
selves once more, like Himself, in the family circle. It was from that 
circle that he called them again. (See p. 361.) 

What is the true meaning of the expression: the brethren of Jesus ? This 
question, as is well known, is one of the most complicated ones of the Gos- 
pel history. Must we understand by it brothers, in the proper sense of 
the word, the issue of Joseph and Mary and younger than Jesus? Or 
sons of Joseph, the issue of a marriage previous to his union with Mary? 
Or, finally, are we to hold that they are not sons either of Joseph or of 
Mary, and that the word brother must be taken in the broad sense of 
cousins? From the exegetical point of view, two reasons appear to us 
to support the first of these three opinions: 1. The two passages, Matt. i. 
25: “ He knew her not until she brought forth her first-born son” (or, ac- 
cording to the Alexandrian reading “her son’’), and Luke ii. 7: “she 
brought forth her first-born son.” 2. The proper sense of the word brothers 
is the only natural one in the phrase: his mother and his brethren. The 
following appendix will give a general exposition of the question. 


The Brethren of Jesus. 


The oldest traditions, if we mistake not, unanimously assign brothers to Jesus, and 
not merely cousins. They differ only in this point, that these brothers are, according 
to some, sons of Joseph and Mary, younger brothers of Jesus; according to others, 
children of Joseph, the issue of a first marriage. The idea of making the brothers of 
Jesus in the New Testament cousins, seems to go no further back than Jerome 
and Augustine, although Keim (I., p. 423) claims to find it already in Hegesippus 
and Clement of Alexandria. (Comp. on this question, the excellent dissertation 
of Philip Schaff: Das Verhdliniss des Jacobus, Bruders des Herrn, zu Jacobus Al- 
phaet, 1843.) Let us begin by studying the principal testimonies: Hegesippus, 
whom Eusebius (ii. 23) places “in the first rank in the apostolical succession,” 
writes about 160: “James, the Lord’s brother, called the Just from the times of 
Christ even to our days, then takes in hand the administration of the Church with 
the apostles (werd Tov aroor.).” It clearly follows from these words: with the apos- 
tles, that Hegesippus does not rank James, the Lord’s brother, among the apos- 


in the centre of the plain of Gennesaret, half 
a league west of Khan-Minyeh. Renan ob- 
jects that Capernaum must have been situ- 
ated on the lake-shore (mrapa@adagcia, Matt. 
iv. 13). But Ain-Mudawara is only a quarter 
ofa league distant from the shore of the lake 
(comp. Mark v. 21, Matt. ix. 9). Only we do 
not find ruins in this district. Are we then 
to think of Ain-Tabigah, between Tell-Hum 
and Khan-Minyeh? This is the opinion ex- 
pressed in Heydenheim’s Vierteljahrschrift, 
1871, pp. 533-544. A powerful spring is found 
there which may have served the purpose of 
irrigating the country by aqueducts, such as 


one which supplies, at the present time, the 
mill which is placed on this spot. But here 
also no ruins have been discovered up to the 
present hour. As for Bethsaida, there is the 
same uncertainty. Some think of Ain-Tabi- 
gah, others of Et-Tin. Quandt even expresses 
an opinion in favor of El-Megdil (The Tower), 
which is ordinarily regarded as the Magdala 
of the Gospel. In this case, we must, with 
this writer, locate Magdala, together with the 
district of Dalmanutha, southward of Tiberias. 
—Comp. my Comment sur lV évang. de Lue, I. 
p. 301 f.; Eng. Trans. L, p. 365. 


358 FIRST PART. 


s 
tles, and consequently distinguishes him from the two apostles of this name, the 
son of Zebedee, and the little (less), son of Alpheus. Now, if Alpheus is the Greek 
form of the Aramean name Clopas (‘p57 = KAorac), a name which, according to 
Hegesippus, was that of the brother of Joseph, it follows from this, that, this last 
James being the cousin of the Lord, the first could be only His brother, in the 
proper sense. 

The distinction which Hegesippus established between the three Jameses is con- 
firmed by an expression quoted from him in the same chapter of Eusebius: “ For 
there were several persons called James (70AA0i "IaxwPor).” The word roAdoi (sev- 
eral), implies that he supposed there were more than two Jameses. 

Eusebius relates (iii. 11), that after the martyrdom of James the Just, the. first 
bishop of Jerusalem, “Simeon, the son of Clopas, who was the Lord’s cousin (aveyr0c), 
was chosen as his successor.” For, Eusebius adds: “ Hegesippus relates that Clo- 
pas was the brother of Joseph.” By this expression: the son of C'lopas, Simeon’s 
relationship to Jesus is evidently distinguished from that of James; otherwise, 
Eusebius would have said: who was also the son of Clopas, or at least: who was 
the brother of James. Hegesippus did not, therefore, consider James as the son 
of Clopas, nor, consequently, as the Lord’s cousin ; he regarded him, therefore, as 
His brother in the proper sense of the word. 

Eusebius (iii. 32), quotes, also, the following words of Hegesippus: “Some of 
these heretics denounced Simeon, the son of Clopas ... In the time of Trajan, 
the latter, son of the Lord’s uncle (6 éx Tov Oeiov Tov Kvpiov ... ), was condemned to 
the cross.” Why designate Simeon by the expression: son of the Lord’s uncle, 
while James was always called, simply, the Lord’s brother, if they were broihers, 
one of the other, and related to the Lord in the same degree? The principal pas- 
sage of Hegesippus is cited by Eusebius (iv. 22): “ After James had suffered mar- 
tyrdom, like the Lord, Simeon, born of His uncle (6eiov airov), son of Clopas, was 
appointed bishop, having been chosen by all as a second cousin of the Lord (évra 
aveyiov Tov Kupiov devtepov).” If we refer the pronoun airov (His uncle), to James, 
the question is settled: Simeon was the son of James’ uncle, consequently, James’ 
cousin, and not his brother; and James was, therefore, not the cousin, but the 
brother of Jesus. If we refer the airod to the Lord Himself, it follows, as 
we already know, that Simeon was the son of Jesus’ uncle, that is to say, His 
cousin. The last words of Hegesippus carry us still further. Simeon is called the 
second cousin of Jesus ; who was the first? It could not be James the Just, as Keim 
thinks. Everything that precedes prevents our supposing this. As constantly as 
Simeon is called cousin of Jesus, so constantly is James the Just designated as His 
brother. How would this be possible, if they were brothers to each other? It 
appears to me that the first cousin of Jesus (the eldest son of Clopas), could have 
been only the apostle James (the little) the son of Alpheus. He, as an apostle, 
could not be head of a particular flock, or consequently, bishop of Jerusalem. 
‘This was, then, the second cousin of Jesus, to whom they turned after the death 
of James the Just. Thus, everything is harmonious in the account of Hegesip- 
pus, and the identification of the name Alpheus and Clopas, which is at the pres- 
ent day called in question, is confirmed by this ancient testimony.!_ This result is 


1 The identification of the two names Al- _—mann, for example, prefers to derive the sec- 
pheeus and Clopas is, at the present day, called ond of these names from the Aramaic word 
in question again for different reasons. Holtz- culba—hammer (Jacob der Gerechte und seine 


CHAP. OH. 12. 309 
also confirmed by the words of Hegesippus respecting Jude, the brother of James 
(Jude ver. i.): “There existed, also, at that time, grandsons of Jude, called His 
brother (brother of the Lord) according to the flesh” (Euseb. iii. 20). This expres- 
sion: brother of the Lord according to the flesh, applied to Jude, clearly distinguishes 
his position from that of Simeon. 

The opinion of Clement of Alexandria may appear doubtful. This Father seems 
(Euseb. ii. 1) to know only two Jameses: 1. The son of Zebedee, the brother of 
the Apostle John; 2. The Lord’s brother, James the Just, who was at the same 
time the son of Alpheus, and the cousin of Jesus. “ For there were two Jameses,” 
he says, “one, the Just, who was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple . . . , the 
other, who was beheaded (Acts xii. 2).’ Nevertheless, Clement may very well 
have passed in silence James, the son of Alphzus, of whom mention is only once 
made in the Acts, and who played no part in the history of the Church with 
which this Father here occupies himself. Clement, moreover, seems to derive his 
information respecting James from Hegesippus himself (Schaff, p. 69). Now we 
have just ascertained the opinion of the latier.?. Tradition recognizes, therefore, 
the existence of brothers of Jesus, and particularly of these two: James and Jude. 
But are they children of Joseph, the issue of an earlier marriage, or sons of Jo- 
seph and Mary? ; 

The former opinion is that of the author of an apocrypal writing, belonging to 
the first part of the second century, the Protevangelium Jacobi. In chap. ix. 
Joseph says to the priest who confides Mary to him: “I have sons, and am old.” 
At chap. xvii.: “I have come to Bethlehem to have my sons registered,” ete. 
Origen accepted this view. In his Homily on Luke vii., translated by Jerome, 
he says: “For these sons, called sons of Joseph, were not born of Mary.” (See 
the other passages in Schaff, p. 81 f.) It follows, however, from his own explana- 
tions that this opinion rested, not on an historical tradition, but on a double dog- 
matic prejudice: that of the moral superiority of celibacy to marriage, and that 
of the exceptional holiness of the mother of Jesus (comp. especially the passage 
ad Matth. xiii. 55). Several apocryphal Gospels—those of Peter, Thomas, etc., 
as well as several Fathers, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius, etc., spread abroad this 
opinion. But Jerome charges it with being deliramentum apocryphorum. 

The other view is found in the following authorities: Tertullian evidently 
admits brothers of Jesus in the strict and complete sense of the word. For he 
says, de Monog. c. 8: “The virgin was not married until after having given birth 
to the Christ.” According to Jerome (adv. Helvid.), some very ancient writers 
spoke of sons of Joseph and Mary, and they had already been combated by Jus- 
tin; a fact, which proves to what a high antiquity this opinion goes back.’ 


Brider, in the Zeitschr. f. wiss. Theol., 1880). 
The philological scruples, however, which 
are raised, do not seem to me sufficient to 
overthrow what results from the simple and 
plain tradition of Hegesippus. 

1 Before these facts, Keim’s affirmation (I., 
p. 423) falls to the ground: “Hegesippus 
makes James and Simeon .. . cousins 
of Jesus.” (Comp. the same assertions: 
Schenkel’s Bibellezic., I., p. 482.) 

2 Eusebius himself certainly distinguished 
James, the Lord’s brother, from James, the 
son of Alpheus, since in his Commentary on 


Is. xvii. 5 (Montfaucons Coll. nova patr., II., 
p. 422), he reckons fourteen apostles: the well- 
known twelve..., then Paul..., then 
James, the Lord’s brother, first bishop of 
Jerusalem. But respecting the manner in 
which the latter was related to the Lord, the 
passage ii. 1, leaves us in doubt (see the 
various reading). The thought of Eusebius on 
this subject does not seem to me to be clear. 

3 We do not here allege testimonies of so 
late a time as that of the letter of the pseudo- 
Ignatius to the Apostle John, or that of the 
Apostolical Constitutions, viii. 35 (see Schaff). 


360 FIRST PART. 


Whatever preference should be given to the one or the other of these two 
relationships, the difference between the brothers and cousins of Jesus remains 
established from the historical point of view. 

This now is the difficulty which it raises: The names of Jesus’ brothers, men- 
tioned in Matt. xiii. 55; Mark vi. 3, are James, Joses (according to the various 
readings, Joseph or John), Simon and Judas. Now, according to John xix. 25, 
comp. with Matt. xxvii. 56 and Mark xv. 40, Mary, the wife of Clopas, aunt of 
Jesus, had two sons, one named James (in Mark, James the litile), the other Joses, 
who were, consequently, two cousins of Jesus. Moreover, Hegesippus makes 
Simeon, the second bishop of Jerusalem, a son of Clopas ; he was, therefore, also a 
cousin of Jesus. Finally, Luke vi. 14-16 speaks of an apostle Judas (son or 
brother) of James who is mentioned as son of Alpheus (or Clopas). He would, 
thus, be a fourth cousin of Jesus, and the two lists would coincide throughout ! 
Four brothers and four cousins with the same names! Is this admissible? But 
1. As to the Apostle Judas, the natural ellipsis in Luke’s passage is not brother, but 
son of James—consequently of some James unknown to us. This designation ig 
designed merely to distinguish this apostle from the other J udas, Iscariot, whose 
name follows. Jesus had then, indeed, a brother named Judas, but not a cousin 
of thisname. 2. The statements of Hegesippus certainly force us to admit a 
cousin of Jesus by the name of Simon. 3. If, for the second brother of J esus, we 
adopt the reading Joseph, the identity of name with that of the third cousin 
falls to the ground of itself. 4. As to the name James, it is undoubtedly found in - 
the two lists. The actual result, therefore, is this: In these two lists, that of the 
brothers, and that of the cousins of Jesus, there are two names in common: those 
of James and Simon. Is this sufficient to prove the identity of these two catego- 
ries of persons? Even in our day, does it not happen, especially in country 
places, that we find families related to one another, in which, among. several 
children, one or two bear certain very familiar names in common ? 

Notice, on the other hand, two positive exegetical reasons in favor of the dis- 
tinction between the brothers and the cousins of Jesus: 1. Without doubt, assum- 
ing the premature death of Clopas, we could understand how his widow and her 
sons might have been received by Joseph and Mary, and the latter brought up 
with Jesus, and in this way their designation as brothers of Jesus could be 
explained. But is it conceivable that, in presence of the fact that the mother of 
these young persons was still living (Matt. xxvii. 56 and parall.), the expression 
would have been used in speaking of Mary and her nephews, “ His mother and His 
brethren,” as it isused in our Gospels (Matt. xii. 46; Mark iii. 31 ; Luke viii. 19)? 
2. The surname, the little, given to James, the cousin of Jesus (Mark xv. 40), 
must have served to distinguish him from some other member of his family, bear- 
ing the same name. Is it not probable that this other James was precisely 
James, his cousin, the brother of Jesus? 

We conclude, therefore, that Jesus had four brothers strictly so called: James, 
surnamed the Just, Joseph, Simon and Judas,—and three cousins: James, the 
little, Simon and Joses. 

No one of His brothers was an apostle; a fact which accords with vii. 5: “Not 
even did his brethren believe on him.” Being converted later, after His resurrection 
(1 Cor. xv. 5), they became, one of them (James), the first bishop of Jerusalem 
(Gal. 1.19.5 31..9 ; Acts xy; xxi, 8.) < the others, zealous missionaries (1 Cor. 
ix. 5). James and Judas are urdoubtedly the authors of our two canonical 


CHAP. Ir. 12. 361 


Epistles. As for the cousins of Jesus, one only was an apostle, James (the little) ; 
the second,Simon, was the second bishop of Jerusalem. Of Joses, the third, we 
know nothing. 


It is perhaps not impossible to place in this first visit at Capernaum 
some of the facts appertaining, according to the Synoptical narratives, to 
the first period of the Galilean ministry. The calling of the disciples, 
following upon the miraculous draught of fishes, takes its place naturally 
here. At the time of His setting out for Jerusalem, Jesus called them to 
follow Him for ever. He was going to inaugurate His work, and He must 
have desired to be surrounded from that time by those whom He had the 
design of associating in it. This twelfth verse is not, therefore, the close 
of the preceding narrative, as Weiss thinks. It is, at the same time, the 
indication of the moment when Jesus passed from private life’ to His 
public ministry. Like His disciples, He separates: Himself from His 
family in order to begin the Messianic work. Moreover, this narrative is 
so summary, that if the whole of Jesus’ life were not presupposed as 
known to the readers, it would resemble an enigma. 

We have to consider in the following event: 1. The act of the Lord: vv. 
13-16 ; 2. The effect produced: vv. 17-22. 


Vv. 13-16. 


It was at Jerusalem and in the temple, that the Messiah’s ministry 
must open. “The Lord whom ye seek,” Malachi had said (iii. 1-8), 
“shall enter into his temple... . he shall purify the sons of Levi...” 
That prophecy said to Israel that her King would announce Himself, not 
by a miracle of power, but by an act of holiness. 

The moment of this inauguration was naturally indicated. The feast 
of the Passover, more than any other, assembled the whole people in the 
holy city and in the courts of the temple. This was the hour of Jesus 
(ver. 4). Ifthe people had entered into the reformatory movement which 
He sought, at that time, to impress upon them, this entrance of Jesus 
into His temple would have become the signal of His Messianic coming. 

The temple had three particularly holy courts: that of the priests, which 
enclosed the edifice of the temple properly so-called (vaéc) ; more to the 
eastward, that of the men, and finally, to the east of the latter, that of the 
women. Around these courts a vast open space had been arranged, which 
was enclosed on four sides by colonnades, and which was called the court 
of the Gentiles, because it was the only part of the sacred place (iepév) into 
which proselytes were permitted to enter. In this outermost court there 
were established, with the tacit consent of the temple authorities, a 
market and an exchange. Here were sold the different kinds of animals 
intended for the sacrifices; here Greek or Roman money, brought from 


1 Why is Mary, the wife of Clopas (Mark and not of Simon? This is a fact not easy to 
xv. 40), called the mother of James and Joses, —_ explain. 


362 FIRST PART. 


foreign regions, was exchanged for the sacred money with which the 
capitation-tax determined by Exod. xxx. 13 for the support of the temple ° 
(the half-shekel or double-drachma = about 31 cents) was paid. 

Until this day, Jesus had not risen up against this abuse. Present in 
the temple as a simple Jew, He did not have to judge the conduct of the 
authorities, still less to put himself in their place. Now, it is as the Son 
of Him to whom this house is consecrated, that He enters into the 
sanctuary. He brings to it, not merely new rites, but new duties. To 
keep silence in the presence of the profanation of which religion is the 
pretext, and at which His conscience as a Jew and His heart as the Son 
revolt, would be to belie, at the outset, His position as Messiah. The word 
of Malachi, which we have just quoted, traces His course for Him. It is 
to misconceive gravely the meaning of the act which is about to be 
related, to see in it, with Weiss, only a simple attempt at reform, such as 
any prophet might have allowed himself. The single expression: “ My 
Father’s house” (ver. 16), shows that Jesus was here acting in the full 
consciousness of His Messianic dignity; comp. also ver. 19. Vv. 19-21, 
make us appreciate the true bearing of this act; it isan appeal to the 
conscience of Israel, a demand addressed to its chiefs. If this appeal is 
heard, this act of purification will inaugurate the general reform of the 
theocracy, the condition of the Messianic kingdom. If the people 
remain indifferent, the consequences of this conduct are clear to the view 
of Jesus; all is over with the theocracy. The rejection of the Messiah, 
His death even; this is the fatal end of such conduct. Comp. an analo- 
gous ordeal at Nazareth, Luke iv. 23-27. The power in virtue of which 
Jesus acted, was by no means, therefore, the alleged right of the zealots of 
which the act of Phineas (Num. xxv.; Ps. cvi. 80) is thought to have been 
the type, but which never really existed in Israel. 

Ver. 18. “ And! the Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to 
Jerusalem.” John says: of the Jews, with reference to his Gentile readers, 
with whom he identifies himself in the feeling of Christian com- 
munion. 

Ver. 14. “ And he found in the temple those who sold oxen and sheep® and 
doves, and the money-changers sitting.” The article the before the terms 
designating the sellers and money-changers, which Ostervald omits with 
other translators, sets forth this office as a known one; they are the 
habitual, and in a sense licensed sellers and money-changers. The 
three sorts of animals mentioned were the ones most habitually used for 
the sacrifices.—Kepyariorjc, money-changer, from xépua, piece of money. 

Ver. 15. “And having made* a small scourge of cords, he drove them all 
out of the temple, both the sheep and the oxen ; and he poured out the changers’ 
money * and overthrew® their tables.” This scourge was not an instrument, 
but an emblem. It was the sign of authority and of judgment. If it 


1§ alone reads Se instead of kat. 4BLT> X Orig. read ta xepuara, instead 
28 alone reads kat ta mpoB. kat Boas. of To Kepua. 
3% alone reads emoincev . .. Kar (he made 5Instead of averrpevev, B X: avérpepev: 


and...) N: xateotpeper. 


CHAP. I. 13-16. 363 


had been a matter of performing a physical act, the means would have 
been disproportionate to the end, and the effect would be even more so 
to the cause. The material use of the scourge had no place. The simple 
gesture was enough.—Ildvrac, ail, includes, according to many (comp. 
Béumlein, Weiss, Keil), only the two following objects connected by te kai, 
“all, both sheep and oxen.” But it is more natural to refer zdvta¢ to rove 
rwhovvrac, the sellers, which precedes, and to make of the following words 
a simple apposition: “He drove them all out, both sheep and oxen.” The 
design of the re xa/, as well as, is certainly not to indicate by a lifeless dis- 
joining of parts the contents of the word all, but to express the sort of 
bustle with which men and animals hastened off at His command and at 
the gesture which accompanied it. He overturned, with His own hand.— 
Kodavpiorpc, money-changer, from xdAAvBoc, nummus minutus.—rd Képya, 
singular taken in the collective sense. | 

Ver. 16. “And he said to those that sold the doves: take these things hence ; 
make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise.” With regard to the sel- 
lers of doves Jesus limits Himself to speaking. He cannot drive out the 
doves, as one drives oxen or sheep ; and He does not wish to overturn the 
cages, as He has overturned the tables of the money-changers. He is per- 
fectly master of Himself. If He had really struck the dealers in oxen and 
sheep, we cannot see why He should have spared the sellers of pigeons. 
The command “take away” is addressed only to these last; the following 
words, “ make not, . . .” to all the traffickers. The defining phrase, “ of 
my Father,” contains the explanation of J esus’ act. He is a son who 
avenges the honor of the paternal house. When He was in the temple 
at the age of twelve, it was already the same filial feeling which animated 
Him; but on this day He is sustained by the distinct consciousness of His 
duty as Messiah, involved henceforth for Him in His position as Son. It 
is very remarkable that in the Synoptics (the scene of the baptism), no 
less than in John,the feeling of His filial relation to God takes the lead in 
Jesus of that of His office as Messiah. He does not feel Himself to be 
Son because He is Christ; He knows Himself to be Christ because He is 
Son (comp. my Comment. on Luke 1, p. 235). Here is an indication which 
is incompatible with the opinion of Renan, who represents Jesus as ex- 
alting Himself by degrees and raising Himself by degrees from His Mes- 
sianic consciousness to the consciousness of His divinity. 

The outward success of this judicial act is explained by the majesty of 
Jesus’ appearance, by the irresistible ascendency which was given to Him 
by the consciousness of the supernatural force which He could exert at. 
need, by the feeling of His sovereignty in that place, as it betrays itself in 
the expression “my Father,” and, finally, by the bad conscience of those 
who were the objects of such a judgment. 


Vv. 17-22. 


The effect is described in vv. 17-22. We meet here a fact, which will 
repeat itself at every manifestation of the Lord’s glory; a twofold impres- 


364 FIRST PART, 


sion is produced, according to the moral predisposition of the witnesses ; 
some find in the act of Jesus nourishment for their faith; for others the 
same act becomes a subject of offense. It is the pre-existing moral sym- 
pathy or antipathy that determines the impression. 

Ver. 17. “ His disciples remembered’ that it was written: The zeal of thy 
house shall eat me up.” * This recollection took place immediately ; comp. 
ver, 22, where the opposite fact is expressly pointed out. Ps. Ixix., the 
ninth verse of which presents itself at this moment to the remembrance 
of the disciples, is only indirectly Messianic—that is to say, the subject 
contemplated by the Psalmist is not the person of the Messiah (comp. ver. 
6: “Thou knowest my foolishness, and my sins are not hid from thee’’), but the 
theocratic righteous person, suffering for the cause of God. The highest 
realization of this ideal is the Messiah. JVeiss claims that this quotation 
finds an explanation only so far as this Psalm was, at that tippe, exclu- 
sively, and through an error, referred to the Messiah. But in order to 
this, the reading of ver. 6 must have been forgotten. The unanimity of 
the Mjj. decides in favor of the reading xaragdyeraz. This verb is a future; 
the evangelist substitutes it for the past xaré¢aye, hath eaten up, of the 
LXX. which is in conformity with the Hebrew text. The disciples are 
thinking, not of Jesus’ last sufferings, which were at that time beyond the 
thoughts which occupied their minds, but on the consuming force of His 
zeal, on that living holocaust, the first act of which they beheld at this mo- 
ment. This also is the meaning of the word hath eaten up, in the Psalm. 

Whjle the disciples compare the Scriptures, and this remembrance 
strengthens their faith, the Jews reason and object, just as the inhabitants 
of Nazareth do, Luke iv. 22. Instead of letting the act of Jesus speak, as 
every manifestation of holiness should, to their.conscience, they demand 
the external sign which should legitimate this act, as if it did not contain 
in itself its own legitimation! 

Ver. 18. “ The Jews, therefore, answered and said unto him: What sign 
showest thou unto us, that thou doest these things?” The particle, therefore, 
connects again with ver. 16, after the interruption in ver. 17. The expres- 
sion “ the Jews”’ designates here especially the authorities charged with 
the care of the temple, with the shade of hostility which attaches to this 
term in our Gospel (see i. 19). Riggenbach (“ Leben des Herrn Jesu,” p. 
382) observes that ‘it is, indeed, the method of Pharisaism to demand a 
onuciov, an external sign, to legitimate an act which commends itself to the 
conscience by itself alone, because, once on this path, one can cavil about 
the nature and value of the sign, can move on indefinitely from demand 
to demand, and can ask finally, after a multiplication of loaves: What sign 
doest thou then? ’Aroxpivecba: does not signify here, any more than else- 
where, to take up the discourse (Ostervald, Rilliet, Arnaud). This word al- 
ways contains the idea of reply; only the reply is sometimes addressed to 
the conduct or the feeling of the interlocutor. Here the Jews’ question is 


1% BL Tb X Cop. Orig. omit de after with several Mnn. It., instead of xaradave- 
éuvynodncayv. tat (shall eat up) which all the Mjj. read 
2The T. R. reads xatefaye (hath eaten up) 


CHAP. It. 17-19. 365 


an answer to the act of Jesus; Jesus had just addressed an appeal to the 
religious sentiment of the people. The attitude of the people, thus 
called upon to declare themselves, in some sort decided fatally their future. 
The reply was significant. The nineteenth verse will show us that Jesus 
immediately penetrated its whole meaning.—'Or : “What sign showest 
thou (to explain) that thou art doing . . . ” Meyer: ig éxeivo ore, 

Ver. 19. “Jesus answered and said unto them: Destroy this tenyple, and in 
three days I will raise it up.” This answer of Jesus is sudden, like a flash of 
lightning. It springs from an immeasurable depth; it illuminates regions 
then completely unexplored by any other consciousness than His own. 
The words : Destroy this temple, characterize the present and future conduct 
of the Jews in its innermost significance, and the words: In three days p & 
will raise it wp, display all the grandeur of the person and of the future 
work of Jesus. This mysterious saying involves the following difficulty : 
on the one hand, the connection with what precedes prompts us to refer 
the words, this temple, to the temple properly so called, which Jesus had 
just purified ; on the other, the evangelist’s interpretation (ver. 21) obliges 
us to apply them to the body of Jesus. Some, as Liicke and Reuss, cut 
the Gordian knot by declaring that there is a conflict which cannot be set- 
tled between scientific exegesis and the apostle’s explanation, and by de- 
termining that there is an advance of the first beyond the second. Baur 
administers a severe lecture to Liicke for irreverence towards the apostolic 
exegesis, of which this view gives evidence. In fact, according to Baur, 
this saying being partly the creation of the eyangelist himself, he ‘must 
know better than any one, better than Liicke, what is its true meaning! 

The historical truth of this saying of Jesus is guaranteed: 1. By the 
declaration of the false witnesses (Matt. xxvi. 61; Mark xiv. 57, 58), which 
proves that, although the recollection of the circumstances in which it 
was pronounced may have been effaced, the expression itself had re- 
mained deeply engraved on the memory, not only of the disciples, but of 
the Jews. 2. By Acts vi. 14, where Stephen’s accusers said: “ We have 
heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place and shall 
change the customs which Moses gave to us.” Stephen could not have 
spoken thus except on the foundation of a positive declaration of Jesus. 
3. By the originality, the conciseness, and even the obscurity of the 
saying. 

The first clause cannot contain an invitation to the Jews directly to 
destroy the temple, not even in the hypothetical sense of de Wette: “If 
you should destroy.” This supposition would be absurd; no Israelite 
would have thought of laying his hand on the sacred edifice. The word 
destroy should, therefore, be taken in the indirect sense: to bring about, 
by continuing in the course which you are following, the destruction of 
the theocracy and that of the temple. But what is the offense by which 
Israel can provoke this final chastisement? Modern interpretation ,— 
“ scientific exegesis,” as Liicke says,—answers: By continually increasing 
moral profanations, such as that against which Jesus had just protested. 
This answer is insufficient. Simple sins of this kind could prepare, but 


we 


366 FIRST PART. 


not decide, this catastrophe. The Old Testament assigns a more positive 
cause for the final ruin of Israel; it is the rejection and murder of the 
Messiah. Zechariah announces this crime, when describing (xii. 10) the 
mourning of the Israel of the last days, lamenting the murderous sin 
against Jehovah whom they have pierced. Daniel, chap. ix., says: “ The 
Messiah shall be cut off. ... and the people of a prince who shall come 
shall destroy the city and the sanctuary ;” a passage which Matthew (xxiv. 
15, 16) applies to the circumstances of his time. The means for Israel of 
destroying its temple, are, to the view of Jesus, to put the Messiah to 
death. The appearance of the Messiah is the purpose of the theocratic 
institution. The Messiah being once cut off, it is all over with Israel and 
consequently with the temple. The people and the priesthood may 
indeed still exist for a while after this; but all this is nothing more than 
the carcase over which the eagles of the divine judgment gather themselves (Matt. 
xxiv. 28). Why, at the moment when Jesus expires, is the veil of the 
temple rent? It is because, in reality, there isno longer a Most Holy 
place, no longer a Holy place, no longer courts, sacrifice, priesthood ; the 
temple, as Jehovah’s temple, has ceased to exist. 

When He says “ Destroy this temple,” therefore, it is, indeed, of the tem- 
ple properly so called, that Jesus speaks; but He knows that it will be 
in His own person, that this destruction, so far as it depends on the Jews, 
will be consummated. It is on His body that they will cause the blow to 
fall, which will destroy their sanctuary. The imperative Aécare is not, 
then, merely concessive: “If it happens that you destroy.” It is of the 
same kind with that other imperative, “ What thou hast to do, do quickly” 
(xii. 27). When the fruit of perversity, collective or individual, is ripe, 
it must fall. Comp. also the raypécare, Matt. xxiii. 32. 

The meaning of the second clause follows from that of the first. If 
the death of Jesus is the real destruction of the temple, the restoration 
of the latter can consist only in the resurrection of Jesus Himself. Jesus 
once said: “ Here is more than the temple” (Matt. xii. 6). His body was the 
living and truly holy dwelling of Jehovah; the visible sanctuary was the 
anticipatory emblem of this real temple. It is, therefore, really, in Him, 
in His body, that this supreme crisis will be effected. The Messiah per- 
ishes; the temple falls. The Messiah lives again; the true temple rises 
again; in a new form, beyond doubt. For in the Kingdom of God, there 
is never a simple restoration of the past. He who speaks of rising anew 
speaks of progress, reappearance in a higher form. The word éyeipecy, to 
waken up, to raise wp, is perfectly suitable here. For it may be applied at 
once to a resurrection and a construction (see Meyer). The expression : 
in three days, the authenticity of which is guaranteed in a very special 
way by the statement of the false witnesses (dia tprov juepov, Matt. xxvi. 61; 
Mark xiv. 58), receives in our explanation its natural meaning; for, in an 
historical situation so solemn as this, it is impossible to see only a poetic 
or proverbial form for saying: “in a very short time,” as Hos. vi. 2, or 
Luke xiii. 31.. A demonstrative miracle has been demanded of J esus, as 
a sign of His competency. We know from the Synoptics that Jesus 


CHAP. I. 19. 367 


always rejected such demands, which renewed for Him the third tempta- 
tion in the wilderness. 

But there was a miracle, one only, which He could promise, without 
condemning Himself to the role of a wonder-worker, because this mira- 
cle entered as a necessary element into the very work of salvation: it was 
His resurrection. Thus it is to this sign that He in like manner appeals, 
in similar cases, in the Synoptics (Matt. xii. 388-40; xvi. 4). We come 
also here upon one of those profound analogies which, beneath the dif- 
ference of the forms, blend into one whole the representation of the Syn- 
optics and that of John. It is by the reparative power which He will 
display, when the Kingdom of God shall have sunk down, in a sense, 
even to nothing, that Jesus will prove the competency for reformation 
which He has just arrogated to Himself at this hour. This explanation 
answers thus to the natural meaning of the expressions of the text, to 
the demands of the context, and finally to the evangelist’s interpretation. 

The following is the meaning at which modern exegesis has arrived, by 
following, as Liicke says, “the laws of philological art.” It is best set 
forth, as it seems to us, by Hwald (Gesch. Christi, p. 230): “All your re- 
ligion, resting upon this temple, is corrupted and perverted; but He is 
already present, who, when it shall have perished as it deserves, shall 
easily restore it ina more glorious form, and shall thus work, not one of 
those common miracles which you ask for, but the grandest of miracles.” 
In this explanation, the temple destroyed is Judaism ; the temple raised 
up is Christianity; the act of raising it up is Pentecost, not the resurrec- 
tion. We shall not say that this sense is absolutely false; it is so only so 
far as it is given as the exact expression of the thought of Jesus at this 
moment.. What condemns it is: 1. That the transformation of the econ- 
omy of the letter into that of the Spirit is not a sign, but the work itself. 
It is necessary that the event indicated by Jesus should have an external 
character, in order to be adapted to the demand which was addressed to 
Him; 2. It is impossible, from this point of view, to interpret naturally 
the words: in three days. The passages (Hos. vi. 2 and Luke xiii. 31) do 
not sufficiently justify the figurative sense which must, in that case, be 
given to them here; 8. The temple raised up would be entirely different 
from the temple destroyed; but the pronoun airéy (it), demands that there 
should, at least, be a relation between the one and the other (the body of 
Jesus destroyed and raised again). Objection is made to the meaning 
which we have proposed, that the Jews could not have understood so 
mysterious a reply. Assuredly, they did not see in the temple, of which 
Jesus spoke, anything but the material edifice, and they represented to 
themselves the sign promised by Him as the magical appearance of a new 
and supernatural temple (Mark xiv. 58). But we shall see that, in dealing 
with evil-disposed persons, the method of Jesus is to throw out enigmas 
and to reveal the truth only while veiling it; comp. the explanation of 
Jesus respecting the use of parables (Matt. xii. 11-16). Here is a secret 
of the profoundest pedagogics. 

Objection is also made, that Jesus could not, so long beforehand, know 


368 FIRST PART. 


of His death and resurrection. But in the Synoptics, also, He very early 
announces the tragical end of His Messianic ministry. It is during the 
first days of His activity in Galilee, that He speaks of the time “ when the 
bridegroom will be taken away, and when the disciples will fast’? (Mark ii. 
19, 20). Had Jesus, then, never read Is. liii., Dan. ix., Zech. xii., etc.? 
Now, if He foresaw His death, He must have been assured also of His 
resurrection. He could not suppose that the bridegroom would be taken 
away, not to be restored. 

Finally, it is objected, that, according to the Scriptures, it is not Jesus 
who raised Himself. But the receptivity of Jesus, in the act of His res- 
urrection, was not that of passivity. He says Himself (x. 17, 18): “ I give 
up my life, that I may take it again . . . I have the power to give it up, and I 
have the power to take it again.” He lays hold, as in all His miracles, of the 
divine omnipotence, and this becomes thereby active in Him. 


Renan has seen in this utterance, so original and so profound, only a whim: 
“One day,” he says, “ His ill-humor against the temple drew from Him an impru- 
dent word.” He adds: “ We do not know, indeed, what sense Jesus attached to 
this word, in which His disciples sought forced allegories” (Vie de Jésus, p. 367). 
Where Renan sees a proof of the ill-humor of Jesus against the temple, the 
immediate witnesses found one of the zeal for the house of God, which de- 
voured their Master. Which has better understood Jesus? As for the explana- 
tion given by John (ver. 21), we shall hope that every serious reader will find in 
it something else than a “forced allegory.” 

Weiss does not think it is possible to defend the complete authenticity of the 
expression of Jesus, as it has been preserved for us by John. If Jesus expressed 
Himself thus, he must, at the same time, have pointed to His body with His fin- 
ger, and this gesture would have been sufficient to render the misapprehension of 
the Jews (ver. 20) impossible. Besides, the interpretation which Mark gives of 
the saying of Jesus (xiv. 58), leads one to suppose that its real meaning was a 
little different from that which we find in John. To the demand of the Jews 
relative to His competency to purify the temple (ver. 18), Jesus is said to have an- 
swered, that for the outward temple He would substitute the habitation of God in 
the spirit. It was John, according to Wezss, who introduced afterwards into the 
quite simple answer of Jesus, the two ideas of His death and His resurrection. 
This hypothesis could be taken into consideration only if the difficulty presented 
by the saying of Jesus, as we have it, were insurmountable. But we believe that 
we have shown that it is not so. At the foundation, the true ground of this sup- 
position is, that according to this author, Jesus must not have predicted before- 
hand His death and resurrection. 

How did Jesus discover in this question, apparently so innocent: “What sign 
showest thou?” the prelude of the catastrophe which was to put an end to His own 
life, and, by that means, to the theocracy itself? We know from ii. 3, 4, with what 
penetration Jesus seized upon the moral bearing of the words which were addressed 
to Him. We have also cited Luke iv. 22, where it was enough for Jesus to 
hear the critical reflection on the part of the inhabitants of Nazareth: “ Js not 
this the son of Joseph?” in order to His announcing to them His near rejection, 
not only on their part (ver. 23), but on the part of the whole people (vv. 24-27). 


CHAP, I1, 20-22. 369 


In the most fugitive impression of His interlocutors, the perspicacious eye of 
Jesus discerned the principle of the great final decision. By this characteristic 
feature, also, we verify in the Jesus of the Synoptics and of John, one and the 


’ game Jesus. 


Ver. 20. “ The Jews said, therefore: Forty-six years was this temple in 
building, and wilt thou raise it up in three days?” The restoration of the’ 
temple by Herod had begun in the eighteenth year of his reign, accord- 
ing to Josephus (Antigg. xv. 11,1). In the Jewish War, the same historian, 
by an error, mentions the fifteenth. The first year of the reign of this 
prince was that from the first of Nisan 717 U. C. to the first of Nisan 718; 
the eighteenth would consequently be the year included between the first 
of Nisan 7384 and the first of Nisan 735: it was about the autumn of 
that year that the work began (Jos. Ant. xv. 11,1). The time indicated, 
forty-six full years (Gkodouf9n), brings us, therefore, as far as to the au- 
tumn of the year 780. The present Passover, consequently, must be that 
of the year 781, and as it was divided from the year in which Jesus died 
by the one alluded to in vi. 4, it follows therefrom, that Jesus died in 
783. Now for many other reasons, that year seems really to have been 
the year of His death. Weiss objects that the expression : was built, does 
not necessarily imply that it was still in the course of building at that 
moment. But the work continued still for many years, until in 64 it was 
finished under Agrippa II. What reason could there be to suppose an 
interruption at the time in which our narrative places us? 

Ver. 21. “ But he spoke of the temple of his body.” By éxeivoc, ille vero, he 
opposed to every other, John strongly contrasts the thought of Jesus 
with the interpretation of the Jews and the want of understanding of the 
apostles. Only He comprehends perfectly the true sense of His own 
saying. 

Ver. 22. “ When, therefore, he was risen from the dead, his disciples remem- 
bered that he had said this,’ and they believed the Scripture and the word which 
Jesus had said.” Into docile hearts the light came, although slowly. The 
event explained the word, as in its turn the word contributed to disclose 
the deep meaning of the event. It is surprising to meet here the limiting 
words ri ypaga, the Scripture ; for the Scripture had not been quoted by 
Jesus, unless we think, with Weiss, of ver. 17, which is unnatural in view . 
of the formal opposition established by ver. 22 between the time of the one 
and that of the other reniiniscence. The evangelist undoubtedly wishes 
to intimate that the first point on which the light fell, in the hearts of the 
apostles, after the resurrection, was the prophecies of the Old Testament 
which announced that event (Ps. xvi.; Is. liii.; Hos. vi.; the prophet 
Jonah), and that it was by the intermediate agency of the interpreted 
prophecies that the present word of Jesus came back to their remem- 
brance and was also made clear to them. 

This little point which belongs to the inner biography of the apostles, 
stamps the narrative with the seal of historical reality. Let the reader 


1T. R. wrongly adds avtots (to them), with K and some Mnn. 


24 


\ 


370 FIRST PART. 

picture to himself, with Baur, a pseudo-John, in the second century, 
inventing this momentary want of intelligence in the disciples with regard 
to a saying which he had himself ascribed to Jesus! The moral impossi- 
bility of such a strange charlatanism as this is obvious. This remark 
applies to the similar points, iv. 32, 33; vil. 89; xi. 12; xu. 16, 33; 
xili. 28, etc. 

The Synoptics relate an act of Jesus similar to this; which they place 
at the beginning of the week of the Passion, either on Palm-day (Matt. 
xxi.; Luke xix.), or more exactly on the next day after that (Mark xi.). 
We might naturally enough suppose that these three evangelists, having 
omitted all the first year of Jesus’ ministry, were led thereby to locate 
this event in the only visit to Jerusalem of which they relate the story. 
This is the opinion of Liicke, de Wette, Ewald, Weiss, etc. Keim goes much 
further; he claims that it would have been the grossest want of tact on 
Jesus’ part thus at the start to advertise His Messiahship, and to break 
with the old Judaism as He does in John, But what gives to the corpo- 
real act its meaning and its character is the words with which Jesus 
accompanies it. Now these words, which constitute the soul of the nar- 
rative, are very different in the Synoptics and in John, to such a degree 
that it would be impossible to unite them in one consecutive discourse. 
In the Synoptics, Jesus claims, on the ground of Is. lvi. 7 (“ My house 
shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples’’), the right of the Gentiles to 
the place which, from the beginning, had been conceded to them in the 
temple (1 Kings viii. 41-43). In John, there is no trace of this intention ; 
Jesus has in view Israel itself and only Israel. This difference, as well as 
the characteristic reply, John ii. 19, argues two distinct events. If, as we 
may not doubt, the abuse which isin question really existed at the moment 
when Jesus presented Himself for the first time as Messiah, and as Son 
of God, it was impossible that He should tolerate it. It would have been 
to declare Himself Messiah and abdicate the Messianic office by one act. 
Thus John’s narrative is self-justified. But it is, also, wholly true that if, 
after having been reduced during more than two years to the simple 
activity of a prophet, Jesus wished to reassume on Palm-Sunday His office 
as Messiah-King, and thus to take up again a connection with His begin- 
nines, He could not do so better than by repeating that act by which He 
had entered upon His career, and by repressing again that abuse which 
had not been slow in reproducing itself. By the first expulsion He had 
invited the people to the reformation which could save them; by the 
second, He protested against the profane spirit which was about to de- 
stroy them. Thus the narrative of John and the Synoptic narrative . 
equally justify themselves. This contrast between the two situations 
agrees with the difference between the words uttered. In John, seeing 
His appeal repelled, Jesus thinks of His death, the fatal limit of that 
first rejection; in the Synoptics, seeing the fall of Israel consummated, 
He proclaims the right of the Gentiles, who are soon going to be substi- 
tuted for the Jews. As for Keim’s objection, this author forgets that, by 
acting in this way, Jesus made an appeal precisely to that which was 


CHAP. 1h 2a; Sik 


deepest in the consciousness of every true member of the theocracy, 
respect forthe temple. Beyschlag has justly called this proceeding on the 
part of Jesus, “the most profoundly conservative Jewish act.” It was 
precisely the wonderful character of this act, that it inaugurated the 
revolution which was preparing, by connecting it with that which was 
most vital in the Israelitish past. 


Il. —Jesus at Jerusalem: ii. 23-iii. 21. 


Jesus, not having been welcomed in the temple, does not force matters 
forward. The use of violence, even though by divine means, would have 
led Him to the career, not of a Christ, but of a Mahomet. In presence of 
the cold reserve which He meets, He retreats; and this retrograde move- 
ment characterizes, for a time, the course of His work. The palace has 
just shut its doors to Him; the capital remains open. Here He acts, yet 
no longer in the fullness of that Messianic sovereignty with which He had 
presented Himself in the temple. He confines Himself to teaching and 
miracles, the two prophetic agencies. Such is the admirable elasticity of 
the divine work in the midst of the world; it advances only as far as faith 
permits; in the face of resistance it yields; it retires even to its last en- 
‘trenchment. Then, having reached this, it all at once resumes the offen- 
sive, and, engaging in the last struggle, succumbs externally, to conquer 
morally. 

Vv. 28-25 are a preamble. Itis the general picture of the activity of 
the Lord at Jerusalem, following after His undertaking in the temple. 
Then, in the following passage, iii. 1-21, John gives the remarkable ex- 
ample of the teaching of Jesus and of His Messianic testimony, in this 
earliest period, in presence of those whom He found disposed to faith. 

Ver. 28. “As he was in Jerusalem, at the Passover, at the feast, many be- 
lieved on his name, seeing the miracles which he did.” —The first clause of the 
verse contains three designations. One is that of place: in Jerusalem, at 
the centre of the theocracy, the normal theatre of His work. The second 
is that of time: at the Passover, in those days when the whole people were 
assembled in the capital, in greater numbers than on any other occasion 
in the year. The third designation is that of the mode: at the feast, in the 
midst of the solemn impressions which the daily ceremonies of that Pas- 
chal week awakened. The pronoun zo/A0i, many, denotes nothing more 
than individuals; they form a contrast with the nation which should have 
collectively believed. Comp. the contrast between oi idio, His own, and 
dco, all those who, i. 11,12. But a still more sorrowful contrast is pointed 
out by the evangelist; it is that which existed between the faith of these 
believers and true faith. Their faith, to the view of Jesus, was not faith. 
No doubt, it had for its object His revelation as Christ and Son of God 
(His name); but it rested only upon the external fact of His miracles. 
The logical relation between this aorist believed and the present participle 
seeing, is expressed by the conjunction because. This faith had nothing 
inward and moral; it resulted solely from the impression of astonishment 


3/12 FIRST PART. 


produced upon them by these wonders. Signs may, indeed, strengthen 
and develop true faith, where it is already formed, by displaying to it 
fully the riches of its object (ii. 11). They may even, sometimes, excite 
attention; but not produce real faith. Faith is a moral act which at- 
taches itself to the moral being in Jesus. The last words: which He did, 
depict, indeed, the nature of this faith; it was the material operation 
which impressed these persons. These miracles were, undoubtedly, 
numerous; allusion is made to them in iy. 45. John relates, however, 
only one of them; so far different is His aim from that of the Synoptics. 
He wishes only to describe here a spiritual situation. 

Ver. 24, 25. “ But Jesus did not trust himself to them, because he knew all 
men, 25, and because he had no need that any one should testify of man ; for he 
knew of himself what was in man.” Jesus is no more dazzled by this appar- 
ent success, than He had been discouraged by the reverse which He had 
undergone in the temple. He discerns the insufficient nature of 
this faith. There is a sort of play upon words in the relation between 
ov éxioteverv, He did not believe, did not trust Himself, and ériorevoar, they be- 
lieved, ver. 23. While they considering only the external facts, the mira- 
cles, believed, He (atric dé) not stopping with appearances, did not believe ; 
He did not have faith in their faith. It is because He did not recognize in 
it the work of God. Consequently, He did not any more treat them as 
believers. How was this attitude of distrust manifested? It is difficult to 
state precisely. Probably the point in John’s thought was rather a cer- 
tain reserve of a moral nature, than positive external acts, such as reti- 
cence respecting His doctrine or the solitude in which He shut Himself 
up. Luthardt, “As they did not give themselves morally to Him, He did 
not give Himself morally to them.” It is a profound observer initiated 
into the impressions of Jesus’ mind,—this man who has laid hold of and 
set forth this delicate feature of His conduct. If he was himself one of 
the disciples whose call is related in chap. i., he must indeed have felt the 
difference between the conduct of Jesus towards these persons, and the 
manner in which He had deported Himself towards himself and his fel- 
low-disciples. Let one picture to himself such a feature invented in the 
second century! Nothing in the text obliges us to identify this superior 
knowledge of Jesus with divine omniscience. The evangelist undoubtedly 
knew for himself that clear and penetrating look (éuBAézew) which read in 
the depth of the heart as in an open book. This superior knowledge of 
Jesus is the highest degree of the gift of the discerning of spirits (1 Cor. xii. 
10; 1 John iv. 1). 

The clause: and because... . etc., generalizes the statement of ver. 24. 
It signifies that, in any case, Jesus did not need to have recourse to infor- 
mation, in order to know what He had to think of such or such a man. 
This faculty of discernment was inherent in His person (He Himself) and, 
consequently, permanent (imperfect, knew). “Iva, in order that, is here no 
more than elsewhere the simple periphrasis for the infinitive (in opposi- 
tion to Weiss). The idea of purpose, which remains always attached to 
this word, is explained by the tendency, which is inherent in the need of 


CHAP. II. 24, 25. 373 


knowledge, to satisfy itself. The article rov before av6pérov, “ the man,” may 
be explained either in the generic sense : man in general, or, what is perhaps 
more correct, in an altogether individual sense: the man with whom He 
had to do in each given case (Meyer). But even in this last explanation, 
the generic sense can be applied to év rw avOpdry, in the man, in the follow- 
ing clause. The for would mean that He knew thus each representative 
of the type, because He knew thoroughly the type itself. However, it is 
more simple to give to this expression: in the man, the same individual 
sense as in the preceding clause, and to explain the for by the word: 
Himself. He had no need of information; for of Himself He knew .. . 

On the foundation of this general situation, there is brought out sepa- 
rately, as a particular picture, the scene of the conversation with Nicode- 
mus. Is this incident quoted as an example of that Jewish faith which is 
nothing but a form of unbelief ii. 23 (comp. ver. 2),as Baur thinks, or, on 
the contrary, as an exception to the attitude full of reserve which was as- 
sumed by Jesus and described vv. 24, 25 (Ewald)? The opinion of Baur 
strikes against the fact that Nicodemus later became a believer (chaps. 
vil. and xix.), so that the example would have been very badly chosen. 
On the other hand, the text gives no more indication that the following 
occurrence is related as a deviation from the line of conduct traced in ii. 
24; and ver. 2 even makes Nicodemus belong in the class of persons de- 
scribed in vy. 23-25. Lvicke sees in this narrative only an example of the 
supernatural knowledge of Jesus, but this idea does not correspond suffi- 
ciently with the very grave contents of the conversation. In Reuss’ view, 
Nicodemus is a type, created by the evangelist, of that “literary and 
learned Judaism whose knowledge is nothing, and which has everything 
to learn from Jesus.” But Nicodemus reappears twice afterwards, playing 
a part in the history of Jesus (chs. vii. and xix.); he was not, therefore, 
created only in order to give Jesus here the opportunity to convince him 
of ignorance. If the author inserted this incident in his narrative, it is 
because he saw in it the most memorable example of the revelation which 
Jesus had given, in the first period of His ministry, of His person and 
His work; comp. Weiss and Keil. 

The part of this conversation in our Gospel may be compared with that 
of the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew: these two pas- 
sages have an inauguratory character. As for Nicodemus, he is at once 
an example and an exception : an example, since miracles were the occa- 
sion of his faith; an exception, since the manner in which Jesus treats 
him proves that He hopes for the happy development of this faith. The 
faith characterized vv. 23-25, as Luthardt observes, is not real faith; but 
none the more is it unbelief. From this point there may be falling back 
or advance.—How did the evangelist get the knowledge of this conversa- 
tion? May Jesus or Nicodemus have related it to him? The first alter- 
native (Meyer) has somewhat of improbability. In the second, it is asked 
whether Nicodemus understood well enough to retain it so thoroughly. 
Why could not John himself have been present at the interview, even 
though it took place at night? Comp. ver. 11. . 


374 FIRST PART. 


But this question is subordinate to another. Is not this conversation 
itself, as we have it before us, a free composition of the author in which 
he has united different elements of the ordinary teaching of his master, or 
even, as Keim says, put into His mouth a highly spiritual summary of his 
own semi-Gnostic dogmatics? Finally, without going so far, can it not be 
supposed, at least, that the subjectivity of the author has, without his hay- 
ing a suspicion of it himself, influenced this account more or less, espe- 
cially towards the end of the conversation? This is what we shall have 
to examine. For this purpose, what shall be our touch-stone? If the 
direct, natural application of the words of Jesus to Nicodemus the Phar- 
isce is sustained even to the end, we shall recognize by this sign the authen- 
ticity of the account. If, on the contrary, the discourse loses itself, as it 
advances, in vague generalities, without appropriateness and without di- 
rect relation to the given situation, we shall find in this fact the indication 
of a more or less artificial composition. 

Ver. 1. “ There was a man of the Pharisees, whose name was Nicodemus, one 
of the rulers of the Jews.” The name Nicodemus, though of Greek origin, 
was not unusual among the Jews. The Talmud mentions several times a 
person of this name (Nakedimon), called also Bounat, reckoned in the 
number of Jesus’ disciples. He was one of the four richest inhabitants of 
the capital. His family fell into the greatest destitution. He must have 
been alive also at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem. This last cir- 
cumstance, connected with the great age of Nicodemus at the time of 
Jesus’ ministry, renders the identity of the latter with the personage of 
whom the Talmud speaks, doubtful. Stier saw in the word av6pe7o¢, aman, an 
allusion to ii. 25; John would remind us thereby that Nicodemus was an 
example of that human type which Jesus knew so well; this is far-fetched. 
Before naming him, John points out his quality as Pharisee. This charac- 
teristic signifies much more, indeed, than his name, for the understand- 
ing of the following conversation. The most narrow and exalted national 
particularism had created for itself an organ in the Pharisaic party. Ac- 
cording to the ideas of that sect, every Jew possessing the legal virtues 
and qualities had a right of entrance into the Messianic kingdom. Uni- 
verso Israeli est portio in mundo futuro, said the Rabbis. The Messiah Him- 
self was only the perfect and all-powerful Jew, who, raised by His miracles 
to the summit of glory, was to destroy the Gentile power and place Israel 
at the head of humanity. This Messianic programme, which the imagi- 
nation of the Pharisaic doctors had drawn out of the prophecies, was that 
which brought with it Nicodemus to the presence of Jesus. The title 
apyov, ruler, denotes, undoubtedly, one of the lay members of the Sanhe- 
drim (vii. 50), in contrast to the apyvepeic, chief priests (vil. 50; Luke 
xxiil. 18). 

Ver. 2. “He came to him? by night and said: Master, we know that thou art 
a teacher come from God; for no one can do these miracles which thou doest, 


16 Byz. Syrseh, read mpos tov Incovy instead of mpos avrov (a correction with a view to 
public reading). la 


CHAP. I. 1-3. 375 


except God be with him.”—What was the purpose of this visit? These first 
words of Nicodemus are only a preamble ; it would be idle to seek here 
the revelation of the purpose of his procedure. Koppe has supposed that 
he came to act asa spy on the Lord. But Jesus treats him as an honest 
person, and Nicodemus shows himself sincere during the course of the 
conversation, and also afterwards. Meyer has supposed that he came to 
inquire about the way to be saved. But asa good Jew and pious Pharisee, 
he by no means doubted as to his own salvation. We must, rather, sup- 
pose that he had discerned in Jesus an extraordinary being, and as he 
must have known the answer of the forerunner to the deputation of the 
Sanhedrim, he asked himself seriously whether Jesus might not be the 
Messiah announced by John as already present. In that case he would 
try to sound His plans respecting the decisive revolution which His 
coming was to involve. This supposition appears to me more natural 
than that of Weiss, who, because of the title of teacher with which Nico- 
demus salutes Jesus, thinks that he wished to question Him concerning 
what new teaching He had just given. But Nicodemus evidently could 
not salute Jesus by any other title than that of teacher, even if, as he must 
have had from the testimony of John the Baptist and in consequence 
of the expulsion of the traders, he had a presentiment that there was in 
Him something still greater. The plural cidayer, we know, proves that He 
did not take this step solely in his own name, but that a certain number 
of his colleagues entertained the same thoughts with himself—He comes 
by night. This circumstance, noticed expressly in xix. 89 and perhaps 
also in vii. 50, is easily explained by the fear which he had of compromis- 
ing himself before the other members of the Sanhedrim, and even before 
the people. Perhaps, also, he wished to avoid further increasing, through 
a step taken in broad daylight, the reputation of the young teacher. 
Nicodemus gives Him the title of papi, Master; this is saying very much 
on his part; since Jesus had not passed through the different degrees of 
rabbinical studies which gave a right to this title. Comp. vil. 15: “ The 
Jews were astonished, saying : How does this man know the Scriptures, not being 
aman who has studied?” It is precisely this extraordinary course of the 
development of Jesus which Nicodemus characterizes by saying: a@ teacher 
come from God. ’Arxd Oe0v, from God, is placed at the beginning as the 
principal idea, opposed to that of a regular doctorate. The same contrast 
ss found in vii. 16 in the mouth of Jesus Himself. This designation: 
from God, depends neither on the verb, come, nor on the word teacher, 
separately, but on the complex phrase ; the sense is: “come as a teacher 
from God.” The argument is consonant with theocratic precedents 
(Exod. iv.). Miracles prove divine assistance, and this proves the divine 
mission. But this formal demonstration, intended to prove to Jesus a 
truth which he does not doubt, is somewhat pedantic and must have 
shocked the ear of Him to whom it was addressed. So Jesus cuts short 
the discourse thus commenced by a sudden apostrophe, intended rather 
to answer the inmost thoughts of His interlocutor than his spoken words. 

Ver. 3. “Jesus answered and said unto him: Verily, verily, I say unto you, 


376 FIRST PART. 


Except aman be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.’—The relation 
of this answer to the words of Nicodemus has been differently understood, 
for the very reason that He was not able to finish the expression of His 
thought. Meyer, in conformity with his supposition indicated above, 
interprets this answer thus: “Every particular work is unfitted to open 
the door of the kingdom of God; there must be a radical regeneration.” 
But we have seen that Nicodemus, the Pharisee, could not have come 
with the thought which Meyer supposes. Baumgarten-Crusius and Weiss, 
starting from the title of teacher which he had given Him, think that 
Jesus means to say: “It is not a new teaching only that you need, it is a 
new birth.” According to our previous remarks, we think, rather, with 
Luthardt, that, on hearing the first words of Nicodemus, the whole Phari- 
saic programme with relation to the kingdom of God presented itself 
vividly to the mind of Jesus, and that He felt the need of directly opposing 
to it the true divine plan touching this capital subject. Nicodemus believes 
that he discerns in the appearance of Jesus the dawn of the Messianic 
kingdom, such as he conceived it; Jesus reveals to him an altogether 
spiritual conception of that kingdom, and, consequently, of all other 
moral conditions for entrance into it: “It is not a glorified earthly life; 
it is not a matter of expelling the Roman legions and of going to conquer 
the Capitol! The true kingdom of God is a state of the soul, the submis- 
sion of the heart to the Divine will; to enter it, there must be wrought 
within the man a work at once spiritual and individual, which has 
nothing in common with the great political drama which thou hast in 
view.” It is, then, the full security in which Nicodemus is living with 
regard to his participation in the kingdom of the Messiah, that Jesus 
wishes to break up, by answering him in this way. We have in Luke 
xvii. 20, 21, a parallel which offers the best commentary on our passage. 
“When cometh the kingdom of God?” a group of Pharisees ask of Jesus. 
“The kingdom of God cometh not with observation,” Jesus answers; 
“it is within you.” The coincidence could not be more complete. The 
formula amen, amen, implies a doubt in the hearer’s mind (see i. 52); the 
doubt implied here is that which naturally arises from the Pharisaic pre- 
judices of Nicodemus. ‘The pious Jew, the honored Pharisee, the 
powerful ruler, Nicodemus is prostrated,” says Hengstenberg, “at the shock 
of this, verily.” The solemn expression: “J say unto thee,” or “I declare 
to thee,” recalls to Nicodemus that dignity of divine teacher which he has 
himself just attributed to Jesus. By the indeterminate formula: if any 
one, Jesus avoids the harshness which the direct application to such an 
old man would have involved. The word évw6ev has, in the three other 
passages where John uses it (ver. 31; xix. 11, 28) the local meaning: from 
above, that is to say, from heaven. The passages, also, may be compared 
in which he makes use of the expression: to be born of God; for example, 
i. 13, and in the Ist Epistle ii. 29, iii. 9, ete.; nine times in all. These 
parallel passages seem decisive and have determined a large number 
of interpreters (Origen, Erasmus, Liicke, de Wette, Meyer, Biumlein, Reuss, 
etc.) to adopt this meaning here. But may we not also conclude from the 


CHAP, III. 3 317 


last passages cited that if this were the idea which John wished to express, 
he would rather have employed the expression éx Oeoi, of God? The 
misunderstanding of Nicodemus (ver. 4) is more easily explained, if Jesus 
saidin Aramaic: anew, than from above, since even in this latter case, also, 
Nicodemus might have spoken of a second birth. At all events, it follows 
from the expressions: a second time (deirepov) and his mother’s womb, that, 
if he thought of a birth coming from above, he understood this term in 
the sense in which it can be applied even to the natural birth,—that is to 
say, that every child who is born comes from God, descends from heaven. 
However, if the word dvwiev expressed here such a striking idea, the 
emphasis would be laid upon this word, and, in that case, it ought to be 
placed before the verb. Placed after the verb, dvw6ev only strengthens the 
idea of beginning connected with that of being born, which leads us to 
give to this adverb the temporal, rather than the local sense: from the 
beginning. We have three striking examples of this sense of dveGev. 
Josephus says (Antigg. 1.18, 3): giAiav dvobev roeirac; he contracts friend- 
ship with him, going back to the beginning, that is, as if they entered for the 
first time into mutual relations. Tholuck cites, the following passage of 
Artemidorus (Oneirocriticon i. 14): A father dreaming that his wife gives 
birth to a child exactly like himself, says: “that he seems to himself 
dvwlev yevvacta, to be born from the beginning, to recommence his own 
existence.” In the Acta Pauli, Jesus says to Peter, who is flying from 
martyrdom and to whom He presents Himself: dvofev wé220 oravpwhjvar, 
“Tam going to begin anew my crucifixion.” Compare also in the New 
Testament, Luke 1.3; Acts xxvi.5; and Gal.iv.9. In this last passage 
avwlev is completed by zaaw: “entering from the beginning into a state 
of slavery which will be the second.” This sense of dvw6ev can scarcely 
be given in French. The expression tout a neuf would best answer to it. 
The sense is: to place in the course of the earthly life a beginning as new 
as birth itself. There is nothing to oppose this sense, philologically, 
according to the examples cited. And it makes the answer of Nicodemus 
more easily understood. The word to see is perhaps connected with to be 
born; a new sight implies a new life. Sight is often the symbol of enjoy- 
ment, as well as of suffering (vill. 51). In the old covenant, the kingdom 
of God was realized in a politico-religious form. From this temporary 
envelopment, Jesus freed the spiritual principle which forms the true foun- 
dation of that state of things, the submission of the human will to the 
divine will, in one word, holiness (comp. the Sermon on the Mount); and 
from this principle He derives a new order of things which is first realized 
in individuals, and which brings about thereby the renewal of society, and 
finally is to transform nature itself. For it is false to exclude, as Reuss 
does (Hist. de la théol. chrét. t. II., pp. 555 f.), the social and final conse- 
quences of the notion of the kingdom of God in the sense of our Gospel. 
The eschatological hopes attached to this term in the Old and New Testa- 
ments are found again in full in v. 28, 29; vi. 39, 40, 44, 54. Meyer calls 
attention to the fact that the term kingdom of God does not again appear 
anywhere else in John, and rightly finds in this fact a proof of the truly 


378 FIRST PART. 


historical character of the naryative which occupies our attention. If, as 
Renan thinks, Jesus had been only a young enthusiast, obedient to a 
mission which He had assumed for Himself, would He not have been 
flattered by seeing such considerable personages as Nicodemus and those 
whom he represented (ver. 1) as well as the colleagues in whose name he 
spoke, ranked among the number of his adherents, and would not this 
feeling have borne Him on, at this moment, to entirely different language? 
The assured feeling of the divinity and holiness of His missson alone 
could, in the face of this success, keep Him from a false step. 

Ver. 4. “Nicodemus says to him: How can a man be born when he is 
old? He cannot enter a second time, can he, into his mother’s womb and be 
born?” This saying, to the view of several modern critics, is a master-piece 
of improbability. Reuss thinks that “it is indeed, wrong to try to give to 
this answer a meaning even in the smallest degree plausible or defensible.” 
Schleiermacher proposes to explain thus: “It is impossible, at my age, to 
recommence a new moral life.” Tholuck, Baumlein and Hengstenberg, 
nearly the same: “ What thou askest of me is as impossible as that a man 
should enter again. .. .” These explanations evidently weaken the mean- 
ing of the text. Meyer thinks that the embarrassment into which the say- 
ing of Jesus throws Nicodemus, leads him to say something absurd. Lange 
finds rather a certain irritation in this answer: The Pharisee would attempt 
to engage in a rabbinical discussion in order to show Jesus the exaggera- 
tion of His demands. These suppositions have little probability. Would 
Jesus speak as He does in the sequel to a man so narrow-minded or so 
irritable? Liicke explains: “Thou canst not, by any means, mean that 

.?” This explanation is philologically accurate; it faithfully renders 
the meaning of the negative “4 (comp. our translation). As Weiss observes, 
Nicodemus does not answer thus as a man wanting in understanding; but 
he is offended at seeing Jesus propose to him such a condition; he refuses 
to enter into His thought, and, holding firmly to the literal sense, he limits 
himself to a setting forth of its absurdity. The manner in which he 
expresses this impression does not seem even to be entirely free from irony. 
It is because in truth, he cannot conceive how the beginning of another life 
can be placed in the womb of the natural existence. The kingdom of God 
has always appeared to him as the most glorious form of the earthly exist- 
ence itself. To what purpose a new birth, in order to enter into it? The 
Old Testament spoke, no doubt, of the force from above, of the divine aid 
necessary to sanctify the man, but not of a new birth (see Luthardt). 

The words: ‘when he is old,” prove that Nicodemus did not fail to apply 
to himself the: “Jf any one” of Jesus. The word detrepov, a second time, 
undoubtedly reproduces only partially the meaning of dvafev, from the begin- 
ning, in the mouth of Jesus. This is because Nicodemus does not compre- 
hend the difference between a beginning anew and a different beginning. 
A radical moral renewal seems to him impossible without a simultaneous 
physical renewal. Thus the explanation which Jesus gives him bears on 
the absolute difference between the natural birth and the new birth which 
He demands: 


CHAP. til. 4,0, 379 


Ver. 5. “Jesus answered: Verily, verily, I say unto thee that except a man is 
born of water and of spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”* The 
words, of water and spirit, substituted for avebev (from the beginning) in- 
dicate to Nicodemus the new factors, and consequently the totally different 
nature of this second birth. The first term: of water, agrees better with 
the idea of a new birth, than with that of a heavenly birth. Spiritualism, 
embarrassed by the material character of this first means, has often sought 
to unite it with the second. Thus Calvin paraphrases the expression of 
water and spirit by the term aquae spiritales ; he finds support in the expres- 
sion baptism of the Spirit and of fire (Luke iii. 16). But the spiritual sense 
of the word fire could not be questioned in that phrase. It was otherwise 
with the word water in the saying with which we are occupied, especially 
at the time when Jesus was speaking thus. The baptism of John was pro- 
ducing at that time an immense sensation in Israel, so that the thought of 
Nicodemus, on hearing the words, birth by water, must have turned imme- 
diately to that ceremony; as it was celebrated in the form of a total or 
partial immersion, it quite naturally represented a birth. Jesus, moreover, 
at the moment when He thus expressed Himself, was in a sense coming 
out from the water of baptism; it was when completing this rite that He 
had Himself received the Holy Spirit. How, in such circumstances, could 
this expression: Born of water, have possibly designated on His lips any- 
thing else than baptism? Thus, also, is explained the negative and almost 
menacing form: Except a man... Nicodemus was a Pharisee, and we 
know that the Pharisees had refused to submit to John’s baptism (Luke 
vii. 80); this saying contained, therefore, a very real admonition addressed 
to Nicodemus. Weiss, laying stress upon the absence of the article before 
the word water, rejects this special allusion to the rite of baptism. He sees 
in the water only an image of the purification of sin effected by the new 
spiritual birth. But the absence of the article simply makes prominent 
the quality of the means, and does not prevent us from thinking of the 
special practical use which was made of it by John at that time. Nico- 
demus must learn that the acceptance of the work of the forerunner was 
the first condition of entering into the new life. This first term, thercfore, 
contained a positive invitation to break with the line of conduct adopted 
by the Pharisaic party towards John the Baptist. But what is the relation 
between baptism and the new birth (ver. 8)? Liicke makes prominent in 
baptism the subjective element of repentance (uerdvora). He thinks that 
Jesus meant to say: First of all, on the part of man, repentance (of which 
baptism is the emblem) ; afterwards, on the part of God, the Spirit. But 
the two defining words are parallel, depending on one and the same prep- 
osition; the one cannot represent something purely subjective and the 
other something purely objective. The water also contains something 
objective, divine; this divine element in baptism is expressed in the best 
way by Strauss. “If baptism is, on the part of man,” he says, “ the declara- 


1¥ reads wewv Tyv Baoidcray Twv ovpavwy (the kingdom of heaven), a reading which Tischen- 
dorf adopts (8th edition). 


380 FIRST PART, 


tion of the renunciation of sin, it is, on the part of God, the declaration of the 
pardon of sins.” The baptism of water, in so far as offered and adminis- 
tered on the part of God and in His name, contains the promise of pardon, 
of which it is the visible pledge, in favor of the sinner who accepts it. In 
this sense, Peter says on the day of Pentecost, Acts ii. 38: “Be baptized, 
every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the pardon of sins; and 
[following upon this pardon] you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.” 
And it must, indeed, be noticed that he says: “The pardon of sins,” and 
not of Ais sins. For it is the idea of baptism in itself, and not that of its 
individual efficacy, which Peter wishes to indicate. Baptism is, indeed, the 
crowning-point of the symbolic lustrations of the Old Testament; comp. 
Ps. li., 4, 9, ““ Wash me from mine iniquity ... Cleanse me Srom my sin with 
hyssop ; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.” Ezek. xxxvi. 25, “I will 
sprinkle upon you clean water, and you shall be clean.” Zech. xiii. 1, “ In that 
day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants 
of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.” Water is, in all these passages, 
the emblem of the expiatory blood, the only real means of pardon. Comp. 
1 John v. 6, where the water, the blood and the Spirit are placed in con- 
nection with one another; the water, on the one hand, as the symbol 
of the blood which reconciles and, on the other, as the pledge of the Spirit 
which regenerates. To accept the baptism of water administered by John 
was, therefore, while bearing witness of one’s repentance, to place oneself 
under the benefit of the promise of the Messianic pardon. The condem- 
nation being thus taken away, the baptized person found himself restored 
before God to his normal position, that of a man who had not sinned; and 
consequently he found himself fitted to receive from the Messiah Himself 
the gift of the Spirit. The Spirit: Here is the active, efficient principle of 
the new birth, of the renewal of the will and of the dispositions of the heart, 
and thereby even of the whole work of sanctification. Jesus sums up, 
therefore, in these two words: Of water and spirit, the essential principles 
of the Christian salvation, pardon and sanctification, those two conditions 
of entrance into the divine kingdom. 

In the following verses, no further mention of water is made, precisely 
because it has in the new birth only a negative value; it removes the ob- 
stacle, the condemnation. The creative force proceeds from the Spirit. 
The absence of the article with the word spirit, is explained in the same 
way as with the word water. The question is of the nature or quality of 
the factors co-operating in this supernatural birth. The expression, 
eiceibew (to enter), is substituted here for the term ideiv (to see), of ver. 3. 
The figure of entering into, is in more direct correspondence with that of 
being born. It is by coming forth from (éx) the two elements indicated, in 
which the soul is plunged, that it enters into (cic), the kingdom. The read- 
ing of the Sinaitic MS.: “the kingdom of heaven,” is found also, accord- 
ing to Hippolytus, among the Docetz of the second century ; it is found 
in a recently discovered fragment of Irenxus, in the Apostolical Constitu- 
tions, and in Origen (transl.). These authorities are undoubtedly not suf- 
ficient to authorize us to substitute it for the received reading, as Tischen- 


CHAP. III. 6. 381 


dorf does. But this variant must be extremely ancient. At all events, 
it overthrows the objection raised against the reality of the quotation of 
our passage in Justin, Apol.i.61. (See Introd., p. 152, 153.) 

In speaking thus to Nicodemus, Jesus did not think of making salvation 
depend, either in general or in each particular case, on the material act 
of baptism. The example of the thief on the cross proves that pardon 
could be granted without the baptism of water. But, when the offer of 
this sign has been made and the sinner ‘has rejected it, the position is dif- 
ferent ; and this was the case with Nicodemus. By the two following sen- 
tences, Jesus demonstrates the necessity (ver. 6a), and the possibility (ver. 
6b), of the new birth, by leaving aside the water, to keep closely to the 
Spirit only. 

Ver. 6. “ That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the 
Spirit is spirit.” The logical transition from ver. 5 to ver. 6 is this under- 
stood idea: “The Kingdom of God can only be of a spiritual nature, as 
God is Himself.” In order to enter it, therefore, there must be, not flesh, 
as every man is by his first birth, but spirit, as he becomes by the new 
birth. The word flesh (see pp. 268-269), taken in itself, does not necessarily 
imply the notion of sin. But it certainly cannot be maintained, with 
Weiss, that the question here is simply of the insufficiency of the natural 
birth, even in the state of innocence, to render man fit for the divine 
kingdom. Nevertheless, we must not forget that the question here is of 
humanity in its present constitution, according to which sin is connected 
with the fact of birth more closely than with any other of the natural life 
(Ps. li. 7).1. The expression: the flesh, seems to me, therefore, to denote 
here humanity in its present state, in which the flesh rules the spirit. 
This state is transmitted from generation to generation in such a way 
that, without renewal, no man can come out of that fatal circle. And 
hence the necessity of regeneration. How does this transmission of the 
carnal state accord with individual culpability? The last words of this 
conversation will throw some light on this difficult question. According 
to this saying, it is impossible to suppose that Jesus regarded Himself as 
born in the same way as other men (ver. 7, you). The substantive flesh, as 
a predicate (is flesh), has a much more forcible meaning than that of the 
adjective (carnal) would be. The state has, in some sort, become nature. 
Hence, it follows that it is not enough to cleanse or adorn outwardly the 
natural man; a new nature must be substituted for the old, by means of 
a regenerating power. We might also see in the second clause a proof of 
the necessity of the new birth; it would be necessary, in that case, to give 
it the exclusive sense: ‘ Nothing except what is born of the Spirit is spir- 


which the word flesh is used, there are thirty- 
two where the term has a morally indifferent 


1 The opposition which Weiss makes to ap- 
pear between Paul and John as to the use of 


the word flesh, as if the notion of sin were 
connected more closely to this term by the 
first than by the second, is only relatively 
well-founded. This is what the difference 
amounts to: in Paul, of eighty-eight cases in 


sense ; in John (Gospel and Epistle), there is, 
beyond our present passage, only one case 
among fifteen (1 John ii. 16), where the notion 
of sin seems to be attached to the word flesh. 


382 FIRST PART. 


itual (and can enjoy, in consequence, the Kingdom of the Spirit).” But 
the clause has rather a positive and affirmative sense: “ That which is born 
of the Spirit is really spirit, and consequently cannot fail to enjoy the King- 
dom of the Spirit.” The idea, therefore, is that of the reality of the new 
birth, and consequently, of its complete possibility. This is the answer to the 
question: “How canaman?” Let the Spirit breathe, and the spiritual 
man exists! The word Spirit, as subject, denotes the Divine Spirit, and, 
as predicate, the new man. Here, again, the substantive (spirit), is used 
instead of the adjective (spiritual), to characterize the new essence. This 
word spirit, in the context here, includes not only the new principle of 
spiritual life, but also the soul and body, in subjection to the Spirit. The 
neuter, 7d yeyevvypuévov (that which is born), is substituted in the two clauses 
for the masculine (he who is born), for the purpose of designating the 
nature of the product, abstractedly from the individual ; thus, the general- 
ity of the law is more clearly brought out. Hilgenfeld finds here the 
Gnostic distinction between two kinds of men, originally opposite. 
Meyer well replies: “There is a distinction, not between two classes of 
men, but between two different phases in the life of the same individual.” 

Jesus observes, that the astonishment of Nicodemus, instead of dimin- 
ishing, goes on increasing. He penetrates the cause of this fact: Nicode- 
mus has not yet given a place in his conception of divine things to the 
action of the Holy Spirit; this is the reason why he is always seeking to 
represent to himself the new birth as a fact apprehensible by the senses. 
Recognizing him, however, as a serious and sincere man, He wishes to 
remove from his path this stumbling-stone. Here is not a fact, He says 
to him, which one can picture to himself; it can be comprehended only 
as far as it is experienced. 

Vy. 7, 8. “ Marvel not at that which I have said unto thee: ye must be born 
anew. The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, 
but knowest not whence it cometh nor’ whither it goeth. So is every one that is 
born of the Spirit.2—By the expression: “ Ye must be born,” Jesus exempts 
Himself from this general condition. It Was necessary for Him to grow 
spiritually, no doubt, (Luke ii. 40, 52); but He did not need to be born 
again. The gift of the Holy Spirit at His baptism was not a regeneration, 
but the crowning of a perfectly normal previous development under the 
constant influence of the Spirit—Jesus directs the attention of Nicodemus 
to a fact which, like the new birth, escapes the observation of the senses, 
and which is proved only by its effects, the blowing of the wind.—The 
Greek word zvetwa has, as well as the Hebrew word 1); the twofold mean- 
ing of wind and spirit. As it appears from the following so that there 1S oh 
comparison, this term is certainly taken here in the sense of wind. Tho- 
luck (first edition) supposed that, at that very moment, the wind was heard 
blowing in the streets of Jerusalem. This supposition gives more of reality 
to the words: and thow hearest the sound thereof—When he says: thou 


1The Mjj. Mnn. and Vss. read kat mov, and 28 alone reads ex rov vdatos Kav Tou mvEv- 
not » mov (A. It. Vg.) patos. : 


CHAP. 1. 7-10. 383 


knowest not . . . Jesus does not speak of the explanation of the wind in 
general. He calls to mind only that, in each particular case, it is impos- 
sible to determine exactly the point where this breath is formed and the 
one where it ends. Perhaps there is an allusion to Eccles. xi. 5: “As 
thou knowest not the way of the wind...” While the development 
of all natural life connects itself with an organic visible germ and ends in 
a product which falls under the senses, the wind appears and subsides as 
if a free irruption of the infinite into the finite. There is, therefore, in 
nature no more striking example of the action of the Spirit. The opera- 
tion of the regenerating principle is not bound to any rule appreciable by 
the senses; it is perceived only by its action on the human soul. But the 
man in whom this action works does not understand either from whence 
these new impressions which he feels proceed, nor whither they lead him. 
He is only conscious of a profound work which is wrought within him and 
which radically renews him. The adverb of rest zov, with the verb of 
motion irdye, is a frequent construction in Greek. It is, as it were, the 
anticipation of the state of rest which will follow the motion when it has 
reached its end. The application of the comparison, in the second part of 
the verse, is not expressed altogether correctly. It would have been 
necessary to say : so it takes place in every man who is born . . . But it is 
not in the genius of the Greek language to make a comparison and its 
application correspond symmetrically ; comp., in the New Testament, Matt. 
xiii. 19 f£, xxv. 1, etc.—The perfect participle yeyevynuévoc denotes the com- 
pleted fact: The eye has seen nothing, the ear has heard nothing. And 
yet there is a man born anew and one who has entered into the eternal 
kingdom? Allis done, and nothing has been visible! What a contrast 
with the noisy and pompous appearance of the divine kingdom according 
to the Pharisaic programme! 

Vv. 9, 10. “ Nicodemus answered and said unto him: How can these things 
be? 10. Jesus answered and said unto him: Thow art the teacher of Israel, 
and thou knowest not these things !”,—Nicodemus does not deny; but he 
acknowledges himself a stranger to all experience of the action of the 
Spirit. It is Jesus’ turn to be astonished. He discovers with surprise such 
spiritual ignorance in one who, at this moment, represents before Him the 
teaching of the old covenant. Something of bitterness has been found in 
this reply ; it expresses nothing but legitimate astonishment. Ought not 
such passages as Jer. xxxi. 83; Ezek. xxxvi. 26-28; Ps. cxliii. 10, 11, to 
have prepared Nicodemus to understand the power of the divine breath? 
But the Pharisees set their hearts only on the glory of the kingdom, rather 
than on its holiness—The article 6 before diddoxaroc, “the teacher” has 
been interpreted in the sense: “the well-known, illustrious teacher” 
(Winer, Keil.) The irony would, thus, be very strong. This article, 
rather, designates Nicodemus as the representative of the Israclitish teach- 
ing office, as the official ddacxadtia personified. Comp. the 6 écf#iov Mk. 
xiv. 18. 

The tenth verse forms the transition to the second part of the conversa- 
tion. That which externally marks this part is the silence of Nicodemus. 


384° FIRST PART. 


As Hengstenberg observes, he seems to say, like Job before Jehovah: “J 
am too small; what shall I answer? I have spoken once; but I put my hand 
upon my mouth.” On His part, Jesus treats him with a touching kindness and 
condescension; He has found him humble and docile, and He now opens 
Himself to him without reserve. Nicodemus came, as we have seen, to 
interrogate Him respecting His Messianic mission and the mode of the 
establishment of the divine kingdom so long expected. He did not by any 
means preoccupy his thoughts with the moral conditions on which he 
might himself enter into that state of things. <A faithful Jew, a pious 
Pharisee, a holy Sanhedrist, he believed himself saved by the very fact that 
he was such. Jesus, as a consummate educator, began by reminding him 
of what he forgot,—the practical question. He taught him that which he 
did not ask for, but that which it was more important for him to know. 
And now He reveals to him kindly all that which he desired to know: 
He declares to him what He is (vy. 11-18); what He comes to do (vv. 
14-17); and what will result for humanity from His coming (vv. 18-21). 

The first part of the conversation is summed up thus: What will take 
place? Answer: Nothing, in the sense in which you understand it. The 
second means: And yet something really takes place, and even a thing 
most unheard of: The supreme revelator is present; redemption is about 
to be accomplished ; the universal judgment is preparing. Such are the 
divine facts which are displayed before the eyes of Nicodemus in the sec- 
ond part of the conversation. The conduct of Jesus with this man is 
thus in complete contrast with that which had been mentioned in ii. 24. 
He trusts Himself to him; for He has recognized his perfect uprightness ; 
comp. ver. 21. 

The positive teaching does not, properly, begin until ver.18. Vv. 11, 
12, are prefatory to it. 

This passage vv. 11-13 is clearly joined to ver. 2;. Nicodemus had 
spoken in thename of several : “Weknow .. .” (ver.1); Jesus addresses him- 
self to these absent interlocutors: ‘ You receive not... ; if I told you 
... 7’ (vy. 11b and 12a). Nicodemus had called Jesus a teacher “come 
from God” (ver. 1). Jesus shows him that he has spoken more truly than 
he thought; He reveals Himself to him as the Son of man, descended 
from heaven to bear witness of heavenly things (ver. 13). This relation 
between ver. 1 and vy. 11-13 proves that the whole of the beginning of 
the conversation, vv. 3-10, was called forth accidentally, and is in reality 
but an episode; and that now only do. the revelations, which Nicodemus 
had come to seek, properly speaking, begin. 

Vv. 11-13. In opposition to the doctorate of the letter, devoid of all 
spiritual intuition, Jesus announces to him the coming of a teaching, . 
which will rest on the immediate knowledge of the truth (ver. 11). In order 
that Nicodemus may profit by this higher teaching, Jesus invites him to 
faith (ver. 12). Finally He displays to him, in His own person, the perfect 
revealer (ver. 18). Weiss and Keil think that Jesus wishes now to point 
out the way to attain regeneration, and, consequently, also to understand 
it. But the setting forth of salvation given in the sequel is far too consid- 


CHAP. III. 11. 385 


erable for it possibly to be caused by so special a relation to that which 
precedes. 

Ver. 11. “ Verily, verily, I say unto thee, We speak that we do know and bear 
testimony of that we have seen; and ye receive not our testimony.” The for- 
mula amen, amen (“in truth”), declares, as always, a truth which Jesus is 
about to draw from the depths of His consviousness, and which, present- 
ing itself as a revelation to the mind of His interlocutor, must triumph 
over his prejudices or his doubts. The rabbinical teaching worked upon 
the letter of the Scriptures, but did not place itself in contact with the es- 
sential truth which it contained (v. 39). Jesus proclaims with an inward 
satisfaction the coming of a wholly different teaching of holy things, 
which will have the character of certainty: “that which we know ;”’ be- 
cause it will spring from immediate intuition: “that which we have seen.” 
The two subordinate verbs, we speak, and we testify, are in correspondence 
with the two principal verbs: one speaks (declares) that which one knows ; 
one testifies of what one has seen. There is, moreover, evident progress be- 
tween each verb and the corresponding verb of the following clause: 
Knowledge rises to the clearness of sight, and speaking assumes the solemn 
character of testimony. The contrast marked here by Jesus between -the 
rabbinical teaching and His own struck even the people; comp. Matt. vii. 
28, 29. 

But of whom, then, does Jesus speak when He says “ We”? What is 
this college of new teachers whom He contrasts with the caste of the 
scribes and sages of this age which passes away (1 Cor. i. 20)? These 
plurals “we speak ... we testify” have been explained in a variety of ways. 
Beza and Tholuck understand by we: “I and the prophets.” Bengel: “I 
and the Holy Spirit.” Chrysostom and Huthymius : “I and God.” The im- 
possibility of these explanations is manifest. De Wette and Liicke see in 
this we a plural of majesty; Meyer and Keil, the plural of category: 
“teachers such as J.” These explanations are less untenable. But this 
first person of the plural, used for the designation of Himself, is unex- 
ampled in the mouth of Jesus. And why return afterwards to the singu- 
lar (vv. 12, 13): “TZ tell thee . . . if J have told you... if J tell you.” 
Just as the you is addressed to other persons besides Nicodemus (comp. 
ver. 2: we know), so the we must be applied not only to Jesus, but to a 
plurality of individuals which He opposes to that of which Nicodemus 
is the representative. We must, therefore, suppose that Jesus here an- 
nounces to Nicodemus the existence of a certain number of men whoal 
ready represent the new mode of teaching. According to Knapp, Hof- 
mann, Luthardt, Weiss, etc., Jesus, when speaking thus, thinks only of 
Himself and John the Baptist. He alludes to that which John and He be- 
held in the scene of the baptism. But the idea of regeneration to which 
it is claimed that this seeing and knowing refer is totally foreign to the 
scene of the baptism, and even in our chapter, vv. 31, 32, the forerunner 
expressly places himself outside of the limits of the new teaching inau- 
gurated by Jesus. We believe, therefore, with Lange, Hengstenberg and 
Westcott, that Jesus is thinking of Himself and His disciples, of whom one 

25 


386 FIRST PART. 


or several were at that moment with Him; and who were beginning al- 
ready to become the organs of this new teaching-office inaugurated by 
Him. In the person of Jesus, then, through His acts and His words, 
heaven is constantly opened before their eyes (i. 52); already they truly 
see and know ; their gaze pierces to the essence of things: ‘“ He who hath 
seen me, hath seen the Father.” On this foundation, they already testify. 
What vivacity, what freshness, in the declaration of John and Andrew, i. 
42, in that of Philip, i. 47, in the exclamation of Nathanael, i. 50, in the 
profession of Peter, vi. 68,69! There are here, no doubt in a weak meas- 
ure, sight and testimony. Jesus feels Himself no more alone. Hence 
the feeling of profound joy which breathes in these plurals: we speak, we 
know, etc., and which betrays itself even in the form of His language. In- 
deed, Luthardt has observed, with reason, that we see appearing here that 
form of parallelism which constitutes the poetic rhythm of the Hebrew 
language. This feature of style betrays emotion and always marks a mo- 
ment of peculiar exaltation (v. 87; vi. 85, 55,56; xii, 44, 45). The lan- 
guage resembles chant. Nicodemus must learn that things are more ad- 
vanced than he thinks! This passage recalls the one in the Synoptics 
where Jesus declares the preference which God gives to little children, to 
His humble and ignorant disciples, over the intelligent and learned rabbis 
of Jerusalem (Matt. xi. 25; Luke xi. 21). While his colleagues and him- 
self are still waiting for the solemn hour of the advent of the kingdom, 
that kingdom is already present without their knowledge, and others par- 
ticipate in it before them! Meyer, Astié and others refer the expression 
“we have seen” to the knowledge possessed by Christ in His pre-existent 
state. But Weiss himself rejects here this explanation which he thinks 
himself obliged to adopt in other analogous cases (see on ver. 13). It 
would be altogether incompatible with the interpretation which we have 
given to the word we. 

Before unfolding to Nicodemus what He knows and what He sees of 
the things above, Jesus sadly reverts to the manner in which His testi- 
mony has been received by the leaders of the theocracy: “And ye receive 
not our testimony.” Kai, and, has the meaning here of and yet (i. 10). This 
copula brings out better than would the particle kairo, yet (which John 
never uses), the contradiction between two facts which should be ex- 
clusive of each other and which nevertheless move on together (hearing 
and rejecting the testimony). Jesus was conscious, as every living 
preacher is, of the inward resistance which His appearance and His teach- 
ing met in the hearts of the people and their rulers. A presentiment of 
this might have been had already at the time of the deputation of the 
Sanhedrim to John (i. 19 ff.). The conduct of the people and the author- 
ities, with regard to the solemn procedure of Jesus in the temple (ii. 12 ff.), 
had given Him the measure of that which awaited Him. The words of 
Nicodemus himself (iii. 2), in which he had called Him teacher in consid- 
eration of His miracles, not of His teaching itself (ver. 2), showed how 
little His word had found access to hearts. The want of spiritual recep- 
tivity, which the misunderstanding of Nicodemus had just betrayed, will, 


CHAP. mr. 12. 387 


as Jesus perceives, render very difficult the acceptance of the heavenly 
revelations which he brings to the world: 

Ver. 12. “Jf I have told you earthly things and ye believe! not, how shall 
ye believe if I tell you® of heavenly things?” When a teacher says to 
his pupil: “If you do not understand me on this point, how will 
you understand me on that?” we must suppose that the disciple 
expects to be instructed respecting this latter point. We must, there- 
fore, conclude from this word of Jesus, that the heavenly things are to 
Jesus’ view those which preoccupy Nicodemus, and with reference to 
which he had come to interrogate Him: the person of the Messiah, the 
nature of His kingdom, the way in which He will lay the foundation of, 
and complete this great work, both in Israel and in the Gentile world. 
And, indeed, these are precisely the questions which Jesus answers in the 
second part of the conversation, which is to follow. The contrast between 
the past, “if I have told you” and the present “if I tell you” proves that 
Jesus had not yet set forth publicly what He calls the heavenly things. 
This conversation was the first communication of Jesus concerning the 
nature of the Messianic kingdom and the mode of salvation, outside of 
the innermost circle of His own friends. The public teaching of Jesus 
had, therefore, up to that time related to what He calls the earthly things. 
This expression cannot denote things which appertain to earthly inter- 
ests : for Jesus did not occupy Himself with these things before this, any 
more than He did afterwards. If by the heavenly things we must of 
course understand the designs of God, inaccessible to the human mind, 
for the establishment of His kingdom, we must include in the domain of 
earthly things all that which appertains to the moral nature of man; out- 
side of the region of redemption and regeneration ; thus, everything which 
Jesus comes to declare respecting the carnal state of the natural man and 
the necessity of a radical transformation. Jesus is thinking, no doubt, of 
the contents of His first preachings, analogous to those of John the Bap- 
tist, and which Mark sums up (i. 15) in these words: “ Repent ye, and be- 
lieve the Gospel: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand ;” those preachings 
of which we possess the most remarkable example in the Sermon on the 
Mount. What a difference as compared with the revelations which Jesus 
makes to Nicodemus! The conversation with him is the first step in a 
region infinitely elevated above that elementary preaching. We under- 
stand now why it has been preserved to us by John; it had been of 
marked importance in the development of his own faith. 

According to Liicke and Reuss the earthly things are the things easy to 
be understood, and the heavenly “the most elevated ideas of the Gospel, 
less accessible to an intelligence which was not yet enlightened by it.” 
This sense is true from the standpoint of consequences, but not from that 
of explanation strictly so-called. There is no example to prove that 
heavenly can signify difficult, and earthly, easy. Ewald makes of éizov a 


1E H10 Mnn.: ove emorevoate (ye did not be- 2 The second vue is wanting in E H 9 Mnn. 
lieve), instead of ov meatevere (yedo not believe). —_ Italia, 


388 FIRST PART. 


third person plural: “ Jf they (the prophets) have spoken to you of earthly 
things and you have not believed (the reading: émreicare).” But a subject 
of this sort could not be understood, and an éy6 could not be omitted in 
the following clause (Meyer, Béumlein). In this remarkable saying, Jesus 
contrasts the facts which pertain to the domain of the human conscious- 
ness, and which man can verify by observation of himself, with the divine 
decrees which cannot be known except by means ofa revelation. This is 
the reasoning: “If, when I have declared to you the things whose reality 
you can, by consulting your own consciousness, discover, you have not 
believed, how will you believe when I shall reveal to you the secrets of 
heaven, which must be received solely on the foundation of a word?” 
There, the testimony of the inner sense facilitates faith; here, on the con- 
trary, everything rests upon confidence in the testimony of the revealer. 
This testimony being rejected, the ladder, on which man may raise him- 
self to the knowledge of heavenly things, is broken, and the access to the 
divine secrets remain, closed. 

This saying of Jesus should teach apologetics to place the supporting 
point of faith in the declarations of the Gospel which are most immedi- 
ately connected with the facts of consciousness and the moral needs of 
the soul. Its truth being once recognized in this domain where it can be 
verified by every one, it is already half-demonstrated in relation to those 
declarations which are connected with the purely divine domain. It will be 
completely so, as soon as it shall be established that these two parts, divine 
and human, of the Gospel, are adapted to one another as the two parts of 
one whole; that the moral needs of man which are proved by the one find 
their full satisfaction in the divine plans revealed in the other. The moral 
truth of the Gospel is the first guarantee of its religious truth. 

Ver. 13. “And no one hath ascended up to heaven except he who descended 
from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven.”* The question, “how will 
you believe ?”” (ver. 12) implied, in the thought of Him who proposed it, 
the necessity of faith. Ver. 18 justifies this necessity. The intermediate 
idea is the following: “Indeed, without faith in my testimony, there is 
no access for you to those heavenly things which thou desirest to know.” 
Kai: and yet. Olshausen, de Wette, Liicke, Luthardt and Meyer find in ver. 
13 the proof, not of the necessity of faith in the revelation contained in 

the teaching of Jesus, but of that in revelation in general. But this thesis 
is too purely theoretical to find a place in such a conversation. Heng- 
stenberg thinks that Jesus here wishes to reveal His divinity as the first 
among the heavenly things which Nicodemus has need to know. Meyer 
rightly answers that the negative form of the proposition is inconsistent 
with this intention. Besides, Jesus would have employed, in that case, 
the expression Son of God, rather than Son of man. The general mean- 
ing of this saying is as follows: “ You do not believe my word... . And 
yet no one has ascended to heaven so as to behold the heavenly things 
and make them known to you, except He who has descended from it to 


18 BL T> Orig. (once) Euseb. omit the words 0 wy ev tw ovpavw (who is in heaven). 


CHAP. III. 13. 389 


live with you as a man, and who, even while living here below, abides 
there also; so that He alone knows them de visu, and so that, conse- 
quently, to believe in His teaching is for you the only means of knowing 
them.” But how can Jesus say of Himself that He ascended to heaven? 
Did He speak of His ascension by way of anticipation (Augustine, 
Calvin, Bengel, Hengstenberg)? But His future ascension would not justify 
the necessity of faith in His earthly teaching. Liicke, Olshausen, Bey- 
schlag, after the example of Hrasmus, Beza, etc., think that heaven is 
here only the symbol of perfect communion with God—a communion to 
which Jesus had morally risen, and by virtue of which He alone possessed 
the adequate knowledge of God and of the things above. This sense would 
be admissible if the word ascended had not as its antithesis the term 
descended, which refers toa positive fact, that of the incarnation; the 
corresponding term ascend must, therefore, refer to a fact no less positive, 
or rather—since the verb is in the perfect and not the aorist—to a state 
resulting from a fact quite as positive. Meyer and Weiss, following Jansen, 
think that the idea of ascending may be regarded as applying only to men 
in general and that an abstraction from it can be made with reference to 
Jesus. Ascending is here only as if the indispensable condition for all other 
men of dwelling in heaven: “No one. . . except he who (without having 
ascended thither) has descended from it, he who is there essentially (Meyer), 
or who was there previously (Weiss).” This is an attempt to escape the 
difficulty of the ei «4, except ; the fact of being in heaven is reserved for 
Jesus, while suppressing, so far as He is concerned, that of ascending ; 
comp. the use of e u7 in Matt. xii. 4; Luke iv. 26, 27; Gal. 1.19. How- 
ever, the case is not altogether the same in those passages. We might 
try to take the «i u# in the sense of but, like the Hebrew ki im; but in that 
case John must have written xatéBy instead of 6 xataBdg: “No one has 
ascended, but the Son of man descended.” The Socinians, perfectly under- 
standing the difficulty, have had recourse to the hypothesis of a carrying 
away of Jesus to heaven, which was granted to Him at some time or other 
of His life before His public ministry. As for ourselves, we have no occa- 
sion to have recourse to such an hypothesis; we know a positive fact 
which is sufficient to explain the has ascended when we apply it to Jesus 
Himself; it is that which occurred at His baptism. Heaven was then 
opened to Him; He penetrated it deeply by His gaze; He read the heart 
of God, and knew at that moment everything which He was to reveal to 
men of the divine plan, the heavenly things. In proportion as the con- 
sciousness of His eternal relation as Son to the Father was given to Him, 
there necessarily resulted from it the knowledge of the love of God 
towards mankind. Comp. Matt. xi. 27— Heaven is a state, before being a 
place. As Gess says: “To be in the Father is to be in heaven.” Subsid- 
iarily, no doubt, the word heaven takes also a local sense; for this spirit- 
ual state of things is realized most perfectly in whatever sphere of the 
universe is resplendent with all the glory of the manifestation of God. 
The moral sense of the word heaven prevails in the first and third clauses ; 
the local sense must be added to it in the second. ‘No one has ascended 


390 FIRST PART. 


. ” signifies thus: “ No one has entered into communion with God and 
possesses thereby an intuitive knowledge of divine things, in order to 
reveal them to others, except He to whom heaven was opened and who 
dwells there at this very moment.” 

And by virtue of what was Jesus, and Jesus alone, admitted to such a 
privilege! Because heaven is His original home. He alone has ascended 
thither, because He only descended thence. The term descended im- 
plies in His case the consciousness of having personally lived in heaven 
(Gess). This word denotes, therefore, more than a divine mission; it 
implies the abasement of the incarnation, and consequently involves the 
notion of pre-existence. It is an evident advance upon Nicodemus’ pro- 
fession of faith (ver. 2). The filial intimacy to which Jesus is exalted 
rests on His essential Sonship, previous to His earthly life. If the word 
descended implies pre-existence, the term, Son of man, brings out the 
human side in this heavenly revealer. The love of mankind impelled 
Him to become one of us, in order that He might speak to us as a man, 
and might instruct us in heavenly things in a manner intelligible to us. 
The recollection of Prov. xxx. 4 seems not to be foreign to the expression 
which Jesus makes use of: “ Do I know the knowledge of the holy ones? 
Who ascendeth to heaven and descendeth from it?”—The last words: 
who is in heaven are preserved in the text by Tischendorf (8th ed.) and by 
Meyer, notwithstanding the Alexandrian authorities; Westcott rightly 
says: “They have against them the ancient MSS., and for them the 
ancient versions.” But according to this critic, the testimony of the ver- 
sions is in this case remarkably weakened by the contrary testimony of 
the Sinaitic MS. which so often accords with them. The rejection may 
have been the result of an accidental omission or of the difficulty of 
reconciling this addition with the idea of the preceding clause ;—that of 
having descended. On the other hand, we can understand how these words 
may have been interpolated, in order to resolve the apparent contradiction 
between the idea of being in heaven in order to have ascended thither, and 
that of having descended. At all events, the idea which these words express, 
that of the actual presence of Christ in heaven, is already very positively 
contained in the perfect avaBéBnnev, has ascended. This tense indeed does 
not signify: has accomplished at a given moment the act of ascending 
(this would be the sense of the aorist), but He is there, He lives there, as 
having ascended thither. Thus the preceding antithesis is resolved. 
Jesus lives in heaven, as a being who has re-ascended thither after having 
descended in order to become Son of man (xvi. 28). The Lord led two 
lives parallel to each other, an earthly life and a heavenly life. He lived 
in His Father, and, while living thus with the Father, He gave Himself 
unceasingly to men in His human life. The teaching in parables, in which 
the heavenly things take on His lips an earthly dress, is the true lan- 
guage answering to that existence which is formed of two simultaneous 
lives, the one penetrating the other. 

Some interpreters (Luthardt, Weiss), understand the participle (6 éy), in 
the sense of the imperfect who was (before the incarnation) ; this word, ac- 


CHAP. 111. 14. 391° 


cording to them, expresses the idea of pre-existence as a condition of the 
kataBaivew, of the act of descending. But this participle (6 6»), if it is 
authentic, is rather in relation with the principal verb: has ascended, than 
with the participle (6 xaraBac). “ He lives in heaven, having re-ascended 
thither, inasmuch as He has descended thence.” To express, without am- 
biguity, the idea of the imperfect, the periphrasis (¢ 7v) would have been 
necessary; Liicke sees in 6 ov a perpetual present. This idea may be ap- 
plied to i. 18, where the question is of the Son of God, but not to our pas- 
sage, where the subject is the Son of man. 

Meyer, Weiss and Keil maintain that Jesus explains here the knowledge 
which He has of divine things by His pre-existence. Such an idea can 
be found in these words only on condition of denying any application of 
the idea of ascending to Jesus, a thing which is impossible. The higher 
knowledge of Jesus is, much rather, presented here as the result of an 
initiation (has ascended), which took place for Him during the course of 
His human existence, and through which He received at a certain time 
the immediate and constant, though truly human, intuition of divine 
things. And, in fact, this is the impression which every word of Jesus 
produces: that of a man who perceives the divine directly, but who per- 
ceives it with a human consciousness like our own. It is impossible for 
me to understand how Weiss can, on the one hand, make this higher 
knowledge proceed from a recollection of His anterior existence, and 
maintain, on the other, that such knowledge “does not go beyond the 
limits of a truly human consciousness.” The Son of man, living in 
heaven, so as to have re-ascended thither after having descended, is the 
sole revealer of divine things: this is the first of the éroupdva, the heavenly 
secrets, which Jesus communicates to Nicodemus. The second is the 
salvation of men through the lifting up of this same Son of man, 
not on a throne, but on a cross, the supreme wonder of divine love to the 
world: vy. 14-16. This is the essential contents of the revelation which 
Jesus announced to him in ver. 18. 

Vy. 14,15. “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must 
the Son of man be lifted up, 15, that whosoever believeth on him,’ may have 
eternal life.’ The commentators give more or less forced explanations of 
kai (and). Laicke : “I can reveal (vv. 11-13), and I must do so”’ (vv. 14-16). 
Olshausen : “I give not only my word, but my person.” De Wette: “Jesus 
passes from the theoretical to the practical.” Meyer and Luthardt: “He 
has spoken of the necessity of faith; He speaks now of its sweetness.” 
Weiss: “There is here a new motive to believe. The elevation of Jesus 
will give salvation only by means of faith.” All this is too artificial. 
From our point of view, the connection is more simple: the «ai and, and 
also, adds a second divine mystery to the first, the decree of redemption to 
that of revelation. 

The central idea of this verse is that of the lifting up of the Messiah. 


1 Instead of ets avrov, which T. R. reads in A, em’ avtwin L, ev avrw in BT. NB 1 Diag Bs 
with 14 Mjj. (among them \), nearly allthe some Mnn.; Syrer.; Italia, omit the words 
Mnn.: Itplur.; Vg; Chrys.; em’ avrov is read = un aoAntat add’. 


392 FIRST PART. 


Three principal explanations have been given of the word twwOjva (to be 
lijted up). It has been applied either to the spiritual glory which the moral 
perfection which He will display in His sufferings will procure for Jesus 
in the hearts of men (Paulus), or to His elevation to heavenly glory which 
will take place as following upon His death (Bleek), or finally, to the very 
fact of His suspension on the cross; this last interpretation is the one 
most generally received. And indeed, in the one or the other of the first 
meanings, Jesus would rather have used the term dofac@jvar (to be glorified). 
For the third, the following points decide the case: 1. The comparison 
with the serpent raised to the top of the pole, which certainly had nothing 
glorious in it; 2. The naturally material sense of the word tywljva (to be 
lifted up); finally, 3. The relation of this word to the corresponding Ara- 
maic term zekaph, which is applied to the suspension of malefactors. 
Only we must take account of the allusion which Jesus, in using this term 
(being lifted up), certainly made to the ideas of Nicodemus, according to 
which the Messiah was to ascend the throne of Solomon and rule the 
world. And the voluntary and ironical amphibology of this expression 
will be understood as in connection with the Messianic expectation of the 
Pharisees. To perceive this shade, we must strongly emphasize the otrwe: 
(ct 7s thus)—and not as you picture it to yourselves—that the lifting up of 
the Son of man will take place. This word (will be lifted up), intimates 
indeed that by this strange elevation the Son of man will attain not only to 
the throne of David, but to that of God. Such is the full meaning of the 
word: to be lifted wp. We must not, as Meyer does, refuse to follow the 
thought of Jesus in this rapid evolution, which instantaneously brings 
together the greatest contrasts, if we would understand all the depth and 
all the richness of His words. We find here again the same enigmatical 
character as in ii. 19. The fact related in Num. xxi. 9, is one of the most 
astonishing in sacred history. Three peculiarities distinguish this mode 
of deliverance from all the other analogous miracles: 1. It is the plague 
itself, which, represented as overcome, becomes, by its ignominious expos- 
ure, the means of its own defeat; 2. This exposure takes place, not in a 
real serpent—the suspension in that case would have proclaimed only the 
defeat of the individual exposed—but in a typical copy, which represents 
the entire species; 3. This expedient becomes efficacious through the in- 
tervention of a moral act, the look of faith on the part of each injured per- 
son. If this is the type of salvation, it follows from this fact that this salva- 
tion will be wrought in the following way : 1. Sin will be exposed publicly 
as vanquished, and for the future powerless; 2. It will not be in the person 
of a real sinner—which would proclaim only the particular defeat of that 
sinner—but in the person of a holy man, capable of representing, as a liv- 
ing image, the condemnation and defeat of sin, as such ; 8. This exhibition 
of sin as one who is vanquished, will save each sinner only by means of 
an act on his part, the look of faith upon his spiritual enemy condemned 
and vanquished. Here, Jesus declares, is the salvation on which the estab- 
lishment of the Kingdom will be founded; here is the second heavenly 
decree revealed to men. What a reversal of the Messianic programme of 


CHAP. 111. 15. 393 


Nicodemus! But, at the same time, what appropriateness in the choice 
of this Scriptural type, designed to rectify the ideas of the old doctor in 
Israel ! 

“ Must,” says Jesus; and first, for the fulfillment of the prophecies; then, 
for that of the divine decree, of which the prophecies were only an emana- 
tion (Hengstenberg); let us add, finally; and for the satisfaction of certain 
moral necessities, known to God only. The designation, Son of man, is 
here, as at ver. 138, chosen with a marked design. It is on the complete 
homogeneousness of His nature with ours, that the mysterious substitu- 
tion rests, which is proclaimed in this verse, precisely as it was on this 
same community of nature that the act of revelation rested, which was 
announced in the preceding verse. 

Ver. 15 finishes the application of the type. To the look of the dying 
Israelite the faith of the sinner in the crucified one corresponds; to the 
life restored to the wounded one, the salvation granted to the believer.— 
Ilac, whosoever extends to the whole of humanity the application of the 
Israelitish type, while emphatically individualizing the act of faith (6).— 
The reading of the T. R. ei¢ aitév, to or on Him, is the one which best suits 
the context (the look turned towards . . . ); faith looks to its object. If 
we consider how little the Alexandrian authorities agree among them- 
selves, the received reading will be acknowledged as, on the whole, the best 
supported one. Tischendorf (8th ed.) reads év airé, after the Vatican 
MS.; in that case, this limiting phrase may be connected with éyz, as 
Weiss and Keil connect it, rather than with zorebwv. But, in this context, 
the connection with zicretwv remains, nevertheless, the most natural rela- 
tion. The Alexandrian authorities reject the words py aréAnrar ard 
should not perish, but ; they may certainly have been introduced here from 
ver. 16. Even in that case we are struck with the rhythmic relation 
between the last words of these two verses ; it is the sign of the stirring of 
feeling and elevation of thought (Introd., p. 187). We comprehend, in- 
deed, what an impression this first revelation of His future suffering of 
punishment must have produced on Jesus Himself; comp. xii. 27. As 
for Nicodemus, we also account for what he experienced when on the 
Holy Friday he saw Jesus suspended on the cross. That spectacle, instead 
of being for him, as for others, a stumbling-block, a ground of unbelief and 
despair, causes his latent faith to break forth (xix. 39). This fact is the 
answer to de Wette’s question, who asks if this anticipatory revelation of 
the death of the Messiah was not contrary to the pedagogic wisdom of 
Jesus. Weiss, who is not willing to admit that Jesus so early foresaw and 
predicted His death, thinks that Jesus did not express Himself in so pre- 
cise a way, but that he spoke vaguely of some lifting up which would be 
accorded to Him during His earthly life, to the end that He might be 
recognized as Messiah by the Jews. But, in that case, it is necessary to 
suppose: 1. That John positively falsified the account of the words of 
Jesus; 2. That Jesus spoke of something which was never realized, for we 
know not what that supposed lifting-up can be; 8. There nolonger remains, 
in this case, any relation between the prophecy of Jesus and the matter of 


394 | FIRST PART. 


the brazen serpent. From the cross Jesus ascends to God, from whose 
love this decree emanates (dei must, ver. 14). 

Ver. 16.“ For God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, 
that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish, but should have eternal 
life.’ —Here is the érovpawov, the heavenly mystery, par excellence ; Jesus 
displays the source of the redemptive work, which He has just described ; 
it is the love of God itself. The world, that fallen humanity of which God 
in the Old Testament had left the largest part outside of His theocratic 
government and revelation, and which the Pharisees devoted to wrath and 
judgment, Jesus presents to Nicodemus as the object of the most bound- 
less love: ‘God so loved the world ...” The gift which God makes to it 
is the Son,—not only the Son of man, as He was called vv. 13, 14 in rela- 
tion to His humanity, but His only-begotten Son. The intention, in fact, is 
no longer to make prominent the homogeneity of nature between this 
Redeemer and those whom He is to instruct and save, but the boundless- 
ness of the love of the Father; now this love appears from what this mes- 
senger is for the Father Himself. It has been claimed that this term, 
only-begotten Son, was ascribed to Jesus by the evangelist. For what 
reason? Because, both in his Prologue (i. 14-18), and in his Epistle (iv. 9) 
he himself makes use of it. But this term is, in the LXX., the translation of 
the Hebrew vm (Ps. xxv. 16; xxxv.17; Prov. iv. 3). Why should not Jesus 
have employed this word if He was, as we cannot doubt (Matt. xi. 27 ; xxi. 37), 
conscious of His unique relation to God? And how should the evangelist 
have been able to render it in Greek otherwise than the LXX. had ren- 
dered it? Man had once offered to God his only son; could God, in a 
matter of love, remain behind His creature ?—The choice of the verb is 
equally significant; it is the word for giving, and not only for sending ; to 
give,.to surrender, and that, if necessary, even to the last limits of sacri- 
fice.—The last clause produces the effect of a musical refrain (comp. ver. 14). 
It is the homage rendered by the Son to the love of the Father from which 
everything proceeds. The universality of salvation (whosoever), the easiness 
of the means (believeth), the greatness of the evil prevented (should not 
perish), the boundlessness, in excellence and in duration, of the good 
bestowed (eternal life): all these heavenly ideas, new to Nicodemus, are 
crowded into this sentence, which closes the exposition of the true Messi- 
anic salvation.—According to this passage, redemption is not extorted from 
the divine love; it is its thought, it is its work. It is the same with Paul: 
“All things are of God, who reconciled us unto Himself by Jesus Christ” 
(2 Cor. v. 18). This spontaneous love of the Father for the sinful world is 
not incompatible with the wrath and the threatenings of judgment; for 
here is not the love of communion, which unites the pardoned sinner to 
God; but a love of compassion, like that which we feel towards the unfor- 
tunate or enemies. The intensity of this love results from the very great- 
ness of the unhappiness which awaits him who is its object. Thus are 
united in this very expression the two apparently incompatible ideas 
which are contained in the words: so loved and may not perish. Some 
theologians, beginning with Hrasmus (Neander, Tholuck, Olshausen, Bawm- 


CHAP. I1I. 16. 395 


lein) have supposed that the conversation of Jesus and Nicodemus closes 
with ver. 15, and that, from ver. 16, it is the evangelist who speaks, com- 
menting with his own reflections on the words of his Master. This opin- 
ion finds its support in the past tenses, loved and were, ver. 19, which seem 
to designate a more advanced period than that at which Jesus conversed 
with Nicodemus; in the expression povoyerfc, only-begotten Son, which 
belongs to John’s language ; finally, in the fact that, from this point, the 
dialogue-form wholly ceases. The for of ver. 16, is, on this view, designed 
to introduce John’s explanations ; and the repetition in the same verse of 
the words of ver. 15 are, as it were, the affirmation of the disciple answer- 
ing to the Master’s declaration.—But, on the other hand, the for of ver. 16 
is not a sufficient indication of the passing from the teaching of Jesus to 
the commentary of the disciple. The author must have marked much 
more distinctly such an important transition. Then, how can we imagine 
that the emotion which bears on the discourse from ver. 18 is already 
exhausted in ver 15? The increasing exaltation with which Jesus succes- 
sively presents to Nicodemus the wonders of divine love, the incarnation 
(ver. 13) and redemption (vv. 14, 15), cannot end thus abruptly ; the thought 
can rest only when it has once reached the highest principle from which 
these unheard of gifts flow, the infinite love of the Father. To give glory to 
God, is the goal to which the heart of Jesus always tends. Finally, who 
could believe that He would have dryly sent Nicodemus away after the 
words of ver. 15, without having given him a glimpse of the effects of the 
salvation announced, and without having addressed to him for himself a 
word of encouragement? Would this be the affectionate sympathy of a 
truly human heart? The part of Jesus, in that case, would be reduced to 
that of a cold catechist. The difficulties which have given occasion to 
this opinion do not seem to us very serious. The past tenses of ver. 19 
- are justified in the mouth of Jesus, like the reproach of ver.11: “ You 
receive not our testimony,” by the attitude, which the population and authori- 
ties of the capital had already taken (ii. 19). We have justified by the con- 
text the term only-begotten Son, and have seen that it would hardly be 
natural to refuse it to Jesus Himself. The terms new birth, birth of water 
and birth of the Spirit (vv. 3, 5) are also not found in the rest of Jesus’ dis- 
courses ; must we, for this reason, doubt that they are His? In a kind of 
discoursing so original as His, does not the matter, at each moment, create 
an original form? When we remember that the drat 2eyéueva (words 
employed only once) are counted by hundreds in the Epistles of St. Paul 
(two hundred and thirty in the first epistle to the Corinthians, one hun- 
dred and forty-three in the epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians taken 
together, one hundred and eighteen in the Ep. to the Hebrews), how can 
we conclude from the fact that a term is found only once in the discourses 
of Jesus which have been preserved to us, that it does not really belong to 
His language? Finally, the cessation of the dialogue-form results simply 
from the increasing’surprise and humble docility with which Nicodemus, 
from this point onwards, receives the revelation of the heavenly things. 
In reality, notwithstanding this silence, the dialogue none the less continues. 


396 FIRST PART. 


For, in what follows, as in what precedes, Jesus does not express an idea, 
does not pronounce a word, which is not in direct relation to the thoughts 
and needs of His interlocutor, and that as far as ver. 21, where we find, at 
last, the word of encouragement which naturally closes the conversa- 
tion, and softens the painful impression which must have been left. in the 
heart of the old man by the abrupt and severe admonition with which it 
had begun.—De Wette and Lticke, while maintaining that the author makes 
Jesus speak even to the end, nevertheless think that, without himself 
being conscious of it, he mingled more and more his own reflections with 
the words of his Master. Nearly the same is also the opinion of Weiss, 
who thinks that, in general, John has never given an account of the dis- 
courses of Jesus except by developing them in his own style. If, in what 
follows, we find any expression wanting in appropriateness, any thought 
unconnected with the given situation, it will indeed be necessary to accept 
such a judgment. Ifthe contrary is the fact, we shall have the right to 
exclude this last supposition also. 

One idea is inseparable from that of redemption,—it is that of judg- 
ment. Every Pharisee divided man into the saved and the judged, that is 
to say, into circumcised and uncircumcised, into Jews and Gentiles. 
Jesus, who has just revealed the redeeming love towards the whole world, 
unfolds now to Nicodemus the nature of the true judgment. And this 
revelation also is a complete transformation of the received opinion. It 
will not be between Jews and Gentiles, it will be between believers and un- 
believers, whatever may be their nationality, that the line of demarcation 
will pass. 

Ver. 17. “ For God sent not his' Son into the world to judge the world, but 
that the world might be saved through him.” For: the purpose of 
the mission of the Son, as it is indicated in this verse, proves that 
this mission is indeed a work of love (ver. 16). The word, world, is re- 
peated three times with emphasis. Nicodemus must hear in such a way 
as no more to forget that the divine benevolence embraces all humanity. 
The universalism of Paul, in its germ, is in these verses 16,17. The first 
clause, by its negative form, is intended to exclude the Jewish idea, ac- 
_ cording to which the immediate purpose of the coming of the Messiah 
was to execute the judgment on the Gentile nations. Our versions trans- 
late, kpivecv, in general, with the meaning condemn; Meyer himself still 
defends this meaning. It is explained thus: ‘ Jesus did not come to exe- 
cute a judgment of condemnation on the sinful world.” But why should 
not Jesus have said karaxpivecv, to condemn, if He had this thought? What 
He means to say is, that His coming into the world has for its purpose, 
not an act of judgment, but a work of salvation. Reuss concludes from 
this saying that “the idea of a future and universal judgment is repudi- 
ated” in our Gospel. But the future judgment is clearly taught in vv. 27, 
28. The idea which Jesus sets aside in this saying, is only that the pres- 
ent coming of the Messiah has for its purpose a great external judicial 


18 BL T® and some Mnn. omit avrov. 


CHAR rit, “17,18. | 397 


act, like that which the Pharisee Nicodemus was certainly expecting. If 
a judgment is to take place as a personal act of the Messiah, it does not 
appertain to this coming. However, although the purpose of His coming 
is to save, not to judge, a judgment, but an altogether different one 
from that of which the Jews were thinking, was about to be effected 
because of that coming: a judgment of a moral nature, in which it is 
not Jesus who will pronounce the sentence, but every man will himself 
decide his own salvation or perdition. 

Ver. 18. “ He that believeth on him is not judged ; but’ he that believeth not 
is judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only-begotten 
Son of God.” The idea of this verse is as follows: “I do not judge any 
one, for the reason that he who believes is not judged, and he who does 
not believe has already judged himself.” As has been well said: “‘ Here 
is justification by faith, and condemnation by unbelief.”? Jesus does not 
judge the believer, because he who accepts the salvation which He brings 
is no longer a subject of judgment. Meyer, Hengstenberg, etc., and our 
translators [A. V.] render the word «pivey here also by condemn. Weiss, 
Keil, Westcott acknowledge that this sense is arbitrary. The passage in 
v. 24 shows that it is contrary to the true thought of Jesus. To judge is, 
after a detailed investigation of the acts, to pronounce on their author a 
judicial sentence deciding as to his innocence or his guilt. Now the Lord 
declares that the believer, being already introduced into eternal life, will 
not be subjected to an investigation of this kind. He will appear before 
the tribunal, indeed, according to Rom. xiv. 10; 2 Cor. v. 10, but to be 
recognized as saved and to receive his place in the kingdom (Matt. xxv.). 
If faith withdraws man from the judgment, there is in this nothing arbitrary. 
This follows precisely from the fact that, through the interior judgment of 
repentance which precedes and follows faith, the believer is introduced 
into the sphere of Christian sanctification which is a continual judgment 
of oneself, and consequently the free anticipation of the judgment (1 Cor. 
xi. 31). The present od xpiverar, ts not judged, is that of the idea. Jesus 
does not judge the unbeliever, because he who refuses to believe finds his 
judgment in this very refusal. The word 7éy, already, and the substitution 
of the perfect («éxperac) for the present («piverar) show clearly that Jesus is 
thinking here of a judgment of a spiritual nature, which is exercised here 
below on him who rejects the salvation offered in Christ. Such a man 
has pronounced on himself, by his unbelief, and without any need on the 
part of Jesus of intervening judicially, his own sentence. It is self-evi- 
dent that this sentence is a sentence of condemnation. But the word 
does not say this. The meaning is: The one is not to be judged; the 
other is judged already ; consequently, the Son does not have to intervene 
personally in order to judge. The use here of the subjective negative (the 
first uf) belongs, according to Bdauwmlein, to the decline of the language. 
According to Meyer, this form has, on the contrary, its regular sense: in 
not believing,” or “‘ because he does not believe.” The title of only-begotten 


1 B Italia. Orig.: o uy, for o de uy in all the rest. 2H. Jacottet. 


f 


398 FIRST PART. _ 


Son sets forth the guilt of those who reject such a being and the work 
which He accomplishes. The more glorious the Saviour is, the more 
grave a matter it is to turn away from Him. The more holy Heis, divine 
in His entire manifestation, the more does unbelief towards Him bear 
witness of a profane sentiment. His name: the revelation which He 
gives us of His essence (see i. 12). The perfect yj reriorevkev, has not be- 
lieved, denotes not the act of not believing, but the state which results from 
it. ‘“ Because he is not in the favorable position of a man who has given 
his confidence to such a being.” The #4 is used here as among the later 
Greeks (e. g. Lucian) to denote the cause in the thought of the speaker. 
The moral separation between men, described in ver. 18, constitutes the 
judgment in its essence; this is the idea developed in vv. 19-21. By the 
position which men take with regard to Jesus, they class themselves as 
reproved (vv. 19, 20) or saved (ver. 21). Thus far, Jesus has proved that 
He does not judge, but He does this by contrasting with the outward judg- 
ment, which was expected, a moral judgment of which no one dreamed. 
This judgment it is which He now explains. 

Ver. 19. “ Now this is the judgment, that the light is come into the world, and 
men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil.” In 
rejecting Jesus, man judges himself. The strictest inquiry into his whole 
life would not prove his disposition, as opposed to what is good, better than 
does his unbelief. The final judicial act will have nothing more to do than 
to ratify this sentence which he pronounces on himself (vv. 28, 29). In 
order to make the matter understood, the Lord here calls Himself the light, 
that is to say, the manifested good, the divine holiness realized before the 
human conscience. It follows from this, that the attitude which the man 
takes in relation to Him, reveals infallibly his inmost moral tendency. 
To the view of Jesus, the experiment has been already made for the world 
which surrounds Him: “ Men loved rather. ..” There is in every servant 
of God, in proportion to his holiness, a spiritual tact which makes him 
discern immediately the moral sympathy or antipathy which his person 
and his message excite. The visit of Jesus to Jerusalem had been for 
Him a sufficient revelation of the moral state of the people and their — 
rulers. They are the men of whom He speaks in this verse, but with the 
distinct feeling that they are in this point the representatives of fallen 
humanity. The expression loved rather is not designed, as Liicke thinks, to 
extenuate the guilt of unbelievers, by intimating that there is still in them 
an attraction, but a weaker one, towards the truth. As has been well said, 
the word padrov does not mean magis, more, but potius, rather. This 
word, therefore, aggravates the responsibility of the Jews, by bringing 
out the free preference with which, though placed in presence of the light, 
they have chosen the darkness (comp. ver. 11). What is, indeed, the 
ground of this guilty preference? It is that their works are evil. They are 
determined to persevere in the evil which they have hitherto committed ; 
this is the reason why they flee from the light which condemns it. By 
displaying the true nature of their works, the light would force them to 
renounce them. The term 16 oxéroc, the darkness, includes with the love 


CHAP, 111. 19, 20. 399 


of evil the inward falsehood by which a man seeks to exculpate himself. 
The aorist 7ydarnoar, loved, designates the preference as an act which has 
just been consummated recently, while the imperfect #4, were, presents 
the life of the world in evil as a fact existing long before the appearance 
of the light. The word épya, works, denotes the whole moral activity, 
tendency and acts. In the following verse, Jesus explains, by means of a 
comparison, the psychological relation between immorality, gross or 
subtle, and unbelief. 

Ver. 20. “ For, every one who practiseth evil hateth the light and doth not 
come to the light,' that his works may not be condemned.” Night was reigning 
at the moment when Jesus was speaking thus. How many evil-doers were 
taking advantage of the darkness, to pursue their criminal designs! And 
it was not accidental that they had chosen this hour. Such is the image 
of that which takes place in the moral world. The appearance of Jesus 
is for the world like the rising of the sun; it manifests the true character 
of human actions; whence it follows, that when any one does evil and 
wishes to persevere in it, he turns his back upon Jesus and His holiness. If 
his conscience came to be enlightened by this brightness, it would oblige 
_ him to renounce that which he wishes to keep. He denies therefore, and 
this negation is for him the night in which he can continue to sin: such 
is the genesis of unbelief. The expression 6 gavAa xpdoowr, he who does 
evil, denotes not only the tendency to which the man has hitherto sur- 
rendered himself, but also that in which he desires to persevere. This is 
what the present participle zpdcowy (instead of the past mpdfac) expresses. 
For the word rovnpa (perverse things) is substituted the word ¢aida (things 
of nought) of ver. 19; the latter is taken from the estimate of Jesus 
himself, while the former referred to the intrinsic nature of the acts, to 
their fundamental depravity. We must also notice a difference between 
the two verbs zpdrrew and roeiv: the first indicates simply labor—the 
question is of works of nought—the second implies effective realization, 
in the good the product remains. But we need not believe that the term 
practise evil refers only to what we call immoral conduct. Jesus is cer- 
tainly thinking, also, of a life externally honorable, but destitute of all 
serious moral reality, like that of the greater part of the rulers in Israel, 
and particularly of the Pharisees: the exaltation of the J and the pursuit 
of human glory, as well as gross immorality, belong to the gavda xpdrrew, 
“practise things of nought” in the sense in which Jesus understands it.— 
Mucei, he hates, expresses the instinctive, immediate antipathy ; ov« ipyeraz, 
he comes not, denotes the deliberate resolution. The verb éAéyyewv (perhaps 
from rpoc éAnv Kpivew, to hold to the light in order to judge) signifies: to 
bring to light the erroneous or evil nature of an idea or a deed. 

The reason of unbelief, therefore, is not intellectual, but moral. The 
proof which Jesus gives, in ver. 20, of this so grave fact is perfectly lucid. 
All that Pascal has written most profoundly on the relation between the 


18 alone omits cat ovk epxetar evs To dws reason of a confounding of the two dws on 
(and he does not come to the light) evidently by __ the part of the copyist. 


400 FIRST PART. 


will and the understanding, the heart and the belief, is already in advance 
contained in this verse and the one which follows. But that which is 
true of unbelief is equally true of faith. It also strikes its roots into the 
moral life; here is the other side of the judgment : 

Ver. 21. “ But he that doeth the truth cometh to the light, that his works may 
be made manifest! because they are wrought in God.” Sincere love of moral 
good predisposes to faith; for Jesus is the good personified. There are in 
humanity, even before the appearance of Christ, men who, although like 
others affected by inborn evil, react against their evil inclinations, and 
pursue with a noble ardor the realization of the moral ideal which shines 
before them. Jesus here calls them those who do the truth. St. Paul, also 
in accord with St. John on this point, describes them as those who by per- 
severing in well-doing seek for glory, honor and incorruption (Rom. 11.7). This 
earnest aspiration after the good, which the theocratic discipline stimulates 
and protects in Israel, forms a contrast to the mummeries of the Pharisaic 
righteousness. It can be present in a penitent publican, no less than in 
an irreproachable Pharisee. The same idea is found again in the expres- 
sions to be of God, to be of the truth (vill. 47, xviii. 87). This disposition is 
the condition of all real faith in the Gospel. The adherence of the will to 
the preparatory revelation of God, whether in the law of conscience or in 
that of Moses, is the first condition of the adherence to the higher reve- 
lation of divine holiness in Jesus Christ. The expression to do the truth 
denotes the persevering effort to raise one’s conduct to the height of one’s 
moral consciousness, to realize the ideal of the good perceived by the con- 
science; comp. Rom. vii. The soul which, it may be, in consequence of 
the bitter experience of sin, longs after holiness, recognizes in Jesus its 
realized ideal and that by which it will itself attain to the realization of it. 
The figurative expression to come to the light signifies to draw near to Jesus, 
to listen to Him with docility, to surrender oneself to Him; comp. Luke 
xv. 1,2. Is there not, in the choice of this figure, a delicate allusion to 
the present course of Nicodemus? As truly as this night which reigns 
without is the figure of the unbelief in which the lovers of sin envelop 
themselves, so really is this light around which these few interlocutors 
meet, the emblem of the divine brightness which Nicodemus came to seek 
for. And so it will come to pass. It is the farewell of Jesus: Thou desirest 
the good; it is this which brings thee here. Take courage! Thou shalt 
find it! 

If the upright hearts come to the light, it is because they do not, like 
those spoken of before, dread the manifestation of the true character of 
their conduct; on the contrary, they desire it: To the end, says Jesus, 
“that their works may be manifested because they are done in God.” I return 
thus to the ordinary translation of the close of this verse. I had previously 
preferred the following: That they may be manifested as being done in 
God; comp. for this Greek construction, iv. 35. But the first construction 


18 omits almost the whole of tais verse as _— 20, 21, a portion of the authorities in ver. 21 
far as ore (confusion of the two epyaavrov, vy. placing avrov after epya). 


CHAP. llr. 21. 401 


is more natural here. The truly righteous man seeks, as Nicodemus did, 
to come into contact with Christ, the living holiness, because he has within 
him nothing which impels him to withdraw himself from the light of God; 
on the contrary, the nature of his works is the cause of his being happy to 
find himself fully in that light. The expression wrought in God seems very 
strong to characterize the works of the sincere man before he has found 
Christ. But let us not ‘forget that, both in Israel and even beyond the theo- 
cratic sphere, it is from a divine impulse that everything good in human 
life proceeds. It is the Father who draws souls to the Son, and who.gives 
them to Him (vi. 87, 44). It is God who causes to resound in the sincere 
soul the signal for the strife, ineffectual though it be, against inborn evil 
(Rom. vii.). Wherever there is docility on the part of man towards this 
divine initiative, this expression works wrought in God is applicable, which 
comprehends as well the sighs of the humbled publican and the repentant 
believer as the noble aspirations of a John or a Nathanael. Such a man, 
conscious of his sincere desire for the good, does not fear to expose himself 
to the light and consequently to come to Christ. The more he acts in God, 
the more he desires to see clearly within himself, to the end of attaining a 
still more perfect obedience. In the previous editions, I had referred the 
in order that to the need of a holy approbation. Weiss sees in it the desire 
to show that the good works accomplished are those of God and not those 
of the man. I think that the question is rather of a need of progress. 
Luthardt seems to me to have completely perverted the meaning of this 
verse and to have lost the very profound teaching which it contains, by 
explaining: “He who practices the moral truth manifested in Christ soon 
attaches himself to Christ by the religious bond of faith.” But does not 
the practice of the holiness revealed in Christ necessarily imply faith in 
Him? The saying of Jesus in vii. 17 has a striking analogy to this. 

“In humanity anterior to Christ,” says Ivicke rightly, ‘two kinds of men 
are mingled together. With the appearance of Jesus, the separating 
begins ;” airy 7 xpiow. ‘Under the trees of the same forest,” observes 
Lange, “all sorts of birds find shelter together during the night. But in 
the morning, as soon as the sun sheds forth his rays, some close their eyes 
and seek the darkest retreat, while others clap their wings and salute the 
sun with their songs. Thus the appearing of Christ separates the lovers 
of the day from those of the night, mingled together until then in the mass 
of mankind.” We must not, however, understand this idea in the sense 
which the Tiibingen school ascribes to the evangelist: That there are two 
kinds of men opposite in their nature. All the expressions used by John: 
“They loved rather,” “to practise evil things,” “to do the truth,” are, much 
rather, borrowed from the domain of free choice and deliberate action. 
(Comp. Introd., pp. 182 f.). 

It is with this word of hope that Jesus takes leave of Nicodemus. And 
we can easily understand why, in contrast with John the Baptist’s course 
(ver. 36), Jesus spoke, in the first place, of those who reject the light (vv. 
19, 20), and, in the second place, of those who seek it (ver. 21). He wished 
to terminate the conversation with a word of encouragement addressed 

26 


402 FIRST PART. 


to His interlocutor. He had recognized in him one of those righteous 
souls who will one day believe and whom faith will lead to the baptism 
of water, and thereby to the baptism of the Spirit. Henceforth Jesus 
waits for him. Reuss deems the silence of John respecting his depart- 
ure surprising. “We have, indeed, seen him come; but we do not see 
him go away. We are wholly ignorant of the result of this interview.” 
Then this scholar boldly draws therefrom a proof against the historical 
reality of the personage of Nicodemus and his conversation with Jesus. Is 
this objection serious? The evangelist should then have told us expressly, 
that Nicodemus, on leaving Jesus, returned to his own home and went to 
bed! Does not the effect produced upon him by the conversation appear 
plainly from the later history? Comp. vii. 50,51; xix. 39. John respects 
the mystery of the inner working which had just begun, and leaves the 
facts to speak. It is the revelation of Jesus to Nicodemus which is the 
subject of this narrative, and not the biography of this Pharisee. No more 
does Matthew mention the return of the Twelve after their first mission 
(chap. x.); does it follow from this that their mission is not historical ? 
The narrative of our Gospels is wholly devoted to the religious end and 
does not entertain itself with empty details. 

We are now in a condition to give a judgment respecting this interview. 
It seems to me that its historical character follows from the perfect appo- 
siteness, which we have established, in all the words of Jesus and in their 
exact appropriateness to the given situation. The statement of ver. 1, “A 
man of the Pharisees” is found to be the key of the whole passage. Every 
word of Jesus is like a shot fired at close quarters with such an interlocu- 
tor. He begins by bringing home to this man who approaches Him, as 
well assured of his participation in the divine kingdom as of his very exist- 
ence, a sense of all that which he lacks, and by saying, although in other 
terms: “ Unless thy righteousness surpasses that of the Scribes and Pharisees, 
thou shalt not enter the kingdom of heaven.”’ After having thus made a void 
in this heart full of itself and its own righteousness, he endeavors to fill 
this void in the positive part of the conversation, in which He answers the 
questions which Nicodemus had proposed to present to Him. In this 
answer, He opposes, from the beginning to the end, programme to pro- 
gramme: first, Messiah to Messiah, then, salvation to salvation, finally, 
judgment to judgment, substituting with regard to each of these points 
the divine thought for the Pharisaic expectation. There is enough, as it 
seems to me, in this direct application, this constant fitness, and this 
unshaken steadiness of course in the conversation to guarantee its reality. 
An artificial composition of the second century would not have succeeded 
in adapting itself so perfectly to the given situation. In any case, the 
cohesion of all the parts of the conversation is too evident to allow of the 
distinction between the part belonging to Jesus and that belonging to the 
evangelist. Either the whole is a free composition of the latter, or the 
whole also must be regarded as the summary of a real conversation of 
Jesus. We say: the summary; for we certainly do not possess a complete 
report. The visit of Nicodemus, of course, continued longer than the few 


CHAP. III. 21. 403 


minutes necessary for reading the account of it. John has transmitted to 
us in a few salient words the quintessence of the communications of Jesus 
at this juncture. This is what the quite vague transitions by means of a 
simple and, xai, indicate. We have before us the principal mountain peaks, 
but not the whole of the chain (comp. Jntrod., p. 99). 


III.—Jesus in the Country of Judea: III. 22-36. 


The previous testimonies of John the Baptist were appeals to faith. 
That which is to follow assumes the character of a threatening protest 
against the generally hostile attitude and the rising unbelief of Israel. 
This discourse appertains, therefore, to the picture of the manifestation of 
Jesus and its general result in Israel. . 

After the feast of the Passover, Jesus did not immediately return to Gali- 
lee; the reason of this course of action will be pointed out in iv. 43-45. He 
repaired to the country region of Judea, where He set Himself to preach 
and baptize almost as John the Baptist was doing. Vv. 25, 26, lead us to 
suppose that the place where Jesus set Himself to the exercising of this 
ministry, was not far removed from that in which the forerunner was 
working. 

How are we to explain this form, which the activity of Jesus assumes 
at this time? The temple was closed to Him and He had gone over the 
holy city, without meeting in it any other man of note disposed seriously 
to prefer the light to darkness, except Nicodemus; then he removes still 
further from the centre, and establishes Himself in the province. To this 
local retreat corresponds a modification in the character of ‘His activity. 
He had presented Himself in the temple with full authority, as a sover- 
eign who makes his entrance into his palace. That summons not having 
been accepted, Jesus cannot continue His Messianic activity ; He restricts 
Himself to the work of prophetic preparation; He is obliged to become 
again, in some sort, His own forerunner, and by this retrogade step He 
finds Himself placed, for a moment, at the same point which John the 
Baptist had reached at the termination of his ministry. Hence the simul- 
taneousness and the sort of competition which appeared between the two 
ministries and the two baptisms. After His return to Galilee, Jesus will 
Himself renounce this rite, and as the single element of Messianic organi- 
zation He will only preserve the apostolate. He will no longer aim at 
anything except to awaken faith by the word. The foundation of the 
Church, with which the re-establishment of baptism is connected, will be 
deferred to the epoch when, by His death and resurrection, the bond 
between Him and the unbelieving people shall have been completely 
broken and the foundation of the new society prepared. 

These changes in the mode of Jesus’ activity have not escaped the notice 
of the rationalists ; they have seen in them nothing else than the result of 
a growing miscalculation. Yet Jesus had announced all from the first 
day: “ Destroy this temple ;” and the final success of His work proves that 
there was something better here than the result of a deception. Faith, on 


404 FIRST PART. 


the contrary, admires, in this so varied course, the elasticity of the divine 
plan in its relations to human freedom, and the perfect submissiveness 
with which the Son can yield to the daily instructions of the Father. 
Thereby the absence of plan becomes the wisest and most wonderful of 
plans; and the divine wisdom, accepting the free play of human freedom, 
can make even the obstacles which the resistance of men opposes to it, the 
means of realizing its designs. This glance at the situation explains the 
momentary juxtaposition of these two ministries, the one of which, as it 
seemed, must succeed the other. 

The following passage contains: 1. The general picture of the situation 
(vv. 22-26); 2. The discourse of John the Baptist (vv. 27-86). 


1. Vv. 22-26. 


_ Ver. 22. “After this Jesus came with his disciples into the country of Judea ; 
and he tarried there with them and baptized.” Mera raira (after this), connects 
this passage, in a general way, with i. 23-25: “ Following upon this activ- 
ity of Jesus at Jerusalem.” “Iovdaia yf (the land of Judea), denotes the 
country, as opposed to the capital. The imperfect he was tarrying, and he 
was baptizing, indicate that this sojourn was of some duration. The 
expression, he was baptizing, is more exactly defined in iv. 2: “ Yet Jesus 
himself baptized not, but his disciples.” The moral act belonged to Jesus; 
the material operation was wrought by the disciples. If these two pas- 
sages were found in two different Gospels, criticism would not fail imme- 
diately to see in them a contradiction, and would accuse of harmon- 
istic bias the one who should seek to explain it. The intention of the 
narrator in our passage is only to place this baptism under the responsi- 
bility of Jesus Himself. 

Ver. 23. “ Now John also was baptizing in Ainon, near to Salim, because 
there was abundance of water there ; and they came and were baptized.” Ain, 
from which Afnon, denotes a fountain. We may also, with Meyer, make of 
the termination on an abridgment of the word jona, dove ; this word would 
thus signify the fountain of the dove. This locality was in the vicinity of a 
town called Salim. The situation of these two places is uncertain. EHuse- 
bius and Jerome, in the Onomasticon, place A®non eight thousand paces 
south of Bethsean or Scythopolis, in the valley of the Jordan, on the 
borders of Samaria and Galilee, and Salim, a little further to the west. 
And indeed there has recently been found in these localities a ruin 
bearing the name of Aynwn (Palestine Exploration Report, 1874). From 
this, therefore, it would be necessary to conclude that these two local- 
ities were in Samaria. But this result is incompatible with the words 
of ver. 22: in the country of Judea (on the supposition, at least, that the 
two baptisms were near each other). And, above all, how should John 
have settled among the Samaritans? How could he have expected that 
the multitudes would follow him into the midst of this hostile people? 
Ewald, Wieseler, Hengstenberg, and Miihlau, because of these reasons, sup- 
pose an altogether different locality. In Josh. xv. 32 three towns are 


CHAP. Ilr. 22-24, 405 


spoken of: Shilhim, Ain, and Rimmon, situated towards the southern 
frontier of the tribe of Judah, on the borders of Edom (comp. xv. 21). In 
Josh. xix. 7 and 1 Chron. iv. 32, Ain and Rimmon again appear together. 
Finally, in Neh. xi. 29 these two names are blended in one: En-Rimmon. 
Might not Ainon be a still more complete contraction? This supposition 
would do away with the difficulty of the baptism in Samaria, and would give 
a very appropriate sense to the reason: because there was abundance of water 
there. Indeed, as applied to a region generally destitute of water and almost 
desert, like the southern extremity of Judah, this reason has greater force 
than if the question were of a country rich in water, like Samaria. 

Jesus would thus have gone over all the territory of the tribe of J udah, 
seeing once in His life Bethlehem, His native town, Hebron, the city of 
Abraham and David, and all southern Judea even as far as Beersheba. 
This remark has excited the derisive humor of Reuss ; we do not at all 
understand the reason of it. In the Synoptical Gospels, we see Jesus 
making a series of excursions as far as the northern limits of the Holy 
Land, once even to Ceesarea Philippi, in the vicinity of the ancient Dan, at 
the foot of Hermon, at another time as far as into the regions of Tyre and 
Sidon. He would thus have visited all the countries of the theocratic 
domain from Dan to Beersheba. Is not this altogether natural? Hengsten- 
berg has taken advantage of this sojourn of Jesus in the vicinity of the 
desert, to place the temptation at this time. This Opinion is chronol- 
ogically untenable. 

Ver. 24. “ For John had not yet been cast into prison.” This remark of 
the evangelist is surprising, because there is nothing in what precedes ~ 
which is adapted to occasion it. The fact of the incarceration of John 
the Baptist, as already accomplished, was not, in any way, implied in the 
preceding narrative. It is therefore elsewhere than in our Gospel that we 
must seek for the reason why the evangelist thinks that he must correct a 
misapprehension existing on this subject, as he evidently does by the re- 
mark of ver. 24. This reason is easily discovered in the narrative of our 
first two Synoptics: Matt. iv. 12: “Jesus, having heard that John was deliv- 
ered up, withdrew into Galilee.’ Marki. 14: “ After that John was de- 
livered up, Jesus came into Galilee.” These words immediately follow the 
account of the baptism and temptation; they would necessarily produce 
on the reader the impression that the imprisonment of John the Baptist 
had followed very closely upon the baptism of J esus, and preceded—even 
occasioned—His first return to Galilee; thus precisely the opinion which 
the remark of John sets aside. The account in Luke iii. 19, 20 is differ- 
ent; the imprisonment of the Baptist is there evidently mentioned only 
by way of anticipation. Hengstenberg thought that the narrative of Mat- 
thew and Mark might be explained by the fact that the first return of 
Jesus to Galilee—the one which John relates in i. 44—was simply omitted 
by them. But we have seen (ii. 11) that the first visit of Jesus to Caper- 
naum coincided with certain scenes of the very first period of the Gali- 
lean ministry related by the Synoptics. It only remains, therefore, to ac- 
knowledge that frequently in the primitive oral tradition the first two re- 


406 FIRST PART. 


turns from Judea to Galilee (i. 44 and iv. 1-3) were blended together. 
From this identification would, naturally, result the suppression of the 
entire interval which had separated them—that is to say, of almost a 
whole year of Jesus’ ministry. To recover this ground which had disap- 
peared, John was thus obliged expressly to restore the distinction between 
the two returns. He was especially obliged to do this on reaching the 
fact which he is about to relate, a fact which falls precisely in this interval. 
Hilgenfeld himself, speaking of this passage, says: “ Involuntarily the 
fourth evangelist bears witness here of his acquaintance with the Synop- 
tical narrative.” There is nothing to criticise in this remark except the 
word involuntarily. For the intentional character of this parenthesis, ver. 
94, is obvious. We have already proved in John the evident intention of 
distinguishing these two returns to Galilee by the manner in which he 
spoke of the miracle of Cana, ii. 11; we shall have occasion to make a 
similar remark of the same character, with reference to iv. 54. As for 
the way in which this confusion arose in the tradition written out by the 
Synoptics, we may remember that it was only after the second return to 
Galilee that Jesus began that uninterrupted prophetic ministry which the 
first three Gospels portray for us very particularly and which was the be- 
ginning of the foundation of the Church. However important were the 
attempts made in Judea, up to this time, in the description of the develop- 
ment of Jewish unbelief which John traced, they could just as easily be 
omitted in the narrative of the actual establishment of the kingdom of 
God, and of the foundation of the Church which was the result of the 
Galilean ministry, related especially by the Synoptics. 

We can draw from this twenty-fourth verse an important conclusion 
with respect to the position of the author of the fourth Gospel in the 
midst of the primitive Church. Who else but an apostle, but an apostle 
of the first rank, but an apostle recognized as such, could have taken in his 
writing a position so sovereign with regard to the tradition received in the 
Church, emanating from the Twelve, and recorded in the Gospels which 
were anterior to his own? By astroke of the pen to introduce so consid- 
erable a modification in a narrative clothed with such authority, he must 
have been, and have felt himself to be, possessed of an authority which 
was altogether incontestable. 

Ver. 25. “ There arose therefore a dispute on the part of John’s disciples with 
a Jew, touching purification.’ The occasion of the following discourse was 
a discussion provoked by the competition of the two neighboring bap- 
tisms. dv, therefore, marks this relation. The expression on the part of 
the disciples, shows that John’s disciples were the instigators. The reading 
of the greater part of. the Mjj. "Ioviaiov, a Jew, instead of "Iovdaiwv, some 
Jews, is now generally preferred. I accept it, without being able to convince 
myself altogether of its authenticity. Should not the substantive Iovdaiov 
have been accompanied by the adjective rw� And would an altercation 


1The T. R. reads IovSatwv (Jews) with & Mnn. It. Syreur, Cop. Orig. All the rest read 
Iovdatov (a Jew). 


CHAP, Ul. 25, 26. 407 


with a mere unknown individual have deserved to be so expressly marked ? 
The three most ancient Versions agree in favor of the reading ’Iovdaiuv, 
Jews. The Sinaitic MS. also reads in this way. The two substantives in 
ov, before and after this word, might have occasioned an error. The sub- 
ject of the discussion was the true mode of purification. Of what purifi- 
cation? Evidently of that which should prepare the Jews for the king- 
dom of the Messiah. Meyer thinks that the Jew ascribed to the baptism 
of Jesus a greater efficacy than to that of John. Chrysostom, followed by 
some others, holds that the Jew had had himself baptized already by the 
disciples of Jesus. Hofmann and Luthardt suppose, on the contrary, be- 
cause of the term Jew, that he belonged to the Pharisaic party, hostile 
both to Jesus and to John, and that he had maliciously recounted to the 
disciples of John the successes of Jesus. The use of this term scarcely 
allows us, indeed, to suppose in this man kindly feelings, either towards 
Jesus or towards John. Perhaps in response to the disciples of John who 
invited him to have himself baptized, reminding him of the promises of 
the Old Testament (Ezek. xxxvi. 25, etc.), he answered ironically that one 
knew not to whom to go: “Your master began; here is a second who 
succeeds better than he; which of the two says the truth?” The question 
was embarrassing. The disciples of John decide to submit it to their mas- 
ter. This historical situation is too well defined to have been invented. 

Ver. 26. “ And they came to John and said to him: Master, he that was 
with thee beyond the Jordan, to whom thou hast borne witness, behold, he bap- 
tizeth, and all men come to him.” There is something of bitterness in these 
words. The words: “to whom thou hast borne witness” make prominent 
the generosity which John had shown towards Jesus: “See there, how 
thou hast acted, thou (ct); and see here, how He is acting, He (oiroc). 
"Ide, behold, sets forth the unexpected character of such a course: “ He 
baptizes, quite like thyself; thus, not content with asserting Himself, He 
seeks to set thee aside.” Baptism was a special rite, introduced by John, 
and distinguishing his ministry from every other. By appropriating it to 
Himself, Jesus seemed to usurp the part peculiar to His predecessor and - 
to desire to throw him altogether into theshade. And what is more poig- 
nant in this course of action is, that it succeeds: “All men come to 
him.” This exaggeration, all, isthe result of spite. Matt.ix. 14shows us 
John’s disciples in Galilee, after the imprisonment of their master, ani- 
mated by the same hostile disposition and combining more or less with 
the adversaries of Jesus. 


2. Vv. 27-36. 


John does not solve the difficulty raised by the Jew or the Jews. He 
goes directly to the foundation of things. After having characterized the 
relation between the two personages of whom it is desired to make rivals, 
he shows that all opposition, even all comparison between them, is out of 
place. The solution of the pending question follows of itself from this 
general explanation. The discourse has two parts which are very distinct 


408 FIRST PART, 


and the idea of which evidently answers to the given situation: “J” and 
“ He,” or, to use John’s own expressions, the friend of the bridegroom (vy. 
27-30), and the bridegroom (vv. 81-36). The first must be thrown into the 
shade and decrease; the second must increase. Each of the two, there- 
fore, is in his place; that which grieves his disciples fills him with joy. It 
will be asked why the forerunner did not at that moment abandon his 
particular position, in order to go and join himself, with his disciples, to 
the retinue of Jesus. The answer to this question, often proposed, is not 
difficult. Summoned to prepare Israel for the kingdom of the Messiah, 
John was like the captain of a vessel, who must be the last to abandon the 
old ship, when all its company are already safely in the new one. His 
special part, officially marked out, continued so long as the end was not 
yet attained, that is, so long as the whole people were not yet given to 
Jesus. 


Vv. 27-30. “I.” 


Ver. 27. “ John answered and said: A man can receive nothing except that 
which hath been given him from heaven.” As far as ver. 30, which is the 
centre of this discourse, the dominant idea is that of the person and mis- 
sion of the forerunner. Accordingly, it seems natural to apply the gen- 
eral sentence of ver. 27 specially to John the Baptist. He is urged to de- 
fend himself against Jesus who is despoiling him. “I cannot take,” he 
answers, “ that which God has not given me ”—in other words, “I cannot 
assign to myself my part: make myself the bridegroom, when I am only 
the friend of the bridegroom.” So Bengel, Liicke, Reuss, Hengstenberg, I 
myself (first ed.). I abandoned this application in the second edition, for 
that of Olshausen, de Wette, Meyer, Weiss, according to which this maxim 
refers to Jesus : “ He would not be obtaining such success, if God Him- 
self did not give it to Him.” With this meaning, this saying must be re- 
garded as the summary of the two parts of the discourse (I and He), and 
not only of the first part. Yet I ask myself whether it is not proper, as I 
did originally, to refer this maxim to the mission conferred, rather than 
the success obtained; comp. Heb. v. 4. Then the asyndeton between vy. 
26 and 27 is more consonant with the application to John only, since he 
announces the following verse as an energetic reaffirmation of the thought 
of ver. 26. 

Ver. 28. “ Ye yourselves bear me! witness that I said: I am not the Christ, 
but I am sent before him.” John expressly applies to himself the maxim 
of ver. 26. He has informed his disciples, from the beginning, of the fact 
of which they are complaining. He has always said to them, that it was 
not given to him to be the Christ, that his mission went no further than 
to open the way for Him. He appeals, with respect to this point, to their 
own recollection and discharges Himself thus from all responsibility for 
their jealous humor towards Jesus. The words: “Ye bear me witness,” 
seem to allude to their own expression, in ver. 26, where they had recalled 


1 The Mjj..% EF H M V, and 60 Mnn. omit pos (me). 


CHAP. 1. 27-30. 409 


the conduct of John with reference to Jesus. Then, he explains to them, 
by a comparison, the feeling which he experiences and which is so dif- 
ferent from theirs. 

Ver. 29. “ He that hath the bride is the bridegroom, and the friend of the 
bridegroom, who standeth and heareth* him, rejoiceth greatly because of the 
bridegroom’s voice; this, my joy, therefore, is now perfect.” His position is 
subordinate to that of Jesus, but it has also its privileges and its own joy, 
and that joy perfectly satisfies him. Niudy (the bride), is the Messianic 
community which John the Baptist was to form in Israel that he might 
lead it to Jesus; viugioc (the bridegroom), designates the Messiah, and, if 
we may so speak, the betrothed of this spiritual bride. The name Jehovah 
signifies precisely: He who shall be or shall come. According to the Old 
Testament, indeed, the Lord would not confide this part of bridegroom to 
any other than Himself, and the coming of the Messiah is to be the high- 
est manifestation of Jehovah Himself (p. 276); comp. Is. liv.5; Hos. ii. 19; 
Matt. ix. 15; xxv. 1f.; Eph. v. 32; Apoc. xix. 7, etc. The functions of 
the marriage friend were, first, to ask the hand of the young woman, then 
to serve as an intermediary between the betrothed couple during the time 
of betrothal, and finally, to preside at the marriage-feast; a touching image 
of the part of John the Baptist: 6 éoryxa¢ he who standeth. This word 
expresses, as Hengstenberg says, “‘ the happy passivity ” of him who beholds, 
listens and enjoys. While he fulfills his office in presence of the betrothed, 
the marriage-friend hears the noble and joyous accents of his friend, which 
transport him with joy. John speaks only of hearing, not of seeing. 
Why? Is it because he is himself removed from Jesus? But then, how 
can he even speak of hearing? If this term has a meaning apphcable to 
John the Baptist, it implies that certain words of Jesus had been reported 
to him, and had filled his heart with joy and admiration. And how, in- 
deed, could it have been otherwise? Could Andrew, Simon Peter, Jobn, 
these former disciples of the Baptist, be in his neighborhood without 
coming to him, to give an account of all which they heard and saw? 
This is the bridegroom’s voice, which causes the heart of his friend to ieap 
for joy. The phrase, yapé yaipew (to rejoice with joy), corresponds to a 
Hebrew construction (the infinitive placed before the finite verb to 
strengthen the verbal idea); comp. wws wiv, Is. lxi. 10 (and the LXX); 
Luke xxii. 15. This expression describes the joy of John as a joy reach- 
ing to the full, and, consequently, as excluding every feeling of a different 
sort, such as that which the disciples were attempting to awaken in him. 
The words: this joy which is mine, contrast his joy as the marriage-friend to 
that of the bridegroom. John alludes to those words of the disciples: all 
go to him; in this spectacle is his joy as friend. TerAjpwra, not: has been 
accomplished (Rilliet), the aorist would be necessary, but: 7s, at this very 
moment, raised to its highest point. He means: “that which calls forth 
vexation in you is precisely the thing which fulfills my joy.” 

Ver. 30. “ He must increase, but I must decrease.” Here is the expres- 


1 places avtov after eatyxws. 


410 FIRST PART. 


sion which forms the connecting link between the two parts of the dis- 
course, announcing the second and summing up the first. The friend of 
the bridegroom had, at the beginning of the relation, the principal part; 
it was he alone who appeared. But, in proportion as the relation develops 
itself, his part diminishes: he must disappear and leave the bridegroom 
to become the sole person. This is the position of John the Baptist; he 
accepts it, and desires no other. No one could have invented this admir- 
able saying, a permanent motto of every true servant of Christ. 

At this point, Bengel, Tholuck, Olshausen and others, make the discourse 
of the Baptist end, and the reflections of the evangelist begin. They rest 
principally on the Johannean character of the style in what follows, 
and on the reproduction of certain thoughts of the conversation with 
Nicodemus (see, especially, vv. 31, 32). To pronounce a decision, we 
must study the discourse even to the end. But, in itself, it would be 
scarcely natural that the words of ver. 30, he must increase, should not be 
developed in what follows, as the other words, and I must decrease, have 
been in what precedes. 


Vv. 31-36. “ He.” 


The bridegroom, He must increase, while the friend decreases, for He 
is superior to him, first, through His origin (ver. 31), then, through the 
perfection of His teaching (vv. 32-34), finally, through His dignity as Son, 
and the absolute sovereignty which belongs to Him as such (ver. 35). 
The discourse closes with a practical conclusion (ver. 36). 

Ver. 31. “ He that cometh from above is above all;! he that is of the earth, 
is of the earth, and speaketh as being of the earth ; he that cometh from heaven 
ts above all.” * With his own earthly nature John contrasts the heavenly 
origin of Jesus. “Avwbev, from above, is applied here, not to the mission— 
for that of John is also from above—but to the origin of the person. The 
all denotes the divine agents in general. All, like John himself, are to be 
eclipsed by the Messiah. The words three times repeated: of the earth, 
forcibly express the sphere to which John belongs and beyond which he 
cannot go. The first time they refer to the origin (ov é«): a mere man; 
the second, to the mode of existence (éor/): as being of the earth, he re- 
mains earthly in his whole manner of being, feeling and thinking (comp. 
the antithesis ver. 13); the third time, to the teaching (Aaiei): seeing the 
things of heaven only from beneath, from his earthly dwelling-place. 
Thisis true of John, even as a prophet. No doubt, in certain isolated 
moments and as if through partial openings, he catches a glimpse of the 
things from above; but even in his exstacies he speaks of God only as an 
earthly being. So, while inviting to repentance, he does not introduce 
into the kingdom. This estimate of John by himself is in harmouy with 
the judgment of Jesus, Matt. xi. 11: “ The least in the kingdom of heaven is 
greater than he.” And the shaking of his faith, which followed so soon, 


18 D Italia: cae before o wy. 28D some Mnn. a b Syrevr, omit exavw 
28: em instead of ex; D: amo, tmavtwy ect. (above all) the second time. 


CHAP. III. 31-34. 41) 


was not long in demonstrating the justice of it. , After having thus put in 
their proper place, as contrasted with Jesus, all the servants of heaven, 
John returns to the principal theme: He. If, with some of the Mjj., we 
reject the last words of this verse: 7s above all, the words he that cometh 
from heaven must be made the subject of the verb bears witness, ver. 32 
(rejecting the «ai). But the fullest and richest reading is also the one 
most accordant with the spirit of the text. By the last words, John re- 
turns to the real subject of this part of his discourse, Jesus, from which he 
had turned aside, for a moment, in order to make more prominent His 
superiority by the contrast with himself. 

Ver. 32. “ What} he hath seen and heard, of that? he beareth witness ; and 
no man receiveth his witness.” The xai, and, is omitted by the Alexandrian 
authorities, and no doubt rightly; asyndeta are frequent in this discourse. 
From the heavenly origin of Jesus follows the perfection of His teaching. 
He is in filial communion with the Father. When He speaks of divine 
things, He speaks of them as an immediate witness. This saying is the 
echo of that of Jesus in ver. 11. In reproducing it, the forerunner declares 
that Jesus has affirmed nothing respecting Himself which is not the exact 
truth. But how could he know this? We think we have answered this 
question in the explanation of ver. 29. By the last words, John confirms 
the severe judgment which Jesus had passed upon the conduct of the 
people and their rulers (ver. 11). However, while declaring, as Jesus had 
done, the general unbelief of Israel, John does not deny individual ex- 
ceptions; he brings them out expressly in ver. 33. What he means here 
by the word no one, is that these exceptions which seem so numerous to 
the view of his disciples that they make the whole (“all” ver. 26), are to 
his view only an imperceptible minority. To the exaggeration of envy, 
he opposes that of zeal: “ Where you say: all, as for me, I say: no one.” 
He would not be satisfied unless he saw the Sanhedrim in a body, fol- 
lowed by the whole people, coming to render homage to the bridegroom 
of the Messianic community. Then, he could, himself also, abandon his 
office as friend of the bridegroom, and come to sit, as spouse, at the Mes- 
siah’s feet. We should notice the verbs in the present tense, “he testifies 

. no one receives,” which place us in the time of the ministry of Jesus, 
and do not permit us to put this part of the discourse in the evangelist’s 
mouth. 

Vv. 33, 34. “ He that hath received his testimony hath set his seal that God is 
true; 34, for he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God ; for he 
giveth® not the Spirit by measure.” There are, nevertheless, some believers, 
and what is the grandeur and beauty of the part which they act!  ¢pa- 
yitew, to seal, to legalise an act by affixing one’s seal to it. This is what 

‘the believer does in relation to the testimony which Christ gives; in 
ranging himself among those who accept it, he has the honor of associat- 
ing, once for all, his personal responsibility with that of God who speaks 


1 Kat (and) is omitted by 8 BD L T> Italiq 37. R. 15 Mjj. Syr. read, after Sidworv, o 
Syreer Cop. Orig. Geos (God) omitted by § BC L T». 
28 D omit rovro. 


412 FIRST PART. 


by His messenger. Indeed, this certification of truth, adjudged to Jesus 
by the believer, rises even to God Himself. This is what is explained 
by ver. 34 (for). The utterances of Jesus are to such a degree those of 
God, that to certify the truth of the former is to attest the veracity of God 
Himself. Some think that the idea of the divine veracity refers to the 
fulfillment of the prophecies which faith proclaims. But this idea has no 
connection with the context. According to others, John means that to 
believe in Jesus is to attest the truth of the declaration which God gave 
on His behalf at the time of His baptism. This sense would be natural 
enough in itself, but it does not accord well with ver. 34. The profound 
thought contained in this expression of John is the following: In receiy- 
ing the utterances of Jesus with faith in their divine character, man 
boldly declares that what is divine cannot be false, and proclaims thus the 
incorruptible veracity of God. We must notice the aorist éogpayioev, set 
his seal: it is an accomplished act. And what an act! He affixes His 
private signature by his faith to the divine testimony, and becomes thus 
conjointly responsible for the veracity of God Himself. There is evidently 
somewhat of exaltation in this paradoxical form, by which John expresses 
the grandeur of the act of faith. The expression whom he hath sent (which 
recalls ver. 17), must be taken in the most absolute sense. The other 
divine messengers merit this name only in an inexact sense; they are, in 
reality, only raised up; to be sent, in the strict sense of the word, one 
must be from above (ver. 31). The same absolute force should be given 
to the expression : the words of God: He alone possesses the complete, 
absolute divine revelation. This is what the article 74, the, indicates; all 
others, John the Baptist himself, have only fragments of it. And whence 
comes this complete character of His revelation? From the fact that the 
communication which is made to Him of the Spirit is without measure. 
The T. R. reads, after didwow, 6 bed¢: “God gives the Spirit...” The 
Alexandrian authorities unanimously reject this subject, God; and it is 
probable that it isa gloss, but a gloss which is just to the sense. It is 
derived from the first clause of the verse. No doubt the Spirit might be 
made the subject, as I myself tried to do formerly. The position of the 
word 76 zveiua, the Spirit, however, is not favorable to this sense. And it 
is more simple to understand the subject of the preceding clause. The 
present didwow gives, as well as the expression: “not by measure,” are 
explained by the recollection of the vision of the baptism: John saw the 
Spirit in the form of a dove, that is to say, in its living totality, descending 
and abiding upon Him. Meyer, offended by the ellipsis of the pronoun 
av7@, to him, makes a general maxim out of this saying, with the following 
sense: “God is not obliged always to give the Spirit, only in a definite 
measure, as He formerly did in the case of the prophets. He may, if He 
pleases, give it once without measure in its fullness,” from which this 
application is understood : “And this is what He has done with respect to 
the Son.”” But thus precisely the thing would be understood which ought 
to be expressed, and expressed which might very well have been left to be 
understood. Perhaps, the ellipsis of the pronoun air, to Him, arises 


CHAP. III. 35, 36. 413 


from the fact that the gift of the Spirit to Jesus is in reality of a universal 
bearing. God does not give it o Him for Himself only, but for all. It is 
a permanent, absolute gift. 

Ver. 35. “ The Father loveth the Son and hath given all things into his 
hand.” —The asyndeton between this verse and the preceding may be ren- 
dered by this emphatic form: “Because also the Father loveth ...” 
This absolute communication of the Spirit results from the incomparable 
love which the Father has for the Son. These words are, as it were, the 
echo of that divine declaration which John had heard at the baptism: 
“ This is my beloved Son.” The term ayar4, loves, is taken in the absolute 
sense, like the expressions: sent and the words. Jesus had used the term 
Son, when speaking with Nicodemus, vy. 16-18; the second Psalm already 
applied it to the Messiah in vv. 7, 12 (where every other explanation 
seems to us untenable); Isaiah and Micah had expressed themselves in a 
similar way (Is. ix.5; Micah v. 2,3). John himself had heard it at the 
baptism. It is not surprising, therefore, that he uses it here. From this 
love of the Father flows the gift of all things. Some interpreters, starting 
from ver. 34, have applied this expression solely to spiritual gifts, to the 
powers of the Holy Spirit. But the expression into His hand does not 
accord with this sense. There is rather an advance upon the idea of ver. 
34: “ Not only the Spirit, but all things.” By the Spirit, the Son reigns in 
the heart of believers; this is not enough; the Father has, moreover, 
given Him universal sovereignty, that He may be able to make all things 
serve the good of His own. This is exactly the thought which Paul 
expresses in Eph. i. 22 by that untranslatable phrase: airdv iduxev Kegaagy 
inéip mdvta ry éxxagoig, The hand is the symbol of free disposal. Thereby 
John meant to say: “I complain of being despoiled by Him! But He has 
a right to everything and can take everything without encroachment.” 
And from this follows the striking application which he makes to his dis- 
ciples, in closing, of the truth which he has just proclaimed : 

Ver. 36. “ He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life; but he that obeyeth 
not the Son shali not see} life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” This is 
the practical consequence to be drawn from the supreme greatness of the 
Son. These last words present a great similarity to the close of Ps. ii: 
“ Do reverence to the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish in the way when, in a 
little time, his wrath will be kindled ; but blessed are they that put their trust in 
him.” Only John, the reverse of the Psalmist and of Jesus Himself (iii. 
19-21), begins with believers, to end with unbelievers. It is because he 
would give a stern and last warning to his disciples and the entire nation. 
John declares, as Jesus had said to Nicodemus, that all depends for every 
man on faith and unbelief, and that the absolute value of these two moral 
facts arises from the supreme dignity of Him who is the object of them: 
the Son. This name is sufficient to explain why faith gives life, why 
unbelief brings wrath. The phrase 6 dreiév, he who disobeys, brings out 
the voluntary side in unbelief, that of revolt. The Son is the legitimate 
sovereign ; unbelief is the refusal to submit. The words: the wrath abides, 


18 reads ovx exer (hath not), instead of ovx oerac (shall not see). 


414 FIRST ‘PART, 


have often been understood in this sense: The natural condemnation 
abides, because the act which alone could have removed it, that of faith, 
has not taken place. But this sense seems to us weak and strained, and 
is only imperfectly connected with what precedes. The question is rather 
of the wrath called forth by the very refusal of obedience, and falling 
upon the unbeliever as such. Is it not just that God should be angry? If 
faith seals the veracity of God (ver. 33), unbelief makes God a har (1 John 
v. 10).—The future shall see is opposed to the present has. Not only does 
he not have life now, but when it shall be outwardly revealed in its perfect 
form—that of glory—he shall not behold it; it shall be for him as though 
it were not. Here is a word which shows clearly that the ordinary escha- 
tology is by no means foreign to the fourth Gospel. The verb pever, abides, 
in spite of its correlation with the future éyera:, shall see, is a present, and 
should be written péver. The present abides expresses, much better than 
the future shall abide, the notion of permanence. All other wrath is revo- 
cable; that which befalls unbelief abides forever. Thus the epithet eternal 
of the first clause has its counterpart in the second. 


Respecting the fact which we have just been studying, the following is Renan’s 
judgment: “ The twenty-second and following verses, as far as ver. 2 of chap. iv., 
transport us into what is thoroughly historical... . This is extremely remark- 
able. The Synoptics have nothing like it” (p. 491).—As to the discourse, it may 
be called: the last word of the Old Covenant. It recalls that threatening of 
Malachi which closes the Old Testament: “ Lest I come and smite the earth with a 
curse.’ It accords thus with the given situation: In view of the unbelief which 
was emphatically manifested even among his disciples, the forerunner completes 
his previous calls to faith by a menacing warning. All the details of the discourse 
are in harmony with the character of the person of the Baptist. There is not a 
word which cannot be fully explained in his mouth. Vv. 27, 29, 30 have a seal 
of inimitable originality ; no other than the forerunner, in his unique situation, 
would have been able to create them. Ver. 35 is simply the echo of the divine 
declaration which he had himself heard at the moment of the baptism. In ver. 
34 there is formulated no less simply the entire content of the vision which was 
beheld at that same moment. Ver. 28 is the reproduction of his own testimony 
in the Synoptics (Matt. iii. and parallels). Ver. 36 also recalls his former preach- 
ings on the wrath to come (Matt. iii. 7) and that aze already laid unto the root of the 
trees (iii. 10) with which he had threatened Israel. There remain only vv. 31, 32. 
We believe we have indicated the very probable origin of these verses (see on 
ver. 32). Will any one find an objection in the Johannean coloring of the style? 
But we must recall to mind the fact that we have here the Greek reproduction by 
the evangelist’s pen of a discourse given in Aramaic (see Introd. pp. 172-175). 
It is entirely impossible to imagine a writer of a later epoch carrying himself back 
thus into the midst of the facts, drawing all the words from the given situation, 
and, above all, adapting to it with so much precision the progress of the discourse 
(John and Jesus), and binding together the two parts of it by the admirable 
saying of ver.30. Weizstéicker himself cannot refrain from acknowledging (p. 268) 
“that there are in this discourse elements of detail which distinctly mark the 
Baptist’s own point of view” (vv. 27, 34, 35, 36). 


CHAP. IV. 1—42. 415 


We have already replied to the objection derived from the special and inde- 
pendent position which John the Baptist keeps, instead of going to rank himself 
among the disciples of Jesus. As long as the aim of his mission—to lead Israel 
to Jesus,—was so far from being attained, that preparatory mission continued, and 
the Baptist was not free to exchange it for the position of a disciple which would 
have been more satisfactory to him (ver. 29). It is asked how, after such a 
discourse of their Master, John’s disciples could have subsequently formed them- 
selves into an anti-Christian sect? But a small number from among the innumer- 
able multitude of those baptized by John were present at this scene, and it would, 
in truth, be much to expect of a discourse—to suppose that it could have extir- 
pated a feeling of jealousy which was so deep that we even find the traces of it 
again in the Synoptics (Matt. ix. 14 and parallels). On the point in Matt. xi. 2, 
also alleged in opposition to the authenticity of this discourse, see on i. 34. 

Weiss holds, like Reuss, that this discourse contains authentic elements, but 
worked over by the evangelist, and that he has fused them into one whole with 
his own ideas. Thus, he proves the authenticity of the saying of ver. 34 by this 
argument: The perfection of Jesus’ teaching is here ascribed by the forerunner to 
the action of the Holy Spirit, while John the Evangelist ascribes it to the remem- 
brance which He had of His knowiedge of the Father in His pre-existent state. 
This difference between the idea of the evangelist and that of the Baptist must 
prove the historical character of the discourse, at least in this point. But we 
have seen hitherto and we shall continue to discover that this way of conceiving 
of the higher knowledge of Jesus, which Weiss attributes to the evangelist, is by 
no means in harmony with the text and with the thought of our fourth Gospel. 
This alleged difference between his conception and that of the Baptist does 
not exist. 

Our Gospel does not give an account of the imprisonment of John the Baptist. 
But the saying of Jesus (v. 35) implies the disappearance of the forerunner. This 
took place, therefore, very shortly after this last testimony uttered by him in 
Judea (see at iv. 1). The fact of John’s death was omitted here, like so many 
other facts with which the author knows that his readers are well acquainted, and 
the mention of which does not fall within his plan. 

I cannot believe (see p. 258) that the account which occupies our attention 
was written without some allusion to the disciples of John, who were moving 
about in considerable numbers in Asia Minor; not, surely, that I would wish to 
claim, that the entire fourth Gospel owes its existence to this polemical design, 
but it has entered as a factor into its composition (comp. Introd., pp. 213, 
214). 


SECOND SECTION. 
IV. 1-42. 
JESUS IN SAMARIA. 


The first phase of the public ministry of Jesus is ended. Unbelief on 
the part of the masses, faith on the part of a few, public attention greatly 
aroused, such is the result of His work in Judea. Nevertheless the un- 
easiness which He sees appearing among the leaders of the people with 
relation to Himself, is for Him the signal for retreat. He does not wish 


416 FIRST PART. 


to engage prematurely in a conflict which He knows to be inevitable. 
He abandons Judea therefore to His enemies and, returning to Galilee, 
He makes that retired province, from this time onward, the ordinary the- 
atre of His activity. 

The direct road from Judea to Galilee passed through Samaria. But 
was it the one which was followed by the Jews, for example the Galilean 
caravans which went to the feasts at Jerusalem? Writers ordinarily 
answer in the affirmative, resting upon the passage of Josephus Andtig. vi. 
1: “It was the custom of the Galileans to pass through Samaria in order 
to go to the feasts at Jerusalem.” But R. Steck! has concluded, not with- 
out reason, from a passage in the Life of Josephus (chap. 52): “Those 
who wish to go quickly from Galilee to Jerusalem must pass through 
Samaria,” that the custom of which that author speaks in the Antiquities 
was not so general as the first passage seems toimply. Perhaps this road 
was that of the festival caravans; but it was not that of the Jews who 
were of strict observance, at least in private life. As to Jesus it has been 
claimed that by following this road in this case, He would have put Him- 
self in contradiction to His own word in Matt. x. 5, where, on sending 
them out to preach, He said to the apostles: “Go not into the way of the 
Gentiles and enter not into any city of the Samaritans ; but go ye rather to the 
lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But, between passing through Samaria 
(dca rH¢ Zauap., ver. 4) and making the Samaritan people the object of a 
mission, there is an easily appreciable difference. We should much 
rather acknowledge, with Hengstenberg, that it might be befitting for 
Jesus to give once, during His earthly life, an example of largeness of 
heart to His apostles which might afterwards direct the Christian mission 
throughout the whole world. Luke ix. 51 proves that Jesus really did 
not fear to approach the Samaritan soil. 

The fact which is to follow has a typical significance. Jesus Himself 
acutely feels it (ver. 38). This Samaritan woman and these inhabitants 
of Sychar, by the readiness and earnestness of their faith, and by the 
contrast of their conduct with that of the Israelitish people, become in 
His eyes the first-fruits, as it were, of the conversion of the Gentile 
world. There is therein a sign for Him of the future destiny of the king- 
dom of God on earth. Must we from this conclude, with Baur, that this 
whole account is only an idea presented in action by the author of our 
Gospel? Certainly not. If the Samaritan woman was nothing but a 
personification of the Gentile world, how would the author have put into her 
mouth (ver. 20 f.) a strictly monotheistic profession of faith, as well as the 
hope of the near advent of the Messiah (ver. 25; comp. ver. 42)? Because 
a fact has an ideal and prophetic significance, it does not follow that it is 
fictitious. If there is a story of the Saviour’s life which, by reason of the 
vivacity and freshness of its totality and its details, bears the seal of his- 
toric truth, it is this. Renan himself says: “Most of the circumstances 
of the narrative bear a strikingly impressive stamp of truth.” (Vie de 
Jésus, p. 243.) 


1 Jahrb. f. prot. Theol., 1880, IV., (Der Pilgerweg der Galilaer nach Jerusalem). 


CHAP. Iv. 1-3. 417 


As an example of faith, this incident is connected with the two preced- 
ing representations: that of the faith of the apostles (i. 88 ff.) and that of 
the visit of Nicodemus (iii. i-21). These are the luminous parts of the 
narrative which alternate with the sombre parts, representing the begin- 
ning of unbelief (i. 19 ff. ; ii. 12 ff. ; iii. 25 ff). 

We distinguish in this narrative the following three phases: 1. Jesus 
and the Samaritan woman: vv. 1-26; 2. Jesus and the disciples: vv. 27- 
38; 3. Jesus and the Samaritans: vv. 39-42. 


L—Jesus and the Samaritan Woman: vv. 1-26. 


In this first phase we see how Jesus succeeds in awaking faith in a soul 
which was a stranger to all spiritual life. The historical situation is 
described in vv. 1-6. 

Vv. 1-3. ‘‘ When therefore the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that 
Jesus made and baptized more disciples than® John,—2, though Jesus did not 
himself baptize, but his disciples,—8, he left Judea, and departed again ® into 
Galilee.” Ver. 1. explains the motive which leads Jesus to leave Judea: 
A report has reached the Pharisees respecting Him, according to which 
this new personage may become more formidable than John himself. 
Oiv, therefore: because of this great concourse of people, mentioned in iii. 
2983-96. The title: the Lord (in the larger part of the MSS.), is but rarely 
applied to Jesus during His earthly life (vi. 23; xi. 2). It pre-supposes 
the habit of representing Jesus to the mind as raised to glory. It is fre- 
quent in the epistles. If it is authentic in this passage (see the various 
reading of three MSS., which read: Jesus), it is occasioned either by the 
feeling of the divine greatness of Jesus, which manifests itself in the pre- 
ceding section, or, more simply, by the desire of avoiding the repeti- 
tion of the name of Jesus, which occurs again a few words further on. 
The expression had heard excludes a supernatural knowledge. We see 
in what follows that the tenor of the report made at Jerusalem is textually 
reproduced; comp. the name of Jesus instead of the pronoun He, and 
the present tenses rovet and Barrifer, makes and baptizes. Jesus must have 
appeared more dangerous than John, first, because of the Messianic tes- 
timony which John had borne to Him, and, then, because of His course 
of action which was much more independent of legal and Pharisaic 
forms; finally, because of His miracles; with relation to John, comp. x. 
41. The reading of the five Mjj., which omit #, than, could only have this 
meaning: “that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus is making more dis- 
ciples, and that (on his side) John is baptizing.” This meaning is strange, 
and even absurd. The term disciples,which here denotes the baptized, 
will be found again in vii. 3 in this special sense. 

The practical conclusion which Jesus draws from this report may lead 


1~ A A some Monn. _Itplerique Vg. Syr. STIaAw (again) is found in&CDLM T» 
Cop. read o Ingovus (Jesus) instead of o xupros some Mnn. Itplerique Vg. Cop. Syrseh, It is omit- 
(the Lord). ted by all the other documents. 


2A BGLII reject » (than). 
27 


418 FIRST PART. 


us to suppose that John had been already arrested and that, as Heng- 
stenberg thinks, the Pharisees had played a part in this imprisonment; 
comp. the term rapedédy, was delivered up, Matt. iv. 12; it was, he says, 
by the hands of the Pharisees, that John had fallen under the power of 
Herod. But it will be asked why Jesus retires into Galilee, into the do- 
main of Herod; was not this running in the face of danger? No; for 
this prince’s hatred to John was a personal matter. As to His religious 
activity, Jesus had less hindrance to fear on the part of Herod than on 
that of the dominant party in Judea. 

The remark of ver. 2 is designed to give precision to the indefinite ex- 
pression used by the evangelist himself, ii. 22: that Jesus is baptizing. 
Nothing is indifferent in the Lord’s mode of acting, and John does not 
wish to allow a false idea to be formed by his readers, respecting one of 
His acts. Why did Jesus baptize, and that without Himself baptizing? 
By baptizing, He attested the unity of His work with that of the forerun- 
ner. By not Himself baptizing, He made the superiority of His position 
above that of John the Baptist to be felt. He recalled to mind that which 
the latter had said: “I baptize you with water, there cometh another who 
will baptize you with the Spirit and with fire,” and reserved expressly for 
Himself that higher baptism. The first of these observations makes us 
understand why, at the end of a certain time, He discontinued the bap- 
tism of water, and the second, why He re-established it later as a type of 
the baptism of the Spirit which was to come. At all events, we must not 
compare this course of action with that of Paul (1 Cor. i. 17) and of Peter 
(Acts x. 48),which had quite another aim. If He gave up this rite in the 
interval, this fact stands in relation to that other: that Jesus ceased tak- 
ing a Messianic position in Galilee, to content Himself with the part of a 
prophet, up to the moment when He presented Himself again in Judea 
as the Son of David and the promised Messiah (chap. xil.). At the same 
time, He gave up transforming into a Messianic community, by means of 
baptism, that Israel whose unbelief emphatically manifested itself towards 
Him. There are therefore three degrees in the institution of baptism: 
1. The baptism of John: a preparation for the Messianic kingdom by 
repentance; 2. The baptism of Jesus, at the beginning of His ministry: 
a sign of attachment to the person of the Messiah, with the character of 
disciples; 3. The baptism re-instituted by Jesus after His resurrection: a 
consecration to the baptism of the Spirit. Those who had, received the 
first of these three baptisms (e. g. the apostles) do not seem to have sub- 
mitted afterwards to the second or third. Jesus made use of them to 
administer these two latter baptisms (ver. 2; Acts ii.). It is not without 
reason that Beck has compared the baptism of infants in the Christian 
Church with the second of these three baptisms. 

The departure from Judea is pointed out, ver. 3, as a distinct act of re- 
turn to Galilee; and this because, according to ver. 1, the real object of 
Jesus was much less to go thither than to depart thence. The word rdw, 
again, which is read by six Mjj., alludes to a previous return to Galilee (i. 
44). John avails himself of each occasion to distinguish these two returns 


CHAP. Iv. 4, 9. 419 


which had been identified by the Synoptic tradition (see on iii. 24). This 
adverb is, therefore, authentic, notwithstanding the numerous MSS. and 
critics that omit it or reject it. 

Vv. 4,5. “ Now he must needs pass through Samaria. He cometh thus to a 
city of Samaria called Sychar, near to the parcel of ground which Jacob gave 
to his son Joseph.” *Edeu, it was necessary : if one would not, like the very 
strict Jews, purposely avoid this polluted country (comp. p. 416); Jesus 
did not share this particularistic spirit. The name Sychar is surprising; 
for the only city known in this locality is that which bears the name of 
Shechem, and which is so frequently mentioned in the Old Testament. Can 
there be an error here of a writer who was a stranger to Palestine, as the 
adversaries of the authenticity of our Gospel claim? We think the solu- 
tions scarcely probable which make the name Sychar a popular and in- 
tentional corruption of that of Shechem, deriving it either from Schéker, 
falsehood (city of falsehood, that is to say, of heathenism), or from Sché- 
kar, liquor (city of drunkards ; comp. Is. xxviii. 1, the drunkards of Ephraim). 
We might rather hold an involuntary transformation through an inter- 
change of liquid letters which was frequent (as e. g. that of bar for ben, 
son). But the most natural solution is that which is offered by the 
passages of Eusebius and Jerome, in which two neighboring localities 
bearing these two distinct names are positively distinguished. Euse- 
bius says in the Onomasticon: “Sychar before Neapolis.” Neapolis, in- 
deed, is nothing else then the modern name of Shechem. The Talmud 
speaks also of a locality called Soukar, of a spring Soukar, of the plain of 
Soukar. At the present day also, a hamlet exists very near Jacob’s well 
and situated at the foot of Mount Ebal, which bears the name El-Ascar, a 
name which very much resembles the one which we read in John and in 
the Talmud. Lieut. Conder and M. Socin? also give their assent to this 
view. It seems certain, moreover, that the ancient Shechem was situated 
somewhat more to the east than the present city of Nablous. This is 
proved by the ruins which are discovered everywhere between Nablous 
and Jacob’s well (see Félix Bovet, Voyage en Terre-Sainte, p. 363). Peter- 
mann (art. Samaria in Herzog’s Encyclop. xiii. p. 362) says: ‘The emperor 
Vespasian considerably enlarged the city on the western side.” In any 

case, to see, with Furrer, in this name Sychar an indication of the purely 
ideal character of the account, one must be thoroughly preoccupied by a 
preconceived theory (Bibeller., lii., p. 875). It is at Nablous that the rem- 

nant of the Samaritan people who are reduced to the number of Bout 
one hundred and thirty persons live at the present day. 

According to de Wette, Meyer, and others, the gift of Jacob to Joseph, 
mentioned in this fifth verse, rests on a false tradition, even arising froma 
misunderstanding of the LXX. Gen. xlviii. 22, Jacob says to Joseph: “J 
give thee one portion (Schekem), above thy brethren, which I took from the 
Amorites with my sword and my bow.” As the patriarch has just adopted as 


1 All the MSS.. with the exception of some 2 Zeitschrift des Deutschen Paldstina-Vereins, 
Mnn., and all the ancient Versions read I. Heft. p. 42. 
Svxap and not Srxap. 


420 FIRST PART. 


his own the two children of Joseph, it is natural for him to assign to this 
son one portion above all his brethren. But the Hebrew word (Schekem) 
which denotes a portion of territory (strictly shoulder) is at the same time 
the name of the city, Shechem; and it is claimed that the LXX., taking 
this word in the geographical sense (as the name of a city), gave rise, 
through this false translation, to the popular legend which we find here, 
and according to which Jacob left Shechem as a legacy to Joseph. But it 
is incontestable that when Jacob speaks “ of the portion of country which 
he had taken from the Amorites with his bow and his sword,” he alludes to 
the bloody exploit of his two sons, Simeon and Levi, against the city of 
Shechem (Gen. xxxiv. 25-27): “ Having taken their sword, they entered the 
city of Shechem, and slew all its inhabitants and utterly spoiled it.” This is 
the only martial act mentioned in the history of the patriarch. Notwith- 
standing its reprehensible character, Jacob appropriates it to himself in 
these words, as a confirmation of the purchase which he had himself pre- 
viously made (Gen. xxxili. 19) of a domain in this district of Shechem, 
and he sees therein, as it were, the pledge of the future conquest of this 
whole country by his descendants. Thus, then, by using in order to desig- 
nate the portion which he gives to Joseph, the word schekem, it is the patri- 
arch who makes a play upon words, such as is found so frequently in the 
Old Testament; he leaves to him a portion (Schekem) which is nothing else 
than Shechem. His sons so well understood his thought, that, when their 
descendants returned to Canaan, their first care was to lay the bones of 
Joseph in Jacob’s field near to Shechem (Josh. xxiv. 32), then to assign, as 
a portion, to the larger of the two tribes descended from Joseph, that of 
Ephraim, the country in which Shechem was located. The LXX. not being 
able to render the play upon words in Greek, translated the word schekem 
in the geographical sense; for it was the one which had most significance. 
There is here, therefore, neither a false translation on their part, nor a 
false tradition taken up by the evangelist. 

Ver. 6. “ Jacob’s well was there; Jesus therefore, wearied by his journey, sat 
thus? by the well; i was about the sixth hour.’ This well still exists; for “it 
is probably the same which is now called Bir-Jakoub” (Renan, Vie de 
Jésus, p. 243). It is situated thirty-five minutes eastward of Nablous, 
precisely at the place where the road which follows the principal valley, 
that of Mukhna, from south to north, turns suddenly to the west, to enter 
the narrow valley of Shechem, with Ebal on the northeast and Gerizim 
on the southwest. The well is hollowed out, not in the rock, as is com- 
monly said, but rather, according to Lieutenant Anderson, who descended 
into it in 1866, in alluvial ground; the same person has ascertained that 
the sides are for this reason lined with rude masonry. It is nine feet in 
diameter. In March, 1694, Maundrell found the depth to be one hundred 
and five feet. In 1843, according to Wilson, it was only seventy-five feet, 
owing, doubtless, to the falling in of the earth. Maundrell found in it fif- 
teen feet of water. So also Anderson, in May, 1866. Robinson and 


1 Ovtws (thus), is omitted by some Mnn.; Italia, and Syr. 


CHAP. Iv. 6-9. 421 


Bovet found it dry. Schubert, in the month of April, was able to drink 
of its water. Tristram, in December, found only the bottom wet, while, 
in February, he found it full of water. At the present day, it is blocked 
up with large stones, five or six feet below the aperture; but the real open- 
ing is found several feet lower. A few minutes further to the north, 
towards the hamlet of Askar, the tomb of Joseph is pointed out. Robin- 
son asks with what object this gigantic work could have been undertaken 
in a country so abounding in springs—as many as eighty are counted in 
Nablous and its environs. There is no other answer to give but that of 
Hengstenberg: “This work is that of a man who, a stranger in the coun- 
try, wished to live independently of the inhabitants to whom the springs 
belonged, and to leave a monument of his right of property in this soil and 
in this whole country. Thus the very nature of this work fully confirms 
the origin which is assigned to it by tradition.” 

The caravan, leaving the great plain which stretches towards the north, 
directed its course to the left, in order to enter the valley of Shechem. 
There Jesus seated Himself near the well, leaving His disciples to con- 
tinue their journey as far as Sychar, where they were to procure provis- 
ions. He was oppressed by fatigue, xexomsaxé¢ (wearied), says the evan- 
gelist; and the Tiibingen school ascribes to John the opinion of the Do- 
cetee, according to which the body of Jesus was only an appearance! 
Obrwe (thus), isalmost untranslatablein our language; it is doubtless for some 
such reason that it is omitted in the Latin and Syriac versions. It signifies: 
without further preparation ; taking things as Hefoundthem. According to 
the meaning given by Erasmus, Beza, etc., “ wearied as He was,” the adverb 
would rather have been placed before the verb; comp. Acts. xx.11; xxvil.17 
(Meyer). Theimperfect (éxa#éfero), is descriptive; it does not mean : He seated 
Himself, but: He was seated ; (comp. xi. 20; xx. 12; Luke ii. 46, etc.). The 
word refers not to what precedes, but to what follows. ‘He was there 
seated when a woman came...” The siath hour must denote mid-day, 
according to the mode of reckoning generally received at that time in the 
East (see at i. 40). This hour of the day suits the context better than six 
o’clock in the morning or evening. Jesus was oppressed at once by the 
journey and the heat. The first part of the conversation extends as far 
as ver. 15; it is immediately connected with the situation which is given. 

Vv. 7-9. “A woman of Samaria comes to draw water. Jesus says to her: 
Give me to drink. 8. For his disciples had gone to the city to buy food. 9 The 
Samaritan woman therefore says to him: How is it that thou, being a Jew, dost 
ask drink of me who am a Samaritan woman. (For the Jews have no dealings 
with the Samaritans.”') How was it that this woman came so far to seek 
water, and at such an hour? She had undoubtedly been working in the 
fields, and was coming to draw water on her return to her home at the 
hour of dinner (see at ver. 15). It has been thought that this feature suits 
an evening hour better, since that is ordinarily the hour when the women 
go to the well. But in that case this woman would undoubtedly not have 
been found here alone (Meyer, Weiss). 


1 This parenthesis is wholly omitted by &. 


422 FIRST PART. 
a 

The objective phrase : of Samaria, depends on the word woman, and not 
on the verb comes ; for, in the latter case, Samaria would mean the city of 
that name; an impossible meaning, since that city was situated three 
leagues to the northeast. The request of Jesus must be understood in 
the most simple sense, and regarded as serious. There is no allegory in 
it; He is really thirsty ; this follows from the word wearied. But this does 
not prevent Him, in beginning a conversation with the woman, from 
obeying another necessity than that of thirst—namely, of saving (vv. 32, 
34). He is not unaware that the way to gain a soul is often to ask a ser- 
vice of it; there is thus conceded to it a kind of superiority which flatters 
it. “The effect of this little word was great; it began to overturn the 
wall which had for ages separated the two peoples,” says Lange. The re- 
mark of ver. 8 is intended to explain that, if the disciples had been pres- 
ent, they would have had a vessel, an dvrAjua, to let down into the well. 
Indeed, in the East, every caravan is provided with a bucket for draw- 
ing from the wells which appear on the road (see ver. 11). This explana- 
tion given by the evangelist, proves the complete reality, in his view, of 
the need which called forth the request of Jesus. There is no longer here 
anything of docetism! Does the expression, the disciples, denote all the 
disciples without exception? Might not one of them, John, for example, 
have remained with Jesus? It would be strange enough that Jesus should 
have been left there, absolutely alone, in the midst of a hostile population ; 
and twelve men were not necessary to procure provisions! Meyer’s prud- 
ery is offended at such a simple supposition, and Reuss goes so far as to 
say : “The luminous idea has been formed of leaving John at the place to 
take notes.”—The Jewish doctors said : ‘‘ He who eats bread with a Samar- 
itan is as he who eats swine’s flesh.” This prohibition, however, was not 
absolute ; it did not apply either to fruits or to vegetables. As to corn and 
wine, we are ignorant. Uncooked eggs were allowed; whether cooked, 
was a question (Hausrath, Neutest. Zeitgesch., I., p. 22). It is proved, 
however, that the most strict Rabbinical regulations belong to a later 
epoch. 

How did the Samaritan woman recognize Jesus as a Jew. By His dress 
or His accent? Stier has observed that in some words which Jesus had 
just spoken the letter w occurred, which, according to Judg. xii. 6, distin- 
guished the two pronunciations, the Jewish (sch), and the Samaritan (s) ; 
nnw van (tent lischechoth ; Samaritan : lisechoth)—The last words (ov yap 
cvyypovra) are a remark of the evangelist, with a view to his Gentile 
readers who might be unacquainted with the origin of the Samaritan 
people (2 Kings xvii. 24 ff.). It was a mixture of five nations transported 
from the East by Esarhaddon to re-people the kingdom of Samaria, the 
inhabitants of which his predecessor had removed. To the worship of 
their national gods, they united that of the divinity of the country, Jeho- 
vah. After the return from the Babylonish captivity, they offered the Jews 
their services for the rebuilding of the temple. Being rejected, they used 
all their influence with the kings of Persia, to hinder the re-establishment 
of the Jewish people. They built for themselves a temple on Mount Geri- 


CHAP. Iv. 10. | 423 


zim. Their first priest was Manasseh, a Jewish priest who had married a 
Persian wife. They were more detested by the Jews than the Gentiles 
themselves were. Samaritan proselytes were not received. It has been 
thought that the woman, in frolicsomeness, exaggerated somewhat the 
consequences of the hostility between the two peoples, and that in sub- 
mitting to Jesus this insignificant question, she wished to enjoy for a 
moment the superiority which her position gave her. This shade of 
thought does not appear from the text. The Samaritan woman naively 
expresses her surprise. : 

Ver. 10. “Jesus answered and said unto her: If thou knewest the gift of God 
and who it is who says unto thee: Give me to drink, thow wouldst have asked 
of him thyself, and he would have given thee living water.” To this observation 
of the woman Jesus replies, not by renewing His request, but by making 
her an offer by means of which He reassumes His position of superiority. 
To this end, it is enough to raise this woman’s thoughts to the spizitual 
sphere, where there is no more anything for Him but to give, and for her 
but to receive. The expression: The gift of God, may be regarded as an 
abstract notion, whose concrete reality is indicated by the following words : 
who it is that says to thee (so in our first edition). The words of Jesus in 
iii. 16: “ God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son,” favor this 
sense, according to which Jesus is Himself the gift of God. But as Jesus 
distinguishes Himself from the living water, in the following words, it is 
better to see in the words: He who says to thee, the agent through whom 
God makes this gift to the human soul. God gives Jesus to the world, and 
Jesus gives to it the living water. Living water, in the literal sense, denotes 
spring-water, in contrast with water of a cistern, or stagnant water. Gen. 
xxvi. 19: “Israel’s servants dug in the valley, and found there a well of living 
water,” that is, a subterranean spring of which they made a well; comp. 
Levit. xiv. 5. In the figurative sense, living water is, therefore, a blessing 
which has the property of incessantly reproducing itself, like a gushing 
spring, like life itself, and which consequently is never exhausted. What 
does Jesus mean by this? According to Justin and Cyprian, baptism ; 
according to Liicke, faith; according to Olshausen, Jesus Himself; accord- 
ing to Calvin, Luthardt, Keil, the Holy Spirit; according to Grotius, the 
evangelical doctrine; according to Meyer, truth; according to Tholuck, 
Weiss, the word of salvation; according to Westcott, eternal life, consisting 
in the knowledge of God and of His Son Jesus Christ (xvii. 3); this scholar 
cites as analogous the Rabbinical proverb: “ When the prophets speak of 
water, they mean the law.” Lange, according to ver. 14: The interior 
life, especially with reference to peace in the heart. It seems to me that, 
according to Jesus Himself (vv. 18, 14), it is, as Westcott thinks, eternal 
life, salvation, the full satisfaction of all the wants of the heart and the 
possession of all the holy energies of which the soul is susceptible. This 
state of soundness of the soul can only be the result of the dwelling of 
Jesus Himself in the heart, by means of His word made inwardly living 
by the Holy Spirit (chaps. xiv.—xvi.). This explanation includes, therefore, 
all the others up to a certain point. 


424 FIRST PART. 

Vv. 11, 12. “ The woman! says to him: Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with, 
and the well is deep ; from whence, then, hast thou that living water? 12. Art 
thou greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well, and who drank of it 
himself, as well as his sons and his cattle?” TheSamaritan woman takes the 
expression living water in its literal sense. She means: “Thou canst neither 
(oire) draw from the well the living water which thou offerest to me—for 
thou hast no vessel to draw with—nor (xai), because of its depth, canst thou 
reach by any other means the spring which feeds it.” Unable to sup- 
pose that He is speaking spiritually, she cannot understand that He offers 
her what He has Himself asked from her (Westcotl). The term xépue, Sir, 
expresses, however, profound respect. She calls Jacob our father, because 
the Samaritans claimed descent from Ephraim and Manasseh (Joseph. 
Antigg. ix. 14, 3). Opéupara: servants and cattle, everything requiring to 
be supported. It is the complete picture of patriarchal nomad life which 
appears here. 

Vy. 18, 14. “ Jesus answered and said to her: Whoever drinks of this water 
shall thirst again ; but he that shall drink? of the water that I shall give him, 
shall never thirst ; but the water that I* shall give him* shall become in him a 
fountain of water springing up unto eternal life.” It is to no purpose that 
the water of the well is spring-water ; it is not that which Jesus means by 
living water; it has not the power of reproducing itself in him who drinks 
it; so, after a certain time, the want revives and the torment of thirst 
makes itself felt. ‘A beautiful inscription,” says Stier, “to be placed upon 
fountains.” Such water presents itself to the thought of Jesus as the 
emblem of all earthly, satisfactions, after which the want reappears in the 
soul and puts it again in dependence upon external objects in order to its 
satisfaction. | 

Jesus defines in ver. 14 the nature of the true living water; it is that 
which, reproducing itself within by its own potentiality, quenches the 
soul’s want as it arises, so that the heart cannot suffer a single moment 
of inward torment of thirst. Man possesses in himself a satisfaction inde- 
pendent of earthly objects and conditions.—’Eyé ; yes, J, (in opposition to 
Jacob).—With Reuss, I formerly referred the words ¢ic¢ (wv aldviov, unto 
eternal life, not to time, but to the effect produced, to the mode of appear- 
ance: in the form of eternal life. The parallel term, however, cic rov 
aidva for ever, favors rather the temporal sense, “even to the life without 
end.” 

Ver. 15. “ The woman says to him : Sir, give me this water, that I may not 
thirst, neither pass this way® to draw.”’—This woman’s request has certainly a 
serious side. The respectful address, Sir,is sufficient to prove this. It fol- 
lows likewise from the grave character of the answer of Jesus. Even 
though the absence of spiritual wants causes her not to understand, she is 


1B rejects y yuryn. NS reads execyn. same word. 
28 D Syr., omit ovr. 5Instead of epxouwar or epywuat, between 
38 D read o de mvwy, instead of os 8’ av mn. which the other three Mjj. are divided, & 
48 D M,some Mnn., and It., read eyw be- _— reads drepywpat, B Stepxomac. 

fore 6wow. & rejects avtw which follows this 


CHAP. Iv. 11-18. 425 


impressed ; can this man indeed have the power of working such a miracle? 
Nevertheless, the expression of the desire which she experiences to have her 
life made more comfortable has in it something naive and almost humorous. 
—The last words reproduce the promise of Jesus: “shall not thirst.” 
The reading of the two oldest MSS.: “that I pass no more this way,” 
instead of: that I come hither no more, should undoubtedly be adopted. 
No one would have substituted this for the received reading. It confirms 
the idea that we have expressed: namely, that the woman was merely 
passing that way, as she returned to her house. 

The first phase of the conversation is closed. But Jesus has raised a 
sublime ideal in this woman’s imagination—that of eternal life. Could he 
abandon her before having taught her more on this subject, since she had 
thus far shown herself teachable. 

Vv. 16-18. “ Jesus says to her: Go, call thy husband, and come hither. 17. 
The woman answered and said: I have no husband. Jesus says to her: Thou 
hast well said: I have! no husband. 18. For thou hast had five? husbands, and 
he whom thou now hast is not thy husband. In this thou hast said truly.” — 
Westcott observes that the natural transition to this invitation, which is 
apparently so abrupt, is perhaps to be found in the last words of the 
woman: “that I pass no more this way to draw,” which suggest persons of 
her family for whom she is performing this duty—Must we seek the 
object of this request in the moral effect which it should produce on the 
woman, by giving Jesus the opportunity to prove to her his prophetic 
knowledge (Meyer, Reuss, etc.)? Certainly not, for there would then be a 
miracle of exhibition, which would not be in harmony with the ordinary 
simplicity of Jesus. The invitation must be its own justification. Others 
think that Jesus proposed to Himself to awaken in this woman the sense 
of her life of sin (Tholuck, Luthardt, Bonnet, Weiss, etc.). But under this 
form of supposition also, the means used have something of indirectness, 
which does not seem to be in entire conformity with the perfect sincerity 
of the Lord. The true reason of it seems to me rather to be this: Jesus 
did not wish to act upon a dependent person without the participation of 
the one to whom she was bound, and the more because the summoning 
of the latter might be the means of extending His work. Meyer makes the 
nature of the relation which united them an objection. But the arrival 
of this woman, at so unusual an hour, had undoubtedly been for Jesus the 
signal of a work to be done; and there is nothing to show that, when 
addressing this invitation to the woman, Jesus had her antecedents already 
present to His mind. Might not the term, thy husband, indeed, be com- 
pletely justified by this supposition? The prophetic insight may not have 
been awakened in Him till He heard the answer which struck Him: “JI 
have no husband :”—She had been married five times; and now, after these 
five lawful unions, she was living in an illicit relation. The fact that she 
did not venture to call the man with whom she is living her husband, 
shows in this woman a certain element of right character. 


18 Italia; Heracleon: exers (that thou hast 2 Heracleon: e€ (six) instead of revre (five). 
not) instead of exw (J have not). 38 E: adnOws instead of adndes. 


426 . FIRST PART. 


The reply of Jesus is not free from irony. The partial assent which 
He gives to the woman’s answer, has something sarcastic in it. The 
‘same is true of the contrast which Jesus brings out between the number five 
and the: “I have no!’””—The emphatic position of the pronoun oot before 
avo implies, perhaps, the following understood antithesis: “Not thine 
own, but the husband of another.” From this it would follow that she had 
lived in adultery. It is not absolutely necessary, however, to press so far 
the meaning of this construction—Modern criticism, since the time of 
Strauss (see especially Keim and Hausrath), connects this part of the con- 
versation with the fact that the Samaritan nation was formed of five 
eastern tribes which, after having each brought its own God, had adopted, 
besides, Jehovah, the God of the country (2 Kings xvii. 30, 31). The 
woman with her five husbands and the man with whom she was now liv- 
ing as the sixth, are, it is said, the symbol of the whole Samaritan people, 
and we have here a proof of the ideal character of this story. The view 
rests especially on this statement of Josephus (Antig. ix. 14, 3): “ Five 
nations having brought each its own God to Samaria.” But 1, in the O. T. 
passage (2 Kings xvii. 30, 31), there is, indeed, a question of five peoples, 
but, at the same time, of seven gods, two peoples having introduced two 
gods. 2. These seven gods were all worshiped simultaneously, and not 
successively, up to the moment when they gave place to Jehovah; a fact 
which destroys the correspondence between the situations. 3. Is it 
conceivable that Jehovah would be compared to the sixth husband, who 
was evidently the worst of all in the woman’s life? If the reading siz of 
Heracleon, has reference to the ancient Samaritan religion, it does not 
refer to the addition of Jehovah to the other five gods, but rather to 2 
Kings xvii. 30, where there is an allusion to six or seven gods brought in 
by the Eastern Gentiles. 

Vv. 19, 20. “ The woman says to him: Sir, I see that thou art a prophet. 
20. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain;* and you say that in Jerusalem 
is the place? where men ought to worship.” Some see in this question of the 
woman only an attempt to turn aside the disturbance of her conscience, 
“a woman’s ruse ” (de Wette) with the design of escaping from a painful 
subject. “She diverts attention from her own life by proposing a point 
of controversy ” (Astié). But would Jesus reply, as He does, to a question 
proposed insucha spirit? Besser and Luthardt go to the opposite extreme: 
This question is, in their view, the indication of a tortured conscience, 
which, sighing for pardon, desires to know the true sanctuary to which it 
can go to make expiation for its faults. This is still more forced. Reuss, 
with an irony which assails the evangelist himself, says: “If she asks the 
question thus, it is only for the purpose of bringing out the declaration of 
the Lord which we are about to read.” Westcott says rightly: ‘“ Here is 
the very natural inquiry of a soul which finds itself face to face with an 
interpreter of the divine will.” This woman has recognized in Jesus a 


1 All the Mjj.: ev tw oper rovtw, instead of 2 & omits o romos. 
ev TovTw Tw opet Which T. R. reads with Mnn. 


CHAP. Iv. 19-21. . 497 


prophet; she has at the same time found in Him largeness of heart. The 
two answers, vv. 17, 19, have proved that, notwithstanding her faults, she 
is not altogether wanting in right character. It follows even from ver. 25 
that religious thoughts are not strange to her, that she is looking for the 
Messiah and that she waits to receive from Him the explanation of the 
questions which embarrass her. The fact of a Jewish prophet, present 
before her eyes, inspires her with doubts as to the religious claim of her 
nation. Is it not an altogether simple thing, that, in her present situation, 
after her conscience has been so profoundly moved, her thoughts should 
turn to the great religious question which separates the two peoples, and 
that she should ask the solution of it? Itis an anticipation of the more 
complete teaching which she expects from the Messiah. By the term: 
our fathers, she perhaps understands the Israelites of the time of Joshua, 
who, according to the reading of the Samaritan Pentateuch (Deut. xxvii. 
4), raised their altar on Mount Gerizim, and not on Ebal; in any case, she 
understands by this expression all the Samaritan ancestors who had wor- 
shiped on Gerizim, from the period when a temple was built there in 
Nehemiah’s time. This temple had been destroyed by John Hyrcanus 
one hundred and twenty-nine years before Christ. But even after this 
event, the place had remained a sacred spot Deut. xi. 29, as it still is at the 
present day. It is there that the Samaritans even now celebrate the feast 
of the Passover every year. Jerusalem not being named anywhere in the 
law, the preference of the Samaritans for Gerizim found plausible reasons 
in the patriarchal history. The superiority of the Jewish sanctuary could 
be justified only from the standpoint of the later books of the Old Testa- 
ment. But we know that the Samaritans admitted only the Pentateuch 
and the Mosaic institution. When she said: on this mountain, she 
pointed to it with the finger. For Jacob’s well is situated directly at 
the foot of Gerizim. She confines herself to setting forth the antithesis, 
thinking indeed that Jesus will understand the question which follows 
from it. 

Ver. 21. “ Jesus says to her: Woman, believe me; the hour cometh when 
neither on this mountain nor at Jerusalem shall ye worship the Father.” The 
position of Jesus isa delicate one. He cannot deny the truth, and He 
must not repel this woman. His reply is admirable. He has just been 
called a prophet, and He prophesies. He announces a new economy in 
which the Samaritans, having become children of God, will be set free 
from that local sanctuary which the woman points out to Him on the 
summit of Gerizim, but without being compelled for this reason to go to 
Jerusalem. The filial character of this new worship will free it from all 
the external limitations by which all the old national worships were bur- 
dened. If the privilege of Gerizim passes away, it will not be that it 
may be assigned to Jerusalem. “ You will not bring the Jews hither ; but 
they shall no more force you to go to them. You shall meet each other, 


1T. R. reads yuvat morevoov wor With 14 Mjj. Italia. Syr. while & BC D L3 Mnn. b Orig. read 
muoreve wow yuvar (D morevaor). 


428 FIRST PART. 


both parties alike, in the great family of the Father’s worshipers.” What 
treasures cast to such a soul! What other desire than that of doing His’ 
Father’s will could inspire in Jesus such condescension!—The aorist 
xiorevoov in the T. R. signifies: ‘ Perform an act of faith.” We can under- 
stand the prefixing of the apostrophe: woman, in this reading which 
makes such an earnest appeal to her will. The present cioreve in the 
Alexandrian documents simply signifies: ‘ Believe from this moment and 
for the future.” Both the readings may be sustained. This summons to 
faith answered to this woman’s profession: ‘Thou art a prophet.” The 
subject you of shall worship might denote the Samaritans and Jews (Hilgen- 
feld), or men in general (so in my 2d ed.), in contrast to Jesus Himself or 
to Jesus and His own. But this woman could not regard herself as the 
representative either of humanity in general, or of the Samaritans and 
Jews together. The subject of you shall worship must rather be derived 
from those words of her question in ver. 20: Our fathers worshiped. It is 
the Samaritans only. 

Ver. 22. “ Ye worship that which ye do not know ; we worship that which we 
know, because salvation comes from the Jews.” The antithesis, which is so 
clearly marked between ye and we proves, whatever Hilgenfeld may say, 
who wrongly cites Hengstenberg as being of his opinion (comp. the Com- 
mentary of the latter, I. pp. 264-269), that the ye denotes the Samaritans 
and the we Jesus and the Jews. After having put His impartiality beyond 
suspicion by the revelation of the great future announced in ver. 21, Jesus 
enters more closely into the question proposed to Him and decides it, as 
related to the past, in favor of the Jews. “It is at Jerusalem that the liv- 
ing God has made Himself known; and that because it is by means of the 
Jews that He intends to give salvation to the world.” God is known only 
so far as He gives Himself to be known. The seat of the true knowledge 
of Him can, therefore, only be where He makes His revelation; and this 
place is Jerusalem. By breaking with the course of theocratic develop- 
ment since the time of Moses, and rejecting the prophetic revelations, the 
Samaritans had separated themselves from the historic God, from the 
living God. They had preserved only the abstract idea of the one God, a 
purely rational monotheism. Now the idea of God, as soon as it is taken 
for God Himself, is no more than a chimera. Even while worshiping 
God, therefore, they do not know what they worship. The Jews, on the 
contrary, have developed themselves in constant contact with the divine 
manifestations ; they have remained in the school of the God of revela- 
tion, and in this living relation they have preserved the principle of a true 
knowledge. And whence comes this peculiar relation between this peo- 
ple and God? The answer is given in what follows. If God has made 
Himself so specially known to the Jews, it is because He wished to make 
use of them, in order to accomplish the salvation of the world. It is sal- 
vation which, retroactively in some sort, has produced all the previous 
theocratic revelations, as it is the fruit which, although appearing at the 
end of the annual vegetation.is the real cause of it. The true cause of 
things is their aim. Thus is the 67, because, explained. 


CHAP. Iv. 22—24. 429 


This passage has embarrassed rationalistic criticism, which, making the Jesus of 
our Gospel an adversary of Judaism, does not allow that He could have pro- 
claimed Himself a Jew, and have Himself united in this we His own worship and 
that of the Israelitish people. And indeed if, as d’Eichthal alleges (Les Evangiles 
I. p. xxviii.), the Jesus of the fourth Gospel, “from one end to the other of His 
preaching, seems to make sport of the Jews,” and consequently cannot “be one 
of them,” there is a flagrant contradiction between our passage and the entire 
Gospel. Hilgenfeld thinks that, at ver. 21, Jesus addresses the Jews and the Sa- 
maritans taken together, as by a kind of prosopopoeia, and that at ver. 22, by the 
words: we worship that which we know, he designates Himself, (with the believers) 
in opposition to these Jews and Samaritans. We have already seen at ver. 21 
that this explanation cannot be sustained, and this appears more clearly still 
from the words of ver. 22: “ Because salvation comes from the Jews,” which evi- 
dently prove that the subject of “we worship” can only be the Jews. D’ Eichthal 
and Renan make use here of different expedients. The enigma is explained, says 
the first, when it is observed that this expression is only “the annotation, or 
rather the protest, which a Jew of the old school had inscribed on the margin of 
the text, and of which an error of the copyist has made a word of Jesus” (p. 
xxix., note). And this scholar is in exstacies over the services which criticism 
can render to the interpretation of the sacred writings! Renan makes a similar 
hypothesis. ‘The 22d verse, which expresses an opposite thought to that of vv. 
21 and 23, seems an awkward addition of the evangelist alarmed at the boldness 
of the saying which he reports” (p. 244, note). Arbitrariness could not be 
pressed further. The critic begins by decreeing what the fourth Gospel must be; 
an anti-Jewish book. Then, when he meets an expression which contradicts this 
alleged character, he rejects it with a stroke of the pen. He obtains, thus, not 
the Gospel which is, but that which he would have. But is it supposed that the 
first Jew whom one might meet was in possession of the authentic copy of our 
Gospel, to modify it according to his fancy; or that it was very easy for any 
chance foreigner, when this writing was once spread abroad, to introduce an inter- 
polation into all the copies which were in circulation among the Churches? As 
for Renan’s hypothesis, it supposes that the evangelist thought he knew more 
than the Master whom he worshiped ; which is not very logical. The alleged 
incompatibility of this saying with vv. 21, 23, and with spirit of the fourth Gos- 
pel in general, is an assertion without foundation. (See Introduction, p. 127-134.) 


At ver. 21 Jesus has transferred the question to the future, when the 
localized worship of ancient times should no longer exist. In ver. 22,580 
has justified the Jews, historically speaking. At ver. 23 He returns to 
the future announced in ver. 21, and describes all its grandeur. 

Vv. 28, 24. “ But the hour cometh and now is, when the true worshipers 
shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth ; for also the Father seeketh 
such worshipers. 24. God is spirit, and they that worship him! must worship 
him in spirit and in truth.”* But: in contrast with the period of Israelit- 
ish prerogative now ended. The words, and now is, added here, serve to 
arouse more strongly the already-awakened attention of the woman. It 


18% Dd Heracleon Orig. omit avrov after 2N reads: ev mvevmatt adndecas (in the spirit 
MpogKuvovvTas, of truth). 


430 FIRST PART. 


is as if the first breath of the new era were just passing across this soul. 
Perhaps Jesus sees in the distance His disciples returning, the represent- 
atives of this nation of new worshipers which in a few moments will be 
recruited by the first-fruits of the Samaritan people. He brings out the 
two characteristics of the future worship: spirituality and truth. Spirit 
denotes here the highest organ of the human soul, by means of which it 
has communion with the divine world. It is the seat of contemplation, 
the place of the soul’s meeting with God, the sanctuary where the true 
worship is celebrated; Rom. i. 9: “ God, whom I serve in my spirit” (év ro 
mvevuati yov); Eph. vi. 18: praying in the spirit (év rvebuarc). This spirit, in 
man, the rveiua avbpdrwov, remains a mere potentiality, so long as it is not 
penetrated by the Divine Spirit. But when this union is accomplished, it 
becomes capable of realizing the true worship of which Jesus speaks. 
This first feature marks the intensity of the new worship. The second, 
truth, is the corollary of the first. The worship rendered in the inner 
sanctuary of the spirit is the only true worship, because it alone is con- 
formed to the nature of God, its object: “ God is spirit.” The idea of sin- 
cerity does not fill out the meaning of the word truth; for a Jewish or 
Samaritan prayer might evidently be sincere. The truth of the worship 
is its inward character, in opposition to every demonstration without 
spiritual reality. Though these words exclude all subjection of Christian 
worship to the limitations of place or time, it is nevertheless true that by 
virtue of its very freedom, this worship can spontaneously accept condi- 
tions of time and place. But,as Mme. Guyon says, the external adoration 
is then “ only a springing forth of the adoration of the Spirit” (quoted by 
Astié). The two defining words: in spirit and in truth are formal; the 
concrete character of the new worship is expressed by the word: the Fa- 
ther. The worship of which Jesus is speaking is the converse of a son 
with his father. We know from what source Jesus drew this definition 
of spiritual and true worship. ‘Abba (Father)” such was the constant 
expression of His inmost feeling. By adding that the Father, at this very 
moment, is seeking such worshipers, Jesus gives the woman an intimation 
that He is Himself the one sent by the Father to form this new people 
and that He invites her to become one of them. 

The 24th verse justifies, from the essential nature of God, what He has 
just said of the spiritual and true nature of the worship now demanded 
by God Himself. Jesus does not give the maxim “ God is spirit” as a 
new revelation. Itis like an axiom from which He starts, a premise admit- 
ted by His interlocutor herself. The Old Testament taught, indeed, the 
spirituality of God in all its sublimity (1 Kings viii. 27), and the Samari- 
tans certainly held it, like the Jews (see Gesenius, de Samarit. theol. p. 12, 
and Liicke). What is new in this saying is not the truth affirmed, but the 
consequence which Jesus draws from it with reference to the worship which 
was tocome. He calls forth from it the idea of the people of the chil- 
dren of God offering throughout the whole world constant adoration ; 
comp. Mal.i. 11. Thus to a guilty woman, perhaps an adulteress, Jesus 
reveals truths which He had probably never unfolded to His own disci- 


CHAP. 1v. 25, 26. 431 


ples.—The reading of the Sinaitic MS. év rvetuari aAndeiac, in the spirit of 
truth, is derived from xiv. 17; xv. 26, etc., and arises from the false appli- 
cation of the word rveipua to the Holy Spirit. 

Ver. 26. “ The woman says to him, I know! that Messiah cometh (he who 
is called Christ) ; when he is come, he will declare unto us? all things.”* The 
woman’s answer bears witness of a certain desire for light. Her Spirit 
yearns for the perfect revelation. This is the reason why we were not 
wrong in interpreting vv. 15, 20 in a sense favorable to her character. Ac- 
cording to modern accounts, the Samaritans actually expect a Messiah, to 
whom they give the name Assaé/ (from yy, to return) ; this word signifies, 
according to Gesenius, he who brings back, who converts; according to de 
Sacy and Hengstenberg, he who returns, in the sense that, as the expectation 
of the Samaritans was founded on Deut. xviii. 18: “ God will raise up for 
you another prophet from among your brethren, like unto me,” the Messiah to 
their view is a Moses who returns. At the present day, they call him el- 
Muhdy. There is a striking contrast between the notion of the Messiah, 
as it is expressed by the mouth of this woman, and the earthly and polit- 
ical notions on this subject which Jesus encountered in Israel. The Sa- 
maritan idea was imperfect, no doubt; the Messiah was a prophet, not a 
king. But it contained nothing false; and for this reason Jesus is able to 
appropriate it to Himself, and here declare Himself the Christ, which He 
did in Israel only at the last moment (xvii. 3; Matt. xxvi. 64). The trans- 
lation 6 Aeyéuevog Xpiotéc, who is called Christ, belongs to the evangelist. He 
repeats this explanation, already given in i. 42, unquestionably because of 
the complete strangeness of this word Mecosia¢ to Greek readers. It has 
been said that the Jewish term Messiah could not have been ascribed by 
John to this foreign woman. But this popular name might easily have 
passed from. the Jews to the Samaritans, especially in the region of She- 
chem, which was inhabited by Jewish fugitives (Joseph. Antiq. xi. 8. 6). 
Perhaps, the very absence of the article before the word Meooiac, indicates 
that the woman uses this word as a proper name, as is done m the case 
of foreign words (comp. i. 42). The word épyerac (comes) is an echo of the 
two épyerac of vv. 21, 23; she surrenders herself to the impulse towards 
.the new era which Jesus has impressed on her soul. “The pronoun 
éxeivoc, he, has, as ordinarily with John, an exclusive sense ; it serves to place 
this revealer in contrast with all others; to that very one whom she had 
before her. The preposition in the verb dvayyeAsi marks the perfect clear- 
ness, and the object, tévra or drarra, the sa aa character of the Mes- 
siah’s expected revelation. 

Ver. 26. “Jesus says to her: I who speak unto thee am he.” Jesus, not 
having to fear, as we have just seen, that he would call forth in this woman 
a whole world of dangerous illusions, like those which, among the Jews, 
were connected with the name of Messiah, reveals Himself fully to her. 
This conduct is not therefore, as de Wette claims, in contradiction with 

1G L A some Mnn. Syr. read ovSanev (we avayyeAe: (the present instead of the future). 


know). 38 BC Orig. (four times) read amavra in- 
28 D (but not d) read avayyeAAcc instead of stead of mavta. 


432 FIRST PART. 


such words as Matt. viii. 4; xvi. 20, etc. The difference in the soil ex- 
plains the difference in the seed which the hand of Jesus deposits in it. 

How can we describe the astonishment which such a declaration must 
have produced in this woman? It expresses itself, better than by words, 
in her silence and her conduct (ver. 28). She had arrived, a few minutes 
before, careless and given up to earthly thoughts; and lo, in a few mo- 
ments, she is brought to a new faith, and even transformed into an earnest 
missionary of that faith. How did the Lord thus raise up and elevate 
this soul? When speaking with Nicodemus, He started from the idea 
which filled the heart of every Pharisee—that of the kingdom of God, 
and he drew from it the most rigorous moral consequences; for He knew 
that He was addressing a man accustomed to the discipline of the law. 
Then, He unfolded to him the truths of the divine kingdom, by connect- 
ing them with a striking Old Testament type and putting them in contrast 
with the corresponding features of the Pharisaic programme. Here, on 
the contrary, conversing with a woman destitute of all Scriptural prepara- 
tion, He takes His point of departure from the commonest of things, the 
water of this well. Then, by a bold antithesis, He wakens in her mind 
the thought, in her heart the want, of a supernatural gift which may for- 
ever quench the heart’s thirst. The aspiration for salvation once awak- 
ened becomes in her an inward prophecy to which He attaches His new 
revelations. By the teaching with reference to the true worship, He re- 
sponds to the religious prepossessions of this woman, as directly as by the 
revelation of the heavenly things He had responded to the inmost 
thoughts of Nicodemus. With the latter He reveals Himself as the only- 
begotten Son, while still avoiding the title of Christ. With the Samaritan 
He boldly uses this latter term; but without dreaming of initiating into 
the mysteries of the incarnation and of redemption this soul which is yet 
only in the first rudiments of the moral life. Certain analogies have been 
observed in the outward course of these two conversations, and an argu- 
ment has been drawn from them against the truth of the two stories. But 
this resemblance naturally results from what is analogous in the two meet- 
ings: on both sides, a soul wholly earthly finding itself in contact with a 
heavenly thought, and the latter trying to raise the other to its own level. 
This similarity in the situations sufficiently explains the correspondences 
of the two conversations, the diversity of which is, moreover, quite as re- 
markable as the resemblance. 


II.—Jesus and the Disciples : vv. 27-88. 


Ver. 27. Upon this’ his disciples came, and they were astonished? that he was 
speaking with a woman; yet no one of them said:* What seckest thou? or, 
Why speakest thou with her.’ There existed a rabbinical prejudice, accord- 
ing to which a woman is not capable of receiving profound religious instruc- 


18 D read ev rovrw instead of em rovrw. CDG KLM It. Vulg. Cop. Orig. read e9av- 
2T. R. reads e@avpacay with ESUVAA the pacov (were marveling). 
larger part of the Mnn. Sah. etc. But SAB 38 D add autw (to him) after ecmev. 


CHAP. Iv. 27-32. 433 


tion: “Do not prolong conversation with a woman; let no one converse 
with a woman in the street, not even with his own wife; let a man burn 
the words of the law, rather than teach them to women” (see Lightfoot 
on this verse). Probably the apostles had not yet seen their Master set 
Himself above this prejudice—We may hesitate between the two read- 
ings marvelled (é3abuacav) and were marvelling (é0abuafov). The first gives to 
the astonishment the character of a momentary act, the second makes of 
it a continuing state. Mévro.: However, the astonishment did not extend 
so far in any one of them as to lead to ask Him for an explanation. 
Znrteiv, to seek, ask, refers to a service which He had requested, like that of 
ver. 10; Aadciv to speak, to a given instruction. 

Vy. 28, 29. “ The woman therefore left her water-pot and went away into the 
city and says to the men: 29. Come, see a man who hath told me all the things 
that’ I have done; can this be the Christ?” Therefore: following upon the 
declaration of ver. 26, she does not speak, she acts, as one does when the 
heart is profoundly moved. She leaves her water-pot: this circumstance, 
apparently insignificant, is not without importance. It is the pledge of her 
early return, the proof that she goes to seek her husband and those whom 
she will find. She constitutes herself thereby a messenger, and, as it were, a 
missionary of Jesus. What a contrast between the vivacity of this conduct 
and the silent and meditative departure of Nicodemus! And what truth in 
the least details of this narrative !—Toi¢ avOpérouc (to the men), to the first per- 
sons whom she met in the public square.—There is great simplicity in the 
expression : All the things which I have done. Shé does not fear to awaken 
by this expression recollections which are by no means flattering to her- 
self. She formulates her question in a way which seems to anticipate a 
negative answer (7c, not however ?). ‘This is not, however, the Christ, is 
it?” She believes more than she says, but she does not venture to set 
forth, even as probable, so great a piece of news. What can be more 
natural than this little touch. 

Ver. 30. “ They went out? of the city, and were coming towards him.” The 
Samaritans, gathered by her, arrive in large numbers. The imperfect, 
they were coming, contrasted with the aorist, they went out, forms a picture; 
we see them hastening across the fields which separate Sychar from Jacob’s 
well. This historical detail gives the key to Jesus’ words, which are to 
follow. The therefore must be rejected from the text; the attention is 
wholly turned to the they were coming, which follows. 

Vy. 31, 32. “In the mean while, the disciples prayed him, saying: Master, 
eat. 32. But he said unto them, I have meat to eat which ye know not.” Ver. 
31 (after the interruption of vv. 28, 29), is connected with ver. 27. The 
words, év de TO petazt (in the mean while), denote the time which elapsed 
between the departure of the woman and the arrival of the Samaritans. 
’Epwrav (to ask) takes here, as often in the New Testament, and as >Xw does 


1 Instead of mavra ova, % BOC; Italia.; Cop., with & A.: several Mnn.; Itelia.; Sah. This 
read mavta a. particle is rejected by all the other Mjj. ; Vss.; 
2T. R. reads ovr (therefore), after efmAOov, Orig. 


28 


434 FIRST PART. 


in the Old Testament, the sense of pray, without, however, losing altogether 
its strict sense of interrogate: ask whether he will eat. 

Since the beginning of His ministry, Jesus had perhaps had no joy such 
as this which He had just experienced. This joy had revived Him, even 
physically. “You say to me: eat! But I am satisfied; I have had, in 
your absence, a feast of which you have no suspicion.” ’Ey (J), has the 
emphasis; this word places His person in strong contrast to theirs (iveic, 
you): “ You have your repast; I have mine.”—Bpéoce, strictly the act of 
eating, but including the food, which is its condition. The abstract word 
better suits the spiritual sense of this saying, than the concrete (péaua, 
(food). 

Vv. 338, 84. “ The disciples therefore said one to another: Has any one 
brought him anything to eat? 34. Jesus says unto them : My meat is to do? the 
will of my Father and to accomplish his work.” Maric introduces a negative 
question: ‘No one indeed has brought Him ...?” Jesus explains the 
profound meaning of His answer. Here He uses fpoua, in connection 
with the gross interpretation of the disciples. We need not see in the 
conjunction iva, as Weiss would have us, a mere periphrasis for the infini- 
tive. That which sustains Him is His proposing to Himself continually to 
do... to accomplish ... The present to.é—this is the reading of the T. 
R.—refers to the permanent accomplishment of the divine will at each 
moment, and the conjunctive aorist reAedow (to accomplish, to finish), refers 
to the end of the labor, to the perfect consummation of the task which 
will, of course, depend on the obedience of every moment (xvii. 4). The 
reading (rojo), of the Vatican MS., Origen, and the Greco-Latin author- 
ities spoils this beautiful relation ; it is rejected by Tischendorf and Meyer. 
This zou#ow arose from an assimilation to reAsdow. The relation between 
the two substantives éAnua (will), and épyov (work), corresponds with that 
of the two verbs. In order that the work of God may be accomplished at 
the last moment, His will must have been executed at every moment. 
Hereby Jesus makes His disciples see that, in their absence He has been 
laboring in the Father’s work, and that it is this labor which has revived 
Him. This is the idea which He is about to develop, by means of an 
image which is furnished Him by the present situation. 

Vv. 35, 36. “Say ye not that there are yet? four months, and the harvest 
cometh. Behold I say unto you: Lift wp your eyes, and look on the fields, for 
they are white for the harvest. 36. Already even‘ he that reapeth receiveth wages, 
and gathereth fruit unto eternal life, that both® he that soweth and he that reap- 
eth may rejoice together.” The following verses (35-38) have presented such 
difficulties to interpreters, that some have supposed that they should be 
transposed by placing vv. 87, 38 before ver. 36 (B. Crusius). Weiss has 


1 Instead of mow which T. R. reads with 11 = rerpapnvos. 


Mjj. [including 8), Mnn.; Vss., wornow is read 4T. R. reads cat before o bepigwv with 13 Mjj., 
inB DK LT, Orig. (three times). omitted by 8 BC D LT», Italia.; Orig. 

2 Er is wanting in D L 1, 60 Mnn.; Syrevr; 5 The xa afteriva is rejected by BC L T> 
Orig. (sometimes). U, Orig. (four times). 


3T. R.: terpaxnvoy with II only, instead of 


CHAP. IV. 33-36. 435 


supposed that ver. 35 originally belonged to another context. It must be 
admitted that the interpretations proposed by Tnicke, de Wette, Meyer, and 
Tholuck are not adapted to remove the difficulties. Some see in them a 
prophecy of the conversion of the Samaritan people, related in Acts Vil. ; 
others apply them even to the conversion of the entire Gentile world, and 
especially to the apostolate of St. Paul. In that case, it is not surprising 
that their authenticity should be suspected! If the words of vv. 36 ff., have 
no direct connection with the actual circumstances, how can we connect 
them with those of ver. 35, which, according to Liicke and Meyer them- 
selves, can only refer to the arrival of the inhabitants of Sychar in the 
presence of Jesus? From a word stamped with the most perfect appro- 
priateness, Jesus would suddenly pass to general considerations respecting 
the propagation of the Gospel. So de Wette, perceiving the impossibility 
of such a mode of speaking on Jesus’ part, has, contrary to the evidence, 
resolutely denied the reference of ver. 35 to the arrival of the inhabitants 
of Sychar. This general embarrassment seems to us to proceed from the 
fact that the application of Jesus’ words to the actual case has not been 
sufficiently apprehended and kept in mind. They have thus been de- 
spoiled of their appropriateness. A friendly and familiar conversation 
has been converted into a solemn sermon. 

Ver. 35 is joined with ver. 30 precisely as ver. 31 is with ver. 27. 
Jesus gives His disciples to understand, as already appeared from His 
answer (ver. 34), that a scene is occurring at this moment of which they 
have not the least idea: while they are thinking only of the preparation 
of a meal to be taken, behold a harvest already fully ripe, the seeds of 
which have been sown in their absence, is prepared for them. Jesus Him- 
self is, as it were, the point of union between the two scenes, altogether 
foreign to each other, which are passing around His person: that in which 
the disciples and that in which the Samaritans are, with Himself, the 
actors.— Lightfoot, Tholuck, Liicke, de Wette find a general maxim, a proverb, 
in the first words of ver. 835: When a man has once sowed, he must still 
wait four months for the time when he can reap—that is to say, the fruits 
of any work whatever are not gathered except after long waiting (2 Tim. 
1. 6). But in Palestine not four, but six months separate the sowing (end 
of October) from the reaping (middle of April). Besides, the adverb érc 
(there are yet) would not suit a proverb; the words: since the sowing, 
would have been necessary. Finally, why put this proverb especially into 
the mouth of the Apostles (you), rather than in that of men in general? 
There is then here a reflection which Jesus ascribes to His disciples 
themselves.—Between Jacob’s well, at the foot of Gerizim, and the village 
of Aschar, at the foot of Ebal, far on into the plain of Mukhna, there 
stretch out vast fields of wheat. As they beheld the springing verdure on 
this freshly sown soil, they no doubt said to one another: we must wait 
. yet four months till this wheat shall be ripe! From this little detail we 
must conclude that this occurred four months before the middle of April, 
thus about the middle of December, and that Jesus had consequently 
remained in Judea from the feast of the Passover until the close of the 


4356 _ FIRST PART. 


year, that is, eight full months.—The words: You say, contrast the 
domain of nature to which this reflection of the disciples applies, to the 
sphere of the Spirit in which Jesus’ thought is moving. In that sphere, 
indeed, the seed is not necessarily subject to such slow development. It 
can sometimes germinate and ripen as if inan instant. The proof of this 
is before their eyes at this very moment: idot (behold)! This word directs 
the attention of the disciples to a spectacle which was wholly unexpected 
and even incomprehensible to their minds, that of the Samaritans who 
are hastening across the valley towards Jacob’s well.—I say unto you: I 
who have the secret of what is taking place. The act of raising the eyes 
and looking, to which He invites them, is, according to de Wette, purely 
spiritual ; Jesus would induce them to picture to themselves beforehand 
through faith, the future conversion of this people (comp. Acts vili.). But 
the imperative, Oedcacbe (look), must refer to an object visible at that very 
moment. And what meaning is to be given to the figure of four months ? 
The fact to which these words refer, therefore, can only be the arrival of 
the people of Sychar. We understand, then, the use of the imperfect 
they were coming (ver. 30), which formed a picture and left the action incom- 
plete. These eager souls who hasten towards Him disposed to believe— 
this is the spectacle which Jesus invites His disciples to behold. He pre- 
sents these souls to them under the figure of a ripening harvest, which it 
only remains to gather in. And, as He thinks of the brief time needed 
by Him to prepare such a harvest in this place, until now a stranger to the 
kingdom of God, He is Himself struck by the contrast between the very 
long time (five to six months), which is demanded by the law of natural 
vegetation, and the rapid development which the divine seed can have in 
a moment, in the spiritual world; and, as an encouragement for His dis- 
ciples in their future vocation, He points out to them this difference. The 
76 (already), might be regarded as ending ver. 85. ‘They are white for 
the harvest already.’ This word would thus form the counterpart of 
ért (yet), at the beginning of the verse; comp. 1 John iv. 8, where 767 is 
placed, in the same way, at the end of the sentence. This word, however, 
becomes still more significant, if it is placed, as we have placed it in the 
translation, at the opening of the following verse : #67 kai (already even). This 
is acknowledged by Keil, who rightly observes that in this way also already 
forms a contrast to yet. 

There is, indeed, between ver. 35 and ver. 36, a climactic relation which 
betrays an increasing exaltation. “It is true,” says Jesus, “that already 
the harvest is ripe, that at this very hour the reaper has only to take his 
sickle and reap, in order that both the sower and the reaper may in this 
case, at least, celebrate together the harvest-feast.” If such is the mean- 
ing, the authenticity of kai, and (after 767), is manifest, and Origen, with 
the Alexandrian authorities in his train, is found, once more, to have been 
an unfortunate corrector. After having connected 767 (already), with the 
preceding sentence, he rejected the «ai (and or even), in order to make of 
ver. 36, instead of an expression full of appropriateness and charm, a 
general maxim. The reaper, according to ver.38, must denote the apostles. 


CHAP. IV. 35, 36. 437 


The expression, puofdv AauBavew (to receive wages), describes the joy with 
which they are to be filled when gathering all these souls and introducing 
them into the kingdom of heaven. This expression (receive wages) is ex- 
plained by ouvvayew kaprév (to gather fruit). Perhaps there is a reference to 
the act of baptism (ver. 2), by which these new brethren, the believing 
Samaritans, are about to be received by the disciples into the Messianic 
community. And why must the reaper set himself at work without 
delay? Because there is something exceptional to happen on this day, 
iva (in order that). God has intended in this circumstance to bring to pass 
a remarkable thing, namely: that both the sower and the reaper may 
once rejoice together. Those who apply the figure of the harvest to the 
future conversion of the Samaritans by the apostles, or to that of the Gen- 
tile world by St. Paul, are obliged to refer the common joy of the sower 
(Jesus), and the reaper (the apostles), to the heavenly triumph in which the 
Lord and His servants will rejoice together in the fruit of their labor. 
But, first, this interpretation breaks all logical connection between ver. 
35 and ver. 86. How pass directly from this spectacle of the Samaritans 
who hasten to Him to the idea of the future establishment of the Gospel 
in their country or in the world? Then, the present yaipy (may rejoice), 
refers naturally to a present joy, contrary to Meyer. Luthardt seeks to escape 
the difficulty by giving to duoi (together), the sense, not of a simultaneous joy, 
but of a common joy, which is, of course, impossible. This sense of the adverb 
would, moreover, suppress the idea which constitutes the beauty of this 
expression, the simultaneousness of the joy of the two laborers. Jesus 
recognizes in what takes place at this moment, a feast which the Father 
has prepared for Him, and which He, the sower, is about to enjoy at the 
same time with His disciples, the reapers. In Israel Jesus has sowed, but 
He never has had the joy of being Himself present at a harvest. The in- 
gathering will one day take place, no doubt, but when He will be no longer 
there. Here, on the contrary, through His providential meeting with - 
this woman, through her docility and the eagerness of this population 
which hastens to Him, He sees the seed spring up and ripen in a moment, 
so that the harvest can be gathered, and He, the sower, may, at least once 
in His life, participate in the harvest-feast. This simultaneousness of joy, 
altogether exceptional, is strongly brought out by the éuoi (together), but 
also by the double xai (“ both the sower and the reaper’’), and by the 77 
(already), at the beginning of the clause. To understand fully the mean- 
ing of this gracious expression, we must remember that the Old Testa- 
ment established a contrast between the function of the sower (united with 
that of the laborer), and the office of the reaper. The first was regarded 
as a painful labor; Ps. cxxvi. 5,6: ‘Those who sow with tears... He 
who puts the seed in the ground shall go weeping...” The reaper’s 
task, on the contrary, was regarded as a joyous thing. ‘They shall reap 
with a song of triumph ... He shall return with rejoicing, when he shall 
bring back his sheaves.” On this day, by reason of the ‘rapidity with 
which the seed has germinated and ripened, the labor of the seed sowing 
meets the joyous shouts of the harvest. Herein is the explanation of the 


438 FIRST PART. 


construction by which the verb yaipy is much more closely connected, in 
the Greek sentence, with the first subject 6 oveipwr, the sower, than with the 
second 6 Oepifwr, the reaper: “that the sower may rejoice at the same time 
with the reaper.” 

Weiss refers the in order that to the intention of the reaper, who, being 
in the service of the same landholder as the sower, wishes that the latter 
also may rejoice with him. The idea, if we thoroughly understand him, 
is that the disciples were to reap in their future ministry, and this in 
order that Jesus may rejoice in heaven, at the same time that they rejoice 
on earth. But where has Jesus ever given to His disciples such a motive 
as this? And in what connection would this expression stand with the 
present case? 

Vv. 37,38. “ For herein is the saying* true: The sower is one and the reaper 
another. 38. I sent? you to reap that whereon ye have not labored ; other men 
labored, and ye are entered into their labor.’ According to Tholuck, Jesus is 
grieved at the thought that He is not Himself to be present at the con- 
version of the Gentiles, after having prepared the way for it, and to this 
point it is that the proverb refers. Astié appears to be of the same opinion. 
Westcott thinks that Jesus prepares the apostles for the future disappoint- 
ments in the apostleship. They would then be the sowers who do not 
reap, while the whole context proves that only Jesus can be so. Weiss: 
In this region of the spiritual harvest it is not as in ordinary harvests, 
where the sower is often the same as the reaper. But then the origin of 
the common maxim which Jesus quotes is not explained, for it expresses 
just the contrary of what would most frequently be the case in life. 
Then, this sense of é rotrw, “in the spiritual domain,” is hardly natural. 
This form of expression has rather a logical sense: “ In this,” that is, “in 
that you reap to-day what has been sown in your absence and without 
your knowledge” (ver. 36): thus is the common saying verified. or if 
this proverb is false in the sense which is ordinarily assigned to it, namely, 
that he who does the main part of the labor is rarely the one who gathers 
the fruit of it (an accusation against Providence), it is nevertheless true 
in this respect, that there is a distinction of persons between him who 
has the charge of sowing and him who has the mission of reaping. This 
distinction was at the foundation (for) of the saying in ver. 86, since the 
community of joy declared in that verse rests upon the duality of persons 
and offices affirmed by the proverb ver. 87: “one... another... .”— 
"AAnfivéc, not in the sense of aA7%c, veritable, which says truth, but in the 
ordinary Johannean sense: which answers to the idea of the thing; thus: 
The or (without the 6) a saying which is the true maxim to be pro- 
nounced. This distinction, of which they have this day the evidence, 
between him who sows and him who reaps—on this it is that the whole 
activity to which Jesus has called them will rest: such is the idea of ver. 38. 

Ver. 38. As preachers, the apostles will do nothing but reap that which 


1The article o before adnéivos is rejected 28 D read ameoradAxa, instead of amecretAa. 
by BC K LA some Mnn. Heracleon, Orig. 


CHAP. Iv. 37, 38. 439 


has been painfully sown by others. These last are, undoubtedly, John the 
Baptist and Jesus Himself, those two servants who, after having painfully 
ploughed the furrow, have watered with their blood the seed which they 
had deposited in it. Only there is ordinarily a misapprehension of the 
allusion which Jesus makes to the particular fact which has given occasion 
to these words, and which is, as it were, an illustration of them. “ That 
will happen in all your career which is occurring to-day.” I have sent you 
to reap: Jesus had done this by calling them to the apostleship (vi. 70; 
Luke vi. 13).—That on which you have not labored : This harvest in Samaria 
—they have not prepared it, any more than they have prepared that 
which they will reap afterwards in preaching the Gospel. Others have 
labored : in the present case, Jesus and the Samaritan woman—the one by 
His word, the other by her eager hastening. What an enigma for the 
disciples—this population hastening to Jesus to surrender themselves to 
His divine influence,—and, what is more, Samaritans! What has taken 
place in their absence? Who has prepared such a result ? Who has sown 
this sterile ground? Jesus seems to rejoice in their surprise. And it is, 
no doubt, with a friendly smile that He throws out to them these myste- 
rious words: Others labored. They may see here an example of what they 
will afterwards experience: In all their ministry nothing different will 
occur. Commentators discuss the question whether, by this word others, 
Jesus designates Himself alone (Liicke, Tholuck, de Wette, Meyer and Weiss), 
taking others as the plural of category ; or Himself and the prophets, includ- 
ing John the Baptist (Keil) ; or all these personages except Jesus ( Olshausen). 
Westcott applies this word others to all the servants of God in the Old Testa- 
ment (perhaps with an allusion to Josh. xxiv. 18). The disciples have 
entered into the work of their predecessors through their fruitful ministry 
in Judea (ver. 2). But to what end say all this precisely in Samaria? 
The two most curious explanations are certainly those of Baur and Hil- 
genfeld. According to the first, by the term others, Jesus designates the 
evangelist Philip (Acts viii.), and by the reapers, the apostles, Peter and 
John, in the story in Acts viii. 15. To the view of the second, the term 
others designates St. Paul, and the reapers are the Twelve, who seek to 
appropriate to themselves the fruit of his labor among the Gentiles. On 
these conditions, one might wager that he could find anything in any text 
whatever. These forced meanings andthe grave critical consequences 
which are drawn from them, arise in large measure from the fact that the 
wonderful appropriateness of these words of Jesus, as He applied them 
to the given situation, has not been apprehended. 

Jesus is thinking undoubtedly on His own work and that of John, and 
the pérfect: you are entered, is indeed that which is ordinarily understood 
by it, a prophetic anticipation; but this form can be well explained only 
by means of a present fact which suggests it. We discover here, 
with Gess, the contrast between the manner in which Jesus regarded His 
work and the idea which the forerunner had formed of it beforehand. 
“For the latter the time of the Messiah was the harvest; Jesus, on the 
contrary, here regards the days of His flesh asa mere time of sowing.” 


440 FIRST PART, 


We can understand how it must have been more and more difficult for 
John to bring his thought into accord with the work of Jesus. 

The heavenly joy which fills the Lord’s heart throughout this section 
has its counterpart only in the passage, Luke x. 17-24. Here it even 
assumes a character of gaiety. Is it John’s fault, if Renan finds in the 
Jesus of the fourth Gospel only a heavy metaphysician ? 


IlI.—Jesus and the Samaritans: vv. 89-42. 


Vv. 89-42. “ Now many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him} 
because of the word of the woman who testified: He told me all things that? I 
have done. 40. When, therefore, the Samaritans came unto him, they besought 
him to abide with them; and he abode there* two days. 41. And many more 
believed on him because of his word. 42. And they said to the woman: No 
longer because of thy saying * do we believe ; for we have heard him ourselves,® 
and we know that this is indeed the Saviour of the world.”® Here now is the 
harvest-feast announced in ver. 86: The sower rejoices with the reapers. 
This time passed at Sychar leaves an ineffaceable impression on the hearts 
of the apostles, and the sweetness of this recollection betrays itself in the 
repetition of the words two days, in the fortieth and forty-third verses. Aé, 
now, resumes the course of the narrative after the digression in vy. 31-38. 
What a difference between the Samaritans and the Jews! Here a miracle 
of knowledge, without éclat, is enough to dispose the hearts of the people 
to come to Jesus, while in Judea eight months of toil have not procured 
for him one hour of such refreshment. 

The thirty-ninth verse has shown us the first degree of faith: The coming 
to Jesus, as the result of testimony. The fortieth and forty-first verses pre- 
sent the higher degree of faith, its development through personal contact 
with Jesus. 

Ver. 41 marks a two-fold advance, one in the number of believers, the 
other in the nature of their faith. This latter advance is expressed in the 
words: Because of His word, contrasted with the words: Because of the 
woman’s story (ver. 39); it is reflectively formulated in the declaration of 
ver. 42. The Samaritans reserve the more grave term Aéyoc for the word 
of Jesus; they apply to the talk of the woman the term Aadia, which has 
in it, undoubtedly, nothing contemptuous (vill. 48, where Jesus applies it 
to His own discourses), but which denotes something more outward, a 
mere report, a piece of news. The verb axyxdapyev, we have heard, has in the 
Greek no object; the idea is concentrated in the subject airoi: “We have 
ourselves become hearers ;”” whence follows: “And as such we know.” The 
reading of the Sinaitic MS.: “ We have heard from him (from his mouth) 


1 Italia Orig., omit evs avrov (on him). Italia ony waptvprav. 
2s BC L Italia Syr. Cop. read a instead of 5 Syreur add map avrov (from him). 
oga. 616 Mjj., most of the Mnn., Itlia Syrsch add, 
38 Syr.: map’ avtots (with them), instead of | with the T. R., o xpioros. These words are 
exe (there). rejected by & BC TT», some Mnn., Itplerique 


4Instead of anv AaAcay B: AcAtay gov; ND = —~Vulg. Cop., Syreur Orig. Iren. Heracleon. 


a 


CHAP. Iv. 39-42. 44] 
and we know that... ,” would give to the following profession the 
character of an external and slavish repetition, opposed to the spirit of the 
narrative: The expression: The Saviour of the world seems to indicate an 
advance in the notion of the Messiah in these Samaritans. The question 
is of salvation, and no longer merely of teaching as in ver. 25. This 
expression is, perhaps, connected with the word of Jesus to the woman 
(ver. 22), which Jesus must have developed to them: “Salvation is from 
the Jews.” Tholuck and Liicke suspect the historical truth of this term 
Saviour of the world, as too universalistic in the mouth of these Samaritans. 
By what right? Did not these people possess in their Pentateuch the 
promise of God to Abraham: “All the families of the earth shall be blessed in 
thy seed,” to which Jesus might have called their attention? And had they 
not just been, during those two days, in direct contact with the love of the 
true Christ, so opposite to the particularistic arrogance of Jewish Pharisa- 
ism? The Alexandrian authorities reject the words 6 ypvoréc, the Christ. 
Undoubtedly there might be seen in them the seal of the union announced 
_ by Jesus (vy. 23, 24) between the Samaritans (the Saviour of the world) and 
the Jews (the Christ). But it’ is easier to understand how this term may 
have been added, than how it could have been rejected. 

The eager welcome which Jesus found among the Samaritans is an 
example of the effect which the coming of Christ should have produced 
among His own. The faith of these strangers was the condemnation of 
Israel’s unbelief. It was, undoubtedly, under this impression that J esus, 
after those two exceptional days in His earthly existence, resumed His 
journey to Galilee. 


THIRD SECTION. 
IV. 43-54. 
JESUS IN GALILEE. 


In Judea, unbelief had prevailed. In Samaria, faith had just appeared. 
Galilee takes an intermediate position. Jesus is received there, but by reason 
of His miracles accomplished at Jerusalem, and on condition of responding 
immediately to this reception by new prodigies. The following narrative 
(comp. ver. 48) furnishes the proof of this disposition of mind. Such is the 
import of this narrative in the whole course of the Gospel. 

Vv. 48-45 describe the general situation. Then, on this foundation 
there rises the following incident (vv. 46-54). We may compare here 
the relation of the conversation with Nicodemus to the general represen- 
tation in ii. 23-25, or that of the last discourse of the forerunner to the 
representation in ili, 22-24. 


1. Vv. 438-45. 


Vv. 43-45. “After these two days, he departed thence and went away? into 
Galilee. 44. For Jesus Himself had declared that a prophet has no honor in 


18 BC D T> Itplerique Syreur Cop. Orig. omit the words cat annAdev (went away) after exeer. 


442 FIRST PART. 


his own country. 45. When" therefore he came into Galilee, the Galileans re- 
ceived him, because they had seen all the things that he? did in Jerusalem, at 
the feast ; for they also went * to the feast.” This passage has from the begin- 
ning been a crux interpretum. How can John give as the cause (for, ver. 
44) of the return of Jesus to Galilee this declaration of the Lord “that no 
prophet is honored in his own country!” And how can he connect with 
this adage as a consequence (therefore, ver. 45) the fact that the Galileans 
gave Him an eager welcome? 1. Briickner and Luthardt think that Jesus 
sought either conflict (Briickner) or solitude (Luthardt). This would well 
explain the for of ver. 44. But it would be necessary to admit that the 
foresight of Jesus was greatly deceived (ver. 45), which is absolutely 
opposed to the particle oiv (therefore), which connects ver. 45 with the pre- 
ceding. Instead of therefore, but would have been necessary. Moreover, 
Jesus did not seek conflict, since He abandoned Judea in order to avoid 
it; still less solitude, for He wished to work. 2. Weiss, nearly like Briick- 
ner: Jesus leaves to His disciples the care of reaping joyously in Samaria 
afterwards; He Himself goes to seek the hard labor of the sower in Gali- 
lee. But the thought of the future evangelization of Samaria is alto- 
gether foreign to this passage (see above); and ver. 45 is opposed to this 
sense ; for it makes prominent precisely the fact that Jesus found in Gali- 
lee the most eager welcome. Weiss escapes this difficulty only by mak- 
ing the therefore of ver. 45 relate to ver. 43 and not to ver. 44, and by mak- 
ing it a particle designed to indicate the resumption of the narrative. But 
after the for of ver. 44, therefore has necessarily the argumentative sense. 
3. According to Liicke, de Wette and Tholuck, the for of ver. 44 is designed 
to explain, not what precedes, but the fact which is about to be announced, 
ver. 40.4 The sense would, thus, be: “Jesus had indeed declared . . na 
this indeed relating to the fact mentioned in ver. 45, that the Galileans no 
doubt received Him, but only because of the miracles of which they had 
been witnesses. But this very rare use of ydp is foreign to the New Tes- 
tament. This interpretation is hardly less forced than that of Kuinoel, 
who gives to for the sense of although, as also Ostervald translates. 4. 
Origen, Wieseler, Ebrard, Baur and Keil understand by idia rarzpic (his own 
country), Judea, as the place of Jesus’ birth. By this means, the two diffi- 
culties of the for and the therefore pass away at once. But common sense 
tells us that, in the maxim quoted by J esus, the word country must denote 
the place where the prophet has lived and where he has been known 
from infancy, and not that where he was merely born. It is, therefore, 
very evident that, in the thought of John, His own country is Galilee. 
5. Calvin, Hengstenberg and Biéumlein understand by his own country espe- 
cially Nazareth, in contrast with the rest of Galilee, and with Capernaum 
in particular where He went to make His abode. He came, not to Naza- 
reth, as might have been expected, but to Capernaum. (Comp. Mark vi. 


18 D read ws instead of ore (probably ac- 3 It. read eAnAvdecoav for nAdvov. 
cording to ver. 40). Comp. Tholuck, Commentary on the Ep. to 
2A BCL Orig. (4 times) read ova for a. the Rom. 5th ed. chap. ii. ver. 1. 


CHAP. IV. 43—45. 443 


1; Matt. xiii. 54-57; Luke iv. 16, 24.) Lange applies the term country to 
the whole of lower Galilee, in which Nazareth was included, in opposition 
to upper Galilee where Jesus went to fix His abode from this time. But 
how could Nazareth, or the district of Nazareth, be thus, without further 
explanation, placed outside of Galilee, or even in contrast with that prov- 
ince? It might still be comprehensible, if, in the following narrative, 
John showed us Jesus fixing His abode at Capernaum; but it is to Cana 
that He betakes Himself, and this town was very near to Nazareth. 6. 
Meyer seems to us quite near the truth, when he explains: Jesus, knowing 
well that a prophet is not honored in his own country, began by making 
Himself honored outside ef i, at Jerusalem (ver. 45); and thus it was that 
He returned now to Galilee with a reputation as a prophet, which opened 
for Him access to hearts in His own country. Reuss is disposed to hold 
the same relation of thought: “In order to be received in Galilee, He 
had been obliged first to make Himself acknowledged outside of it.” 

The complete explanation of this obscure passage follows, as in so many 
cases, from the relation of the fourth Gospel to the Synoptics. The latter 
make the Galilean ministry begin immediately after the baptism. But 
John reminds us here, at the time of Jesus’ settlement in Galilee, that 
Jesus had followed a course quite different from that which the earlier 
narratives seemed to attribute to Him. The Lord knew that the place 
where a prophet has lived is the one where, as a rule, he has most diffi- 
culty in finding recognition. He began, therefore, by working at Jerusa- 
lem and in Judea for quite a long time (almost a whole year: ver. 85), 
and it was only after this that He came in the strict sense to begin His 
ministry in Galilee, that ministry with which the narrative of the other 
Gospels opens. The meaning, therefore, is: It was then, and only then, 
(not immediately after the baptism), that He commenced the Galilean 
work with which every one is acquainted. We find in this passage, as thus 
understood, a new confirmation of our remarks on iii. 24. If the for, ver. 
44, indicates the cause of Jesus’ mode of acting, the therefore, ver. 45, 
brings out in relief the joyful result and serves thus to justify the wisdom 
of the course pursued. The Galileans who had seen Him at work on the 
grand theatre of the capital, made no difficulty now in welcoming Him. 
The words kai az7avev, and went.away, are rejected by the Alexandrian 
authorities; perhaps they were added from ver. 18. 

Ver. 44. Avrdc, he, the same who apparently was acting in an opposite 
way. The solution of the contradiction is given in ver. 45. ’Eyapripycev, 
testified, can here, whatever Meyer, Weiss, etc., may say, have only the 
sense of the pluperfect, like éroijcev and 729ov which follow. Itis difficult 
to believe, indeed, that John quotes here, for the purpose of explaining 
the conduct of Jesus, a declaration which was uttered at an epoch much 
farther on, like that of Mark vi. 4. Comp. Luke iy. 24, which assigns to 
this saying a much earlier date. The idea of the quoted proverb is that 
one is less disposed to recognize a superior being in a fellow countryman, 
very nearly connected with us, than in a stranger who is clothed, to our 
view, in a veil of mystery. But after that thissame man has brought 


444 FIRST PART. 


himself to notice elsewhere and on a wider theatre, this glory opens the 
way for Him to the hearts of His own fellow-citizens. That moment had 
arrived for Jesus; this is the reason why He now braves the vulgar preju- 
dice which He had Himself pointed out; and of which we have seen an 
instance in the reply of Nathanael, i. 47. And the success justifies this 
course. The words ravra éwpaxérec, having seen . . . , explain the édéZavro, 
they received : there is undoubtedly an allusion to ii. 28-25. This verse 
finds its commentary in Luke iv. 14,15: ‘And Jesus returned to Galilee in 
the power of the Spirit, and his fame spread abroad through all the region 
round about ; and He taught in their synagogues, being glorified by all.” 


2. Vv. 46-54. 


Vv. 46, 47. “He came; therefore, again to Cana of Galilee where he had 
changed ' the water into wine.  And* there was at Capernaum® a king’s offi- 
cer, whose son was sick. 47. He, having heard that Jesus had come from Judea 
into Galilee, went unto him and besought him* that he would come down and 
heal his son ; for he was at the point of death.” Therefore connects with ver. 
3 and ver. 45. Jesus directed His course towards Cana, not, as Weiss 
thinks, because His family had settled there (comp. ii. 12 with Matt. iv. 
13), but undoubtedly because it was there that He could hope to find the 
soil best prepared, by reason of His previous visit. This is perhaps what 
St. John means to intimate by the reflection, “ where he had changed the water 
into wine.” His coming made a sensation, and the news promptly spread 
as far as Capernaum, situated seven or eight leagues eastward of Cana. 
The term Saovdcxéc, in Josephus, denotes a public functionary, either civil 
or military, sometimes also an employé of the royal house. This last 
meaning is here the most natural one. Herod Antipas, who reigned in 
Galilee, had officially only the title of tetrarch. But in the popular lan- 
guage that of King, which his father had borne, was given him. It is not 
impossible that this nobleman of the king’s household may have been 
either Chuza, “ Herod’s steward” (Luke viii. 3), or Manaen, his “ foster- 
brother ” (Acts iii. 1). By its position at the end of the clause, the defin- 
ing expression at Capernaum (which refers, not to was sick, but to there was) 
strongly emphasizes the notoriety which the return of Jesus had speedily 
acquired in Galilee. | 

Ver. 48. “Jesus therefore said to him: Unless ye see signs and wonders ye 
will in no wise believe.” This reply of Jesus is perplexing; for it seems to 
suppose that this man asked for the miracle to the end of believing, which 
is certainly not the case. But the difficulty is explained by the plurals, 
ye see, ye will believe, which prove that this expression is not the reply to 
the father’s request, but a reflection which He makes on occasion of that 
request. It is true, He addresses the remark to the man who is the occa- 


1N reads nd@Oav, erornoav; “They came, they 38 BCD T? Itpleria; Kadapvaovp. 
had changed.” (!) 4s BCD LT? Italia. omit avrov. 
38 DLT» It.: nv de instead of nat nv. 


CHAP. Iv. 46—53. 445 


sion of it (xpd¢ avrév), but He speaks thus, with reference to all the Gali- 
lean people, whose moral tendency this man represents, to His view, at 
this moment. Indeed, the disposition which Jesus thus meets at the mo- 
ment when He sets foot again on Israelitish soil, is the tendency to see in 
Him only a thaumaturge (worker of miracles); and He is so much the 
more painfully affected since He has just passed two days in Samaria, in 
contact with an altogether opposite spirit. There, it was as the Saviour of 
souls that He was welcomed. Here, it is bodily cures which are imme- 
diately asked of Him. He seems to be fit for nothing but to heal. And 
He is obliged to confess—such is the true meaning of His word—that if 
He refuses to play this part, there is reason to fear that no one will be- 
lieve, or rather, according to the slightly ironical turn of expression of 
which He makes use (ov xf), “that it is not to be feared that any one will 
believe.” There is likewise the expression of a painful feeling in the 
accumulation of the two nearly synonymous terms oyueia and répara, signs 
and wonders. The first designates the miracle as related to the fact of the 
invisible world which it manifests; the second characterizes it as related 
to external nature, whose laws it sets at defiance. The latter term, there- 
fore, brings out with more force the sensible character of the supernatural 
manifestation. The meaning, therefore, is: “ You must have signs; and 
you are not satisfied unless these signs have the character of wonders.” 
Some have found in idyre, ye see, an allusion to the request which is ad- 
dressed to Him to go personally to the sick person, which proves, it is 
said, that the father wishes to see the healing with his own eyes. But in 
that case idyre ought to stand at the beginning; and the meaning is forced. 

Vv. 49, 50. “ The officer says to him: Sir, come down ere my child die. 
50. Jesus says to him: Go thy way, thy son liveth. And? the man believed 
the word which Jesus had? said to him, and he went his way.” The father 
has well understood that the remark of Jesus is not an answer, and con- 
sequently not a refusal. He renews his request, employing the term of 
affection 7d radiov pov, my little child, which renders his request more touch- 
ing. Jesus yields to the faith which breathes in his prayer, but in such a 
way as immediately to elevate the faith to a higher degree. There are at 
once in this answer: “ Go thy way, thy son liveth,” a granting of the request 
and a partial refusal, which is a test. The healing is granted; but with- 
out Jesus leaving Cana; He wishes this time to be believed on His word. 
Until now the father had believed on the testimony of others. Now his 
faith is to rest on a better support, on the personal contact which he has 
just had with the Lord Himself. For the term racdiov Jesus substitutes 
vide, son. This is the term of dignity; it exalts the worth of the child, as 
representing the family. The father lays hold by faith upon the promise 
of Jesus, that is to say, on Jesus Himself in His word; the test is sustained. 

Vv. 51-53. “As he was now going down, his servants met* him, and told 


1A and some Mnn. read wow instead of 4Instead of arnvrncavy, 8% BCD KL 2 
matdiov; & macda. Mnn. read umnvrycayv. 
?Ka: is wanting in % B D Italia Vulg. 58 D read nyyetAay for amnyyetAarv. 


38: rov Ingov instead of wm... . Ingous. 


446 | FIRST PART. 


him saying:* Thy son liveth.? 52. So he inquired of them the hour when he 
began to mend. They said to him: yesterday,’ at the seventh hour, the fever 
lefthim. 583. The father, therefore, knew that it was at that hour* in which 
Jesus had said to him :° Thy son liveth. And he believed, himself and all his 
house.” ‘The servants, in their report, use neither the term of affection 
(xadiov), which would be too familiar, nor that of dignity (vidéc), which 
would not be familiar enough, but that of family life : maic, the child, which 
the T. R. rightly gives. The selected term xouérepov, suits well the 
mouth of a man of rank. It is the expression of a comparative improve- 
ment; as we say, finely. The seventh hour, according to the ordinary 
Jewish mode of reckoning, denotes one o’clock in the afternoon (see oni. 
40). But if it was at that hour that Jesus Had given his answer to the 
father, how was it that he did not return to his home on the same day ? 
For seven leagues only separate him from his house. Those also 
who, like Keil, Westcott, etc., think that John used, in general, the mode 
of reckoning the hours which was usual in the Roman courts, support their 
view, with a certain probability, by our passage. Nevertheless, even on 
the supposition that X6éc, yesterday, proves that it was really the following 
day, in the ordinary sense of the word, this delay may be explained either 
by the necessity of letting his horses rest or by the fear of traveling by 
night. But the term yesterday does not even compel us to suppose that a 
night has elapsed since the healing of the child. For as the day, accord- 
ing to the Hebrews, closed at sunset, the servants might, some hours after 
this, say yesterday. 

At this moment the faith of this man rises, at last, to a higher degree, 
that of personal experience. Hence the repetition of the word: and he 
believed; comp. ii. 11. The entire household is borne on by this move- 
ment of faith impressed on the heart of their head. 

Ver. 54. “ Jesus did, again, this second sign, on coming out of Judea into 
Galilee.’ The word deirepov cannot be an adverb: for the second time ; this 
would be a useless synonym for rddw, again. It is, then, an adjective, 
and, notwithstanding the absence of an article, a predicative adjective. “ He 
did again (rdi.v) this miracle, and that as a second one.” There is evidently 
something strange in this somewhat extreme manner of expressing him- 
self: again and as a second. There is an indication here which betrays 
one of those disguised intentions which are so frequent in the fourth Gos- 
pel. The expression employed here can only be explained by closely 
connecting the verb did with the participle coming into, which follows. 
Other miracles in large numbers had occurred between the first act at 
Cana, ii. 11 and this one; this was not therefore the second, speaking ab- 
solutely. Two ideas are united in this clause: He did a second miracle at 
Cana, and He did it again on coming from Judea into Galilee. In other 
terms: Also this second time Jesus signalized His return to Galilee, as the 
first time, by a new miracle done at Cana. It will be in vain to refuse to 


18 D b omit Aeyorrtes. 3X6es in 11 Mjj., exOes in 8. 
2D K LUIL. Syr. read vos instead of mats. 4 BC reject the first ev. 
NA BC: avrov instead of gov. 58 A BCL omit ov. 


CHAP. Iv. 54. 447 


acknowledge this intention of the evangelist. It is a fact, that John shows 
himself concerned to distinguish these first two returns which the tradi- 
tion had confounded. He makes prominent the miracle of chap. il. and 
this one as the two enduring monuments of that distinction. 


Treneus, Semler, de Wette, Baur, Ewald, Weiss, unhesitatingly identify this mira- 
cle with the healing of the Gentile centurion’s servant, Matt. viii. 5 and Luke vii. 
3. As to the differences of details, they give the preference, some to the account 
of the Synoptics, others to that of John. In the two cases, the cure is wrought at 
a distance ; this is all that the two events have in common. The charge of unbe- 
lief which, in the view of Weiss, is another common feature, on the contrary pro- 
foundly distinguishes them. For, in John, it is addressed to the people including 
the father, while in the Synopties it applies only to the nation from which the father 
is distinguished as the example of the most extraordinary faith of which Jesus has 
yet been witness. And yet here is thesame story! Moreover, all the details are 
different, even opposite. Here a father and his son, there a master and his servant. 
Here a Jew, there a Gentile. Here it is at Cana, there at Capernaum, that the 
event occurs. Here the father wishes Jesus to travel to the distance of six 
leagues ; there the centurion absolutely denies the intention of making Him come 
to his house, and this in the same city. Finally, as we have said; here is a sam- 
ple of the sickly faith of the Galileans; there an incomparable example of faith 
given by a Gentile to the whole people of Israel. If these two narratives refer to 
the same event, the Gospel history is thoroughly unsound. Weiss so clearly sees 
this alleged identity melt away in his hands, that he is obliged to bring in a third 
story, that of the healing of the epileptic child (Matt. xvii.), with which John 
blended the one which occupies our attention. 


This 54th verse closes the cycle began at ii. 12, as its counterpart ii. 11 
closed the cycle opened by i.19. Of these two cycles, the first recounts 
the manner in which Jesus passed from private life to His public minis- 
try: the latter relates the beginnings of His work. 

The first contains three groups of narratives: 1. The testimonies of John 
the Baptist; 2. The coming to Jesus of His first disciples; 3. The wedding 
at Cana. The second shows us Jesus: 1. In Judea; 2. In Samaria; 3. In 
Galilee. Each particular narrative is preceded by a short preamble in 
which the general situation is sketched (ii. 12, 18; ii. 28-25; ili. 22-24; iv. 
1-8 and iv. 48-45). The revelation of Jesus goes forward in a continuous 
way: at the Jordan, at Cana, in the temple, with Nicodemus, in Samaria, 
in Galilee. But the national unbelief manifests itself: before it, He is 
obliged to retire from the temple to the city, from the city to the country, 
from Judea to Galilee. But, at the same time, faith comes to light and is 
developed: in all its integrity in the disciples; as a feeble glimmering in 
Nicodemus; dimmed by an intermingling of carnal elements in Galilee. 


SICOIN D2 Ad ©; 





THE DEVELOPMENT OF UNBELIEF IN ISRAEL. 
V. 1-XII. 50. 


Up to this point, decided faith and unbelief have been only exceptional 
phenomena; the masses have remained in a state of passive indifference 
or of purely outward admiration. From this time, the situation assumes 
a more determinate character. Jesus continues to make known the 
Father, to manifest Himself as that which He is for humanity. This rev- 
elation meets with increasing hostility; the development of unbelief, 
becomes the predominating feature of the history. Faith indeed still 
manifests itself partially. But, in comparison with the powerful and rapid 
current which bears on the leaders and the entire body of the nation, it is 
like a weak and imperceptible eddy. 

It is in Judea especially that this preponderant development of unbelief 
is accomplished. In Galilee opposition is, no doubt, also manifested ; but 
the centre of resistance is at Jerusalem. The reason of this fact is easy to 
be understood. In this capital, as well as in the province of Judea which 
depends on it, a well-disciplined population is found, whose fanaticism is 
ready to support its rulers in every most violent action which their hatred 
may undertake. Jesus Himself depicts this situation in the Synoptics by 
that poignant utterance: “It cannot be that a prophet perish out of. 
Jerusalem ” (Luke xiii. 33). 

This observation explains the relatively considerable place which the 
journeys to Jerusalem occupy in our Gospel. The general tradition, which 
forms the basis of the three Synoptical Gospels, was formulated with a view 
to the popular preaching, and to serve the ends of the apostolic mission ; 
consequently it set in relief the facts which were connected with the 
foundation of faith. What had not this issue had little importance for a 
narrative of this kind. Now, it was in Galilee, that province which was 
relatively independent of the centre, that the ministry of Jesus had espe- 
cially displayed its creative power and produced positive results. In this 
generally simple and friendly region, where Jesus found Himself no more 
in the presence of a systematic and powerfully organized resistance, He 
could preach as a simple missionary, give free scope to those discourses 
inspired by some scene of nature, to those happy and most appropriate 
words, to those gracious parables, to those teachings in connection with the 
immediate needs of human consciousness; in a word, to all those forms 

448 


v. 1-xu. 50. 449 


of discourse which easily become the subject of a popular tradition. There 
was little engaging in discussion, properly so-called, in this region, except 
with emissaries coming from Judea (Matt. xv. 1-12; Mark iil. 22; vii. 1; 
Luke v. 17, and vi. 1-7). 

At Jerusalem, on the other hand, the hostile element by which Jesus 
found Himself surrounded, forced Him into incessant controversy. In 
this situation, no doubt, the testimony which He was obliged to give for 
Himself took more energetic forms and a sterner tone. It became more 
theological, if we may so speak ; consequently less popular. This character 
of the Judean teaching, connected with:the almost complete failure of its 
results, was the occasion of the fact that the activity displayed at Jerusalem 
left scarcely any trace in the primitive oral tradition. It is for this reason, 
undoubtedly, that the visits to that capital almost entirely disappeared 
from the writings which contain it, our Synoptics. The Apostle John, who 
afterwards related the evangelical history, and who had in view, not the 
practical work of evangelization, but the preservation of the principal testi- 
monies which Jesus bore to Himself, as well as the representation of the 
unbelief and faith which these testimonies encountered, was necessarily 
led to draw the journeys to Jerusalem out of the background where they 
had been left. It was these visits in the capital which had prepared the 
way for the final catastrophe, that supreme event the recollection of which 
alone the traditional narrative had preserved. Each one of these journeys 
had marked a new step in the hardening of Israel. Designed to form! 
the bond between the Messianic bridegroom and bride, they had served, 
in fact, only to hasten that long and complete divorce between Jehovah 
and His people, which still continues to this hour. We can understand 
that, from the point of view of the fourth Gospel, the journeys to Jeru- 
salem must have occupied a preponderant place in the narrative. 

Let us cast a glance at the general course of the narrative in this part. 
It includes three cycles, having, each one, as its centre and point of de- 
parture, a great miracle performed in Judea: 1. The healing of the impo- 
tent man at Bethesda, chap. v.; 2. That of the one who was born blind, 
chap. ix.; 3. The resurrection of Lazarus, chap. xi. Each of these events, 
instead of gaining for Jesus the faith of those who are witnesses of it, be- 
comes in them the signal of a renewed outbreaking of hatred and unbe- 
lief. Jesus has characterized this tragic result by the reproach, full of 
sadness and bitterness (x. 32): “J have showed you many good works from my 
Father ; for which of them do ye stone me?” These are the connecting 
links of the narrative. Each one of these miraculous deeds is immedi- 
ately followed by a series of conversations and discourses in connection 
with the sign which has given occasion for them ; then, the discussion is 
suddenly interrupted by the voluntary removal of Jesus, to begin again 
in the following visit. Thus the strife which is entered upon in chap. v., 
on occasion of the healing of the impotent man,is resumed in the visit 
of Jesus at the feast of Tabernacles (chaps. vii. and viii.); thus also, the 
discourses which are connected with the healing of the one born blind are 
repeated, in part, and developed at the feast of dedication, in the second 

29 


450 SECOND PART. 


part of chap. x. This arises from the fact that Jesus is careful, each time, 
to leave Jerusalem before things have come to the last extremity. Herein 
is the reason why the conflict which has broken out gums. one visit 
re-echoes also in the following one. 

The following, therefore, is the arrangement of the narrative: First 
cycle: In chap. v., the strife, which had been vaguely hinted at in the 
first verses of chap. iv., commences in Judea in consequence of the healing 
of the impotent man; after this, Jesus withdraws into Galilee and allows 
the hatred of the Jews time to become calm. Butin Galilee also, He finds 
unbelief, only in a different form.: In Judea, they hate Him, they desire 
to put Him to death ; in Galilee, His discontented adherents confine them- 
selves to going away from Him (chap. vi.). There did not exist there the 
stimulant of active hatred, jealousy: unbelief arose only from the 
carnal spirit of the people, whose aspirations Jesus did not satisfy. With 
the journey to the feast of Tabernacles (chap. vii.), the conflict begun in 
chap. v. 1s resumed in Judea, and reaches in chap. viii. its highest degree 
of intensity. Such is the first phase (chaps. v.-vil.). Chap. ix. opens 
the second cycle. The healing of the one born blind furnishes new food 
for the hatred of the adversaries; nevertheless, in spite of their growing 
rage, the struggle already loses somewhat of its violence, because Jesus 
voluntarily withdraws from the field of battle. Up to this time, He had 
sought to act upon the hostile element; from this moment onward, He 
gives it over to itself. Only, in proportion as He breaks with the ancient 
flock, He labors to recruit the new one. The discourses which are con- 
nected with this second phase extend as far as the end of chap. x. The 
third cycle opens with the resurrection of Lazarus; this event brings to 
its highest point the rage of the Jews, and impels them to an extreme 
measure; they formally decree the death of Jesus; and, soon afterwards, 
His royal entrance into Jerusalem, at the head of His followers (chap. 
xii.), hastens the execution of this sentence. This last phase includes 
chaps. xi.-xii. 36. Here Jesus completely abandons Israel to its blindness, 
and puts an end to His public ministry: “And departing, He hid himself 
from them.” The evangelist pauses at this tragical moment, and, before 
continuing his narrative, he casts a retrospective glance on this mysterious 
fact of the development of Jewish unbelief, now consummated. He 
shows that this result had in it nothing unexpected, and he unveils the 
profound causes of it: xi. 37-50. 

Thus the dominant ideaand the course of this part, are distinctly out- 
lined— 

1. v.-vili.: The outbreak of the conflict ; 

2. ix.,x.: The growing exasperation of the Jews; 

8. xi., xii.: The ripe fruit of this hatred: the sentence of death for 
Jesus. 

The progress of this narrative is purely historical. The attempt, often 
renewed—even by Luthardt—to arrange this part systematically according 
to certain ideas, such as life, light and love, is incompatible with this course 
of the narrative which is so clearly determined by the facts. It is no less 


v. 1—x1r. 50. 451 


excluded by the following observations: The idea of life, which, according 
to this system, must be that of chaps. v. and vi., forms again the basis of 
chaps. x. and xi. In the interval (chaps. viii., ix.), the idea of light is the 
dominant one. That of love does not appear till chap. xiii., and this in an 
entirely different part of the Gospel. Divisions like these proceed from 
the laboratory of theologians, but they do not harmonize with the nature 
of apostolic testimony, the simple reflection of history. The real teaching 
of Jesus had in it nothing systematic; the Lord confined Himself to 
answering the given need, which was for Him, at each moment, the signal of 
the Father’s will. Ifin chap. v. He represents Himself as the one who has 
the power to raise from the dead, spiritually and physically, it is because 
He has just given life to the limbs of an impotent man. If in chap. vi, 
He declares Himself the bread of life, it is because He has just multiplied 
the loaves. If in chaps. vii. and viil., He proclaims Himself the living water 
and the light of the world, it is because the feast of Tabernacles has just 
recalled to all minds the scenes of the wilderness, the water of the rock 
and the pillar of fire. We must go with Baur, to the extent of claiming 
that the facts are invented in order to illustrate the ideas, or we must 
renounce the attempt to find a rational arrangement in the teachings of 
which these events are, each time, the occasion and the text. 


FIRST CYCLE. 
V.—VIII. 


This cycle contains three sections: 

1. Chap. v. The beginning of the conflict in Judea; 

2. Chap. vi. The crisis of faith in Galilee ; 

3. Chaps. vii., vill. The renewal and continuation of the conflict in 
Judea. 

From chap. v. to chap. villi. we must reckon a period of seven or 
eight months. Indeed, if we are not in error, the event related in chap. v. 
occurred at the feast of Purim, consequently in the month of March. 
The story of the multiplication of the loaves, chap. vi., transports us to 
the time of the Passover, thus to April; and ch. vii. to the feast of Taber- 
nacles, thus to October. If to this quite considerable period we add some 
previous months, which had passed since the month of December of the 
preceding year, when Jesus had returned to Galilee (iv. 35), we arrive at a 
continuous sojourn in that region of nearly ten months (December to 
October), which was interrupted only by the short journey to Jerusalem in 
chap. v. It is strange that of this ten months’ Galilean activity, John 
mentions only a single event: the multiplication of the loaves (chap. vi.). 
Is it not natural to conclude from this silence, that, in this space of time 
left by John as a blank, the greater part of the facts of the Galilean min- 
istry related by the Synoptics are to be placed. The multiplication of the 
loaves is, as it were, the connecting link between the two narratives. 


452 SECOND PART. 


FIRST SECTION. 
V. 1-47. 
Frrst OUTBREAK OF HATRED IN JUDEA. 


1. The miracle, occasion of the conflict: vv. 1-16; 2. The discourse of 
Jesus, commentary and defense of the miracle: vv. 17-47. 


1—The miracle: vv. 1-16. 


Ver. 1. “ After these things, there was a feast’ of the Jews, and Jesus went 
up to Jerusalem.” The connecting phrase pera raira, after these things, does 
not seem to us to indicate, notwithstanding the examples cited by Meyer, 
as immediate a succession as does pera tovro, after this. Whatever may be 
the feast to which we refer the event which is about to be related, it must 
have been separated by quite a long interval from the previous return. 
In fact, the feast which followed next after that return (in the course of 
December), that of the Dedication, at the end of this month, cannot be 
the one in question here. Jesus would not have returned to Judeaso soon 
after He had left it for the reason indicated in iv. 1. After this came the 
feast of Purim in March, then that of the Passover in April. If the article 
* before éopry, “the feast,” is read, the meaning is not doubtful; the latter 
feast is the one in question; for it was the principal one among the Jewish 
festivals, and the one best known to Greek readers (vi. 4). But why-should 
such a large number of documents have omitted the article, if it was 
authentic? We can much more easily understand the reason for its 
addition; it was supposed that the question was precisely of the Passover. 
If the article is rejected, not only is there no further evidence in favor of 
this feast, but it is even positively excluded. More than this, it would be 
excluded even with the article. For why should not John, who elsewhere 
names it distinctly, do the same here? Comp. ii. 13; vi. 4; xi. 55, ete. 
Moreover, immediately afterwards, the narrative speaks to us, vi. 4, of a 
Passover during which Jesus remains in Galilee. We should, therefore, 
be obliged to suppose that between chaps. v. and vi. a whole year elapsed, 
of which John does not say a single word—a very improbable supposition. 
Besides, in chap. vil. (vv. 19-24), Jesus reverts to the healing of the 
impotent man which is related in chap. v., for the purpose of justifying it; 
would He have proceeded thus with respect to it after an interval of more 
than a year? Chap. iv. (ver. 35) placed us in the month of December; 
chap. vi. (ver. 4) points to the month of April. Between these two dates, 
it is quite natural to think of the feast of Purim, which was celebrated in 
March. This feast had reference to the deliverance of the Jews by queen 
Esther. It was not, it is true, of Divine institution, like the three great 


1T, R. reads eopry (a feast} with AB DG K feast) is read by 8 CE F H LM ATI 50 Mnn. 
SU VI A Mnn. Ir. Or. Chrys. and Tisch. Cop. Sah. some Fathers, Tisch. (8th ed.) 
(ed. of 1859); the article before eoprn: (the 


CHAP. V. l. 453 


feasts ; but why should this fact have prevented Jesus from going to it, as 
He did to the feast of Dedication (chap. x.) which was in the same case? 
And the expression: a feast, is exactly explained by this circumstance. 
As it was much less known than the others, outside of the Jewish people, 
and as by reason of its political character it had lost all importance for 
the Christian Church, it was needless to name it. Against this feast is 
alleged that it was not specially celebrated at Jerusalem. It consisted, 
in fact, in the reading of the book of Esther in every synagogue, and 
at banquets which took place throughout the country. But Jesus may 
have gone to Judea at that time with the intention of remaining there 
until the Passover feast, which was to be celebrated soon afterwards. The 
conflict that occurred on occasion of the healing of the impotent man 
was that which forced Him to return sooner to Galilee. Although, there- 
fore, de Wette pronounces his verdict by declaring, “that there is not a 
single good reason to allege in favor of the feast of Purim,” it appears to 
me that everything speaks in favor of this interpretation, which is that of 
Hug, Olshausen, Wieseler, Meyer, Lange, Gess, Weiss, etc. Ireneus, Luther, 
Grotius, Lampe, Neander, Hengstenberg, etc., decide in favor of the Pass- 
over. Chrysostom, Calvin, Bengel, Hilgenfeld, etc., give the preference to 
Pentecost. The absence of the article and of a precise designation speak 
against the second supposition, as well as against the first. Besides, 
between y.1 (Pentecost) and vi. 4 (Passover of the following year), a 
period of more than ten months would have to be placed, respecting 
which John kept complete silence. Ebrard, Ewald, Lichtenstein, Riggen- 
bach (doubtfully), pronounce for the feast of Tabernacles. This supposi- 
tion is quite as improbable; for this feast is expressly named vii. 2: 7 
évpt TOV "Lovdaiwy, 4 oxyvornyia. Why should it not be named here, as 
well as there? Westcott thinks of the feast of trumpets, on the first of the 
month Tisri, which opened the civil year of the Hebrews. It is on this 
day that the Rabbis fix the creation of the world and the last judgment. 
This day was solemnly announced by the sound of the sacerdotal trumpets. 
But can we suppose that a whole year elapsed between chap. v. and chap. 
vii., where we find ourselves again in the month of October? . Liicke, de 
Wette, Luthardt, regard any determination of the point as impossible. 
This question has more importance than appears at the first glance. If 
we refer v. 1 to the feast of Purim, as we believe we should, the framework 
of the history of Jesus is contracted: two years and a half are sufficient 
to include all its dates: ii. 13 Passover (1st year); iv. 35, December (same 
year); v.1, Purim, March (2d year); vi. 4, Passover (April) ; vii. 1, Taber- 
nacles (October); x. 22, Dedication (December); xii. 1, Passover, April (3d 
year). If, on the other hand, v. 1 designates a Passover feast, or one of 
those which followed it in the Jewish year, we are necessarily led to ex- 
tend the duration of Jesus’ ministry to three years and a half. Gess places 
this journey of Jesus at the time of the mission of the Twelve in Galilee 
(Matt. xi. 1; Mark vi. 7); this circumstance would explain why Jesus re- 
paired to Judea alone or almost alone. This combination has nothing 
impossible in it (see on ver. 13). Has not Beyschlag good grounds for 


454 SECOND PART. 


alleging in favor of John’s narrative the very naturally articulated course 
of the history of Jesus which appears in it: Judea, chap. i.; Galilee, chap. 
li.a; Judea, chap. ii.b. iii.; Samaria, chap. iv.a; Galilee, chap. iv.b; Judea, 
chap. v.; Galilee, chap. vi.; Judea, chap. x., etc., in opposition to the 
strongly-marked contrast, without transition, which the Synoptical nar- 
rative presents: Galilee, Judea? 

Ver. 2. ‘ Now there is at Jerusalem, by! the sheep-gate,? a pool called* in 
Hebrew, Bethesda,* having five porches.” The Sinaitic MS. rejects the words 
éxi th, by the,and thus makes the adjective poBarixy, pertaining to sheep, 
the epithet of koAvu87Opa: the reservoir or the pool for sheep. This reading is 
too weakly supported to be adopted, even in the view of Tischendorf. We 
must, therefore, understand as the substantive belonging with the adjec- 
tive mpoBarixy, pertaining to sheep, one of the substantives, 72, gate, or 
ayopg, market. The passages in Nehemiah, iii. 1-32; xii. 39, where a sheep- 
gate is mentioned, favor the former of these two ellipses. In Neh. iii. 3, 
mention is made of a fish-gate as near the preceding; itis probable that 
these two gates derived their names from the adjacent markets. The 
sheep-gate must have been situated on the side of the valley of Jehosha- 
phat, on the east of the city. As Bovet says, “the small cattle which en- 
tered Jerusalem came there certainly by the east; for it is on this side that 
the immense pastures of the wilderness of Judea lie.” Riehm’s Dictionary 
also says: “ Even at the present day, it is through this gate that the Bedou- 
ins lead their flocks to Jerusalem for sale.” The sheep-gate, as Hengsten- 
berg observes, according to Neh. xii. 39, 40, must have been quite near the 
Temple; for it is from this that, in the ceremony of the inauguration of 
the walls, the cortege of priests entered immediately into the sacred in- 
closure. The gate, called at the present day St. Stephen’s, at the north- 
east angle of the Haram, answers to these data. M. de Sauley (Voyage au- 
tour de la mer Morte, t. Il. pp. 867, 368) holds, according to some passages 
of St. Jerome and of authors of the Middle Ages, that there were in this 
place two neighboring pools, and supplying, in thought, xoAvu87Apa, he ex- 
plains: “ Near the sheep-pool, there is the pool called Bethesda.” In spite of 
the triumphant tone ® with which this explanation is proposed, it is inad- 
missible. The expression of the evangelist, thus understood, would sup- 
pose this alleged sheep-pool, which is nowhere mentioned in the Old Testa- 
ment, to be known to his Greek readers. Meyer, accepting the reading of 
the Sinaitic MS. 16 Aeyduevov EBpacori ByOlada, explains: “ There is near the 


sheep-pool the place called in Hebrew, Bethzatha.” 


1 Instead of em, A DGL read ev. 

28 Vulg*ia. some Mnn. reject em ry. Syreur. 
Syrsh, Cyr. omit exe ty mpoBarcKy. 

3Instead of n emAeyouevn, % reads To Aeyo- 
mevov, D V Mnn. Aeyouern. 

4Instead of Bynéecda, 8 L 1 Mnn. read Byé- 
Ga8a Eus. Brngaéa, B. Vulg. BnO@cacda, D BedA- 
GeOa. 

5 The following are his expressions: “It is 
very curious to see how the commentators 


But a place so com- 


have made incredible efforts to understand 
this verse. ... They have all been equally 
happy in their suppositions; it was the word 
xoAuuByOpa, which needed to be understood, 
and all became clear.” M.de Sauley holds 
that, according to Brocardus, the second pool 
was situated west of the first. But the pas- 
sage quoted would rather prove that it must 
have been to the north. 


CHAP. v. 2. 455 


pletely unknown as the sheep-pool could not be indicated as a determin- 
ing-point to Greek readers. The feminine éyovca which follows is, besides, . 
hardly favorable to this reading, which is only an awkward correction, 
like so many others which are met with in this manuscript. Weiss makes 
koavuBAOpa, a dative, and thinks that the best subject to be supplied is oixig, 
the building Bethesda ; this ellipsis seems to me very unnatural. Bengel 
and Lange have concluded from the present éor:, there 1s, that the Gospel 
was written before the destruction of Jerusalem. But this present may 
be inspired by the vividness of recollection. Besides, an establishment of 
this kind belongs to the nature of the place and may survive a catastro- 
phe. Tobler (Denkbliitter, pp. 53 ff.), has proved that, in the fifth century, 
the porches here spoken of were still pointed out. Hengstenberg concludes 
from the ézi, upon, in the word émAeyouévn, “ surnamed,” that the pool bore 
also another name. But it is more simple to suppose that John regards 
the word pool as the name, and Bethesda as the surname. The expression : 
in Hebrew, denotes the Aramaic dialect, which had become the popular 
language since the return from the captivity. The most natural etymology 
of the word Bethesda is certainly beth-chéseda, house of mercy, whether this 
name alludes to the munificence of some pious Jew who had had these 
porches constructed to shelter the sick, or whether it refers to the 
goodness of God, from which this healing spring proceeded. Delitzsch has 
supposed that the etymology may be beth-estuw (YOON) peristyle.  Beth-As- 
chada (SW) place of outpouring (of the blood of victims), has also been 
thought of. The Alexandrian and Greco-Latin variants are only gross 
corruptions (see those of B and D). It might be supposed that these 
porches were five isolated buildings, arranged in a circle around the pool. 
But it is more simple to imagine asingle edifice, forming a pentagonal 
peristyle, in the centre of which was the reservoir. There are still known 
at the present day, in the eastern part of the city of Jerusalem, some 
springs of mineral water; among others, on the west of the inclosure of 
the Temple, in the Mahometan quarter, the baths of Ain-es-Schefa (Ritter, 
16th part, p. 887). Tobler has proved that this spring is fed by the large 
chamber of water situated under the mosque which has replaced the tem- 
ple. Another better known spring is found at the foot of the southeastern 
slope of Moriah ; it is called the Virgin-spring. We have two principal ac- 
counts respecting this pond, those of Tobler and Robinson. The spring is 
very intermittent. The basin is sometimes entirely dry ; again, the water 
is seen springing up between the stones. On the 2ist of January, 
1845, Tobler saw the water rise four and a half inches, with a gentle un- 
dulation. On the 14th of March, it rose for more than twenty minutes 
to the height of six or seven inches, and in two minutes sank again to its 
previous level. Robinson saw the water rise a foot in five minutes. A 
woman assured him that this movement is repeated at certain times, 
two or three times a day, but that in summer it is often observed only 
once in two or three days. These phenomena present a certain analogy 
to what is related of the spring of Bethesda. Eusebius also speaks of 
springs existing in this locality whose water was reddish. This color, 


456 SECOND PART. 
which evidently arises from mineral elements, was, according to him, due 
to the infiltration of the blood of victims. Tradition places the pool of 
Bethesda in a great square hollow, surrounded by walls and situated to 
the north of the Haram, southward of the street which leads from St. 
Stephen’s gate. It is called Birket-Israil ; it has a depth of about twenty- 
one meters, a breadth of about forty, and a length more than twice as 
great. The bottom is dry, filled with grass and shrubs. Robinson supposed 
that it was a fosse, formerly belonging to the fortifications of the citadel 
of Antonia. This supposition is rejected by several competent authori- 
ties. However this may be, Bethesda must have been nearly in this local- 
ity, for it is here that the sheep-gate (see above) was situated. As it is im- 
possible to identify the pool of Bethesda with any one of the thermal 
springs of which we have just spoken, it must have been covered with 
débris, or have disappeared, as happens so frequently with intermittent 
fountains. The springs which are found at the present oy merely prove 
how favorable the soil is to this kind of phenomena. 

Vv. 3, 4. “ In these porches lay a great number of sick persons, blind, lame, 
withered,’ [waiting for the movement of the water® 4. For an angel descended 
Jrom time to time into the pool and troubled the water ; whosoever then first 
entered in after the troubling of the water, was healed of whatever disease he 
had]}.”* The spectacle which this portico surrounding the pool presented 
is reproduced in some sort de visu by Bovet, describing the baths of Ibra- 
him, near Tiberias: “The hall where the spring is found is surrounded 
by several porticos, in which we see a multitude of people crowded one 
upon another, laid upon pallets or rolled in blankets, with lamentable 
expressions of misery and suffering. . The pool is of white marble, 
of circular form and covered by a cupola supported by columns; the 
basin is surrounded on the interior by a bench on which persons may sit.” 
Eypoi, ¢mpotent, properly denotes those who have some member affected 
with atrophy, or, according to the common expression, wasting away. The 
end of ver. 3 and the 4th verse are wanting in the larger part of the Alex- 
andrian MSS., and are rejected by Tischendorf, Liicke, Tholuck, Olshausen, 
Meyer. The large number of variants and the indications of doubt’ by 
which this passage is marked in several MSS., favor the rejection. The 
defenders of the authenticity of the passage, for example Reuss, explain 
the omission of it by the Alexandrian authorities by a dogmatic antipa- 
thy which, they hold, betrayed itself in the similar omission Luke xxii. 


1 Josephus Bell. Jud. (not Antiqq., as Meyer 
says through an error), x. 5. 4, speaks of two 
pools called Strouthion and Amyydalon; the 
former near the citadel of Antonia on the 
northwest of the temple; the latter at the 
north of the temple. Bethesda must have 
been situated not far from these, towards the 
northeast corner. 

2Da badd to nowy; mapadvtixwr. 

38 A BCL Syrer Sah. some Mnn. omit the 
ending of ver. 3 from exSexonevor (waiting) 


inclusively. This ending isreadin DITA 
A II and nine other Mjj. Mnn. It. Syrseh. 
4The whole of ver. 4 is rejected by § BC 
D Italia Syreur Sah. some Mnn._ Besides this, 
the text presents in the other MSS. an excep- 
tional number of variants; instead of yap: 
kat (L Italia); instead of ayyeAos: ayyedos 
xupvov (A K L Italia Vulg. 30 Mnn.); instead of 
edovero (A K It): instead of 
etapagcero (several Mjj.); etc. 


KaTeBacvev: 
€Tapacce: 


CHAP, V. 3-7. 457 


43, 44 (the appearance of the angel at Gethsemane). This supposition 
would not, by any means, apply either to the Sinaitic MS., which has the 
passage in Luke entire, or to the Alexandrian which, in our passage, reads 
the fourth verse. The Vatican MS., alone presents the two omissions 
together; which evidently is not enough to justify the suspicion expressed 
above. I held with Ewald, in my earlier editions, that the true reading 
is the one presented by the Cambridge MS., and by numerous MSS. of the 
Itala, which preserve the close of ver. 3 while omitting the whole of ver. 
4. The words: waiting for the movement of the water, if they are authentic, 
may indeed easily have occasioned the gloss of ver. 4. And ver. 7 seems 
to demand, in what precedes, something like the last words of ver. 3. 
Still it seems to me difficult to understand what should have occasioned 
the omission of these words in so large a number of documents, if they 
had originally formed part of the text. I am inclined, therefore, to hold 
with Weiss, Keil, etc., that they, as well as ver. 4, were added. The whole 
was at first written on the margin by a copyist; then this marginal re- 
mark was introduced into the text, as is observed in so many cases. This 
interpolation must be very ancient, for itis found already in one of the 
Syriac Versions (Syr*"), and Tertullian seems to allude to it (de Bapt., c. 5). 
It was the expression of the popular opinion respecting the periodical 
movement of the water. According to the authentic text, there is nothing 
supernatural in the phenomenon of Bethesda. The whole is reduced to 
the intermittence which is so frequently observed in thermal waters. It 
is known that these waters have the greatest efficacy at the moment when 
they spring up, set in ebullition by the increased action of the gas, and it 
was at this moment that each sick person tried to be the first to feel its 
influence. | Hengstenberg, who admits the intervention of the angel, 
extends the same explanation to all thermal waters. But it would be 
necessary, in this case, to hold a singular exaggeration in the terms of ver. 
4. For after all no mineral water instantaneously heals the sick and all 
the kinds of maladies which are here mentioned. 

Vv. 5-7. “ There was a man there, held by his? sickness for thirty-eight 
years. 6. When Jesus saw him lying? and knew that he had been already 
sick for a long time, he said unto him: Dost thou wish to be healed? 7. The 
sick man answered him: Sir, I have no one, when the water is troubled, 
to put® me into the pool; and while I am coming, another goes down be- 
fore me.” The long continuance of the malady is mentioned, either to 
set forth how inveterate and difficult to heal it was, or rather, according 
to ver. 6, to explain the profound compassion with which’Jesus was moved 
on beholding this unhappy man. "Eywy might be taken in the intransi- 
tive sense (ao6evic éyerv); but the construction is so similar to that of ver. 
6, where ypévor is the object of éye, that it is preferable to make éry the 


18 alone omits exet. 4E FG HSyreeh some Mnn. read vac (yes) 
28 BC DL Itpleria some Mnn. read (after before «upte. 
agGevera) avtov, which is omitted by T. R. 5T, R. reads BadAyn with some Mnn. only; 
with AIT AA I and 9 other Mjj. all the Mjj. read BaAn. 


38 alone reads avaxetmevoy. 


458 SECOND PART. 


object of éywv: “ Having thirty-eight years in this condition of sickness.” 
One has what one suffers. It is not necessary to connect éyev closely 
with 7 éxei, as if John meant to say that the sick person had been there 
for thirty-eight years. 

Jesus appears here suddenly, as it were coming forth from a sort of 
incognito. What a difference between this arrival without éclat and His en- 
trance into the Temple at the first Passover, 11. 13 ff.! Here it is no longer 
the Messiah; itis a simple pilgrim. Meyer translates yvoic¢ : having learned, 
as if Jesus had receivedinformation. Weiss thinks that he heard the fact 
from the lips of the sick man himself. This meaning is possible; yvotc 
may, however, indicate one of those instantaneous perceptions by which 
the truth revealed itself to Jesus in the degree which was demanded by 
His task at the moment. Comp. i. 49; iv. 17. The 14th verse will show 
that the entire life of the sick man is present to the view of Jesus. The 
long time recalls the thirty-eight years of ver.5: in this way is the iden- 
tity of construction explained. The feast of Purim was celebrated 
among the Jews by works of beneficence and mutual gifts. It was the 
day of largesses. On Purim-day, said a Jew, nothing is refused to chil- 
dren. Jesus enters into the spirit of the feast, as He does also in chaps. 
vi. and vil., as regards the rites of the feasts of the Passover and of Taber- 
nacles. His compassion, awakened by the sight of this man lying ill 
and abandoned (lying on a couch), and by the inward contemplation of the 
life of suffering which had preceded this moment (already), impels him to 
bestow largess also and spontaneously to accomplish for him a work of 
mercy. His question: “ Dost thou wish to be healed?” is an implicit 
promise, Jesus endeavors thus, as Lange says, to draw the sick man from 
the dark discouragement in which this long and useless waiting had 
plunged him, and to reanimate hope within him. At the same time, Je- 
sus by means of this question wishes to turn away His thought from the 
means of healing on which it was exclusively fixed, and to give hima 
perception of a new means, the living being who is to become for him 
the true Bethesda. Comp. the similar words of Peter to the impotent 
man, Acts ill. 4: “ Look on us.” Faith, awakened by his look fixed upon 
Him who is speaking to him,will be, as it were, the channel through 
which the force from above will penetrate within him. The answer of the 
sick man does not imply the authenticity of ver. 4, nor even necessarily 
that of the end of ver. 3. It is sufficiently explained by the fact, known 
or easy to understand, of the intermittent ebullition of the spring. We 
see by the words: I have no one, that he was solitary and poor. 

Vv. 8, 9. “ Jesus saith unto him : Arise, take up thy bed? and walk. 9. And 
immediately* the man was healed,‘ and he took up his bed, and walked. Now 
that day was a Sabbath.” The word xpéBBarog comes from the Macedonian 
dialect (Passow) ; it is written in different ways. The imperfect he walked 
dramatically paints the joy in the recovered power. 

1T. R. reads eyecpae with U VT A Mnn.; 17 Mjj.: kpaBarrov ; N: xpaBaxrov; E: xpaBartov. 


the rest: eyecpe. 38 D only omit evdews. 
27. R. with V and several Mnn.: xpaBBaror ; 48 Italia add here xac nyep@y (and arose). 


CHAP. v. 8-15. 459 


Vy. 10-13. “ The Jews therefore said unto him who had been healed: It is 
the Sabbath ; it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed. 11. He answered? them: 
He that healed me said unto me: Take up thy bed, and walk2 12. They asked 
him therefore: who is the man who said unto thee: Take up thy bed and walk? 
13. But he that was healed*® knew not who it was ; for Jesus had disappeared * 
as there was a multitude in the place.”*® The act of carrying his bed seemed 
to the Jews a violation of the Sabbath rest. The Rabbis distinguished 
three sorts of works interdicted on the Sabbath, among them that of carry- 
ing a piece of furniture. The Rabbinical statute also prohibited treating 
a sick person medically, and perhaps the term re@cparevpévog (cared for, 
treated), contains an allusion to this other no less heavy grievance. But 
the fault of the Jews was in identifying the rabbinical explanation of the 
fourth commandment with its real meaning. The sick man very logically 
places his action under the protection of Him who miraculously has given 
him the power to perform it. The question of the Jews (ver. 12) is very 
characteristic. It is reproduced with much accuracy and nicety. They 
do not ask: ‘Who healed thee?” The fact of the miracle, though sur- 
prising enough, affects them very slightly. But the contravention of their 
Sabbatic statute, this is what is worthy of attention. Here is, indeed, the 
spirit of the Iovdaio: (ver. 10). The aorist iabeic (healed), differing from refe- 
patevuévoc (cared for), sets forth prominently the moment when the sick 
man, having gained the consciousness of his cure, looked about for His 
benefactor without being able to find Him. The reading adopted by 
Tischendorf (6 ao6evev) has no intrinsic value, and is not sufficiently sus- 
tained. The design of Jesus in withdrawing so speedily was to avoid the 
noise and the flocking together of a multitude; He feared the carnal 
enthusiasm which His miracles were exciting. But it does not follow from 
this, that the last words: “as there was a crowd in the plate,” are intended 
to express this motive. They rather set forth, as Hengstenberg thinks, the 
possibility of escape. Jesus had easily disappeared in the midst of the 
crowd which was thronging the place. This is, undoubtedly, the meaning 
which the reading of the Sinaitic MS. is designed to express: év péow (in the 
midst of); it is inadmissible, as well as the other variant of the same MS. 
in this verse (évevcev).—Exveto, strictly : to make a motion of the head in order 
to avoid a blow, hence: to escape. The aorist has certainly here the sense 
of the pluperfect (against Meyer and Weiss). From this slight detail, Gess 
concludes that Jesus was not accompanied by His disciples in this visit to 
Jerusalem, and that they were at this time accomplishing their mission 
in Galilee. 

Vv. 14, 15. “ Afterward, Jesus finds him® in the temple and said to him: 
Behold, thou art made whole ; sin no more, lest a worse thing befall thee. 15. The 


1 Instead of amexpiOn, A B: os S¢ (CG K L with D It.? only. 


A: 0 de) amexpiOn; S: o Se amexpivaro. 4D read evevoev (made a sign) instead of 
2 Instead of apov and mepimarer,Nreadsin  efevevoev. 

this verse and the following apat and srept- 5 alone: weow instead of tow 

matev. SNS BCL omit rov xpaBBarov gov. ON Syreur roy reOeparevmevov instead of autor. 


83 Instead of cadecs, Tisch. reads acOevwry 


460 SECOND PART, 


man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.” The 
sick man had, undoubtedly, come into the temple to pray or offer a thank- 
offering. The warning which Jesus addresses to him certainly implies that 
his malady had been the effect of some particular sin; but we need not 
infer from this that every malady results from an individual and special 
sin; it may have as its cause, in many cases, the debasement of the col- 
lective life of humanity by means of sin (see on ix. 3). By something 
worse than thirty-eight years of suffering, Jesus can scarcely mean any- 
thing but damnation. 

In the revelation which the impotent man gives to the Jews, we need 
not see either a communication dictated by thankfulness and the desire to 
bring the Jews to faith (Chrysostom, Grotius, etc.), nor an ill-disposed denun- 
ciation (Schleiermacher, Lange), nor an act of obedience to the Jewish 
authorities (Liicke, de Wette, Luthardt), nor, finally, the bold desire of 
making known to them a power superior to their own (Meyer). It is quite 
simply the reply which he was not able to give, at ver. 13, and which he 
now gives to discharge his own responsibility; for he remained himself 
under the complaint so long as he could not refer it to the author of the 
act, and this violation of the Sabbath might draw upon him the penalty 
of death (vv. 16, 18); comp. Num., xv. 35. 

Ver. 16. “For this cause did the Jews persecute Jesus,2 because he did these 
things on the Sabbath day.” Aca rovro (for this cause), resumes what precedes, 
and, at the same time, is explained by the phrase which closes the verse: 
because... The word dédxew (persecute), indicates the seeking of the 
means to injure. In favor of the authenticity of the following words in 
the T. R.: and they sought to kill him, the uaddov (yet more), of ver. 18, can 
be alleged. But it is still more probable that it is these words in ver. 18 
which have occasioned this interpolation. The imperfect ézote: (He did), 
malignantly expresses the idea that the violation of the Sabbath has hence- 
forth passed with Him into a rule: He is accustomed to do it. This idea 
is entirely lost in the inaccurate translation of Ostervald and of Rillict: 
“because He had done this.” The plural raira (these things), refers to 
the double violation of the Sabbath, the healing and the bearing of the 
burden. 

Let us notice here two analogies between John and the Synoptics: 1. In 
the latter also, Jesus is often obliged to perform His miracles as it were 
by stealth, and even to impose silence on those whom He has healed. 
2. It is on occasion of the Sabbatic healings wrought in Galilee, that, 
according to them also, the conflict breaks out (Luke vi. 1-11). 


II. The discourse of Jesus: vv. 17-47. 


In this discourse which is designed to vindicate the act which He has 
just performed, the three following thoughts are developed : 


1 Instead of avnyyecAe, D G U A20 Mnn. read vac with 12 Mjj.; the larger part of the Mnn. ; 
amnyyerde; S&C L Syr Cop eczev. It?; Syrseh. These words are omitted in& B 
2T. R. adds here xa eGnrovy avrov amoxret- CD L Itplerique; Vulg.; Syreur; Cop. 


CHAP. v. 16, 17. 461 


1. Jesus justifies His work by the perfect subordination which exists be- 
tween His activity and that of His Father: vv. 17-30. 

2. The reality of this relation does not rest solely on the personal 
affirmation of Jesus; it has as its guarantee the lestimony of God Himself: 
vv. 31—40. 

8. Supported by this testimony of the Father, Jesus passes from defense 
to attack and unveils to the Jews the moral cause of their unbelief, the 
absence of the true spirit of the law: vv. 41-47. 


I. The Son the Father’s workman: vv. 17-30. 


Ver. 17. “ Jesus answered them: My Father worketh witil now, and I work.” 
The aorist middle azexpivaro is found only here and in ver. 19; perhaps 
also xii. 23. Its use may be occasioned by the personal, apologetic char- 
acter of the following discourse. This utterance, like that of 11. 19 (comp. 
Luke ii. 49), is like a flash of light breaking forth from the inmost depths 
of the consciousness of Jesus, from the point of mysterious union where 
He inwardly receives the Father’s impulse. These sudden and immeasur- 
ably profound outbreakings of thought distinguish the language of Jesus 
from all other language. 

These words are ordinarily explained in this sense: ‘“ My Father works 
continually (that is without allowing Himself to stop on the Sabbath), 
and, for myself, I work in the same way, without being bound by the legal 
statute;” either in that this declaration is applied to the work of God in 
the preservation of the universe, when once the creation is finished, 
(Reuss), or in that it is referred to the work of the salvation of humanity, 
which admits of no interruption (Meyer). In both cases, Jesus would 
affirm that He is no more subjected, as a man, to the obligation of the 
Sabbatic rest, than is God Himself. But if this were, indeed, His thought, 
He would not have said: until this very hour (éw¢ dprv), but always, continu- 
ally (ae). This objection is the more serious, because, according to the 
position of the words, this adverb of time, and not the verb, has the 
emphasis. Then, in the second member of the sentence, Jesus could not 
have refrained from either repeating the adverb or substituting for it the 
word duolwc, in the same way; “And I also work continually, or likewise.” 
Besides, it would have been very easy to answer to this argument that 
the position of a man with regard to the Sabbatic commandment is not 
the same with that of God. Finally the declaration of Jesus, thus under- 
stood, would contradict the attitude of submission to the law which He 
constantly observed during His life. Born a Jew, He lived as a faithful 
Jew. He emancipated Himself, undoubtedly, from the yoke of human 
commandments and Pharisaic traditions, but never from that of the law 
itself. It is impossible to prove in the life of Jesus a single contravention 
of a truly legal prescription. Death alone freed Him from this yoke. 
Such is the impression which He left, that St. Paul says of Him (Gal. iv. 
4): “born under the law,” and characterizes His whole life by the expres- 
sion (Rom. xv. 8): “ minister of the circumcision.” Luthardt has fully per- 


462 SECOND PART. 


ceived the special sense which the adverb éw¢ épri, until this hour, must 
have. He has had the idea of contrasting it, not with the Sabbatic insti- 
tution, but with the final Sabbath yet to come: “Since up to this time the 
work of salvation has not been consummated, as it will be in the future 
Sabbath, and consequently my Father works still, I also work.” This 
sense is certainly much nearer to the thought of Jesus; only the antithe- 
sis between the present Sabbath and the Sabbath to come is not indicated 
by anything in the text. 

To apprehend thoroughly the meaning of this utterance, let us for a 
moment set aside the words éw¢ dp, until this hour. Jesus says: “ My 
Father works, and I also work.” The relation between these two propo- 
sitions is obvious. We easily understand that it is necessary to combine 
logically what is grammatically in juxtaposition, and that it is as if it 
were: “ Since my Father works, I also work.” The Son cannot remain 
idle when the Father is working. We find again here that paratactic 
construction which is conformed to the genius of the Hebrew language, 
and which expresses by the simple copula, and, one of the numerous 
logical relations which the genius of the Greek states with precision by 
means of some other conjunction; comp. i. 10, ii. 9, etc. Nothing is 
changed in this relation by the addition of the adverb éwe dpri, until this 
hour. The meaning becomes the following: “Since my Father works up 
to this moment, I also work.” Passow, in his Dictionary, remarks that in 
Greek, especially in the later writers, apr: following «ai, as is the case here, 
serves to indicate the immediate and rapid succession of two states; thus 
in this sentence: dpre areipyacto rd dopa Kat anqAder (the song was no sooner 
Jinished than he departed). This is precisely the relation of immediate 
succession which Jesus affirms here as the law of His activity, as the true 
relation between His Father’s work and His own, from which He draws 
the justification of the miracle which had been made the subject of in- 
crimination. Westcott, Weiss and Keil are unwilling to see here an idea of 
subordination ; they claim that the work of the Son is much rather co-or- 
dinated with that of the Father. But this alleged co-ordination would not 
justify Jesus ; for, as we have already said, the position of a man cannot 
be compared to that of God. We must reach the point of dependence in 
order that the argument may avail. And this relation of dependence it 
is, indeed, which appears from the relation between the two propositions: 
“Since my Father works until this moment, I also work.” In order to 
grasp the meaning of this word, at once simple and profound, it is suffi- 
cient to imagine Jesus working with Joseph in the carpenter’s shop at 
Nazareth. Can we not readily understand the reply which He would 
have addressed to the one who wished to turn Him aside from the work: 
“My Father works until now, and I also [consequently] cannot cease to 
work.” Jesus finds Himself now with His Heavenly Father in a vaster 
workshop; He sees God at work in the theocracy and in the whole world, 
occupied with working for the salvation of mankind, and He suits His 
own local and personal working to this immense work. This is what He 
has just done in healing the impotent man; this modest healing is a link 


CHAP. v. 18. 463 


in the great chain suspended from His Father’s hand, a real factor in the 
work which God is accomplishing here on earth. The development of — 
this thought will follow in vv. 19, 20. 

The meaning, therefore, is not: “I, as truly as God, have the right to 
work on the Sabbath;” but: “I have done nothing but obey the signal 
which God gave me at the moment...” Jesus sets forth, not the con- 
tinuity of His working, but his filial and devoted adaptation to the work 
of the Father. And if objection is made that this amotints to the same 
thing, since God might direct Him to work even on the Sabbath, the an- 
swer is easy. God will not direct him to do anything which is contrary to 
the position of Jew, which He has imposed upon Him for the time of His 
earthly life. And He has done this none the more in this case, since 
neither the way in which Jesus healed the impotent man, nor the return 
of the latter to His dwelling, carrying his bed, really fell under the pro- 
hibition of the Mosaic law, as rightly understood. Hilgenfeld has gone even 
so far as to see in this saying of the Gospel an intentional contradiction of 
the idea of the rest of God in Genesis. But the rest in Genesis refers to 
the work of God in the sphere of nature, while the question here is of 
the divine work for the salvation of the human race. Is there here, as is 
affirmed, pretentious metaphysics? No. Itis the deepest foundation of the 
peculiar filial life of Jesus, which all at once appears in this marvelously 
concise saying. The life of Socrates presents a phenomenon which has 
some analogy to that of which we have just had a glimpse. His genius 
arrested him when he was on the point of acting contrary to the will of 
the gods. But what a distance between this purely negative action and 
the positive divine impulse to which Jesus attaches His whole work! 
And what an appropriateness in this saying, what an imposing apology! 
It was to say to His adversaries: In accusing me, it is the Father whom 
you accuse. It is the legislator Himself whom you reproach with the 
transgression of the law; for I only act on a signal received from Him. 
We can understand, however, how this saying, instead of pacifying the 
adversaries, was only like the drop of oil thrown upon the fire, and caused 
their rage to overflow. 

Ver. 18. “ For this reason’ the Jews sought the more to kill him, because he 
not only broke the Sabbath, but called God his own Father, making himself 
equal with God.” The dia rovro (for this reason), is explained by the ore 
(because), which follows. We have seen, that according to the genuine 
text in ver. 16, the intention ¢o kill Jesus had not yet been ascribed to His 
enemies; it was only implicitly contained in the word édiwxov (they perse- 
cuted). This suffices to explain the paAAov (yet more) of ver. 18. Let us 
notice here the singular exaggerations of Reuss: “ Let one read,” he says, 
“the discourse, ver. 18 ff., many times interrupted by the phrase: They 
persecute him, they seek to kill him. According to the common and purely 
historical exegesis, we reach the picture of the Jews running after Jesus 
in the streets and pursuing Him with showers of stones ’’(t. ii., p. 416). The 


ma 


1N DIt.: dcarovro ovy; the rest omit ovr, 


464 SECOND PART... 


fact is, that the simple historical exegesis, which does not of set purpose 
go into error, does not find in these expressions: “ They persecuted Him” 
(ver. 16), “they sought to kill Him” (ver. 18), anything else than the indi- 
cation of some hostile secret meetings in which the rulers asked them- 
selves, even then, how they could get rid of so dangerous a man. The 
Synoptics trace back also to this epoch the murderous projects of the 
adversaries of Jesus (Luke vi. 7, 11; Mark iii. 6; Matt. xii. 14). The 
anxious look of John was able to discern the fruit in the germ.—’EAve, 
not: He had violated (Ostervald) ; but (imperfect): He broke, strictly : dis- 
solved. His example and His principles seemed to annihilate the Sab- 
bath. Besides this first complaint, the declaration of Jesus in ver. 17 had 
just furnished them a second—that of blaspheming. It was, first of all, 
the word wot (my Father), which shocked them because of the special and 
exclusive sense which this expression assumed in the mouth of Jesus. If He 
had said Our Father, the Jews would have accepted the saying without 
displeasure (vili. 41). It was, in addition, the practical consequences which 
he seemed to draw from the term, making the working of God the stand- 
-ardof His own, and thus making Himself equal with God. 

The 17th verse contains the primal idea of the whole following 
discourse: the relation of subordination between the activity of the 
Father and that of the Son. Vv. 19, 20, set forth this idea in a more 
detailed way; in ver. 19, the relation of the Son’s action to that of the 
Father; in ver. 20, the relation of the Father’s action to that of the Son. 
We might say: the Son who puts himself with fidelity at the service of 
the Father (ver. 19), and the Father who condescends to direct the activity 
of the Son (ver. 20). 

Ver. 19. “ Jesus therefore answered and said unto them! : Verily, verily,? I say 
unto you: the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father — 
doing. For the things which he doeth, these doeth the Son also in like manner.” 
The interpreters who find a speculative idea in ver. 17, such as that of 
continuous creation, see in vv. 19, 20, the unfolding of the metaphysical 
relation between the Father and the Logos. But if one gives to ver. 17, 
as we have done, a sense appropriate to the context, vv. 19, 20 do not have 
this more or less abstract theological character; they, as well as ver. 17, 
havea practical application to the given case. Jesus means to say, not: Iam 
this or that for my Father; I sustain to Him such or such a relation; but: 
“Whatever work you see me do, though it should give offence to you, 
like that for which I am now accused, be well assured that, as a submis- 
sive Son, I have done it only because I saw my Father acting in this way 
at the same time.” There is no theology here; it is the explanation of 
His work which had been charged as criminal and of all His working in 
general, starting from the deepest law of His moral life, from His filial 
dependence with relation to His Father. This answer resembles the “I 
cannot do otherwise ” of Luther, at Worms. Jesus puts His work under 


i & begins the verse thus: eAeyer ovy avrous £8 alone omits one of the two apny. 
olngouvs. BL: eAeyev instead of ecrev. 


cHAP. Vv. 19. 465 


the guarantee of His Father’s, as the impotent man had just put his own 
under the guarantee of the work of Jesus (ver. 11). 

The first proposition of ver. 19 presents this defense in a negative form: 
Nothing by myself; the second, in an affirmative form: Everything under 
the impulse of the Father. The expression: can do nothing, does not 
denote a metaphysical impossibility or one of essence, but a moral, that 
is absolutely free, powerlessness. This appears from ver. 26 and from the 
very term Son, which Jesus intentionally substitutes for the pronoun I of 
ver.17. For it is in virtue of His filial—that is to say, His perfectly sub- 
missive and devoted—character, that Jesus is inwardly prevented from 
acting of Himself, at any moment whatever. He would indeed have the 
power of acting otherwise, if He wished; and here is the idea which gives 
to the expression 49’ éavrov, of Himself, a real and serious meaning. In 
all the phases of His existence, the Son has a treasure of force belonging 
to Himself which He might use freely and independently of the Father. 
According to ver. 26, He could, as Logos, bring forth worlds out of nothing 
and make Himself their God. But He is wholly with God, here on earth 
as in heaven, (John i.1); and rather than be the God of a world for Him- 
self, He prefers to remain in His position as Son and not to use His 
creative power except in communion with His Father. This law of the 
Son in His divine life is also His law in His human existence. He 
possesses as man all the faculties of man, and besides, after the baptism, 
all the Messianic forces. Therewith He could create, of His own impulse, 
in the sense in which every man of talent creates—create by and for 
Himself, and could found here below a kingdom which should be His own, 
like men of genius and conquerors. Was it not to this very real power 
that the various suggestions of Satan appealed in the wilderness? But 
He voluntarily refused to make any such use of His human and Messianic 
powers, and, invariably connecting His work with that of His Father, He 
thus freely remains faithful to His character as Son. The clause éav py 
tt. .. unless He sees... . doing it, or rather: if He does not see the 
Father doing it, does not restrict the idea to: do of Himself. It is rather 
an epexegetical explanation of ag’ éavrov, of Himself: “ Of Himself, that 
is to say, if He does not see...” The present participle tovvvra, doing, 
answers to apr, now, of ver. 17: The Son sees the Father acting, and asso- 
ciates Himself, at the same instant, with His action. The figurative term 
Baérew, see, denotes the look of the mind constantly fixed upon the 
Father to watch for His will and to discern the point where His working 
actually is, in order to adapt His own to it. In fact, this cannot, of which 
Jesus has just spoken, is only the negative side of His filial devotion, But. 
love, while preventing His acting by Himself, causes Him to co-operate: 
actively in the work of the Father. Contemplating it as already accom-~ 
plished in the thought of God, He immediately executes it on the earth. 
He can only act on this condition. 

This is the idea contained in the second part of ver. 19. It is umted 
by for to the preceding. In fact, if every work of His own is impossible 
for the Son, it is because He devotes Himself entirely to the work of the 

30 


466 SECOND PART. 


Father. The sum of His activity being absorbed in this voluntary depend- 
ence, there remains for Him neither time nor force for acting by Himself. 
“A yap av, the things, whatever they may be. This word includes eventuali- 
ties without number, and, as a consequence, many other infractions of 
their Pharisaic statutes besides the one which they have just seen and 
which gives them so much offense. But He has no change to make for 
this reason; for every work of the Father, whatever it may be, must 
reproduce itself in His work. The word in like manner, éyoiwe, does not 
denote a mere imitation, for the Father’s work is still to be done, since the 
Son sets Himself to the execution of it; it is rather, as Reuss says, “an 
application of the Son’s work to the Father’s.” The Father’s work 
becomes that of the Son, in so far as the latter is capable of containing the 
former. The Son connects Himself at each moment with the work of the 
Father, in order to continue it in the measure in which His intelligence 
can embrace it and His power realize it. In this saying, we know not 
which is the more astonishing, the simplicity of the form or the sublimity 
of the idea. Jesus speaks of this intimate relation with the Being of 
beings, as if the question were of the simplest thing in the world. It is 
the saying of the child of twelve years: ‘ Must I not be in that which belongs 
to my Father?” raised to its highest power. But this perfect subordination 
of the Son’s work to the Father’s cannot exist except on one condition: 
that the Father consents to initiate the Son incessantly into the course of 
His working. This is also what He deigns to do. 

Ver. 20. The relation of the Father to the Son: For the Father loveth the 
Son, and showeth him all things that he himself doeth,and he will show him 
greater works than these, that ye may marvel.” The co-operation of the Son 
in the divine work rests (for) upon the infinite love of the Father, which 
conceals nothing from the Son. The term @Aeiwv expresses tenderness (to 
cherish), and suits perfectly the intimacy of the relation here described. 
It was otherwise in iii. 85, where the word dayarav, which indicates the love 
of approbation and, in some sort, of admiration (ayaa), was found; be- 
cause the question there was of the communication of omnipotence. The 
showing of the Father corresponds to the seeing of the Son (ver. 19), and 
is, at once, its condition and consequence; the condition: for the Father 
unveils His work to the Son, to the end that He may be able to know it 
and co-operate in it; the consequence: for it is this constant and faithful 
co-operation of the Son which causes this revelation incessantly to renew 
itself. . 

But the initiation and co-operation of the Son in the Father’s work are 
subjected to a law of progress, as is suitable to the truly human state of 
this latter. This is what the end of the verse expresses: And he will show 
him greater works than these. The expression: whatsoever things, in ver. 19, 
gave a hint already of that gradual extension of the domain of the works 
which the Father entrusts to the Son. Reuss thinks that the question is 
of two different kinds of works, those of the Father appertaining to the out- 
ward domain, and those of the Son to the spiritual domain, and that the 
term greater refers to the superiority of the second to the first. But the 


CHAP. v. 20. 467 


bodily resurrection is also the work of the Son (vv. 28, 29), and Jesus 
could not, in any case, say that the Son’s works are greater than the 
Father’s. The word duoiws, in like manner, would suffice to refute this 
explanation. Totrwy, than these, evidently refers to the healing of the im- 
potent man and to the miracles of the same sort which Jesus had per- 
formed and of which the Jews were then witnesses. This is only the 
beginning. In proportion as the work of Jesus grows in extent and force, 
the, Father’s work will pass more completely into it; and thus will the 
saying of Isaiah be realized: “ The pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in His 
hand.” The word will show declares that the Father will give Him at 
once the signal and the power to accomplish these greater and still greater 
works. Comp. Apoc. 1. 1: “the revelation which the Father gave to 
Him.” 

The words which close the verse: to the end that ye may marvel, are care- 
fully weighed. Jesus refrains from saying: to the end that ye may be- 
lieve. He knows too well to whom He is speaking at this moment. The 
question here, as Weiss says, is of asurprise of confusion. We might para- 
phrase thus: “ And then there will truly be something at which you may 
be astonished.” The Jews opened their eyes widely as they saw an impo- 
tent man healed: How will it be when they shall one day, at the word of 
this same Jesus, see mankind recovering spiritual, and even corporeal life! 
One cure astonishes them : What will they say of a Pentecost and a resur- 
rection of the dead! This somewhat disdainful manner of speaking of 
miracles would be strange enough on the part of an evangelist who was 
in the whole course of his narrative playing the part of an inventor of 
miracles.—'Iva, in order that, expresses not only a result (dors), but a pur- 
pose. This astonishment is willed by God; for it is from it that the con- 
version of Israel will issue at the end of time. In view of the wonders 
produced by the Gospel among mankind, Israel will finally render to the 
Son that homage, equal to what it renders to the Father, of which ver. 23 
speaks. 


These two verses are one of the most remarkable passages of the New Testa- 
ment in the Christological point of view. De Wette finds in the expression, of 
Himself (ver. 19), an exclusive and scarcely clear reference to the human side of 
the person of Jesus; for, after all, if Jesus is the Logos, His will is as divine as 
that of the Father, and there can be no contrast between the one and the other, 
as the expression, of Himself, would imply. This defect in logic is found, accord- 
ing to his view, again in the words of xvi. 18, where this same expression, of 
Himself, is hypothetically applied to the Holy Spirit. According to Liicke, it is 
only a popular way of presenting the human appearance of Jesus, excluding the di- 
vine element. Reuss (t.II., pp. 438 ff.) brings out in this passage heresy upon heresy, 
if the Logos theory, as it has been presented in the Prologue, is taken as the 
norm of the Johannean thought. According to him, indeed, God is conceived, in 
the Prologue, as a purely abstract being, who does not act in space and time ex- 
cept through the intermediation of the Logos, who is perfectly equal to the 
Father, “the essence of God reproduced, so to speak, a second time and by itself.” 
According to our passage, on the contrary, the Father does a work for Himself 


468 SECOND PART. 


(4 avto¢ rove’), which He reveals to the Son, and in which He gives Him a share, 
which is entirely contradictory. According to this latter view indeed, the Father 
acts directly in the world without making use of the Logos, and the Son is rela- 
tively to the Father in a condition of subordination, which is incompatible with 
“the equality of the two divine persons” taught in the Prologue. 

The judgment of Liicke and de Wette undoubtedly strikes against the con- 
ception of the person of Jesus which is called orthodox, but not that of the New 
Testament and of John in particular. John does not know this Jesus, now divine, 
now human, to which the traditional exegesis has recourse. He knows a Logos 
who, once deprived of the divine state, entered fully into the human state, and, 
after having been revealed to Himself at the baptism asa divine subject, con- 
tinued His human development, and only through the ascension recovered the 
divine state. By His human existence and His earthly activity, He realized in 
the form of becoming, the same filial relation which He realized in His divine ex- 
istence in the form of being. This is the reason why all the terms employed by 
Jesus—the showing of the Father, the seeing of the Son, the expressions “ cannot” 
and “of Himself”’—apply to the different phases of His divine and human exist- 
ence, to each one according to its nature and its measure. To understand the 
“of Himself,’ in our passage and xvi. 13, it is only necessary to take in earnest, as 
the Scripture does, the distinction of persons in the divine being; if each one of 
them has His own life, from which He may draw at will, there is no inconse- 
quence between the passages cited. 

As to the judgment of Reuss, the idea, which he finds in the Prologue, of an 
abstract divinity, purely transcendental and without any possible relation to the 
world, is not that of John; it is only that of Philo. On the contrary, God is, in 
the Prologue, a Father full of love both for His Son (ver. 18) and for the children 
whom He Himself begets by communicating to them His own life (é« Weov éyev- 
viSjoav, were begotten of God, ver. 13). He can thus act directly in the world and, 
consequently, associate His Son, made man, in His work on the earth. Vv. 19, 
20 are in contradiction to the theory of Philo, but not to the conception of the 
evangelist. It is exactly the same with regard to the subordination of the Son. 
The true thought of the Prologue is exactly that of our two verses, 19, 20; the 
dependence, and free dependence, of the Son (7 mpd¢g tov Vedv, ver. 1). This 
conception of the Logos undoubtedly, also, contradicts that of Philo, a fact which 
only proves one thing: that it is an error to make the evangelist the disciple of 
that strange philosopher, while he is simply the disciple of Jesus Christ. (In- 
trod., pp. 127 ff.) ; 

If we wish to form a lively idea of the relation of the work of Jesus to that 
of the Father, as it is presented here, the best way is to enter ourselves into a 
similar relation to the Lord Jesus Christ. We shall then have this experience : 
that the more the faithful servant heartily participates in the work of his Master, 
the more also does the latter give him understanding in respect to the totality 
and the details, and the more does He make him capable of realizing it. The 
agent grows with the work, as the work grows with the agent. The following are 
well-known examples of each of the two things: Oberlin, his eyes fixed upon 
Christ as Christ had His eyes fixed upon the Father, discerning the point which 
the divine work has reached among the inhabitants of Ban-de-la-Roche and what 
the continuation of this work demands; John Bost, contemplating so many suf- 
ferings unrelieved on the soil of France; Felix Neff, shocked at the sight of the 


CHAP. ¥, 21. 469 


deserted Churches of the High Alps; Wilberforce, feeling the chains of his en- 
slaved brethren weigh upon his heart; Antoine Court, weeping over the ruins of 
the Reformed Church of France; Zinzendorf, finding himself suddenly in the 
presence of the persecuted Moravian emigrants who arrive in troops in his own 
lands . . . ; in all these cases, the faithful workman applies his ear to the heart 
of his Master, discerns its beating, and then, rising up, acts. Christ’s work, that 
work which He wishes to do, passes then, in a certain portion of it, into the 
hands of His servant. Thus it is, no doubt, that Christ gradually entered into 
possession of the divine work, even till it became His own in its totality (John 
iii. 35). And having come to this point He gradually gives His own a part in it, 
who become the free sharers in His working, and He makes real to them that 
promise which is not without analogy to the saying which we are explaining: 
“Verily, verily, I say unto you, that he who believeth in me, he also shall do the 
works which I do; he shall do even greater works than these (ueifova tovTwv), be- 
cause I go to my F ather” (xiv. 12). 


Jesus has just spoken of works, greater than His present miracles, which 
He will one day accomplish at the signal of His Father. He now ex- 
plains what these works are; they are the resurrection and the judgment of 
mankind, vv. 21-29. This difficult passage has been very differently un- 
derstood. I. Several Fathers, Tertullian, Chrysostom, later Erasmus, Grotius, 
Bengel, finally in recent times Schott, Kuinoel, Hengstenberg, etc., have ap- 
plied the whole of the passage (except ver. 24) to the ae ion of the 
dead, in the strict sense, and to the last judgment. II. A diametrically op- 
posite interpretation was held already by the Gnostics, then, among the 
moderns, by Ammon, Schweizer, B. Crusius,—it is that which refers the 
whole passage, even vv. 28, 29, to the spiritual resurrection and the moral 
judgment which the Gospel effects; (see also Reuss, in some sort). III. 
Finally, a third group of interpreters unite these two views in this sense, 
that they refer vv. 21-27 to the moral action of the Gospel, and vv. 28, 29 
to the resurrection of the dead in the proper sense. These are, Calvin, 
Lampe, and most of the moderns, Lnicke, Tholuck, Meyer, de Wette, etc. IV. 
By taking account, with greatest care, of the shades of expression, we 
arrive at the opinion that the true progress of ideas is the following: In 
a first cycle, the thought of ver. 17 has been quite summarily developed 
(vv. 19, 20). Then, the works of the Father which the Son is to accom- 
plish are precisely stated in a second cycle (vv. 21-28); those of making 
alive and judging. Finally, in a third cycle (vv. 24-29) the thought 
makes a final advance, which brings it to its end, in the sense that vv. 
24-97 apply to the resurrection and the spiritual judgment, and vy. 27-29 . 
to the final judgment and the resurrection of the dead. This last view 
is, as it seems to me, nearly that of several modern commentators, such 
as Luthardt, Weiss and Keil. 

Ver. 21. “ For, as the Father raiseth the dead and giveth them life, so doth 
the Son also make alive whom He will.” To raise the dead is a greater work 
than to heal an impotent man; hence the for. This work, as well as the 
particular miracles, is the reproduction of the Father’s work. The great 


470 SECOND PART. 


difficulty here is to determine whether, as the greater part of the interpre- 
ters seem to think (for many do not explain themselves sufficiently on 
this point), the work of resurrection ascribed to the Father is to be identi- 
fied with that which the Son accomplishes, or whether it is specifically 
different, or, finally, whether they combine with one another by a process, 
the formula of which must be sought after. According to the first ex- 
planation, the Cooraeiv, give life, ascribed to the Father, would remain in a 
purely ideal state until the Son, yielding to the divine initiative, caused 
the design of the Father to pass into the earthly reality. Thus Luthardt 
says: “The work belongs to God, in so far as it proceeds from Him; to 
the Son, in so far as it is accomplished by Him in the world” (p. 444). 
Gess: “It is not that the resurrection of the dead was until now the work 
of the Father, to become now the work of the Son; the resurrection of 
the dead is not yet an accomplished fact. No more is it that one part of 
the dead are raised by the Father, another by the Son. . . . But the Son 
is regarded as the organ by which the Father raises from the dead.” Bdum- 
ein: “The Son is the bearer and mediator of the Father’s activity,” 
This sense is very good in itself; but does it really suit the expression: 
like as? Was this indeed the proper term to designate a single divine im- 
pulse, an initiative of a purely moral nature? Jesus, in expressing Him- 
self thus, seems to be thinking, rather, of a real work which the Father 
accomplishes and to which His own corresponds. According to the 
second sense, adopted by Reuss, we must ascribe the bodily resur- 
rection to the Father and the resurrection in the spiritual sense, sal- 
vation, to the Son. Reuss finds the proof of this distinction in the 
od¢ 0éAe, whom he wills, which indicates a selection and refers conse- 
quently to the moral domain only. This solution is untenable. How 
could vv. 28, 29, which describe the consummation of the Son’s work, be 
applied to the spiritual resurrection? Comp. likewise vi. 40, 44, etc., where 
Jesus expressly ascribes to Himself, by an éyé, J, several times repeated, 
the resurrection of the body—a fact which entirely destroys the line of 
demarcation proposed by Reuss. Jesus seems to me rather to speak here 
of the divine action, at once creative, preservative and restorative, which 
is exercised from the beginning of things in the sphere of nature, and 
which has broken forth with a new power in the theocratic domain. 
Comp. Deut. xxxii. 39: “T kill and make alive, I wound and heal.” 1 Sam. 
ii. 6: “It is the Lord who killeth and maketh alive, who bringeth down to 
the grave and bringeth up from it.” To this work of moral and physical 
restoration, till now accomplished by God, Jesus now unites His own; He 
becomes the agent of it in the particular sphere in which He finds Him- 
self at each moment; this sphere will extend itself ever more widely; His 
capacity, in Himself, for performing it will increase in the same measure, 


1 As if (to take up anew the comparison of tinct part in the work; or, finally, Jesus sec- 
the common work of Jesus and Joseph) we onding Joseph more and more, in proportion 
had to decide for one of these three forms: as He grows, and ending by charging Him- 
Either Jesus executing the plans traced out self with the whole of the work. 
by Joseph ; or each of the two having a dis- 


CHAP. v. 21. 471 


until this domain is the universe and the power of the Son is omnipotence 
(comp. Matt. xxviii. 18). The steps of this growth are the following: He 
begins to perform isolated miracles of corporeal and spiritual resurrection, 
samples of His great future work. From the time of His elevation to 
glory, He realizes, through the communication of the Holy Spirit, the 
moral resurrection of mankind. Finally, on His return, by the victory 
which He gains over the last enemy, death (1 Cor. xv. 26), He effects, in 
the physical domain, the resurrection of believers, and afterwards also the 
universal resurrection. At that moment only will the work of the Father 
have passed entirely into His hands. The work of the Son is not, there- 
fore, different from that which the Father acccomplishes. Only the Son, 
made man, becomes the agent of it only by degrees. , The present, makes 
alive, in the second member, is a present of competency. Comp. indeed 
vy. 25 and 28 (“the hour cometh that . . . ”), which show that the reality 
is yet to come. Nevertheless, even now, the word of Christ possesses a 
life-giving force (the hour even now ts, ver. 25). We may connect the object 
the dead with the first verb only (raiseth), and give to the second verb (Gwo- 
roi, gives life), an absolute sense. But perhaps it is more natural to make 
the words, the dead, the object of both of the verbs (see Weiss). ’Eyeipew, 
strictly to awake, refers to the passage from death to life; Cworaeiv, to give 
life, to the full restoration of life, whether spiritual or bodily. Nothing 
forces us, with Reuss, to restrict the application of the word make alive, 
in the second member, to spiritual life The restriction: to whom he wills, 
undoubtedly indicates a selection. But will there not be a selection, also, 
in the bodily resurrection? In ver. 29, Jesus distinguishes, in fact, two 
bodily resurrections, one of life, the other of judgment. The first alone 
truly merits the name of making alive. 

By saying : those whom he wills, Jesus does not contrast His will as Son 
with that of the Father. This meaning would require od¢ abtoc béAer. He 
contrasts those whom He feels Himself constrained to make alive (be- 
lievers) with those on behalf of whom it is morally impossible for Him to 
accomplish this miracle. These words, therefore, are the transition to 
ver. 22, where it is said that the judgment, that is to say, the selection, is 
committed to Him. In effecting the selection which decides the eternal 
death and life of individuals, Jesus does not cease for an instant to have 
His eyes fixed upon the Father, and to conform Himself to His purpose. 
According to vi. 88, 40, He discerns those who fulfill the divinely appointed 
condition: he that believeth ; and immediately He applies to them the life- 
giving power which the Father has given to Him, and which has now be- 
come His own. Might there not be in this od¢ 0éAe, those whom he wills, an 
allusion to the spontaneity with which Jesus had offered healing to the im- 
potent man, without being in any way solicited by him, choosing him 
freely among all the sick persons who surrounded the pool? Reuss finds, in 
these words: those whom he wills, a contradiction to the idea of the depend- 
ence of the Son’s work as related to that of the Father. But the inward 
feeling which makes Jesus will in such or such a way, while forming itself 
in Him spontaneously, is none the less in accord with that of God. Jesus 


472 SECOND PART. 


wills of His own will, as He loves of His own love. But this love and this 
will have the same objects and the same end as the love and will of the 
Father. Comp. the formula, in the Apostolic Epistles: “Grace and peace 
from God, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” Liberty is no more arbitrariness 
in Jesus, than inGod. In the same sense it is ascribed to the Spirit (iii. 8 
and 1 Cor. xii. 11), and to the God of nature (1 Cor. xv. 38). What Jesus 
meant to express here is not, therefore, as Calvin and formerly Reuss have 
supposed, the idea of predestination, it is the glorious competency which 
it pleases God to bestow upon Jesus for the accomplishment of the com- 
mon work. He is a source of life like the Father, morally at first, and 
then, one day, corporeally. While affirming His voluntary dependence, 
Jesus allows a glimpse to be gained of the magnificence of His filial pre- 
rogative. 

Vv. 22, 23. “ For also the Father judgeth no man; but he hath committed 
all power of judging unto the Son, 23, to the end that all may honor the Son as 
they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the Father 
who sent him.” Two particles connect ver. 22 with the preceding: ydp, for, 
and ovdé (translated by also), which literally signifies: and no more. The 
meaning is, therefore: “ For the Father no more judges any one (no more 
than He raises from the dead, when once He has committed to the Son 
' the charge and power of raising from the dead,” ver. 21). The for pre- 
sents the second fact (the passing over of judgment to the Son) as the 
explanation of the first (the passing over of the power to raise 
from the dead). Indeed, to make alive is to absolve; to refuse to make 
alive is to condemn. The power of making alive those whom one wills 
implies, therefore, the dignity of a judge. Meyer understands judge here, 
as in chap. iii., in the sense of condemn. But in ver. 21, the question is 
expressly of making alive, saving, and not of the opposite; and the ex- 
pression 77 Kpiow macav, judgment in all its forms (ver. 22), shows that the 
term judge should be taken in the most general sense. H. Meyer (Dis- 
courses of the Fourth Gospel, p. 36) is shocked because this term is taken in 
ver, 22 in the spiritual sense (present moral judgment), in ver. 29 in the 
external sense (the final judgment), and finally in ver. 80 in a sense purely 
subjective (the individual judgment of J esus), and hence he concludes 
that the tenor of the discourse has not been, in this case, exactly repro- 
duced. But in ver. 22 the question is of judgment in the most general 
sense, without definite application (alljudgment). It is only in the follow- 
ing cycle, vv. 24-29, that the meaning of this term is precisely stated, and 
that it is taken, first, in {the spiritual sense, then, in the external sense. 
Everything is, therefore, correct in the progress of the thought. 

Ver. 23. And what is the Father’s will in transferring to Jesus the two 
highest attributes of divinity, making alive, judging? He wills that the 
homage of adoration which humanity renders to Him should be extended 
to the Son Himself. “The Father loveth the Son” (iii. 35); this is the 
reason why He wishes to see the world at the feet of the Son, even as at 
His own. “The equality of honor,” says Weiss, “must correspond with 
the equality of action.” The word ray, to honor, does not directly ex- 


CHAP. V. 22-24. 473 


press the act of adoration, as Reuss remarks. But in the context (kabde 
as), it certainly denotes the religious respect of which the act of adoration 
is the expression. And in claiming for His person this sentiment, in the 
same sense in which it is due to the Father, Jesus authorizes, as related 
to Himself, worship properly so called, comp. xx. 28; Phil. ii. 10 “ that 
every knee should bow at the name of Jesus;” and the Apocalypse 
throughout. The Father is not jealous of such homage. For it is He 
whom the creature honors in honoring the Son because of His divine 
character; as also it is to God that honor is refused, when it is refused to 
the Son. There is a terrible warning for the accusers of Jesus in these 
last words of the verse. Jesus throws back upon them the charge of 
blasphemy; they must learn—these zealous defenders of the glory of 
God—that when they accuse Him, Jesus, as they are doing, because of the 
miracle which He has performed in the midst of them, it is God to whom > 
the outrage which they inflict upon Him is addressed, and that the treat- 
ment to which they subject this weak and poor man touches the Father 
Himself, who places Himself in closest union with Him. This menacing 
close of ver. 23 is an anticipation of the severe application which is to 
terminate the discourse (vv. 41-47). 

The second cycle vy. 21-23 was a still very general development of the 
abridged cycle vv. 19,20. In the third cycle, vv. 24-29, Jesus now shows 
the progressive historical realization of these two works of making alive and 
judging, which the Father has conferred upon Him. Until this point (vv. 
21-23) He has attributed them to Himself only under the abstract form of 
mere competency. Now we behold this twofold power of saving and 
judging really in exercise, first in the spiritual sphere, vv. 24-27 ; then, in 
the outward domain, vv. 28, 29. 

Vv. 24-27. First phase: the spiritual resurrection and moral judgment 
of humanity by the Son. 

Ver. 24. “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and be- 
lieveth him that sent me, hath eternal life; and he cometh not into judgment, 
but is passed from death into life”’ Divine things are present to the mind 
of Jesus; He speaks that which He sees (iii. 11); hence this energetic 
affirmation : “ Verily, verily, I say unto you” (vv. 24, 25). These words set 
forth, at the same time, the greatness of the fact announced. It is really 
unheard of: For him who receives with confidence His word, the two 
decisive acts of the eschatological drama, the resurrection and the judg- 
ment, are completed things. The simple word of Jesus received with 
faith has accomplished everything. This fact is indeed the proof of the 
qualities of life-giver and judge which Jesus ascribed to Himself (vv. 21, 
22). ’Axovev, to hear, denotes not, as Weiss thinks, the outward hearing 
only, in contrast to the inward reception, which would come afterwards 
(and believeth . . . ); it is the spiritual hearing, at the same time with the 
physical, in the sense of Matt. xiii. 43. For the verb believe has a new 
object (Keil); it is the Father as the one who has sent the Son. To sur- 
render oneself to the word of Jesus in faith in the divine character of His 
being and word, is to render homage not only to the Son. but also to the 


474 SECOND PART. 


Father. The meaning of éyec Cwfv, has life, can be fully rendered here 
only by saying “has life already.” Itis the proof of ver. 21: ‘The Son 
makes alive.” Is it not, indeed, His word which works this miracle? 
Kai, and, signifies: and in consequence. The exemption from judgment 
follows naturally from the entrance into life. The place of judgment is 
at the threshold of life and death. *Epyera, comes, is the present of idea. 
The word judgment is by no means equivalent to condemnation, kataxpioce, 
as Meyer will have it and as Ostervald translates. A judgment deciding on 
eternal destiny, says Weiss, is no longer possible with regard to the man 
who has in fact already obtained salvation. By the word of Jesus, re- 
ceived into the inner man, the believer undergoes this moral judgment 
here on earth to which unbelievers will be subjected at the last day. The 
revelation of the hidden things (1 Cor. iv. 5) is made in the inner forum 
of his conscience, where everything is condemned in succession which 
will be condemned for the rest before the tribunal at the last judgment. 
The judgment, is thus for him, an accomplished thing. If therefore the 
word received with faith frees the believer from the judgment, it is because 
it anticipates it; comp. xii. 48, where it is said that the judge, at the last 
day, will be no other than this same word. What a feeling of the abso- 
lute holiness and of the perfection of His word do not such expressions 
imply in the consciousness of Jesus! The reconciliation of this passage 
with Rom. xiv. 10 and 2 Cor. v.10 has been given at iii. 18. The last 
words: But he hath passed from death unto life, contrast (but) the condition 
of him who has entered into life with the fate of the one who will have 
to pass through the judgment. The terms death and life are taken in 
the spiritual sense. Westcott thinks that, in this verse, the idea of the 
physical resurrection is still united with that of the spiritual resurrec- 
tion. The combination of these two ideas seems to me impossible. The 
question is of the effects of the word of Jesus in the sense of His word 
of teaching. It is altogether arbitrary to explain the jeraBéByxev, with 
Béumilein, in the sense of “ has the pledge of being able to pass from death 
to life.” 

Ver. 25. “ Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, 
when the dead shall hear? the voice of the Son of God,? and they that* hear 
shall live.” ® A new affirmation, which Christ draws from the depths of 
His consciousness. An immense perspective opens before Him. The 
great act of the spiritual resurrection of humanity dead in its sins, dead 
to God, is to begin at this hour, and it is through Him that it will be 
wholly accomplished! The identity of the formula which begins these 
two verses, 24 and 25, “verily, verily, I say unto you” as well as the asyn- 
deton, which makes the second the energetic reaffirmation of the first, 
would suffice to prove that ver. 25 cannot refer to a fact essentially differ- 


18 a b omit the words kat vuv eotuv. thorities read avdpwrov (of man). 
2Instead of axovaovrar, % L some Mnn. 48 rejects oc (and having heard, they ...). 
read axovoworv,and B some Mnn. akovoovow.' 5T. R. with 11 Mjj. and nearly all the Mnn. 


3Instead of deov, K Sand some other au- Gnoovtac; NBD L: ¢noovew. 


CHAP. Vv. 25. 475 


ent from the preceding, and how wrong it is for Keil to find included here 
at once the physical and the spiritual resurrection. Jesus has passed, at 
ver. 24, from the general idea of resurrection to that of the spiritual res- 
urrection in particular; He does not return backward. Only in order to 
make a picture, He borrows from the physical resurrection the images by 
which He wished to depict the spiritual work which is to prepare the way 
for it. He seems to allude to the magnificent vision of Ezekiel, in which 
the prophet, standing in the midst of a plain covered with dry bones, calls 
them to life, first, by his word, and then, by the breath of Jehovah. Thus 
Jesus abides here below the only living one in the midst of humanity 
plunged in the death of sin, and the hour is approaching in which He is 
going to accomplish with reference to it a work like that which God en- 
trusted to the prophet with regard to Israel in captivity. There is here a 
feeling analogous to that which leads Him to say in the Synoptics: “ Let 
the dead bury their dead.” 'The expression: The hour cometh, and is now 
come, is intended (comp. iv. 23) to open the eyes of all to the grandeur of 
this epoch which is passing and of that which is in preparation. Jesus 
says: the hour cometh ; what He means is the sending of the Holy Spirit 
(vil. 37-39). But he adds: and is now come ; for His word, which is spirit 
and life (vi. 63), is already preparing the hearts to receive the Spirit. 
Comp. xiv. 17. For the expression: my word, Jesus substitutes: the voice 
of the Son of God. The teaching of Christ is thus presented as the per- 
sonal voice of Him who calls sinners to life. The article oi before dxoisavre¢ 
(those who have heard), distinctly separates the spiritually dead into two 
classes: those who hear the voice without understanding it (comp. xii. 40), 
and those who, when hearing it, have ears to hear, hear it inwardly. Only 
these last are made alive by it. It is the function of ee which is 
accomplished under this form. 
Those who apply this verse to the resurrection of the dead in the strict 
sense, are obliged to refer the words: and now is, to a few miraculous 
resurrections wrought by Jesus in the course of His ministry, and to ex- 
plain the words oi axotcavrec in this sense: and after having heard... But 
all Hengstenberg’s efforts have not succeeded in justifying this grammati- 
cally impossible interpretation of of axobcavrece. According to Olshausen, 
ver. 24 refers to the spiritual resurrection, and ver. 25 to the first bodily 
resurrection—that of believers at the Parousia (1 Cor. xv. 23). Vv. 28, 
29, finally, designate the final, universal resurrection. The words: and 
now 7s, must, in that case, refer to the resurrection of the few believers who 
appeared after the resurrection of Christ (Matt. xxvii. 52, 53). Undoubt- 
edly, Jesus admits a distinction between the first resurrection and the 
universal resurrection (Luke xiv. 14: to the resurrection of the just; comp. 
Apoc. xx. 6); but the explanation which Olshausen gives of the words: 
and now is, is not open to discussion. Nothing in the text authorizes 
us to see here the indication of a resurrection different from that of 
ver. 24. The following verse explains the secret of the power which 


the voice of Christ will display in the hour which is about to strike for 
the earth. 


476 SECOND PART. 


Ver. 26. “ For, as! the Father hath life in himself, so hath he also given to 
the Son to have life in himself.’ The emphasis is on the twice-repeated 
words év éavté (in himself), which terminate the two clauses. The Son not 
only has a part in life, like the creature: He possesses it in Himself, and 
He is thereby the source of it, like the Father Himself—hence His voice 
can give or restore life (ver. 25; comp. i. 3,4). But, on the other hand, 
this divine prerogative the Son does not possess except as a gift of the 
Father. Here is the boldest paradox which it is possible to declare. Life 
in Himself, what in theology is called aseity, self-existence, given to the 
Son! We could not get an insight into the solution of this contradiction, 
unless we saw an analogous contradiction resolved in ourselves. We pos- 
sess, as a thing given, the faculty of determining for ourselves, that is, of 
ourselves morally creating ourselves. We draw at each instant from this 
faculty moral decisions which appertain peculiarly to ourselves, for which 
we are seriously responsible before God, and which are transmuted into 
our permanent character. It is through making us a gift of this myster- 
ious privilege of free action, that God has placed us in the rank of beings 
made in His image. What freedom is for man, this the divine faculty of 
living in Himself is for the Son. It is by this means, also, that the swbor- 
dination of the Son to the Father becomes an act of divine freedom, and 
consequently, of divine love. By the gift of divine independence to the 
Son, the Father has given Him everything; by His perfect and voluntary 
subordination, the Son gives back everything to the Father. To give 
everything, to give back everything, is not this perfect love. God 7s love. 
Thus, not only does God love divinely, but He is also divinely loved. The 
act expressed by the word, éduxev (gave), is regarded by Tholuck, Luthardt, 
Weiss, etc., as a fact falling within the earthly life of Jesus: Jesus pos- 
sesses, here on earth, spiritual life abiding in Him, and can communicate 
itto men. But if this were the full meaning of this word, how would it 
harmonize with vi. 57, where Jesus declares that in His earthly condition 
“ He lives only by the Father,” just as we, believers, live only by Him. It 
must, therefore, be acknowledged, that He is speaking of an eternal gift, 
of a unique prerogative appertaining to His divine state and entering 
into His essential Sonship. The spiritual resurrection of mankind 
through Him, this is the work which He wishes to explain in this pas- 
sage; this work is yet to come; it implies the re-instatement of Christ in 
His divine state (xvii. 1, 2,5). This expression must, consequently, be 
applied to Him in so far as raised, as man, to the supreme position which 
He enjoyed, as Logos, before the incarnation. It is from the midst of this 
glory that He will accomplish the resurrection described in vv. 24, 26 
(the hour cometh); for it is then only that He can pour out the Spirit (vii. 
39; xvii. 2). With the spiritual resurrection and judgment is closely con- 
nected, as a second divine act, the judgment together with the external 
resurrection, which is the condition of it. 

Ver. 27. “ And he hath given him power also? to execute judgment, because 


18 D: ws, instead of worep. 2A B L Itpleria Syreur Cop. Orig. (twice) omit the second kat. 


CHAP. V. 26, 27. 477 


he is son of man.” Jesus had said in ver. 22,in an indefinite way, that 
all judgment is committed to Him. This word all judgment included, of 
course, both the present moral, internal judgment and the final, external 
judgment. It is under these two aspects, taken together, that this idea is . 
reproduced in ver. 27, which thus forms the transition from the work of 
the spiritual resurrection and judgment (vv. 24-26), to that of the outward 
resurrection and judgment (vv. 28, 29). Jesus adds to the idea of ver. 22 
a new limitation: that the function of judge is committed to Him inas- 
much as He is Son of man. The second xai also, although omitted by B, 
is perhaps authentic. It emphasizes the relation between the character 
of judge and that of Son of man. What is this relation? It has been 
understood in a great variety of ways. According to Liicke the meaning 
is: Because He is the Messiah and judging is (according to Dan. vii.) a 
Messianic function. But in that case the article before the words Son of 
man could not be wanting. Without the article, this expression signifies 
simply: a son of man. Keil denies this and thinks that the absence of the 
article may be explained by the fact that the words are here the predicate, 
designating a ‘quality, rather than a person. He explains therefore: 
Because He is mediator between God and man, author of salvation and 
consequently judge; for judgment forms a part of the salvation. But the 
absence of the article is not justified by this, and the idea of salvation is 
arbitrarily introduced here. Beyschlag understands: Because He is the 
perfect man, the ideal man, fitted to serve as the standard for the moral 
worth of all others. But the article could not, any more than in the other 
case, be wanting with this meaning. The term, Son of man, without the 
article sets forth simply the quality of man which He shares with all other 
men. Lange: Because, as a son of man, He can have compassion on our 
weakness. But this would be to deny to God the feeling of compassion, 
while the Scriptures say expressly: “ Like as a Father pitieth ...., so 
the Lord pitieth .. . . for he knoweth our frame” (Ps. cii.18). Heb. ii. 18 
cannot be cited as parallel, since the question there is of intercession, not 
of judgment. De Wette: Because the Father, as being the hidden God, 
cannot judge. Reuss, nearly the same: “In the system, God, in Himself, 
does not place Himself in contact with the world which He is to judge; 
He makes Himself man for this.”! This reason would apply to the God 
of Philo, not to the God of Jesus Christ and of St. John; the latter is a 
Father, who is in direct relations with the world and humanity; He begets 
children for life (i. 18); He loves the world (iii. 16); He even testifies by 
outward miracles in favor of the Son; He draws souls to Christ, ete. 
Such a God might also, if He. wished, judge the world. Besides, as 
Inthardt observes, the opposite of the hidden God would not be the Son 
of man, but the revealed God, the Word, the Son of God, or, speaking 
absolutely, the Son. Meyer and Weiss: Because Jesus is, as man, the 


1 Reuss, in his last work (Théol. johann.), man could not Himself exercise Jt.” But the 
quotes without remark this very different ex- special relation between the has given and the 
planation: “God was obliged to delegate judg- because, would, in that case, need to have 
ment to Him, because He in His quality as been more distinctly marked. 


478 SECOND PART. 


executor and proclaimer of salvation, on which depends the decision of 
each man’s destiny. There is the same reason against this explanation, 
as against that of Keil. The quality of man is made prominent here for 
the purpose of explaining, not the dignity of Saviour, but that of judge. 
Holtzmann: Because He can make the revelation of the divine holiness 
shine forth before the eyes of men through the fact of His human appear- 
ance. But God is able directly to manifest His holiness to the human 
conscience, as is many times seen in the Old Testament. Hengstenberg : 
to recompense Him for becoming man. Strange reward! In this embar- 
rassment, the Peschito (Syr*), some Mjj. (E. M A.), and Chrysostom have 
recourse to a desperate expedient; they connect these words: “ because 
heisson...” with the following verse: “Because He is a Son of man, 
marvel not,” But what is there in the context leading us to suppose an aston- 
ishment respecting this point? Is it then so difficult to grasp the thought 
of Jesus? The judgment of humanity is a homage rendered to the holi- 
ness of God; but this homage, in order really to make reparation for the 
outrage committed, must proceed from the race itself which has com- 
mitted the offense. Judgment, in this view, is exactly on the same line 
with expiation, of which it serves as the complement. Expiation is the 
reparation freely offered by believing humanity ; judgment is the satis- 
faction which God takes from humanity which has refused Him this 
reparation. In the one, as in the other, of these acts, a man must 
preside. 

Vv. 28, 29. “ Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming when all who are in 
the tombs shall hear his voice and shall come forth, 29, those who have done good, 
unto a resurrection of life, those who have done evil, unto a resurrection of 
judgment.” The Lord reaches here the more outward domain, both as 
to the resurrection (ver. 28), and as to the judgment (ver. 29). It 
is impossible, indeed, not to refer ver. 28 to the resurrection of the 
dead, in the proper sense. 1. The question is of a wholly future event; 
for Jesus purposely omits here the words: kai viv éori, and now 1s, 
of ver. 25. 2. He does not merely say, the dead (as in ver. 25); He uses 
the expression : those who are in the tombs, an, expression which must, of 
course, be taken in the strict sense. 3. No more does He say: those who 
shall hear (ver. 25), an expression which implies a selection between two 
classes, but: All those who are in the graves shall hear ; that is to say, the 
whole number of the dead. 4. Finally, He does not speak, as previously, 
of a single result: life; but of two opposite results which that resurrec- 
tion will have (ver. 29). Jesus rises, therefore, from the highest act of au- 
thority (éovoia), the judgment, to the highest act of power (divayc), the res- 
urrection of the body; and this is the way in which He reasons: “ Mar- 
vel not because I attribute to myself the right of judging (ver. 27), for behold 
the display of divine power which it shall one day be given me to make: 
to bring all mankind out of the grave.” Liicke gives quite another turn to 
the thought of Jesus: “ You will cease to be astonished that judgment is 
given to me, if you call to mind that as Son of man (as Messiah), it is I 
who accomplish the resurrection.” Jesus according to his view, makes 


CHAP. V. 28, 29. 479 


His starting point, as from a thing well known and acknowledged, from 
an article of Jewish theology, according to which the Messiah is the one 
who is to raise mankind from the dead. But it is still doubtful whether, 
at the time of Jesus, the work of the resurrection was ascribed to the 
Messiah. Even the later Jewish theology shows itself very much divided 
on this point. Some ascribe this act to the omnipotent God, others to the 
Messiah (Eisenmenger, Hntdeckt, Judenth. Th. II. pp. 897-899). This me- 
chanical appeal to a Jewish doctrine is, moreover, little in accord with the 
ever original character of the testimony of Jesus. Finally, the meaning 
given by Lucke implies a false interpretation of the term son of man, ver. 
27. There is great force in the words: shall hear His voice. “This voice 
which sounds in your ears at this moment, will be the one that shall 
awake you from the sleep of death and cause you to come forth from the 
tomb. Marvel not, therefore, that I claim to possess both the authority 
to judge and the power to raise from the dead spiritually.” Thus the last 
convulsion of the physical world, the universal resurrection, will be the 
work of that same human will which shall have renewed the moral world 
—that of the Son of Man. “ Since death came by man,” says St. Paul with 
precisely the same meaning, “ the resurrection of the dead comes also by man” 
(1 Cor. xv. 21). No doubt, it might be said to Jesus: All these are only 
assertions on thy part. But we must not forget that behind these affirm- 
ations there was a fact—namely, “ Arise and walk,” immediately followed 
by a result, which was at once the text of this discourse and its point of 
support. The twenty-ninth verse concludes this whole development by 
the idea of the final judgment, of which the resurrection of the body is 
the condition. To be judged, the dead must be revived in the fullness of 
their consciousness and of their personality, which implies their restora- 
tion to bodily existence. We must not translate: ‘‘Those who shall have 
done good, evil works,” but: “ the good, the evil works.” In these two ex- 
pressions is declared, as Keil says, the total result of the life in good or 
evil. In the former of these expressions are included the moral sincerity 
which leads to faith (ii. 21), the act of faith itself, when the hour of call- 
ing for it has come, finally, all the fruits of sanctification which result 
from faith. The latter comprehends the natural inward depravity which 
alienates from faith, unbelief which voluntarily takes sides with sin 
against the light (ili. 19, 20), finally, all the inevitable, immoral conse- 
quences of such a choice. On the use of the word roeiv with ayadé and 
mpdooev With gavda, see on ill. 20. The expression resurrection of life is ex- 
plained by the opposite term: resurrection of judgment. The latter can 
only signify : resurrection leading to judgment; the former, only; resur- 
rection introducing to the fullness of life, and that without any further 
necessity of a judgment in order to decide this favorable result. Luthardt 
and Weiss take the genitive Cw7c, of life, as a limiting word of cause or 
quality: a resurrection which results from life (spiritual) already possessed 
(vv. 24, 25), or which is appropriate to that life. But there are degrees in 
the development of life, and if this resurrection, on the one hand, pre- 
supposes life, it may also, on the other hand, have life as its result. Here 


480 SECOND PART. 


also we must avoid translating xpiovc, with Osterwald, Arnaud, etc., by con- 
demnation. 


Reuss maintains that the spiritual resurrection is in this passage declared to be 
“oreater and more important than the physical resurrection” (see on ver. 20) ; and 
in his attempt to make this idea accord with the: “‘ Marvel not,” of ver. 28, which 
implies the opposite, the following is the meaning which he gives to these words: 
“Marvel not that I speak to you, as I have just been doing, of a moral resurrec- 
tion which must precede the physical resurrection. For you hold yourselves that 
the Messiah is to accomplish the latter; and this is in your eyes the more aston- 
ishing.” But these words in your eyes are an importation of the commentator, 
intended to justify his system, according to which he has been able to write re- 
specting the fourth Gospel that line, in manifest contradiction to the real- 
ity (vv. 28, 29): “The idea of a future and universal judgment is repudiated as 
something superfluous” (IL., p. 559). Scholten, feeling the powerlessness of every 
exegetical expedient to reach the end which is pursued, that of causing every 
trace of the ordinary eschatology to disappear from our Gospel, declares vy. 28, 
29 to be unauthentic, which verses, nevertheless, are not wanting in any docu- 
ment. He reasons thus: the activity of Jesus extending, according to pseudo- _ 
John, only to men who are in this life... , vv. 28, 29, must be interpolated.” 
Convenient method! When they do not find the Gospel such as they wish, they 
make it such! Hilgenfeld (Hinl., p. 729), does not hesitate to affirm that our pas- 
sage excludes all the Judeo-Christian eschatology, the outward coming of Jesus, 
a first resurrection, etc. But even though our passage does not contain all the 
elements of the picture, it does not absolutely exclude any one of them. Much 
more, the glorious coming of the Messiah is implied in ver. 28, and the entire 
eschatological drama, which the Parousia is to inaugurate, is summed up in ver. 
29, so far as relates to the final result, which alone is of importance here, the res- 
urrection and the judgment as works of Jesus. 


After this passage (vy. 19-29), the development of the idea of ver. 17: 
“My Father worketh until now and I also work,” is completely unfolded 
and Jesus returns to the starting-point. 

Ver. 30. “I can do nothing of myself; as I hear, I judge; and my judg- 
ment is just, because I seek not mine own will, but the will of him who sent me.” * 
Can ver. 30 be connected with what immediately precedes, by the idea of 
judgment which is common to this verse and ver. 29? But the present 
tense : I judge (ver. 30) does not suit the idea of the future judgment (ver. 
29); and the first clause: I can do nothing of myself, impresses at once on 
the thought of ver. 80 a much more general bearing. We are evidently 
brought back to the idea of ver. 19, which served as the starting-point of 
the preceding development: the infallibility of the Son’s work finding its 
guarantee in its complete dependence on that of the Father. As Reuss 
well says: “The last verse reproduces the substance of the first; and the 
discourse thus is rounded out even externally.” After having ascribed to 
Himself the most wonderful operations, Jesus seems to feel the need of 


17. R. adds rarpos at the end of the verse, rejected by 8A BDK LAA 12 Mnn. Itpleriq 
with EG H MSU V Mnn,, It*lq; this word is | Vulg. Syr. Cop. Orig. (three times). 


CHAP. V. 30. 481 


sinking again, as related to the Father, into a sort of nothingness. He 
who successively accomplishes the greatest works, is powerless to accom- 
plish by Himself the humblest act. The pronoun éyé (J), positively applies 
to that visible and definite personality which they have before their eyes 
the unheard of things which He has just affirmed, in a more abstract way, 
of the Son. This is the first difference between ver. 30 and ver. 19; the 
following is the second: In order to describe the total subordination of 
His work to that of the Father, Jesus made use of figures borrowed from 
the sense of sight: the Father shows, the Son sees. Here He borrows His 
figures from the sense of hearing: the Son hears, evidently from His 
Father’s lips, the sentences which He is to pronounce, and it is only thus 
that He judges. Moreover, of the two divine works which He accom- 
plishes, raising from the dead and judging, it was especially the first which 
Jesus had in view in ver. 19, in relation to the miracle wrought on the 
impotent man; He here makes the second prominent, in connection with 
the supreme act indicated in ver. 29. The sentences of which He speaks 
are the acts of absolution or of condemnation, which He accomplishes 
here on earth, by saying to one: “ Thy sins are forgiven thee,” to the other: 
“Thy works are evil.” Before declaring Himself thus, Jesus meditates 
in Himself; He listens to the Father’s voice, and only opens His mouth 
after He has heard. It is upon this perfect docility that He rests the in- 
fallibility of His judgments, and not upon an omniscience incompatible 
with His humanity: “And—that is, and thus—my judgment is just.” But 
there is a condition necessary for listening and hearing in this way; it is 
to have no will of one’s own; hence the ér: (because), which follows. No 
doubt, Jesus, Himself also, has a natural will distinct from that of God; 
His prayer in Gethsemane clearly proves it: “ Not my will, but thine be 
done.” But, in a being entirely consecrated to God, as Jesus was, this 
natural will (my will), exists only to be unceasingly submitted or sacrificed 
to the Father’s will: ‘“‘Z seek not mine own will, but the will of Him that 
hath sent me.” From the ontological point of view, the Monothelites, 
therefore, well deserved to be condemned; for in denying to Jesus a will 
distinct from that of God, they suppressed the human nature in Him. And 
yet morally speaking, they were right. For all self-will in Jesus was a will 
continually and freely sacrificed. It is on this unceasing submission that 
the absolute holiness of His life rests, and from this holiness it is that the 
infallibility of His knowledge and His words results. He declares this 
here Himself—The roi réupavrd¢ ye of Him who sent me, is not a mere 
paraphrase of the name of God. It is argumentative : the one sent does 
the work of the sender. 

What an existence is that of which this passage, vv. 19-30, traces for us 
the type! Such a relationship with God must have been lived, in order 
to be thus described : to act only after having seen, to speak only after 
having heard, what a picture of filial consciousness, of filial teaching, of 
filial activity! And all this attaching itself to a mere healing, accom- 
plished on the initiative of the Father! Do we not see clearly that the 
essential idea of ver. 17 is that of the relation of dependence of the Son’s 

31 


482 SECOND PART. 


work towards the Father’s, and by no means that of the Sabbath, of which 
not the least mention is made in all this development? At the same 
time, this passage gives us, so to speak, access even to the inner labora- 
tory of our Lord’s thought and allows us to study the manner in which His 
word was produced. The miracle performed and the accusations which 
He excites awaken His reflection. He collects Himself, and the profound 
relation of His work to that of His Father formulates itself in His con- 
sciousness in the form of that simple, summary, oracle-like thesis of ver. 
17. This is the theme which He develops afterwards. At the first moment 
(vv. 19, 20), He remains in the highest generalities of the paternal and 
filial relation. Then there are precisely formulated in His thought the 
two essential works which result from this relation: making alive, judging 
(vv. 21-23) ; finally, those two works themselves are presented to His mind 
in a more and more concrete form, in their progressive historical realiza- 
tion ; first in the moral domain (vy. 24-27), then in that of external reali- 
ties (vv. 28, 29). Where in this incomparable passage is what is called 
religious metaphysics? From the first word to the last, everything breathes 
that sentiment of filial abnegation which is the heart of Jesus’ heart. 


II. The testimony of the Father, in support of that which the Son renders to 
Himself: vv. 31-40. 


Jesus had just ascribed to Himself marvelous works. Such declara- 
tions might provoke an objection among His hearers: “All that which 
thou affirmest of thyself has no other guaranty than thine own word.” 
Jesus acknowledges that His testimony has need of a divine sanction (vy. 
31-35); and He presents it to His adversaries in a double testimony of the 
Father: 1. That of His miracles (ver. 36); 2. And that which is found 
from old time in the Scriptures (vv. 387-40). 

Vv. 31, 32. “ If I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. 82. There 
is another that beareth witness of me; and I know?! that the witness which he 
witnesseth of me is true.” Perhaps ver. 31 is the answer to an objection 
which was actually made to Jesus, in consequence of the preceding words. 
Similar interruptions abound in the much more circumstantial narratives 
of the following chapters. No doubt, the testimony which a person bears 
on his own behalf may be perfectly true. But in the sphere of sinful 
men, such a testimony is always suspected of partiality or falsehood. 
Jesus speaks here from the point of view of His hearers, who regard Him 
as an ordinary man. In the saying of viii. 14, on the contrary, He re- 
sumes His normal position and will claim distinctly the exceptional 
authority which His perfect holiness confers upon Him. The 2yé, J, 
might signify here: “I alone (apart from every other witness).” It is 
better to understand it: “I myself, bearing witness of my own person.” 
Everything which follows proves that this other, whose testimony Jesus is 
about to allege, is God, and not John the Baptist, as de Wette thought. 
Vv. 33-35 are intended precisely to set aside the application of this saying 


1 D Italia Syreur read ovdare (ye know), instead of oda (I know). 


CHAP. v. 31-35. 483 


to the forerunner. In the second clause of ver. 32, this word: I know: 
signifies: “I bear in myself the inward consciousness of that filial relation 
of which my Father bears witness.” He means to say that for Himself 
He has no need of any testimony. The reading oidare, you know, proba- 
bly arises from the false application of these words to the testimony of 
John the Baptist. The expressions repi éuov, repi éuavrod, concerning me, 
concerning myself, repeated three times (vv. 31, 32) do not mean: in my 
favor, for me (Rilliet), but quite simply : respecting me. Before saying who 
this other is, whose testimony serves to support His own, Jesus removes 
the supposition that it is to the testimony of the forerunner that He 
means to appeal. 

Vv. 33-35. “ Ye have sent wnto John, and he hath borne witness unto the 
truth. 34. But the witness which I receive, is not from man; and what I say 
unto you here, is to the end that ye may be saved. 35. He was the lamp that 
burneth and shineth ; and ye were willing to rejoice for a season in his light.” 
The testimony of John the Baptist had made so much noise that Jesus 
might aye that, at the moment when He was saying: “I have another 
witness,” every one would think of that personage. Jesus rejects this 
supposition, but does so while calling attention to the fact that, from His 
hearers’ standpoint, the testimony of John should certainly be regarded 
as valid; for it was they themselves who had called it forth (an allusion to 
the deputation, i. 19 ff.). The word you, iueic, at the beginning of the 
verse, places the hearers in contrast to Jesus, who does not ask for human 
testimonies and contents himself with being able to allege that of the Fa- 
ther. The perfect ueuapripye, hath borne witness, declares that the testi- 
mony of John preserves its value notwithstanding the disappearance of 
the witness (ver. 85: he was, etc.). On this truth to which John bore wit- 
ness, comp. 1. 20, 27, 29. The éya dé, but I, of ver. 34 forms an. antithesis 
to the you of ver. 33. This human testimony which they demanded, is 
not that by which Jesus supports the truth of His own, even though it 
was favorable to Him. But does Jesus regard the testimony of John the 
Baptist as purely human? Some interpreters escape the difficulty by 
translating ob ZauB8dvw in the sense: “I do not seek” or “I am not ambi- 
tious of.” This is to strain the meaning of the expression, which merely 
means: I do not make use of it. Itis enough if we take account of the 
‘article r#v before the word testimony ; “the testimony,” means here: “that 
of which I have need, the only one which I would allege as confirmation 
of my own.” John’s testimony was designed to direct their eyes to the 
light; but, when once the light had appeared, it gave place to the direct 
testimony of God Himself. That testimony was, indeed, the fruit of a 
revelation; but, as Keil says, this inspiration, passing through human 
lips, might be called in question. Nevertheless, Jesus recalls, in passing, 
this testimony of John. It is the care which He has for their souls, 
which does not permit Him to pass it over in silence: “If I recall it, it is 
to the end that yon (iueic) may profit by it unto salvation. It is, then, for 
you, not for me.’ 

The 35th verse expresses the transitory character of the appearance 


/ 


484 SECOND PART. 


of John the Baptist. John was not the light, the sun (i. 8); but he was 
the torch, lighted by God for giving light before the daycame. The article 
the before the word torch has been explained in many ways. Bengel finds 
here an allusion to Sirach xlviii. 1: “ the word (of Elijah) shone as a torch.” 
Luthardt believes that John is compared to the well-known torch-bearer, 
who ordinarily preceded the bridegroom in the marriage feasts. Meyer, 
Weiss, Keil, understand: the true torch which is designed to show the 
path. Perhaps there is an allusion to that séngle light which was lighted 
at night to illumine the house (Mark iv. 21). We might seein the two 
epithets: which burneth and shineth, only this one idea: which is consumed 
in shining. But it is more simple to find here the two conditions of the 
usefulness of the light: to be lighted and not to be covered (Weiss). The 
imperfect 7», was, proves that, at the moment when Jesus was speaking, 
the light was already covered. For there is evidently an allusion in this 
past tense'to the imprisonment of John the Baptist. The second part of 
the verse: Ye were willing .... , continues the figure. Jesus compares 
the Jews to children who, instead of making use of the precious moments 
during which the light shines, do nothing but frolic in its brightness. To 
rejoice is contrasted with to be saved, ver.34. It wasimpossible better to char- 
acterize the vain and puerile curiosity, with which the people were infatu- 
ated by an appearance so extraordinary. Comp. Luke vil. 24: “ What 
went ye out into the wilderness to see?” Weiss thinks that Jesus meant to 
indicate the hopes which had at first been excited in the rulers by this 
appearance. Can this be in accordance with Luke vii. 30?—Hvedjoare: 
you pleased yourselves with . . . 

Ver. 36. “ But I have the’ witness which is greater * than [that of ] John ; 
for the works which the Father hath given * me to accomplish, these very works 
that I do* bear witness of me, that the Father hath sent me.” The passage 
relating to John the Baptist was only a remark thrown in in a passing 
way, an argument ad hominem ; Jesus now develops the fact announced 
at first, ver. 82: the testimony of the Father. The éyé, J, is like that of 
ver. 34, the antithesis of you, ver. 33; it completes the preceding by add- 
ing the affirmation to the negation. For the article the, see on ver. 34: the 
absolute witness, the only one to which I wish to appeal here. 

The absence of the article before weif{w is explained thus: “ the 
true testimony, which is a testimony greater than.” In the genitive rot 
'Iwavvov, of John, is ordinarily found the abbreviated form of comparison : 
“oreater than that of John.” May it not be explained more literally : 
“greater than John,” that is to say, than John testifying in my favor: 
John identified with his testimony. Meyer, Weiss, Keil, Reuss, etc., un- 
derstand by the épya, the works of which Jesus speaks, His whole activity 
in general, and not only His miracles. Weiss alleges for this meaning 
the whole passage vv. 20-27 on the spiritual resurrection of humanity. 
But the spiritual works of Jesus do not come under the perception of the 


18 omits rnv before papruprav. 38 BLT read Sedwxev, instead of edwrev. 
2A BEG M Aread pecgor (evidently a mis- 48 ABD Lsome Mnn. reject eyw before 
take). TOL. 


CHAP. Y. 36, 37. 485 


senses; in order to believe them, they must have been experienced; they 
are not, therefore, a testimony for the unbeliever. Moreover, at the mo- 
ment when Jesus was speaking, they were still to come. Finally, we 
must not forget the starting-point of this whole discourse, which is a mir- 
acle properly so called. Jesus certainly alludes to the healing of the im- 
potent man and to all the similar works which He is accomplishing 
every day. Meyer concedes this explanation in the passages vii. 3, 21 and 
elsewhere; but the context demands it here as well as there. The mira- 
cles are designated, on the one side, as gifts of the Father to Jesus; on the 
other, as works of Jesus Himself. And it is, in fact, by this double right, 
that they are a testimony of God. If the Son did them by His own force, 
they would not be a declaration of God on His behalf; and if God per- 
formed them directly, without passing through the Son as an organ, the 
latter could not derive from them a personal legitimation—We may hes- 
itate between the readings édwxe and déduxe, both of which are compatible 
with the following iva reAecdow. The object of this verb hath given is: the 
works ; God makes a gift to Jesus of His miracles. Then this object is 
developed by these words: (literally) that I may accomplish them. For 
these miracles are not given to Him in the form of works done, but of 
works to be done. This is brought out forcibly by the repetition of the 
subject in the words: these very works which I (éyo) do. The expression 
give in order that includes both permission and power. As it is from this 
double character of the miracle, as a gift of God and a work of Jesus, that 
the testimony results, it is necessary to keep in the text the word éyé, J, 
before rod, which is rejected by some Alexandrian authorities, and which 
well sets forth the second of these two characteristics. But this testimony 
of the miracles is still indirect, as compared with another which is alto- 
gether personal (ver. 37): 

Ver. 37. “And the Father who sent me, himself! hath borne witness of me. Ye 
have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his form.” It is clear, what- 
ever Olshausen, Baur and others may say, that Jesus here speaks of a new 
testimony of the Father: otherwise, why should He substitute for the pre- 
sent beareth witness (ver. 36), which applies to the miracles which Jesus at 
present performs, the perfect hath borne witness, which can only denote a 
testimony given and completed.—The pronoun airéc, Himself, emphasized 
as it is, strongly sets forth the personal character of this new testimony : 
God has spoken Himself. This is the reason why the reading airé¢ seems 
to me preferable to the éxeivoc, he, of the Alexandrian authorities. What 
is this personal testimony? De Wette and Tholuck, understand by it the 
inner voice by which God testifies in the heart of man in favor of the Gos- 
pel, “the drawing of the Father to the Son.” But it is impossible from this 
point of view to explain the perfect hath borne witness, and very difficult 
to account for the following expressions, His voice, His form, which so evi- 
dently refer to a personal manifestation. Chrysostom, Grotius, Bengel (I 
myself, in the former editions), refer this expression to the testimony of 


1 BL. am.read execvos, instead of avtos; D: execvos autos. 


486 SECOND PART, 


God at the baptism of Jesus, which very well answers to this condition. 
But objection is rightly made because of the od . . . réore, never, in the 
following words: and it would be to return to the testimony of John the 
Baptist, which Jesus had set aside, since the voice of God had not been heard 
except by the forerunner and everything rested, therefore, upon his testi- 
mony. We must, accordingly, take our position rather with the explana- 
tion of Cyril, Calvin, Liicke, Meyer, Luthardt, Weiss, Keil, who refer ver. 37 to 
the testimony of God in the Old Testament, the book in which He manifests 
Himself and Himself speaks. Vv. 38, 39 confirm this view. But how, from 
this point of view, can we explain the following clause? A reproach has 
been found here (Meyer, Luthardt, Keil); “You are miserably deaf and 
blind, that is, incapable of apprehending this testimony; you have never 
inwardly received the divine word.” This sense suits the context. But 
the expression : “‘ You have not seen his face” would be a strange one to 
designate moral insensibility to the Holy Scriptures. Others see rather in 
these words a concession made to the hearers: for example, Tholuck : “You 
have, no doubt, neither heard .. . norseen .. . , for that is impossible; 
it is not this with which I reproach you (ver. 37); but you should at least 
have received the testimony which God gives in the Scriptures” (ver. 88). 
If this were the thought, however, an adversative particle could not be 
wanting at the beginning of ver. 38. But the expression: and you have 
not in you, on the contrary, continues the movement of the preceding 
clause. The expressions to hear the voice, see the form of God, denote an 
immediate personal knowledge of God (i. 18). Jesus uses the former in vi. 
46, to characterize the knowledge of God which He has Himself, in con- 
trast with all purely human knowledge: “ Not that any one hath seen the 
Father, save He that is of the Father; he hath seen the Father.” This decla- 
ration ought to serve as a standard for the explanation of the one before 
us. We shall say with Weiss: There is not here either a reproach or a 
concession; it is the simple authentication of a fact, namely, the natural 
powerlessness of man to rise to the intuitive knowledge of God. The 
thought of Jesus is, therefore: “ This personal testimony of God (ver. 87a) 
has not reached you, first because no divine revelation or appearance has 
been personally given to you, as to the prophets and men of God in the 
Old Testament (ver. 37b) ; and then because the word to which those men 
of God consigned their immediate communications with God, has not be- 
come living and abiding in you (ver. 38).” Consequently the personal 
testimony of God, that which Jesus here means, does not exist for them. 
God has never spoken to them directly, and the only book, in which they 
could have heard His testimony, has remained for them, through their 
own fault, a closed book. We can well understand why in ver. 37 Jesus 
employs the term ¢wr4, the personal voice, the symbol of immediate reve- 
lation, while in ver. 88 He makes use of the word 4édyoc, word, the term in 
use to denote the revelation handed down to the people. The direct con- 
nection of ver. 37 with ver. 38 by «ai, and, presents no more difficulty from 
this point of view. 

Vv. 38-40. “ And his word ye have not abiding in you, for ye believe not 


CHAP. V. 38—40. 487 


him whom he hath sent. 39. Ye search the Scriptures, because ye think that in 
them ye have eternal life; and these are they which bear witness of me. 40. 
And ye will not come to me that ye may have life.’ The written word might 
have supplied the place of the personal revelation; they have had it in 
their hands and on their lips, but not in the heart. They have studied 
the letter, but have not appropriated to themselves the contents, the 
thought, the spirit. Thus it has not become a light lighted within them 
to guide them, a power to bear sway over them. Jesus gives a proof of 
this inward fact—it is their unbelief towards Him, the divine messenger. 
Undoubtedly, there is no argument here; for the reality of His divine 
mission was precisely the point in question. It is a judgment which Jesus 
pronounces, and which has its point of support, like the entire discourse, 
in the miracle which He had wrought. 

The 39th verse may be regarded as a concession: No doubt, you study 
the Scriptures with care. But we must rather see herein the indication 
of a fact which Jesus is about to contrast with another. “You search the 
Scriptures with so much care; you scrutinize the externals of them with 
the most scrupulous exactness, hoping to make eternal life spring forth 
from this minute study; and at the same time you obstinately reject the 
one to whom they bear testimony!” We take the verb épevvare, there- 
fore, as an indicative: you search; as do Cyril, Erasmus, Bengel, Liicke, 
Westcott, and now also Luthardt. A large number of commentators and 
translators (Chrysostom, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Stier, Hofmann, Keil, 
Ostervald,) make this verb an imperative: Search. Jesus would exhort 
them to a profound study of the Scriptures. But, in that case, He should 
not have said, “because you believe-you have in them . . .,” but “because 
you will have in them;” or at least “because you yourselves think you 
have in them.” And then He should have continued, in order to give a 
ground for the exhortation, by saying: “ For these are they.” The verb 
épevvav, search, is very suitable as characterizing the Rabbinical study of 
the Scriptures, the dissection of the letter. ’Exeiva:, they, still with the 
emphatic and exclusive meaning which this pronoun has in John: and it 
is precisely they. 

The copula «ai, and, in ver. 40, sets forth, as so often in John, the moral 
contradiction between the two things which unbelief succeeds in causing 
to move on together: to study the Scriptures which testify of Christ, and, 
at the same time, not to come to Christ! They seek life, and they reject 
Him who brings it! The words: ye will not, mark the voluntary side of : 
unbelief, the moral antipathy which is the real cause of it. We find, 
again in this passage the sorrowful tone of that saying preserved in the 
Synoptics: “‘ Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often would I... . But ye would 
not!” This passage clearly shows how Jesus recognized Himself in the 
Old Testament. He beheld there so fully His own figure, that it seemed 
to Him impossible to have sincerely studied that book and not come to 
Him immediately. 

But whence arises, then, the not willing pointed out in ver. 40, and 
what will be its result? These are the two questions which Jesus answers in 


488 SECOND PART. 


the words which close the discourse, and which are, as it were, the prac- 
tical application of it. 


III.—The condemnation of Jewish unbelief: vy. 41-47. 


In vv. 41-44, Jesus unfolds the cause of the moral antipathy which 
keeps them away from Him; in vv. 45-47, the terrible consequences of 
this refusal to believe. 

Vv. 41-44. “TI receive not my glory from men. 42. But I know you, [and I 
know] that ye have not the love of God in yourselves. 43. I am come in my 
Father’s name, and ye receive me not ; if another shall come in’ his own name, 
him ye will receive. 44. How can ye believe, ye who receive your glory from 
one another, and seek not? the glory which cometh from God only.”,—On one 
side, a Messiah who has no care for the good opinion of men and the 
homage of the multitude, and on the other, men who place their supreme 
good in public consideration, in an unblemished reputation for orthodoxy, 
in a high renown for Scriptural erudition and for fidelity to legal observ- 
ances (comp. the description of the Pharisees, Matt. vi. 1-18; xxiii. 1-12): 
how could this opposition in tendency fail to put an obstacle in the way 
of the birth of faith in these latter? Weiss thinks that, if this were the 
sense of ver. 41, an éyé, I, would be necessary, in contrast with you (ver. 
42). In the same manner with Westcott, he understands in this way : Do 
not think that I am speaking thus “in order to glorify myself in your 
eyes ” (Weiss); or: “as the result of spite which my disappointed hopes 
cause me” (Westcott). But the éyé would be necessary only if the case of 
Jesus were placed second. If Jesus had meant to reply to such a suppo- 
sition on the part of His adversaries, He would, no doubt, have said: y7 
doxeite, “think not that I seek ....., ”—_The perfect éyvwxa means: “I 
have studied you, and I know you.” Jesus had penetrated the depth of 
vanity which these fine exteriors so much admired among the rulers 
covered.—The love of God denotes the inward aspiration towards God 
which may be found in the Jew and even in the sincere Gentile. 
Rom. ii. 7: “ Those who seek for honor, glory and immortality.” (Comp. 
ver. 44.) This divine aspiration it is, which leads to faith, as the absence 
of it to unbelief. Jesus states precisely here the thought which is 
expressed in an indefinite way in iii. 19-21. In yourselves: not only on 
the lips, but in the heart. 

Ver. 43. The result of this contrast between His moral tendency and 
theirs. While they reject Him, the Messiah, whose whole appearance 
bears the seal of dependence on God, they will receive with eagerness 
every false Messiah who will act from his own wisdom and his own force, 
glorifying man in his person. All glorious with the glory of this world 
will be the one welcomed by these lovers of human glory. In the name of 
God: coming by His authority and as His delegate. In his own name: 
representing only himself, his own genius and power. ‘EA@y, comes, in 


18 omits ev. 28 10 Mun. Itelia. read ¢nrovvres, instead of gnrete. %Bab. omit Ocov. 


CHAP. v. 41-45. 489 


its relation to é7Av6a, I have come, can only denote a pseudo- Messianic 
appearance. According to the Synoptics also, Jesus expected false Christs 
(Matt. xxiv. 5, 24 and the parallels). History has confirmed this pro- 
phecy ; it speaks of sixty-four false Messiahs, who all succeeded in form- 
ing a party among the Jewish people in this way. See Schudt, Jtidische 
Merkwiirdigkeiten (cited by Meyer). You will receive him; comp. 2 Thess. 
ii. 10,11. The application of this expression ; another to the false Messiah 
Bacochebas (about 132), which some critics have desired to make for the 
purpose of proving that the composition of our Gospel belongs to the 
second century (Hilgenfeld, Thoma), is an absolutely gratuitous supposi- 
tion, which has no authorization in the text. 

This vicious tendency with which Jesus reproaches His adversaries 
went so far as even to destroy in them the faculty, the possibility of be- 
lieving: ver. 44. The pronoun, iveic, you, signifies: men such as you 
are (vv. 42, 43). In the last words, the adjective pévov, only, may be con- 
nected with the idea of #eov: God who is the only God. Jesus would, in 
this case, characterize God as having, as only God, the right to bestow the 
true glory. This is the meaning ordinarily given to this expression. I 
think that it is more in the spirit of the context to understand, with Gro- 
tius and de Wette: the glory which is received from God alone, from God 
only, and not from men. The idea of these verses is that nothing renders 
men more unfit for faith than the seeking for human glory. But as 
necessarily as the current of Pharisaic vainglory bears the rulers of the 
people far away from faith, so infallibly would the spirit of love for God 
which inspires the books of Moses have directed them to Jesus and led 
them to faith. 

Vv. 4547. “ Think not that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one 
that accuseth you,’ Moses, on whom ye have set your hope. 46. For if ye be- 
lieved Moses, ye would believe me; for he wrote? of me. 47. But if ye believe 
not his writings, how shall ye believe* my words.” After having unveiled to 
them the moral cause of their unbelief, Jesus shows to His hearers the 
danger to which it exposes them,—that of being condemned in the name of 
that very law, on the observance of which they have founded their hopes 
of salvation. It is not He, the Messiah rejected by them, it is Moses him- 
self, in whose name they condemn Him, who will demand their condem- 
nation. Jesus pursues them here on their own ground. His word 
assumes an aggressive and dramatic form. He causes to rise before them 
that grand figure of the ancient deliverer, to whom their hopes were at- 
tached (cic 6v), and transforms this alleged advocate into an accuser. The 
words : that I will accuse you, show that, already at that time, a sentiment 
of hostility to His own people was imputed to Jesus. It was His severe 
discourses which gave rise to this accusation. ‘Eor, is very solemn: “ He 
is there, he who...” The words: on whom you hope, allude to the zeal 
for the law, which the adversaries of Jesus had manifested on this very 


1B adds mpos tov matepa (to the Father). read morevere and D G@ SA some Mnn. 
2N: yeypadev instead of eypawev. TLoTEVONTE. 
8Instead of morevoete, B V Italia Syreur 


490 SECOND PART. 


day ; this zeal was their title, in their eyes an assured title, to the Messianic 
glory. “It will be found that this Moses, whom you invoke against me 
will testify for me against you.” What an overturning of all their ideas! 
Meyer and Weiss claim that the words: who will accuse you cannot refer 
to the last yudgment, since Jesus will then fill the office, not of accuser, but 
of judge. But Jesus does not enter into this question, which would have 
had no meaning with people who did not recognize Him as the Messiah. 
To the Father: who will judge by means of Christ. 

The two verses, 46 and 47, prove the thesis of ver. 45, by showing, the 
first, the connection between faith in Moses and faith in Christ; the 
second, the no less necessary connection between the two unbeliefs in the 
one and in the other. In other words: Every true disciple of Moses is on 
the way to becoming a Christian ; every bad Jew is on that towards reject- 
ing the Gospel. These two propositions are founded on the principle 
that the two covenants are the development of one and the same funda- 
mental thought and have the same moral substance. To accept or reject 
the revelation of salvation at its first stage, is implicitly to accept or reject 
it in its complete form. This is exactly the thesis which St. Paul devel- 
ops in Rom. ii. 6-10 and 26-29. The words: wrote of me, allude to the 
Proto-gospel, to the patriarchal promises, to the types such as that of the 
brazen serpent, to the Levitical ceremonies which were the shadow of 
things to come (Col. ii. 17), more especially to the promise Deut. xviii. 18 : 
“T will raise up unto them a prophet like unto thee ;”’—this last promise, while 
including the sending of all the prophets who followed Moses, finds its 
consummation in Jesus Christ.— Ye would believe on me: in me as the one 
whom Moses thus announced. In truth, many of the prophecies had not 
yet found in Jesus their fulfillment. But we must think especially of the 
spirit of holiness in the law of Moses and the theocratic institutions, 
which found in Jesus its full realization. Moses tended to awaken the 
sense of sin and the thirst for righteousness, which Jesus came to satisfy. 
“To give access to this spirit, was to open one’s heart in advance to the 
great life-giver”’ (Gess). 

Ver. 47. On the other hand, unbelief towards Moses carries naturally 
in its train the rejection of Jesus. The essential antithesis is not that of 
the substantives, writings and words, but that of the pronouns, his and my. 
The former is only accidental; it arises only from the fact that the Jews” 
knew Moses by his writings and Jesus by His words. This charge of not 
believing Moses, addressed to people whom the alleged violation of one 
of the Mosaic commandments threw into a rage, recalls that other saying 
of Jesus, so sorrowful and so bitter (Matt. xxiii. 29-82): “Ye build the 
tombs of the prophets, and ye bear witness thus that ye are children of those who 
killed them.” The rejection of a sacred principle shelters itself sometimes 
under the appearances of the most particular regard and most ardent 
zeal for the principle itself. From this coincidence, there result, in 
the religious history of humanity, those tragic situations, among which 
the catastrophe of Israel here announced certainly holds the foremost 
place. 


CHAP. v. 46, 47. 491 


As regards the historical reality of this discourse, the following appear to us 
to be the results of the exegesis: 

1. The fundamental thought is perfectly suited to the given situation. Accused of 
having done an anti-Sabbatical work, and even of ascribing to Himself equality 
with God, Jesus justifies Himself in a way at once the most lofty and the most 
humble, by averring, on the testimony of His consciousness, the absolute depend- 
ence of His work, relatively to that of the Father. 

2. The three principal parts of the discourse are naturally linked together, as they 
start from the central idea which we have just indicated: 1. Jesus aflirms the 
constant adapting of His activity to that of the Father, and declares that from 
this relation of dependence between Him and God will proceed yet far more con- 
siderable works, 2. He proves this internal relation, which it is impossible for 
men to test, by a double testimony of the Father: His miracles, a specimen of 
which is at this very moment before their eyes, and the Scriptures. 3. He closes 
by showing them, in their secret antipathy to the moral tendency of His work, 
the reason which prevents them from trusting the divine testimony, and by 
declaring to them their future condemnation in the name of that Moses whom 
they accuse Him of despising. 

Instead of the abstruse metaphysics which has been charged upon the dis- 
courses in John, there remains for us only the simple expression of the filial con- 
sciousness of Jesus. This latter displays itself gradually in a series of views of 
imposing grandeur, and of an unique elevation. What renders this feature more 
striking, is the naive and almost child-like simplicity of the figures employed to 
describe this communion of the Son with the Father. Such a relation must have 
been lived, in order to be expressed, and expressed in this way. 

Strauss has acknowledged, up to a certain point, these results of exegesis. 
“There is not,” he says, “in the tenor of the rest of the discourse, anything 
which causes difficulty, anything which Jesus could not Himself have said, since 
the evangelist relates, in the best connection, things . . . which, according to the 
Synoptics also, Jesus ascribes to Himself.” The objections of Strauss bear only 
on the analogies of style between this discourse, that of John the Baptist (chap. 
iii.), and certain passages of the first Epistle of St. John (Introd., pp. 106, 107). 
Strauss concludes by saying: “ If, then, the form of this discourse should be ascribed 
to the evangelist, it might be that the substance of it belonged to Jesus.” We 
believe that we may conclude by saying: Jesus must have really spoken in this way. 
The principal theme bears the character of most perfect appropriateness. The 
secondary ideas are logically subordinated to this theme. No detail turns aside 
from the idea of the whole, or goes beyond it; finally, the application is of a 
thrilling solemnity, as it should be in such a situation, and closes by impressing 
on the whole discourse the seal of reality. 

Renan considers that the author of this narrative must have derived the 
substance of his account from tradition, which is, he says, extremely weighty, be- 
cause it proves that a part of the Christian community really attributed to Jesus 
miracles performed at Jerusalem. As to the discourse in particular, see his sum- 
mary judgment respecting the discourses of the fourth Gospel (p. lxxvili.): “The 


1 Leben Jesu, I.,2d part. The expression “in ing the whole of the discourse; it applies to 
the restof the discourse” is not intended to an exception which Strauss had himself just 
limit this favorable judgment given respect- _ set aside. 


492 SECOND PART. 


theme cannot be without a certain degree of authenticity ; but in the execution, 
the fancy of the artist gives itself full play. We feel the factitious action, the 
rhetoric, the studied diction.” But factitious action betrays itself by commonplaces 
without appropriateness; have we met with them? Rhetoric, by emphasis and 
inflation; have we found a redundant word, a word which does not express an 
original thought? Studied diction, by the ingenious antithesis or the striving after 
piquancy; has the discourse which we have just studied offered us anything like 
this? The substance and the force equally exclude the idea of an artificial work, 
of a composition in cold blood. 

Finally, let us notice an assertion of Réville, trenchant and bold like those 
which so often come from the pen of this critic: “This book,” he says, in speak- 
ing of the fourth Gospel, “in which Judaism, the Jewish law, the Jewish tem- 
ples, are things as foreign, as indifferent, as they could be to a Hellenistic Chris- 
tian of the second century .. . ”! And one ventures to write words like these in 
the face of the last verses of this chapter, in which Jesus so identifies His teach- 
ing with that of Moses, that to believe the one is implicitly to believe the other, 
and to reject the second, is virtually to reject the first, because Jesus is in reality 
nothing but Moses completed. The agreement of the law and the Gospel does 
not appear more clearly from the Sermon on the Mount, than from the passage 
which we have just studied. But we know that the Sermon on the Mount is 
universally regarded as that which has most authenticity in the Synoptic tradition. 


1 Revue germanique, I., Dec. 1863, p. 120, note. 


INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS 


WITH REFERENCE TO 


THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 


BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 





Tue intelligent reader of the New Testament, when he comes to the 
Fourth Gospel, is at once impressed by the difference between it and the 
three narratives of the life of Jesus which precede it. Each of these ear- 
lier writings, though having certain peculiarities of its own which distin- 
guish it from the other two, is, in some prominent sense, a biography 
written for the purpose of telling the story itself. If there is a further end 
in view, as undoubtedly there may be, it is rather secondary than primary, 
or, to say the least, it is left to the reader to discover, without any direct 
statement of it on the author’s part. But one cannot open the Fourth Gos- 
pel and read the verses of its first chapter without realizing that the book 
has a new character. The writer is evidently moving in the sphere of 
great thoughts, and not merely of a biographical narrative. He is evi- 
dently intending to relate his story for an end which is beyond the mere 
record. He does not mean to commit his book to those who may chance 
to receive it, and then let them find in the works or words of Jesus what- 
ever idea of His person or influences for their own spiritual life they may 
be able to discover for themselves. He has, on the other hand, a thought 
of his own. He has studied the life of the Master for himself, and he 
would impress, if possible, upon the mind of his reader the conviction 
which has been impressed upon his own. 

What is this conviction? What is this purpose? These are the ques- 
tions which immediately present themselves. The phenomena brought 
before us in the book, and the direct statements, if there be any such, 
which it contains, must furnish the answer. If we look for these—reading 
carefully from the beginning to the end—we discover, first of all, the re- 
markable declarations of what is commonly called the Prologue, and the 


equally striking words of xx. 80, 31, which close the work. What is, if 
493 


494 INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS ON 


possible, still more remarkable, we find that, while the words and propo- 
sitions which evidently hold the most prominent place in the Prologue 
disappear altogether after it reaches its termination, the last verses of the 
twentieth chapter, just alluded to, have a manifest connection with these 
propositions and words. These last verses, also, clearly set forth the pur- 
pose of the book. The phenomena of this Gospel are, therefore, the 
great thoughts of the introductory verses respecting the Logos, the story 
of Jesus which forms the substance and contents of the book, and the 
formal declaration, at the end, that the author’s object in writing is to in- 
duce the readers to believe with regard to Jesus that which, as he cannot 
doubt, will give them the true life of the soul. In a word, he is moved to 
write a new Gospel narrative, not merely to tell once more, or in a some- 
what different way, a story which had been told before, but in order that, 
by telling it, he may prove to his readers the truth of his own conception 
of his Master, and that they, by this means, may attain to the highest 
good. 

Let us consider the Prologue briefly with reference to the plan of the 
work.! There can be little doubt that the two leading ideas of the first 
eighteen verses are those of ver. 1 and ver. 14: The Logos was in the begin- 
ning, was with God, and was God; and the Logos became flesh and taber- 
nacled among us. In connection with the first of these statements, certain 
additional declarations, evidently of a subordinate character, are made in 
vy. 8,4; The Logos was the instrumental agent in creation; with reference 
to the living part of created things He was the life; and with respect to 
the part capable of intelligence and spiritual life He was the light. He 
was thus the source of all existence, of any sort, which any portion of the 
creation is able to possess. That there is a steady movement and 
progress here in the line of the idea of revelation seems evident. The 
movement is towards the spiritual region, and naturally so, because it is 
in that region that the author’s mind is dwelling. These earliest verses, 
therefore, indicate what the word Logos in itself indicates, whatever may 
be its origin—whether the Old Testament or the Jewish-Alexandrian 
philosophy—namely, that the thought of John is of God as revealing 
Himself to and in the world, as distinguished from God in His unre- 
vealed state or His hidden being. The Logos is the revealer. This 
revealer was working in the world,from the beginning,to the end of giving 
the true light, but the world did not fully lay hold of what He offered to it. 


1¥For a more detailed setting forth of the ideas of the Prologue and the meaning of its 
leading words, see additional notes, 


THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 495 


“The light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness apprehended it not.” 
Some clearer mode of manifesting Himself as manifesting also the light 
became, therefore, a necessity; and, accordingly, the Logos became flesh. 
Without attempting to determine, at this point, precisely what the author’s 
idea, in the use of these words, is, we cannot doubt that he intends to repre- 
sent the Logos as, in some way, coming into human life in the person of 
aman. This is made clear, not only by the contrast of the words odpé 
éyévero With the propositions of the first verse, but also by the peculiar 
phrase éoxjvecev év juiv and by the words we beheld his glory, glory as of the 
only begotten from the Father. Finally, the immediate connection of vv. 17, 
18 with ver. 14, through the words grace and truth and the verb éyjoato 
which carries in it the idea of revelation, show that the person in whom 
the Logos, in some sense, took up His abode for the purpose of giving the 
clearer light which men needed was Jesus Christ. The substance of the 
statement of the Prologue is, accordingly, that—in some way, which it is 
not necessary at this point of our discussion to discover and definitely estab- 
lish—Jesus Christ is the Logos who was in the beginning with God and 
was God, and who, at a later period, became flesh. The narrative of the 
earthly life of Jesus which occupies the space intervening between the 
Prologue and the closing verses—that is, which really forms the substance 
of the work—is the means which the author adopts for the accomplish- 
ment of his purpose. The story is the proof. Instead of establishing his 
proposition that Jesus is the Logos incarnate by arguments appropriate to 
a doctrinal treatise, he simply gives the narrative of what He did and 
said, evidently believing that the life will bear the strongest testimony to 
the doctrine. 

That he should have adopted this method of proof was natural, because 
the establishment of the doctrinal proposition in itself considered was 
not the final end which he had in view. This end was, as he himself 
states, a practical one, to be realized in the life of his readers. They were 
to have life in the name of this incarnate Logos. But this life (#7) was 
not merely to the view of this writer a thing of the future, to be experi- 
enced in eternity. It was a present experience of the individual soul— 
the life of Jesus transferred, as it were, to the believing disciple and made 
a possession of his own. There could be no better way, therefore, of 
accomplishing his twofold purpose—the doctrinal and the practical— 
than to lead the reader to believe the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the 
Son of God, by giving the narrative of His earthly career. 

There are, however, two peculiar elements in the narrative which fur- 


496 INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS ON 


ther distinguish it from the narratives of the Synoptical Gospels. The first 
of these is immediately connected with the doctrinal character of the 
book. As the story is told for the purpose of proving the truth just men- 
tioned, it is viewed everywhere by the author in the light of testimony. 
The Greek word which conveys the idea of testimony occurs in this Gos- 
pel in its verbal form thirty-three times, and in its substantive form four- 
teen times. It is found in almost every chapter, and almost universally 
with reference to Jesus. Very singularly it appears in two places in the 
Prologue as bringing out the witness borne by John the Baptist—once, im- 
mediately after the first leading statement respecting the Logos (vv. 1-4), 
and again, after the second leading statement (ver. 14). Then, at the 
opening of the historical section of the first chapter, it is introduced a 
third time with a detailed setting forth of what the Baptist said. It is 
plain that the biography is, as we may say, founded upon testimony ; and 
the simplest, or even the only explanation which can be given, as regards the 
Prologue, is that the author desired to connect each of His two great pro- 
positions with that witness of the forerunner which was, in a sense, the 
accrediting word from God Himself. We find the word, also, in those cen- 
tral and vital chapters of the first main division of the book—the fifth and 
the eighth,—in which the evidences for His claims to Divine Sonship are 
given by Jesus Himself, and pressed upon the attention of His adversa- 
ries. Testimony turns the minds and footsteps of the earliest disciples to 
Jesus. The believer becomes immediately a witness, as we see, for exam- 
ple, in the case of the Samaritan woman. The apostolic work in the 
present and the future is to be that of testifying. The words and works 
which Jesus speaks and does bear testimony to Him. The Spirit who 
shall appear after He is glorified shall be always giving His divine witness. 
The author himself writes his book as one who has seen and testified. 
When we discover this idea thus filling the book, and observe at the end 
that the writer has evidently selected his materials, excluding much that 
he might have inserted (“ many other signs, ete., which are not written in 
this book’), we may not doubt that his principle of selection was con- 
nected with this idea. 

The second of the two elements referred to appears first in the verses 
which follow the Prologue and which extend as far as the middle of the 
second chapter. This passage may be called the historical introduction 
of the Gospel. It will be noticed by the attentive reader that the entrance 
of Jesus on His public ministry, as given in this book, is described in ii. 
13 ff. The passage i. 19-ii. 12 contains only an account of the coming 


THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 497 


of five or six persons to Jesus while He was still continuing in His private 
and family life. The story, as related to these persons, opens with the 
mention of two, one of whom only is named, who were directed to Jesus by 
John the Baptist and apparently came to Him at John’s suggestion. If 
we observe closely the record of John’s testimony, we shall see that there 
are not three independent statements of it (i. 19-28; 29-34; 35 f.), which 
are given merely for the purpose of making known what he said. But, 
on the contrary, there is a manifest movement from the first to the third, 
in such a way as to show that it is for the sake of the last that the other two 
are introduced. When John says to the two disciples in ver. 36, “ Behold 
the Lamb of God,” the absence of all further words makes it evident that 
he must have given a more full explanation of the term on a previous oc- 
casion. The mind of the reader is thus carried back immediately to the 
preceding day (ver. 29), when he said: “ Behold the Lamb of God, who 
taketh away the sin of the world,” and then added the account of the way 
in which he came to know at the baptism of Jesus that He was indeed 
the Lamb of God. This was the declaration and this the explanation 
which they needed to make them ready, when they saw Him again, to go 
to Him and form His acquaintance. But, as John tells the company 
around him on that second day that Jesus whose office is to take away 
sin is the one of whom he had said, After me cometh a man who is etc., 
and that he had himself come baptizing with water in order that this 
greater one might be made manifest to Israel, the thought is again carried 
back to the witness which had been borne on the first day (ver. 26, comp. 
also ver. 15). The first day is thus preparatory to the second, and the 
second to the third. The whole story centres upon the two disciples, and 
the Baptist’s testimony is given because of its bearing upon them. The 
writer, indeed, suggests this even by the careful marking of the successive 
days, which, as related to the testimony considered in itself alone, could 
scarcely have any importance. The result of the testimony in the life of 
those who receive it is thus distinctly brought before us; and, as in the 
uaprvpia of ver. 19, which is unfolded in the following verses, we have the 
beginning of the proof that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, xx. 31a, so 
in the case of these disciples we find the first beginning of that gaining of 
life in His name through faith which is the practical end to be secured by 
the proof, xx. 8lb. Answering to the element of testimony, therefore, 
we discover that of experience. 

But this experience is confined to five or six persons. Indeed, in the 


verses for which the record of John’s testimony prepares the way (35-40), 
32 


498 INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS ON 


it is limited to two. There can be no doubt that the story of these two 
persons is the starting-point from which the whole narrative of the life 
of Jesus is developed. Instead of beginning, as Matthew and Luke do, 
with an account of Jesus’ birth and genealogy, or as Mark does, with His 
baptism and entrance upon His public work, this writer takes his depart- 
ure from a brief interview which these two disciples of John the Baptist 
had with Him,and the first impressions produced upon their minds by 
what they heard Him say. They communicate their impressions to one 
or two others and persuade them to come to Jesus. Two more are 
gained as disciples on the next day, and then the little company go to the 
wedding-feast at Cana, where their faith is strengthened by a miracle. 
Then the public life and work of Jesus begin. But there is abundant 
evidence that the record of this public life and work, as given by the 
author, has constant reference to the disciples, and, at the end, he sums up 
the whole book by the statement, that, while Jesus did many other signs 
in the presence of His disciples which are not written here, these signs— 
these onueia (or miraculous proofs of what He was) which He did in their 
presence—are written, etc. The plan of this Gospel in relation to this 
point is certainly very remarkable, as compared with that of the Synop- 
tics or with the ordinary plan of a biography. No reasonable explana- 
tion can be given of it, except as we hold that the writer intended to con- 
nect the evidences that Jesus was the Logos with the new life and faith 
of these disciples. But, more than this,—the opening story points to in- 
dividual experience. How are we to account for the placing of such a 
little narrative at the beginning of the whole biography—for the develop- 
ment, in a certain sense, of everything out of it? The narrative seems 
so insignificant in itself as to make it improbable that an ordinary histor- 
ian would find it even arresting his attention. It is presented with little 
or no detail. One of the characters in it is, so far as the reader discovers 
from the words of the story itself, unknown even by name. Andrew and 
some one else, we know not who, went to Jesus on a certain afternoon and 
spent two hours with Him, and began to believe in Him as the Messiah. 
This is all. But on this the future narrative, the entire book, is founded. 
How impossible it seems, that a writer of another century, or removed 
entirely from the experience and life of the apostles, should have opened 
his work in this way. If, now, the author was himself the unnamed dis- 
ciple, if that brief conversation with Jesus was the beginning of his 
own faith, if the new life came into being in his soul on that afternoon 
and thus the event here mentioned was the deciding point of his per- 


THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 499 


sonal history, everything is made clear. The little story rises into 
marked significance. It may well be the foundation for all that fol- 
lows. The author gives the record of the life of Jesus as he had known 
it. He says to his readers, Let me tell you of that wonderful man 
whom I lived with years ago, of what I heard Him say and saw Him 
do. Let me carry you back to the hour when I first became acquainted 
with Him, and take you along with me through the subsequent his- 
tory. Let me show you how I came to believe and how I grew in 
my belief, and I hope that the story as I give it may lead you also 
to believe with an earnest and saving faith. But, if the writer was 
not the unnamed disciple, if, on the other hand, he had never seen 
Jesus or the apostles,and knew only the life of a hundred years later, 
this story has no meaning and its insertion is inexplicable. The whole 
book, as related to its beginning, is a mystery, if this meeting with 
Jesus was not a vital thing in the authors own life. It breaks forth 
into clearness and light and has a wonderful naturalness and power, 
so soon as we find the writer of the narrative in the disciple whose 
name is not given. 

The fact that the element of personal experience is an important one 
in the book, and indeed that it is centered, as it were, upon the experi- 
ence of the writer himself, is made evident also by other indications. 
Among these the following may be particularly mentioned. 

1. The great prominence given to the word morevev. This word which 
occurs only thirty-five times in the three Synoptic Gospels, and one hun- 
dred and three times from the beginning of Acts to the end of Revela- 
tion (excluding John’s first Epistle), is found ninety-eight times in this 
Gospel. Around it the whole narrative turns. As the words and works 
of Jesus, the declarations of John, the preaching of the Apostles, the 

work of the Spirit, the Scriptures and the voice of God, are all viewed in 
the light of testimony, so everywhere the attitude of men towards this 
testimony is marked by the verb moretew. If they receive the witness 
which is borne to Christ, they are said to believe. If they reject it, they 
do not believe. If they are partly influenced by it, but yet not affected 
in the inmost principle of their life, they are described as believing (éré- 
tevoav), but not so that Jesus could trust Himself to them (ob« éxiorever 
avrov avroic, ii. 23, 24, comp. viii. 31 ff.). If they grow in faith, asin the 
case of the Twelve, they are repeatedly spoken of as believing—the indi- 
cations of the context being, with each repetition, that the word has a 
growing fullness of meaning. If the final blessing of Jesus is recorded, 


500 INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS ON 


it is a blessing on those who have not seen and yet have believed. If the 
author wishes to express the purpose of his writing, it is that the readers 
may believe. If he desires to tell them the way of securing eternal life, 
it is in the words “that believing you may have life.” Moreover, this 
ever-repeated word, in which all that is most vital to the human soul rests, 
is the verb,which expresses action, and not the noun. The substantive 
riortic, the doctrinal word, which is so frequently used by Paul (nearly one 
hundred and fifty times in his Epistles), and which even occurs twenty- 
four times in the Synoptic Gospels, is not found in this book. Theauthor 
is not moving in the sphere of doctrine, so far as the human side of truth 
is concerned, but of life. Indeed, as we have already seen, the very argu- 
ment to prove the Divine doctrine is the life of Jesus. What can be the 
meaning of this striking feature of this Gospel, except that, to the 
author’s mind, the living experience of the soul was the thing of all im- 
portance? And how exactly do the closing words, which give the object 
and purpose of the book (xx. 30, 31), answer to this thought—I write that 
you may believe the doctrine because, and only because, I know that be- 
lieving is the gate-way of life. 

2. Again, if we look at this verb as the author uses it with reference to 
the apostles, how plainly is the same thing indicated. No attentive student 
of this Gospel can fail to see that, as the disciples are said, again and 
again, at different points of the history, to believe in view of what they 
had seen or heard, the word believe gains a new fullness of meaning. 
There is a steady progress from the first day to the last, from the time 
when Andrew and his unnamed companion went to Jesus for a two hours’ 
conversation to the day when Thomas exclaimed “ My Lord, and my God,” 
and was addressed by the Master as believing. One can almost see the 
growth of the word in significance as the successive stories are read. 
Moreover, the same thing is marked, in a very incidental and yet striking 
way, by the statements which occur with regard to certain things, that the 
disciples only came to understand and believe after Jesus rose from the 
dead. What more vivid picture of developing faith, and thus of inmost 
personal experience, could be given than that which is suggested by this 
word, which means on each new day more than it did on the day before, 
and which has its limits during the Lord’s earthly life so carefully pointed 
out, by the declaration that this or that mysterious thing did not become 
clear to the believing soul until after His earthly life was ended. And 
finally this word is connected with the author himself, if we hold him to 
be the companion of Andrew in chap. i. and the one who ran with Peter 


THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 501 


to the tomb of Jesus on the morning of the resurrection. Evidently, like 
Andrew, he was led to believe in the hours of that first interview. Evi- 
dently, he is included among the disciples who believed in consequence 
of the first miracle at Cana. But what progress had been made, when 
(xx. 8), on entering into the tomb on that Sunday morning, he saw and 
believed. 

3. The same thing is shown by all the indications which prove that the 
disciple whom Jesus loved, and the one whois alluded to, but not named, 
in different parts of the book, is the author. It will be unnecessary to 
enter in this matter at length, for Godet has dwelt upon it largely in his 
Introduction. But we would give a brief presentation of a few points. 
The phenomena of the book, in this regard, are the following: first, 
that, while the other principal characters in the story are mentioned by 
name, and always thus mentioned, there is a prominent disciple who is 
only alluded to, or is set before us simply by means of a descriptive 
phrase; secondly, that, while it is not made so plain as to be beyond the 
possibility of questioning, that this unnamed person is always one and the 
same, yet in the doubtful cases, which are only two in number (i. 35 ff, 
Xviil. 15, 16), the probabilities strongly favor the identification of the per- 
son referred to with the disciple whom Jesus loved, who is mentioned in 
all the others. Godet seems to question this in the second case (see p. 30 
and note on xviii. 15). But the argument, even in this case, is a strong 
one: (w) The very fact that elsewhere there is but one disciple who 
takes an active part in any scene, such as this one here takes, and yet 
is not named, makes the supposition probable, that here also the same 
person is intended. (x) The fact that this “other disciple” (if he was the 
author of the Gospel) was known to Annas, will easily account for the 
report of the examination before that dignitary which he gives, while he 
omits the judicial trial before Caiaphas of which the other Gospels speak. 
He was an acquaintance of Annas, and so was admitted to his house. 
But not being on the same terms with Caiaphas, he was not present at the 
trial! (y) The relation of this other disciple to Peter corresponds with 
that which is set forth elsewhere as existing between Peter and the dis- 
ciple whom Jesus loved. (z) If the disciple whom Jesus loved was the 
author of the book, and therefore familiar with the scenes of the time and 
with Peter, it is scarcely possible that he should not have known who this 
other disciple was, and have given his name (unless, indeed, he was him- 


1 ‘That Annas was the high priest referred to in xviii. 19, and so also in xviii. 15, is altogether 
probable, 


502 INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS ON 


self the person). Or, on the other hand, if the author was of a later time, 
we may ask whether it is probable that the name of Peter’s companion 
on this occasion could have been forgotten? The story of Peter’s denials 
certainly belonged to the widest circle of tradition, and the whole scene con- 
nected with them was a marked and impressive one. The only objection 
which may be urged on the other side is the omission of the article 6 
before dAAog wabyri¢. But, in view of the writer’s care in concealing the 
name of this beloved disciple, this omission can scarcely be regarded as 
having such weight as to overbalance the considerations mentioned. As 
to the other case (i. 35 ff), the points already alluded to are sufficient to 
show that the companion of Andrew was the disciple whom Jesus loved. 
But it may also be remarked that this companion of Andrew stood appar- 
ently in the same relation to him and Peter in which John stood, as rep- 
resented by the other gospels, and that their acquaintance or association 
before the permanent call to discipleship, which is indicated here, corres- 
ponds to that which is hinted at in Mark i. 16-20, i. 29; Lk. iv. 88; v. 1 ff. 

But, if the person alluded to in xviii. 15 and i. 35, is the same with the 
one called the disciple whom Jesus loved, we find the direct statement in 
xxi. 24, that he is the author—a statement either from himself, or from 
others who declare that they know his testimony to be true, and who, by 
reason of the present paprupdyv as distinguished from the aorist ypdyac, 
must have written their postscript, as Godet has pointed out, during his 
lifetime; we also find the direct declaration of xix. 35 that the author was 
present at the crucifixion ; and we find, once more, bearing to the same 
end, all those incidental things which mark the narrative of an eye-witness; 
comp., for example, the story in i. 35 ff., that of the supper in chap. xiii., 
that of the early part of chap. xvili., etc. With reference to xix. 35, Godet 
has sufficiently shown the untenableness of the position of those who deny 
that the author is speaking of himself. But we may add, in a single word, 
that the introduction of an entirely new person, at this point in the story, 
with no description except that he saw the scenes, is wholly improbable, 
and also wholly unlike the author’s course elsewhere. As the disciple 
whom Jesus loved has been mentioned, ten verses earlier, as present at 
the crucifixion, it is infinitely more probable that he is the person referred 
to. If he is not so, the writer attempts to give emphasis and force to a 
statement of the facts mentioned by citing for them a witness utterly un- 
known to his readers, and then attempts to confirm his testimony—this 
man whom they knew nothing of—by saying: he knows that he tells the 
truth. Who is he, is the question of all questions, if his testimony is to 


THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 503 


be of any value. But no answer to this question is given. Moreover, this 
unknown man is declared to know that he says the truth, that you (the 
readers) also may believe. Certainly, no intelligent writer would ever write 
such a sentence, or bring forward such testimony. Let us remember that 
this book was to meet adversaries and the advocates of other systems, and 
was to exhibit proofs to them. What would such a proof be worth? If, 
on the other hand, the “one who hath seen ” is the beloved disciple, how 
far greater the emphasis, and how far more probable the insertion of the 
verse, in case the author is making a solemn declaration of his own know- 
ledge and truthfulness, than if he is simply assuring the readers that that 
disciple (who was another person than himself and who had lived many 
years before this writing) knew the truth of what he said. There is but 
one difficulty in the passage, if he means himself—namely, the use of the 
third person of the pronoun. This, however, belongs with the other ex- 
pression: the disciple, etc., which is also in the third person, and is occa- 
sioned by his desire to keep himself in a sense concealed. But against the 
other views of the sentence every difficulty, which the nature of the case 
allows, arises, and improbability can scarcely reach a higher point than it 
does as related tothem. The verse loses, largely or wholly, its emphasis and 
its significance, unless the author is the one who makes the declaration. 
It may be added that the present tenses and the correspondence in ‘thought 
with the verses expressing the purpose of the book (xx. 30, 81) should not 
be overlooked—and they give their evidence for the same conclusion. 
Testimony and inward experience—testimony originally coming to the 
writer and his fellow disciples, and their own personal inward experience 
as they received and believed the testimony; these are the two essential 
elements of the author’s plan. In the light which we gain in connection 
with them, we may explain the peculiarity of the Prologue. Why does 
the writer open his book with the word Logos, giving no explanation of 
its meaning and, after the few introductory verses are ended, making no 
further allusion to it? The use of this term with no explanation must 
indicate that it was so familiar to his readers as to be readily understood. 
The laying it aside at the close of the Prologue suggests that it was only 
intended to connect the book with inquiries or discussions, which were 
occupying the minds of thoughtful men in the region where the author 
was living. If the subject represented by this word was a wholly new one 
to the original readers, we may safely say that the phenomena of the 
Prologue could not be what they are. Whatever, therefore, may have 
been the origin of the term Logos as here used, we may believe that it 


” 


504 INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS ON 


was employed in the philosophical disputations of the time—that learned 
and intelligent men were asking for an answer to their questions which 
were represented by this term. We may, also, believe that these ques- 
tions had reference to the possibility and manner of God’s revealing Him- 
self to or in the world. The writer found such men considering this great 
subject and giving what explanations or theories they could. He found 
them in uncertainty or in darkness, inquiring with no answer or wan- 
dering off into the gross errors of which Paul speaks in the Epistle to 
the Colossians and errors which even passed beyond these. He desired 
to connect his book with their inquiries and to tell them that he had dis- 
covered the answer which they needed. The man with whom he had 
lived was the Logos. He was the full and final revelation of God. 
The Logos was in the beginning with God and was God, but had now 
become incarnate in Jesus Christ. Let me prove this to you, he says, 
as it were. But let me accomplish this end, not as I might do by set- 
ting before you a mere collection of evidences or arguments, which have 
no immediate personal connection with myself, and none even with Him 
as a part of the daily life which He led among men. Let me do it, 
_rather, by giving you the picture of the living man as He walked 
with His contemporaries, and especially with his earliest followers, along 
the pathway of His earthly career. In this way I can place Him before 
you as He was, and you can see the evidences asthey were given by Him- 
self. You can live with Him, as it were, and hear Him speak of the 
heavenly things. To these readers the term Logos may have come from 
the Jewish-Alexandrian philosophy, while to him it came directly from 
the Old Testament. To him it may have had a different meaning, in 
some degree, from that which it had for them, and a far deeper one. But 
it served, nevertheless, as a connecting-link between his answer and their 
questionings, and having made it useful to this end, he leads them away 
from fruitless discussion to the contemplation of Jesus as he had known 
Him. At the same time, his book would have its adaptation to every 
chance reader, in whose way it might fall, and would call his mind, if 
possible, through the testimony and the experience to the life. 

If we explain the Gospel in this way, everything becomes plain, and the 
‘book comes forth, as its rich, deep thoughts would indicate, from the 
depths of a meditative soul in personal union with Christ when He was 
on earth. But if we locate the writer in the second century, what must 
we believe? We must believe that out of a few notes made by the Apos- 
tle John, or, apart from anything of his, out of the Synoptic narratives, 


THE: INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 505 


the writer manufactured a history of Jesus’ life which he represented as 
moving along with his disciples and gradually influencing their charac- 
ters and their living. Yes, even more than this; that he did this so suc- 
cessfully, so far as relates to the person of the disciple whom Jesus loved, 
that the great majority of the Church in all ages have believed the author 
to be that disciple. To accomplish such a result, a century after the his- 
tory was ended, would require an imagination of a high order, a power 
of transferring oneself to the life of a remote past period such as even 
men of genius rarely have. Such a power belongs only to the higher order 
of poets or writers of fiction. But this author, whoever he may have 
been, did not possess this faculty. We may not know his name, but the 
peculiar characteristics of his mind and soul are exhibited so clearly in 
his writings, that he stands before us with distinctness and with individ- 
uality. He was no writer of fiction or poet of the order mentioned. He 
was a man who, beyond any other in the New Testament history, or, 
indeed, almost any other of any age, dwelt within himself, in the region 
of contemplation,and that not the contemplation of intellectual themes, 
but of the growth of the soul’s life. Introvertive, meditating upon him- 
self and his own character, thinking deep thoughts only as they took hold 
upon the relation of his soul to God and brought the inward man into 
the light, picturing to himself the glory of heaven only as that likeness to 
God which should come from seeing Him as He is—such a man would 
be the last of all to transfer his experience to the life of another, or either 
to desire or be able to picture another as himself. To such a man, the 
inward life is too precious and too personal to be represented as if it 
were not his own. It is too intensely individual to pass beyond the one 
to whom it belongs as the central thing of his being. 

We may add, that it would have been no easy thing for any man, as 
near even to the life of Jesus as Paul or Apollos were—and surely not for 
one living in the second century—to represent his own Christian life as if 
it had grown up in a personal association with Him when He was on 
earth. The sorry failures of all attempts, in our day even, to give a life- 
like picture of those apostolic scenes may show us how hard a task it 
must have always been to do such a work successfully. But, in some 
respects, it must have been more difficult for the early Christians to do it, 
for the dividing line between the apostles and themselves, as those who 
had seen the Lord and those who had not, was a broad one and one of 
which they never lost sight. But here is a success which has deceived the 
ages, and a success accomplished by a man who had great thoughts, yet 


506 INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS ON 


not at all the genius of fiction—who lived in his friendship with the Lord, 
but could not have pictured it to himself or others as growing up under 
different conditions from those which actually belonged to it. 

We venture, also, to maintain that the motive of a speculative or theolog- 
ical character, which has led some to believe that the story is told by the 
author as if he were the apostle when he was not, did not exist. The evyi- 
dences as to the mental character of the writer of the Gospel, which we 
find in his works, are not that he was a speculative philosopher, that he 
dwelt upon propositions or truths for their own sake, that he was ready 
to construct a theological system for the purpose of teaching it, or to 
introduce new theories into the Church. His thoughts relate only to 
character and life. He cares nothing for them except as they enrich the 
soul. He even writes his story of Jesus for the purpose of proving His 
Divine nature and work, only because he is assured that belief in the 
truth will bring life eternal to the believer. And these thoughts which 
grow into character are, first of all, interesting to him for the reason that 
they take hold of and beautify his own character. 

If we examine the First Epistle in connection with the Gospel, we find 
what these thoughts were, and where the writer first received them into 
his mind. The great truth is that God is light, and in Him is no darkness 
at all. This absolute and perfect spiritual light, is what the human soul, 
according to the measure of its capacity, must participate in, if it is to 
have its highest life. The life of the soul is light. Comp. 1 Ep.i.5, Gosp, 
i.4. How is this life to be secured? This is the question with which his 
mind is wholly occupied. How shall it be secured by himself and by all 
other men? The day which brought him into communication with Jesus 
Christ answered the question. The years and the meditations which fol- 
lowed from that first meeting to his latest age, only made the answer 
more full and more satisfying. Thought, therefore, moves along this line. 
The relation of the personal Jesus, full of grace and truth, to his individ- 
ual soul is the starting-point of all thinking, and the nature of Jesus, His 
work, and everything respecting Him centre, in their all-absorbing inter- 
est, around this relation. Friendship with Jesus was the atmosphere in 
which he lived. The meditations of friendship and the study, in experi- 
ence, of its power to develop the inward man—not the speculations of 
philosophy or theology—were what occupied his life. Hence we find 
him, when he comes to write for the world, telling first, in the Gospel, the 
simple story of what Jesus did and said, and afterwards, in the Epistle, 
saying at the outset, “That which we have heard, seen, handled of the 


THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 507 


Word of life, which was with the Father and was manifested unto us, de- 
clare we unto you.” The end in view, in the latter case, is also the same 
as in the former: “that you (the readers) may have fellowship with us 
whose fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.” 

No writer in the New Testament was more unfitted by the peculiar 
characteristics of his nature to find interest in creating a history for the 
purpose of developing an idea. No class of thinking men in any age turn 
with less readiness to mere speculations for their own sake than those 
who, like this writer, are ever studying with intense delight the progress of 
their own souls in true living. Let us try to imagine a speculative philoso- 
pher, of earlier or later times, coming before his readers with a manufac- 
tured history, told in the simple style of the Gospel, and then saying: That 
which I have heard and seen and handled I declare to you, that you 
may have fellowship with me in God and Christ, and these things I write 
that my joy may be fulfilled. The inmost nature of the two classes of 
men is different. The author of the fourth Gospel was not a philosopher 
of the schools, nor a contemplative mystic. He lived in the experience 
and recollections of a personal friendship and found in that friendship the 
eternal life. He could not have created the story of his life with Jesus by 
his imagination, if he would, for his nature was such that it must rest on 
reality. The deepest souls, of his peculiar order, as we have already said, 
do not and cannot picture their own experience as that of another; much 
less, if possible, can they make a fictitious narrative contradicting the 
supremest facts of their personal life, for the purpose of impressively pre- 
senting to the world a theological idea. 

Among the personages of the apostolic history who live and move be- 
fore us on the pages of the New Testament, the writer of this Gospel 
takes his place as truly as any other. Paul and Peter, even, do not stand 
forth as living characters more clearly than he does. He comes forward, 
indeed, as if in his bodily presence, in several of the narratives, and by 
reason of the familiar acquaintance which he shows with the details of 
the history and with the geography, the customs, the men of the region 
which hedescribes. But with far greater distinctness even, does he appear 
to us in his character and inward personality. The testimony of thou- 
sands of men who have communed with him in spirit, as they have given 
themselves up to the contemplation of his deep thoughts, bears witness as 
to what he was, and their testimony, in all the ages, is the same. The 
book which he has written gives evidence with regard to him as truly and 
as fully as the Pauline Epistles do for their author. It shows as plainly 


508 INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS ON 


that he was one of apostolic company who attended Jesus in the years of 
His ministry, as the writings of the apostle to the Gentiles prove that he 
was not. 


The external testimonies for the authenticity of the Gospel, as Godet and 
many other writers have shown, are exceedingly strong. That of Irenzeus, 
given so abundantly, is in itself sufficient, for he knew Polycarp, who had 
known John. But we are persuaded that the book carries within itself its 
strongest evidence. And this evidence is inwoven into its whole texture, 
and is the more powerful in its impressiveness because it is so incidental 
and undesigned. We have given a few suggestions with regard to it, 
which may, in a measure, supplement what Godet has presented in his ex- 
cellent introduction. The subject might be set forth with much greater 
detail and with more of completeness in the plan of presentation. But 
in the limited space allowed us, we have desired only to move along one 
liné of thought, and have been able, even in this line, to do no more than 
indicate what may open a wide field of study for the thoughtful reader of 
this Gospel. Before concluding these introductory remarks upon the 
book, however, we will call attention to two or three scenes in the story 
related by the author, in which the reality of a past experience is what 
gives them all their lifeand power. The scene recorded in i. 35 ff. is one 
of these. Of this we have already spoken. But it is by no means the only 
one. In the narrative of the last evening of the life of Jesus, the author 
represents Him as comforting the hearts of the disciples in view of His 
approaching death by the promise of a future reunion in heaven. He 
begins by assuring them that there are many mansions in His Father’s 
house, and adds the declaration that He is going to prepare a place for 
them there. But between the two statements there is a word inserted, 
which has been to many difficult of explanation: “If it were not so, I 
would have told you.” Whence does the force of this expression come? 
' Where does it get its significance? Surely, from the past life with the 
disciples, and from that alone. As spoken by astranger, or by another than 
a friend, the words would have had little or no meaning. But as taking 
hold upon every day of those three years of their life together, as recall- 
ing all that He had been to them and done for them, as opening the 
depths of His love and friendship so wonderfully revealed to their inmost 
experience, they became the strongest testimony to the truth of what He 
said at the parting hour. Your experience in the past may bear witness 
that I would not deceive you—may prove to you that there isa place for you 
in the Father’s house, for, if it were not so, I would not have failed to tell 


THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 509 


you. But they are of that peculiar character which makes it improbable, 
almost to the extent of impossibility, that a writer of another generation 
would have dreamed of inserting them. To the soul of the beloved disci- 
ple they would be a precious memory for a lifetime, a word of love to be 
often recalled with tenderest recollection. They speak of living friendship 
and appeal to a past. But the one to whom they spoke thus must have 
known the past and have shared in the living friendship. Stories created 
for the presentation of a theological idea do not move in the sphere of such 
expressions. The Christian author of the third or fourth generation of 
believers might, perhaps, have put into the mouth of Jesus the promise 
that He would prepare a place for His followers, or the assurance that 
there was room for them in Heaven, but this little sentence would never 
have found place in his thought or his narrative. It belongs to the even- 
ing on which it is said to have been uttered and to the experience of one 
who heard it from the Lord Himself. It testifies of the authorship of the 
book by an ear-witness. 

Or again, in the same scene of the last evening, who but one who was 
present and witnessed the changing thoughts of successive moments 
could have recorded those words of xvi. 5, 6: “ But now J go unto him that 
sent me; and none of you asketh me whither goest thou,” after having 
related in the earlier part of the conversation, that one of the disciples 
had suggested this very question, xiv.5? To one, however, who remem- 
bered the scene as himself participating in it, these words had a living 
freshness and recalled the grief and disappointment of their hopes, which 
so filled the hearts of all that they thought only of their own future, and 
not of the blessedness which should come to Jesus. How completely 
does this place usin the midst of the apostolic company and tell us of 
the living experience of the hour. It is not the effort of the advocate of 
some intellectual conception or theory that we find here, but the thought 
of a loving friend who always bore with him, even to his latest life, what 
he had felt and what Jesus had said in one of the supreme moments of 
the past. 

Or, if we look at the story of the morning of the resurrection, the 
striking way in which the faith of the disciple whom. Jesus loved is 
represented as confirmed by what he saw in the tomb, while that of 
Peter is not spoken of, points to such knowledge of the inner history of 
the former as indicates that the writer was referring to himself. The 
same is true of the life-like picture presented before us in the twenty- 
first chapter. Not only is it wholly improbable that a writer, who had 


510 INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS ON 


never stood at the standpoint of the event related, and who was writing 
after the death of the beloved disciple, would have taken this method of 
correcting the error alluded to; but the story, by its inimitable natural- 
ness as answering to the feeling of the two participants in the last part of 
the scene with Jesus, carries us into the heart of the writer as he remem- 
bers all that happened. 

Or, finally—to refer only to one more passage—how are we to account 
for the touching incident in xix. 25-27, where Jesus entrusts his mother 
to the care of the beloved disciple? She had children of her own who 
could care for her, or, if not children, nephews who were to her as if 
sons. Why does not Jesus commit her to their care? The fact that 
they were unbelievers at the time will not explain this peculiar act, for 
they were to become believers within a few days after the death of Jesus 
(comp. Acts i. 14), and He must have foreseen this. The only answer to 
the question which the verses suggest is that, at the final hour, Jesus rose 
above the power of earthly relationships, and, in view of His separation 
from them both, joined the two friends, to whom He was most closely 
bound in affection, as son and mother. But, if this was the reason of 
His giving the one of the two to the other, the act bears within itself the 
result of a long-continued and real life of the soul in all the three as 
related to one another. Itis wholly dependent on a living experience. 
And whose experience is to be found in the unnamed sharer in this 
scene? Is it the originator of a system, the defender of an idea, the 
meditative philosopher, who brings into a fictitious narrative a little 
incident like this, which could have no interest as compared with many 
things that might have directly emphasized his doctrine of the Logos? 
Is it not, on the other hand, the man who, in the later years of his life, 
goes over once more the facts of his own association with his Master and 
finds in them all the power of a holy friendship for his own soul? 

All these things—if any judgment of what is true can be formed in the 
case of any man’s utterance or writing—testify of reality. They depend 
on the reality of that which is related for their significance. And the 
only satisfactory explanation of their appearance in the book is that the 
author was bearing witness of what he had seen and heard. The suppo- 
sition that such stories were told for the purpose of maintaining a theory 
or of glorifying one of the apostles at the expense of another is little less 
than absurd. They are not fitted in any considerable measure for either 
purpose. They take hold upon the tenderest feelings of the heart, and 
are foreign to the sphere of rivalry or discussion. And the fact that 


THE INTERNAL EVIDENCE. 511 


their full meaning is to be sought and found only beneath the surface 
adds to the evidence that the writer and the apostle of whom he wrote 
were one and the same person. 

It is often said that the student of the Bible must be in sympathy with 
it, if he would reach the deepest understanding of what it is and what it 
teaches. This is no doubt true, for the unsympathetic mind never reaches 
the perfect light in any line of study. But, in a peculiar sense, it is neces- 
sary for one who comes to the investigation of the fourth Gospel, that he 
should have some comprehension of the inner life of a Christian believer 
who grows into the likeness of Christ by personal communion with Him 
—who abides within the region of his own spirit, and moves upward and 
onward in the sphere of a divine friendship. It is not enough to dissect 
the sentences, or consider the theological doctrine, or attempt to fit the 
narrative to an idea, or trace the possible development of thought under 
certain influences on the foundation of the Synoptic story. The man him- 
self who wrote the book must be understood, for he is, after all, in his own 
inner life, the greatest factor in it. The student of his writings must see 
him himself. He must be in sympathy with him, if he would be prepared 
to appreciate the evidence which he has furnished as to his personality. 
It is the want of this sympathy, arising from the want of that peculiar 
belief which gave him his truest life, that has placed many writers on his 
Gospel quite outside of its central and inmost part. They have dissected 
the book, but they have not known the man. 

But when we know the man, we comprehend the book—and we recog- 
nize in the book not a poem or a work of fiction; the author did not live 
in the region of the imagination :—not the writing of one who created a 
doctrine or system for himself by means of his own reflection; his musings 
were of a far different order from this :—not the effort of a man who tries 
to save Christianity from the influence of Judaism, or to reconcile parties 
and unify the Church, or to elevate or depreciate one or another of the 
apostolic company; he is neither a partisan nor a professed peacemaker :— 
but the simple story of what a man of the richest inward life, who had 
lived with Jesus, learned of His nature and His wonderful spiritual power, 
both in his association with Him and in the meditations of the years that 
followed. 


The Christian system is not dependent on the genuineness of the fourth 
Gospel, so that, if the latter could be disproved, the former would fail. 
But there is no doubt that the author of this Gospel penetrated in his 
thought into the centre of the Christian system, as it has been understood 


512 INTRODUCTORY SUGGESTIONS. 


by the Church. The question of the authorship becomes, therefore, one 
of gravest importance. If the author was that most intimate disciple of 
Jesus of whom the book speaks so frequently, he gained his conception 
of Christ and the new faith from the Lord Himself, and he could not be 
mistaken. His book is the flower and consummation of the apostolic 
thought. It is in the truest and highest sense inspired of God. The at- 
tempt to deny the system is a hopeless one, so soon as this Gospel is estab- 
lished on a firm foundation. In view of this fact, it may well seem 
divinely ordered that the book should stand in the world as it has ever 
done, bearing within itself its own evidence. The writer of it, in address- 
ing the readers for whom his first Epistle was intended, says that he writes 
that which he has seen and heard, in order that they may have fellow- 
ship, as he himself has, with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 
It is a wonderful fact in the history of the centuries which have passed 
since he wrote, that those who have been persuaded by his story to be- 
lieve and who have been conscious, as the result of their faith, that they 
had fellowship with God, have had an abiding confidence that he told of 
what he had heard and seen, and that it is those who have rejected the 
doctrine and the peculiar life, who have questioned the reality of the 
author’s experience as the disciple whom Jesus loved. The past may 
give us confidence in the future; and we may safely predict that, until 
the inner life of the author ceases to bear this witness, he and his Gos- 
pel will be among the unshaken pillars of the Church. 


ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 
ie 


CHAPTER I. 


Tue leading thoughts respecting the Logos which are presented in the 
Prologue are those of ver. 1 and ver.14. The former verse sets forth what 
He was antecedent to the time of His incarnation, and in the beginning ; 
the latter declares that He became flesh. 

A. With reference to the first verse the following points may be 
noticed :—1. The object of the whole Prologue being to make certain 
declarations respecting the Logos, there can be no doubt that 6 Adyog is 
the subject in all the three clauses of which the verse is composed—in 
the third, no less than in the other two. This is indicated also by the 
parallelism, with slight variation, which seems to belong to the rhetorical 
style of this author. The clauses are parallel, but the predicate stands 
first in two of them, while in the intermediate one the subject has its 
natural position. 2. In the third clause, the predicate vedc, being differ- 
ent from that in the second, 6 Seé¢, must be intended to suggest to the 
reader a different idea. This different idea, however, being expressed by 
the same substantive, cannot reasonably be held to be of an entirely dif- 
ferent order. The word without the article must move in the same sphere 
with that which has it. The Logos, according to the statement of the 
writer, must be God in a similar sense to that in which the one with 
whom He is is God, and yet not in precisely the same sense. So far as 
the book may properly be regarded as an unfolding, in any degree, of the 
thoughts of the Prologue, we may naturally expect to find in the chap- 
ters which follow, the answer to the question thus presented: in what 
sense are the words to be understood, when it is said that the Logos is 
Sed¢ and not 6 Ged? 8. In the verses (2-4), which are immediately con- 
nected with ver. 1, the last of the three clauses of that verse does not 
appear, but the other two are repeated. The explanation of this fact is, 
doubtless, to be found in the purpose of these verses. The author is 
moving, in these verses, along the line of revelation. This line is presented. 
in the three terms: creation, life and light. The Logos was the instru- 
mental agent through whom all created things were brought into being. 
To that portion of creation which is animate or rational, as contrasted| 
with the inanimate or irrational part, He is the life-principle, which 
gives it life. To that part which has the higher element, the rvedua, and 
thus has the capacity for the action of the life-principle in the higher re- 
gion, He is the light. What the idea of light is may best be understood 
by the use of the word in 1 John i. 5, where it is said that God is light, and 

33 513 


614 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


it is added, with the same contrast of g@¢ and cxoria which we have here, 
that in Him is no darkness at all. The divine Spiritual illumination for 
man comes in and through the Logos. 4. As the world of beings capable 
of receiving spiritual light failed, by reason of their moral darkness, to 
see and take to themselves the enlightening revelation, which the Logos 
was ever making to all even from the hour of creation, some clearer mode 
of making the light known to them was necessary, and for this purpose 
the Logos became incarnate (ver. 14). 5. The person in whom He be- 
came incarnate is Jesus Christ, ver. 17—Such is the development of the 
thought connected with the Logos as the revealer of God. The Logos was 
in the beginning with God. Thus He is the one by means of whom God 
gives the true light tomen. That they may have it as fully as is needful » 
in order to their possessing it in the soul’s life, He enters into a human 
mode of existence and appears in Jesus. The first and second clauses of 
ver. 1, repeated in ver. 2, are the starting-point of this development, and 
are all that are essential to its beginning. 6. It cannot be doubted, how- 
ever, that the statement of the third clause, which is added to the other 
two, and which must have a deeper meaning than the others because it 
declares what the Logos was, while they only, as it were, tell where and 
when He was, is intended by the writer to hold even a more prominent 
place than they. They are repeated, and the thought for which they open 
the way is unfolded, because the discussions and questionings which occa- 
sioned the writing of the book required the idea of revealing God to be 
presented. But that this revelation of which the book is to speak is and 
must be the true one, the only true one, is a point of greatest importance 
to the end which the author has in view. For thus only can it exclude 
every other and become the undoubted answer to the question which all 
were raising. To the completeness of His power to reveal, He must be, 
not only mpo¢ rdv Bedv, but Gedc. Since He is dedc, He must, in some sense, 
become dvépwrog in order that the revelation may be perfectly appre- 
hended by men. He must be the 6ed¢ dvOpwx0¢. In this view of the au- 
thor’s thought, the third clause of ver. 1 unites itself with the suggestion 
of ver. 14, and then these two leading ideas pass on to ver. 17; and, join- 
ing that verse with themselves, they find their full expression in the 
words: Jesus Christ is the @edc-avOpwroc. Hence it is, as we may believe, 
that the Prologue closes with the last statement of the 18th verse: The 
only-begotten Son (or—if that be the true reading—God only begotten) 
who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him. 7. While, 
therefore, in one view of the Prologue and the whole Gospel, this final 
proposition of ver. 1 may hold only a secondary place in the plan, or even, 
perhaps, be unessential to it, in another and a most important sense, these 
words are the primary words of the entire book, to which everything else 
is subordinate. That he may prove that Jesus is the Son of God, and thus 
that that life which is the living of the human soul in the light of God, 
having in it no darkness at all, may be realized by every reader through 
faith in Him, is the object and purpose of his writing his story of Jesus. 
8. It is on this third clause, not on the first two only, that the expressions 


CHAPTER. I. 515 


in the Gospel which have the deepest meaning rest. As being 6eé¢ and in 
the bosom of the Father, He has life in Himself, even as the Father has 
life in Himself; He is the living bread and the life-giving bread; He and 
His Father are one; to know Him is to know God and to have the eter- 
nal life of the soul. This deepest meaning must be gathered from all the 
words of the book which have any teaching in them with reference to it, 
and they must all be centered in this word 6eé¢, if we are in any true sense 
to comprehend its significance. 

B. With. respect to ver. 14, it may be said: 1. That the word odp§ must 
be interpreted in connection, not only with its use in the writings of this 
author, and, as would also seem probable, with that of the other authors 
of the New Testament, but with the words or clauses in the context which 
evidently belong in the same circle of thought. The Logos, as He 
became flesh, is said to have tabernacled among us; to have been beheld 
by the writer and others; to have imparted from His own fullness that 
grace which came through Jesus Christ; apparently, in some true con- 
ception of the words, to have become Jesus Christ (see ver. 17 in its rela- 
tion to ver. 14 and ver. 16, on the one hand, and to ver. 18 on the other). 
Lapé must, therefore, in some sense, be the equivalent of dv6puroc¢; and, as 
in the case of ded¢ of ver. 1, already alluded to, every indication which the 
book presents before us points to the end that we should make our 
attempt to determine in what sense it is thus equivalent, by means of the 
representation given in subsequent chapters respecting Jesus.—@he term 
.Logos is laid aside by the author immediately at the close of the Prologue, 
but we cannot fail to see that he never loses sight of the two statements 
as to what the Logos was and became. Jesus—the friend and master of 
whom he writes—is not merely a messenger of God to the world to bring 
to it a revelation, but he is the one in whom the Logos, who was @eéc, has 
become dvOpwroc, the one who is able perfectly to reveal because of the 
Ged¢ side or relation of His being, and to make His revelation under- 
stood by those around Him because of the dvpwro¢ side or relation. 
Thus, and thus only, is He the true light of the world, bringing it into 
the actual experience of the eternal life. 


ba 


In what relation to the leading ideas of the Prologue do the statements 
respecting grace and truth stand? The answer to this question may be 
sought in connection with ver. 17 and the contrast with the law which is 
there presented. It will be noticed that these words are first introduced 
at the end of ver. 14, that immediately after them follows the second 
reference to the testimony of John the Baptist, and that then they are 
taken up again asif for further explanation. From these peculiar char- 
acteristics of the passage, it would seem not improbable that the writer 
was thinking of John the Baptist, who, as the last of the prophets, was 
also, in a certain sense, the one who brought the Old Testament legal 
system to its end, and, by turning the minds of the people to the right- 


516 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


eousness which the true idea of the law required, as opposed to that 
which its Pharisaic expounders preached, prepared them for the new 
system which was about to be introduced. The office of John the Baptist, 
as he proclaimed the advent of the Messiah, was to set forth the necessity 
of a radical change of character (uerdvoia), to make known with a new 
power and impressiveness the vital importance of being, not merely 
externally, but internally right, to demand on behalf of the kingdom of 
God a new life. Repentance and reformation were the burden of his 
message. This message, as we may say, was the final word of the legal 
system, as it passed away and opened the door for the faith-system. The 
work of Jesus was to make this reformation and new life possible, 
through the proclamation of the fullness of Divine truth, the revealing 
and imparting of Divine grace, the teaching of the way of salvation 
through forgiveness and that righteousness which grows up in the par- 
doned soul by means of faith. This revelation made by Jesus Christ was 
that which justifies the expression used in ver. 18. The law, even in its 
spiritual application to the inner life, might be revealed thrqugh a man, 
like Moses or John the Baptist. But, in order to reveal the fullness of 
God’s grace and truth, the appearance of a greater than man was needed. 
To this end one must have seen God, in the highest sense of that word— 
as no man has ever seen Him. The only-begotten Son who is in the bosom 
of the Father, the Logos who was with God in the beginning and was 
God, and who, by becoming flesh, brings God into closest communion 
with men, can alone make this revelation. 


dA f, 


Why is the testimony of John the Baptist referred to and made so 
prominent in the Prologue? We find it alluded to not only after the 
verse (14) in which the incarnation is set forth, but even in ver. 5 f. imme- 
diately following the statements respecting the Logos in His pre-existent 
state. The distinct presentation of its contents, however, is evidently 
deferred until the beginning of the historical introduction (ver. 19 ff.). 
The true explanation of this peculiar fact may, not improbably, be sug- 
gested by the plan of the book, as already indicated in the Introductory 
Remarks on the internal evidence for the fourth Gospel. As the earliest 
disciples, according to the representation of the book, were brought to 
Jesus by the testimony of John the Baptist, and the object of the book is 
to induce the readers to believe on the same grounds on which these dis- 
ciples believed, it was natural to give a peculiar prominence to John’s 
testimony at the beginning. His testimony was, in a certain sense, the 
foundation of all that followed, and hence it was not unsuitable—it was, 
on the other hand, especially impressive—to place it in connection with 
the great fundamental propositions which were designed to arrest the 
attention of those for whom the book was primarily written. That the 
testimony of John is regarded by the author as having a very prominent 
place, in its direct bearing upon Jesus’ position and His relation to God, 


CHAPTER I. 517 


is shown by the reference to it in y. 33, 34. In the author’s selection, in 
that chapter, of the expressions of Jesus which set forth the evidence for 
His claims respecting Himself, he chooses for his narrative this one 
which points to John. And though Jesus in the surrounding words 
declares that He has a higher and greater testimony, the witness of John 
is pressed upon the thought of the hearers. 

John’s testimony, as it is introduced in ver. 6 f., has immediate reference 
to the Logos as the light, and thus to the last point in the statements of 
vv. 1-4. We may believe, however, that, though not directly, yet in an 
indirect way, it is mentioned in just this place in order to carry the mind 
of the reader back to the first great propositions of ver. 1, which lie at 
the foundation of the declaration that He is the light. 

The second mention of John’s testimony (after ver. 14) evidently bears 
upon that verse. As it includes the words “He was before me,” and as 
these words are even the ones which have special emphasis, so far at least 
as relates to the depth of the meaning of the sentence, the suggestion just 
made with regard to the previous allusion, in ver. 6 ff., may also be appli- 
cable here. That John the Baptist comprehended fully, when He bore 
witness to Jesus, all that John the Apostle knew of His Divine nature, we 
need not affirm. But that the witness which he gave was a significant 
element in the proof that Jesus Christ is the Logos, of whom what is 
said in ver. 1 and what is said in ver. 14 are both true, we alike believe; 
and this is the reason for including what John had testified in the 
Prologue. 


Ly. 


The reference of ver. 5, by reason of the position which the verse holds— 
in immediate connection with vy. 1-4 and before the allusion to the testi- 
mony of John—is probably to the general and permanent illuminating 
power of the light before the incarnation. The Logos was with God and 
was God; as being thus, He was the source of existence to the creation, 
of life to creatures endowed with life, of light to those having the spirit- 
ual faculty. So farvv.1-4. It is now declared that this light permanently 
shines—from the beginning ever onward—but that the darkness did not 
apprehend it in the earlier times, and hence the necessity is suggested of 
a clearer shining or revelation (that of ver. 14). The past tense of the 
verb apprehended seems to show that the permanent present (which would 
hold true of all time) is limited, so far as the thought of this verse is con- 
cerned, to the time indicated by its associate verb. We may hold, there- 
fore, with reasonable confidence, that the entire passage vv. 1-5 has refer- 
ence to the Logos before His incarnation, as vv. 14-16 relate to Him as 
incarnate. 

But what shall we say of vv. 6-18? The intermediate position of this 
passage suggests a pointing in both directions. The antecedent probabili- 
ties, also, as to what the writer would do in moving from ver. 5 to ver. 14 
indicate the same thing. Finally, the proper interpretation of different 
individual verses in the passage may, not improbably, confirm us in the 


518 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


conclusion. Certainly, ver. 11 must be taken as referring to the period 
following the incarnation, as of course the actual witness-bearing of John 
must be located in this period. But ver.9, by reason of the emphatic jv 
and also by reason of the correspondence in the permanent present ¢wri- 
Cec of this verse with gaive: of ver. 5, is most naturally interpreted as pre- 
ceding the éyévero of ver. 14. There seems, also, to be a natural progress 
in vv. 10-12, of such a nature that, within the sphere of the general pre- 
sent gwrifec, ver. 10 points to what was before the earthly appearance of the 
Logos, and vy. 11, 12 point to what followed after that appearance. John 
was not the light, but He came to testify of it. The true light was always— 
in the early ages, bearing witness for itself and shining through and in the 
creation, physical and spiritual, which He had brought into existence; 
and in the later time, through His manifestation of Himself as a man of 
the Jewish race. In both periods alike, however, the darkness in which 
men were, because of evil, prevented His being known and received. The 
presence of faith was needed in order to the receptivity of the soul for the 
light, and that it might be secured, so far as to bring men to look to Jesus 
as the revealer of God in the highest sense, John the Baptist had appeared 
as a divinely-appointed witness-bearer. He came, that all might believe 
through him. 


¥. 


Following upon this intermediate passage, which has thus a progressive 
movement from the pre-existent to the incarnate period, the second great 
idea of the entire Prologue is distinctly stated, in a proposition standing 
in a parallelism with those in ver. 1. The Word became flesh. The Logos 
entered into human life. The light which had previously been shining in 
creation and, in some sense, in the soul of every man, but which had not 
been apprehended, is now revealed in the clearest possible manner by 
means of the indwelling of the Logos in a man, and by thus bringing God 
and man into immediate communication. The word light now passes 
away, but it gives place to the expressions: We beheld His glory; full of 
grace and truth. The idea is therefore preserved, though the mode of pre-’ 
senting it changes. The change, however, is in sympathy with the advance 
movement of the thought. The revelation of the Logos is now so perfect 
that those who see it behold His glory. The darkness has passed, and He 
is looked upon face to face. And, moreover, the revelation is of grace 
and truth—it is of that deepest part of God’s nature which He alone who 
was with Him in the beginning, and who is in His bosom as the Son with 
the Father, can make known. The light thus shines from the beginning 
to the end, only more clearly at last than at first. Itis apprehended, as it 
shines, by the souls that are susceptible to it. But the susceptibility comes 
always through faith, and only through faith. And at the end the believers 
behold, with undimmed vision, the glory of the light. To this more glor- 
ious manifestation John the Baptist bears testimony, and, pointing to the 
man in whom the Logos is revealed, he says “ He that cometh after me is 
become before me, for He was before me.” This man is Jesus Christ. 


CHAPTER I. 519 


VI. 


If this view of the Prologue, which has been set forth in the preceding 
notes, is correct, the plan of the author, so far from presenting serious 
difficulties, becomes a thoroughly artistic one—the different lines of 
thought being most carefully interwoven with one another; the progress 
ig plain, not only from ver. 1 to ver. 14, but from ver. 1 to ver. 4 and ver. 
5, from ver. 6 to ver. 13, from vv. 6-18 to ver. 14, and from ver. 14 to 
what follows; and finally the insertion of the testimony of John is ac- 
counted for in a way which most naturally and satisfactorily explains 
what seems, at first sight, so peculiar, and yet in a way which shows that 
it, in no proper sense, breaks the line of development of the ideas of light 
and revelation. 

With reference to the individual words and phrases of the Prologue the 
following points may be briefly noticed: 1. The idea of the author in con- 
nection with several of the leading words is, undoubtedly, to be discovered 
from the main portion of the Gospel, rather than from the introductory 
passage alone. We may infer, however, from the statements of the Pro- 
logue itself, and from the origin of some of them, or their use elsewhere, what 
their significance as here employed is. This is true of Adyoc, év apyxi, Cu, 
¢6¢, caps, etc. 2. That the word 2é6yo¢ was derived from the Old Testament 
—a growth of the idea which is indicated even in the first chapter of Gene- 
sis, and which is developed gradually, as Godet shows, in the later times— 
is very widely admitted by the best scholars. That it was suggested to the 
writer, partly, if not wholly, by its use in the discussions of the time and 
region in which he wrote, seems altogether probable. In any case, the 
idea fundamental to it is that of God as revealing Himself. The Logos 
is the one through whom (or that by means of which), God is revealed. 
Introduced, as it is, as connected with the discussions alluded to and for 
the purpose of answering the question which was the central one in them, 
it is natural that its precise meaning should be left for the reader to deter- 
mine from the propositions of which it is made the subject, and from the 
story of the one who is declared to be the Logos. Of these propositions, 
the first two which appear in ver. 1, affirm, in the first place, that the 
Logos was in the beginning—which, from the relation of the words to ver. 
3, must, at least, mean that He existed before the creation, so that all things 
created have their origin through Him; and secondly, that He was with 
God—which expression is further explained by the words of ver. 18: who 
ts in the bosom of the Futher. They show that the revealing one existed 
antecedently to all revelation of God in or to the world, and that what He 
reveals comes from the inmost heart and being of God. But the third 
proposition goes beyond these, and declares that He was @ed¢. Of this word 
it may be said: (a) That it is not used elsewhere in this Gospel or in the 
other writings of this author, or indeed in any case in the New Testament, 
which can be compared with this, to indicate a being inferior to God; (6) That 
the absence of the article does not indicate any such inferiority, because, 
in the first place, as the writer desired to throw especial emphasis on this 


520 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


predicate by placing it at the beginning of the clause, it became necessary 
to omit it in order that the reader might not, by any means, misapprehend 
the meaning, and in the second place, because he evidently did not mean 
to say that the Logos was God in precisely the same sense in which that 
word is used in the phrase: He was with God. He was not the one with 
whom He was. He was @eé¢, but not, as the term is here used, 6 Oed¢. If 
he desired to express what in theological language is set forth in such a 
sentence as: He was of the essence of God, but not the same person with 
the Father, and if he desired to do this by the use of the word 6eé¢, there 
would seem to have been no more simple or better way of formulating his 
thought than by saying: He was zpd¢ rév 6edv, and was 6ed¢. But it is the 
declarations of Jesus Himself, and His miraculous signs which are given 
in the following chapters, which are intended by the writer to determine 
the full significance of both of these sentences. 3. It is worthy of notice 
that, while the word Logos disappears, so far as this special use of it is 
concerned, as soon as the Prologue reaches its end, the words fw7 and ¢a¢ 
occur many times in the subsequent chapters. These words also draw 
closely together and intermingle with one another, as it were, in their 
idea. This fact, which at the first glance seems remarkable, is easy of 
explanation when the plan and purpose of the book are understood. To 
prove that Jesus is the Logos, in the mere sense that He answers to that 
which was a matter of philosophical inquiry to those around him, is a thing 
of little consequence to the writer. But that, as being the true Logos, He 
is the revealer and source of life and light, is the message which He has 
to give to the world, the etayyéauov of God. The satisfying of philosophical 
questioning is nothing to his view, we may say ; the bringing of the human 
soul into union with God is everything. The close connection of the ideas 
of life and light is also very natural, for, as we learn from the author’s 
first epistle, the life of God represents itself to him under the figure of 
light—that pure and perfect light which has no intermingling of dark- 
ness—and the Cof or CoA aidvioc of man is the participation in this same 
light-life. These words, accordingly, are not merely terms of philosophy 
and, as such, appropriate only to the Prologue, but living expressions of 
experience. The life is that of the soul illuminated by pure spiritual light. 
Its atmosphere in which it lives is light. The form of expression in the 
closing sentences of the Gospel (xx. 80, 81) is thus explained—where the 
term Son of God takes the place of Logos, but the term life remains. So 
also in the First Epistle i. 2, we have the words, “And the life was mani- 
fested . . . the eternal life which was with the Father.” The word fe in 
ver. 4, occurring as it does in the progressive development of thought 
from ver. 1 to ver. 5, probably has a more general meaning. But in its 
use afterwards it moves into the sphere of the spiritual, which is the only 
sphere in which the writer would have his own and his readers’ minds 
abide. 4. That the verb xaréAaBev of ver.5 means apprehended, and not 
overcame, is rendered probable by the following considerations: (a) The 
former meaning lies nearer to the fundamental signification of the word 
to lay hold of, seize upon. The thought here moves in the spiritual region, 


CHAPTER I. 521 


and to lay hold of spiritually is to apprehend. (6) The other explanation 
of the word would indicate that the darkness is here looked upon as a 
hostile power contending with the light for the mastery. This is the sense 
perhaps in xii. 85, where darkness is viewed as seizing upon the man, as 
a power hostile to him. But such a conception does not seem to be in the 
writer’s mind in this passage. The whole movement of thought is in the 
line of the revelation of God, which needs to become clearer because it had 
not before been laid hold of. The darkness is not a hostile force strug- 
gling with the light, but a blinding power for the human mind, prevent- 
ing it from seeing the light. This verse corresponds, in this regard, with 
ver. 10, “ the world knew him not.” (c) The prevailing sense of oxoria as 
used by John is that of darkness as preventing men from seeing the light, 
rather than that of a hostile power contending with the light; comp. the 
First Epistle i. 6, ii. 9, 11, Gosp. viii. 12. Indeed, the use of the word in 
xii. 35a seems only a sort of passing figure, for in xii. 85b the common 
meaning returns: “ he that walketh in the darkness knoweth not whither 
he goeth.” 5. The construction of épyésuerov in ver. 9 is quite uncertain. 
The following considerations favor the connection of the word with rayvra 
évOpwrov :—(a) The position which it has in the sentence points to its 
union as an adjective-word with this noun. (b) This connection gives to 
this verse its most natural meaning, as descriptive of the permanent work 
of the light in all ages—the following verses dividing this work with refer- 
ence to the time before and the time after the incarnation. (c) The em- 
phatic position of #v at the beginning of the sentence is better accounted 
for if it is an independent verb; John was not the light, yet the light was. 
(d) If the author’s intention had been to connect the participle with 7, 
the form of the sentence would probably have been different. If his idea 
was was coming as equivalent to came, no satisfactory reason can be given 
for his not using the word came. If it was was about to come, some more 
clear expression of the idea and one less liable to misapprehension would 
have been chosen. In either case, the participle, as we may believe, 
would have been placed nearer to the verb. On the other hand, the prin- 
cipal objection to connecting the participle with dv@pwxov does not seem 
to be well-founded. This objection, which urges that the expression every 
man coming into the world is the same in meaning with every man, and 
therefore the participle is superfluous, might be of force as bearing against 
such a phrase in a book of the present day. But such modes of expres- 
sion belong to the simple, primitive style of the narrative writers of the 
Bible and have a sort of emphasis peculiar to that style. Moreover, it is 
not necessary to regard the two expressions as equivalent to each other, 
for the participle may convey the idea: as he was coming, or, on his coming. 
6. In ver. 14, the words full of grace and truth are to be connected with the 
subject of the main proposition, the Logos. The intervening words, and we 
beheld his glory, etc., are thus to be taken, as by R. V. and many commen- 
tators, including Godet, as a parenthesis. This is rendered probable not 
only by the fact that the adjective ~Agpn¢ is in the nominative case, but 
also by the evident immediate connection of the similar words in vv. 16, 


§22 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


17 with the Logos and Jesus Christ. The 15th verse, again, is with rela- 
tion to the idea expressed by these words, a parenthetical passage, so that 
the thought moves directly on from ver. 14 to ver. 16. In relation to the 
matter of testimony, however, ver. 15 is parallel with ver. 6f., and has a 
similar emphasis and importance. 7. There is apparently somewhat of 
the same carefulness and accuracy of expression, within the limits of 
popular language, in the use of cdpé, which we have noticed in the use of 
6e6¢ as distinguished from 6 6eé¢ in ver. 1. The writer did not wish to say 
that the Logos became a man (4@pw70c), which might be understood ag 
indicating more than could be affirmed. The Logos did not lay aside the 
essence, but the yop¢7, of God. He did not pass from the Divine state into 
that of a mere man. But He entered into human nature, taking upon 
Himself the sop) dobdov. He did not, on the other hand, merely assume 
the cyjua avépoérov, but He became flesh, éyévero cap. Precisely what this 
involved is suggested by the peculiar expression used; but the fullness of 
the author’s idea must, here again, be sought in the subsequent chapters. 
8. Not improbably Godet’s view of the words povoyevoi¢ rapa rarpéc: that 
they mean (as rendered in A. V. and R. V.) the only begotten from the 
Father, is correct. But his argument against Weiss, who understands the 
words as meaning an only begotten from a father, and as referring to the 
only son as inheriting the rank and fortune of his father,—namely, that 
this explanation would suppose that every father who has an only son 
has also a great fortune to give him, can hardly be regarded as having 
any considerable force. We do not measure our thought in such phrases 
by the lower cases, but by the higher. The glory belonging to our idea of 
an only son is not affected by the fact that there are many individual in- 
stances in which there is no glory for him. 9. The fact that ver. 18 is added 
at the end of the Prologue, and immediately after ver. 17 (which declares 
that the revelation of grace and truth, of which in ver. 14 the Logos was 
said to be fullas He became flesh, was made through Jesus Christ), plainly 
connects the end with the beginning and shows that, in the view of the 
writer, Jesus is more than a man—that He is the one who is in the bosom 
of the Father, and who both was with God and was God. 10. It does not 
seem to the writer of this note that Godet’s view of the plan and thought 
of the Prologue is the true one—that the three ideas are, The Logos, un- 
belief, faith, the first being presented in vv. 1-4, the second in vy. 5-11, 
and the third in vv. 12-18. On the other hand, the true view seems rather 
to be that which has been already suggested. The great doctrine of the 
book is, that Jesus is what is represented by the word Logos—the Divine 
revealer of God having entered into our humanity. The Prologue pre- 
sents as its chief point the two propositions, vv. 1, 14, which contain the 
statements respecting the Logos, and ver. 17 which adds that concerning 
Jesus. From ver. 1 to ver. 14 there is a passage subordinate to the two 
main propositions, which shows the necessity of what is stated in ver. 14. 
The other two leading ideas of the book are testimony and believing, the 
former to the end of the latter (see xx. 30,31)—and these two ideas are 
suggested in the Prologue, though only ina secondary way. They are 


CHAPTER | Aer 523 


both mentioned; but the former is made more prominent (ver. 6 f., ver. 
15, ver. 14 we beheld, comp. 1 John i. 1 ff.), because testimony belongs 
rather to the beginning, and faith reaches its fullness of believing only at 
the end. Yet the testimony is always to the end of believing on the part 
of'those who hear it—as truly in the case of John the Baptist at the first, 
as in that of John the evangelist at the last (comp. i. 7 with xx. 31). 


VII. 


The passage from i. 19 to ii. 11 is the Historical Introduction, as it may 
be called. The object which it has in view is to bring before the readers 
the personages who are to act the principal part in the story. The cyuéia 
are done (éroiyaev) in the presence of the disciples (xx. 30). In this pas- 
sage the disciples are introduced on the scene. 

As to the disciples here mentioned, they were, not improbably, all of 
them disciples of John the Baptist. Of the first two who are mentioned 
this fact is distinctly recorded. Were these two persons present with John 
on the day preceding that on which they went to see Jesus? This ques- 
tion is not a vital one to our determination of the plan and object of this 
latter portion of the first chapter. But, if it is answered ip. the affirma- 
tive, it proves the connection between the testimonies of John to which refer- 
ence has been made on page 497 above. That it should be thus answered 
is shown by the improbability that they would have taken the course they 
did if they had heard nothing more from John than the words of ver. 36. 
The additional unfolding of the idea here suggested, which was given on 
the preceding day, accounts for the impression produced by the mere 
pointing to Jesus when He appears again. But without this, there is a 
blank which needs to be filled. Moreover, as these disciples were tem- 
porarily absent from their homes for the purpose of hearing John the 
Baptist and following him, there is every reason to believe that they were 
present with him on each day of the time at their command. For this 
reason also, as well as because of the apparent close connection between 
the several testimonies of John, we may believe that these two persons 
had, in like manner, heard his conversation with the deputation of the 
Sanhedrim. Their going to Jesus, accordingly, is the first instance of 
miotevev Which answers to the uaprupia. 

In the verses which contain the first two testimonies of John, 19-34, the 
following points may be noticed: 1. The record of John the Baptist here 
is quite different, and for quite a different purpose, from that of the other 
Gospels. The story of John’s preaching as given by the Synoptics, is a 
representation of the character and substance of that preaching. This is 
true of the passing allusion to it in Mark, and also of the longer accounts 
in Matthew and Luke. But to this writer, John is of importance only as 
related to his testimony, and in the plan of this introductory passage this 
testimony only bears towards one result. We have not here, therefore, 
the general utterances of John, but only a few words which he said on 
three successive days. The circumstances of these occasions, however, 


524 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


called him to explain his peculiar mission and his relation to the Messiah. 
Hence it is not strange that he should have used some of the expressions 
which he used in addressing the people, and the presence here of the 
quotation from Isaiah, or the allusion to the baptism with water and to 
the mightier one who was to follow, cannot be urged as, in any measure, 
inconsistent with the other Gospels, which represent these words as used 
at a different time. These words must have been often on the Baptist’s 
lips and have been spoken to various hearers. 2. In the second testi- 
mony (ver. 30), we find the words already mentioned in the Prologue (ver. 
15) alluded to as having been spoken on a former occasion. This was not 
on the preceding day apparently, for no such words are introduced in the 
account of that day. We must conclude, therefore, that the hearers pre- 
sent on this occasion, and probably the two disciples, had been also pre- 
sent when John preached before the beginning of what is here narrated. 
These disciples had been, for a brief period at least, under the educating 
influence of the forerunner in a certain kind of preparation for belief in 
Jesus. 3. That the baptism of Jesus must be placed before ver. 19, is clear 
from the fact that it must have occurred at an earlier time than the day 
indicated in ver. 29, because of the allusion to it (vv. 33, 34) as already 
past. But if it preceded ver. 29, it must also have preceded ver. 19, be- 
cause the forty days of the temptation followed the baptism and during 
this period Jesus could not have been accessible to others as he was here. 
Moreover, if He had been baptized on the day mentioned in ver. 19, that 
is, only asingle day before ver. 29, it is scarcely possible that the words 
used by John the Baptist respecting the event should be only what we have 
here. 4. As to the meaning of the words I knew him not (vv. 31, 33), 
Godet holds that they declare that John did not know Jesus a man, for if 
he had known Him thus, he must have known Him also as the Messiah. 
Meyer, on the other hand, says that this expression leaves it quite uncer- 
tain whether he had any personal acquaintance with Jesus. Westcott 
regards the story in Luke as leaving it doubtful whether any such personal 
acquaintance existed. But, if the narrative in Luke is to be accepted, it 
seems almost impossible that. John should not have had some such know- 
ledge of Jesus as would prevent his saying so absolutely, I did not know 
him. The circumstances of Jesus’ birth, and of John’s own birth as related 
to that of Jesus, were so remarkable, that John could hardly have lost 
sight of Him altogether. Moreover, the words addressed to Jesus by 
John in Matt. ii. 14 are very difficult to be accounted for, if Jesus was alto- 
gether unknown personally to him. Weiss attempts to explain the diffi- 
culty by supposing that the 7decv does not refer to the time of the baptism, 
but to the time of the verb 420» which follows, that is to say, the time 
when John entered upon his public office. But this seems wholly improb- 
able in the case of jdev of ver. 38, which occurs in the midst of the 
account of what he saw at the baptism, and appears to be contrasted with 
the knowledge which he gained by seeing the fulfillment of the sign—he 
was without this knowledge even at the baptismal scene, until the moment 
when he saw the dove descending. It would seem, therefore, that the ex- 


CHAPTER I. 525 


planation must be sought for in connection with the idea of the Baptist’s 
testimony, for which the whole matter is introduced. He did not know 
Jesus, in such a sense that he could go forth as the witness sent from God 
(ver. 6), and testify that Jesus was the Son of God, until the divinely pro- 
mised proof had been given. However much the friends, or even the 
mother of Jesus herself, may have thought of a glorious mission as await- 
ing Him in life, they could not have felt sure that He was to hold the Mes- 
sianic office, until they saw the evidences which came with His entrance 
upon His public career. But John—to be the great witness, giving the 
assurance of a Divine word—must certainly have waited for the sign, be- 
fore he could feel that he knew as he ought to know. In this connection, 
also, it may be noticed that John’s testimony seems to take hold, in some 
measure, upon the thoughts which the writer brings out in the Prologue 
(comp. ver. 80, he was before me, ver. 34, the Son of God), and surely, for the 
knowledge of these things, he needed a divine communication. He may 
have believed in Jesus’ exaltation above himself (Matt. iii. 14) by reason 
of what he had heard of the story of His birth or the years that followed. 
He may, thus, have felt that he might rather be baptized by Jesus than 
baptize Him. He may even have had little doubt that He was the Mes- 
siah. But he could not know Him as such, until the word of God which 
had come to him was fulfilled. 


VIII. 


In connection with the third testimony of John, the result in believing is 
given ; the two disciples go to Jesus. With respect to the one of them 
who is not named, we may notice: 1. That he is, beyond any reasonable 
doubt, one of the apostolic company as afterwards constituted. This is 
proved by his connection with Andrew; by the fact that he is undoubtedly 
to be included among those disciples who went to Cana (il. 2), and to 
Capernaum (ii. 12), and so, also, among those who are referred to as being 
present with Jesus at Jerusalem (ii. 17, 22); and by the fact that in the 
subsequent history the ‘“ disciples,” who are made thus especially promi- 
nent, are clearly the apostles. 2. That he is particularly connected with 
Andrew and Peter. He must, therefore, have been one of the apostolic 
company who had this relation to those two brothers before their disciple- 
ship to Jesus began. It appears probable, also, that he is the same un- 
named person who has similar intimacy with Peter after their entrance 
upon their apostolic office. 38. That the only persons whom the Synoptic 
Gospels present to us as thus united with Andrew and Peter are the two 
sons of Zebedee. 4. That there is, to say the least, a possible and not 
improbable allusion to his having a brother whom he introduced to Jesus. 
If so, the evidence that the two were James and John is strengthened, but 
this point is not essential to the proof. 5. That, if the companion of 
Andrew was either James or John, and if he is the one who is alluded to, 
but not named, in subsequent chapters, there can be no question as to 
which of the two he was. If he was the author, he could not be James, 
who was dead long before the book was written. Whether he was the 


526 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


author or not, James had died too early, as Godet has remarked, for any 
such report to spread abroad as that which is referred to in xxi. 23. Weiss, 
in his edition of Meyer’s Commentary (as also Westcott and Hort), holds 
that xpérov, and not zpérog, is the true reading in ver. 41, and Weiss main- 
tains, that, with either reading, the word does not suggest the finding of the 
brother of Andrew’s companion, but that, on the other hand, it simply 
marks the finding of Peter as the first instance to which vv. 48, 45, answer 
as a second and third. Meyer, however, reads zpéroc, and agrees with 
Godet, that there is here a reference to James. Westcott, also, who adopts 
mparov as the text, agrees with these writers in the opinion that James is 
probably alluded to. It is observed that the indication of the verse is 
found not only in this word, but also in the emphatic idcov, and in the fact 
that the verse follows and is apparently connected with ver. 40 (one of the 
two—he first findeth his own), and that the specifying of the finding of 
Peter as the first case of finding seems wholly unnecessary, and, consider- 
ing the separation of the verses which give the account of the other find- 
ings from this one, antecedently improbable. Weiss also holds, that the 
finding of Peter took place on a different day from that of the visit of the 
two disciples to Jesus. But, while this is possible, it seems more probable 
that it occurred on the same day at evening, the days being reckoned by 
the daylight hours. In so carefully marked a narrative, we can hardly 
suppose a new day to be inserted with no designation of it. The result in 
faith of this first day was a conviction on the part of these disciples that 
they had found in Jesus the Messiah. Even this conviction could not, 
probably, in so short an interview, have reached its highest point. On the 
other hand, as related to the full belief of the later days with respect to 
all that Jesus was, this must have been only the earliest beginning of the 
development of years. 


TX. 


In connection with vv. 43-52 the following points may be noticed :—1. 
The impression produced upon the mind of Nathanael is occasioned (at 
least, so far as the record goes), by something beyond what occurred in 
the other cases. There is an exhibition of what seemed to him miracu- 
lous knowledge on Jesus’ part. As to what this was precisely, there is a 
difference of opinion among commentators, as Godet states in his note. 
That Godet is right here, as against Meyer and others, is rendered probable 
by the very deep impression which evidently was made on Nathanael, 
and by the fact that the recording of what Jesus says of him, in ver. 47, 
can scarcely be explained unless we hold that these words, as well as those 
of ver. 48, affected his mind.—2. The answer of Nathanael, also, expresses 
more than what we find in the other cases. He says, indeed, what they 
say: Thou art the king of Israel (the Messiah). But he also says: Thou 
art the Son of God. We may believe that this second expression answers 
to the second element in the manifestation which Jesus made to him: 
namely, the miraculous insight into his character. Jesus awakened, by this 
means, a conviction in Nathanael’s mind, that He had a peculiar relation 


CHAPTER II. 527 


to God; in some sense, at least, a divine side in His nature or character. 
The view that the title Son of God here is simply equivalent to Messiah is 
improbable, when we consider the peculiarities of this story, as compared 
with the others. But we cannot hold that Nathanael grasped at once the 
fullness of the significance of this term, as it is used in xx. 81.—3. The 
words of ver. 52 (51) are evidently spoken with reference, not only to 
Nathanael, but to all the disciples who were now with Jesus. It is quite 
probable that, in the plan of the book, they are inserted here as looking 
forward to all the ojueia which are to be recorded afterwards, and which, 
beginning with the one at Cana, proved to the disciples the union between 
Jesus and God. 

4. That this gathering of disciples about Jesus is quite independent of 
any story in the Synoptics, and is antecedent to the call of which the 
account is given in Matt. iv. 18-22, Mk. i. 16-20 and Luke v. 1-11, is 
evident from the fact that the Synoptic narratives begin the history at a 
later date. Moreover, the readiness with which the four disciples (Andrew, 
Peter, James and John) left their business and their homes immediately 
upon the (Synoptic) call, is almost inexplicable unless there was some 
previous acquaintance and impression such as we discover here. Meyer 
affirms that John and the Synoptics are irreconcilable with each other in 
respect to this matter, because these five or six disciples are with Jesus in 
ii. 2 and remain with Him. Weiss, in his edition of Meyer, takes the 
opposite ground. He, however, maintains that we cannot assert that the 
uabyrai, who are spoken in il. 17-iv. 54, are the same with these five or six 
or that they include all of these. He even goes so far as to say that there 
is no indication in this chapter that Simon joined Jesus, and calls attention 
to the fact that in Luke v.1 ff. the story of the call is centered upon Peter. 
Both of these writers have taken wrong positions; Meyer, in insisting 
that no place can be found for the call in John’s narrative after the first 
chapter, and Weiss, in supposing that Peter may not have acted at this 
time as the others did, and that uafyrai of ii. 17, etc., is not intended by the 
author to designate the same persons—or, at least, to give them a promi- 
nence—who are mentioned inch. i. As Keil remarks, the statements with 
regard to the disciples in the second chapter, if we suppose them to be 
the same with those mentioned in ch. 1., do not exclude the possibility of 
intervals of separation from Jesus, after their first meeting with Him, and 
of return to their former employments. It must be borne in mind 
that John’s narrative is a selection of stories made for the purpose of 
setting forth proofs and the growth of faith, and not a complete or alto- 
gether continuous record of Jesus’ life. 


p.& 


CHAPTER II. 


1. The first eleven verses of ch. ii. are evidently connected with the first 
chapter, because of the continuance of the designation of the days, 
because of the fact that in ver. 11 the miracle is connected with the faith 


528 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


of the disciples mentioned, and because the story of the public life of 
Jesus and His first Messianic appearance evidently begins with ver. 13. 
The historical introduction, accordingly, closes with ii. 12. The expla- 
nation of the design of the miracle recorded in these verses is thus easily 
seen to be that which the writer indicates in ver. 11; it was to manifest 
the glory of Jesus before these disciples, to the end of confirming their 
belief in Him. Any other purpose, such as that of turning the minds of 
the disciples away from the severities of the old system to the free, joyful 
service of the new, must have been altogether subordinate and secondary. 
The book is written for testimony and its results, and the miracle was 
needed now for testimony. It was of the highest importance that these 
five or six men, who were to be apostles, should be established in their 
faith at this time. The character of the miracle was determined, as all 
the miracles of Jesus’ life seem to have been, by the circumstances which 
presented themselves. So, in this case, it was a miracle at a wedding and 
a miracle of turning water into wine. That it taught or might teach 
other lessons was incidental; that it taught faith was the reason for per- 
forming it. It was a onueiov. 

As to particular points in these verses, it may be remarked :—1. In the 
presentation of the story we may see that the writer is guided by the end 
which he has in view. The circumstances mentioned set forth the striking 
character of the miracle and its reality, and the narrative also makes 
prominent the words addressed by Jesus to His mother. The first two of 
these points have a direct bearing, evidently, on the manifestation of His 
glory (ver. 11). There can be little doubt that the same is true of the 
third. The words that are found in vv. 3-5 look towards a miracu- 
lous work as a possibility —2. The answer of Jesus in ver. 4 can hardly 
be explained, if the request of Mary was only that He would, in some 
ordinary way, help the family out of their present embarrassment. This 
was so reasonable a suggestion on her part, it would seem, that He could 
not have replied to it either with such an element of severity in His 
words or with such a form of expression. Her meaning, therefore, must 
apparently have involved something beyond this. The instance most 
nearly resembling this, in which we find in this Gospel the words “my (or, 
the) hour (or time) is not yet come,” is that in vii. 6, where the brethren of 
Jesus urge Him to make Himself known more publicly at Jerusalem. We 
may believe that, on the present occasion also, there was somewhat of the 
same thought in His mother’s mind. She must have been looking for the 
time when He would come forward publicly ; she must have expected it 
with increasing interest, and with even impatient desire perchance, as He 
moved forward in His manhood; she must have thought it near when He 
left her for John’s baptism ; she may even have known from Himself that 
it was near. He had now returned from the baptism with disciples—why 
should not this be the time? Whether we are to understand, therefore, 
that she was asking for an exhibition of miraculous power in the par- 
ticular emergency of the hour or not, it seems impossible to doubt that 
there was in her mind some call for a display on His part of His 


CHAPTER II. 529 


Messianic character and dignity which should go, in its publicity and 
effect, beyond the company then present, and become in itself the 
assumption. as if before the world, of His office. The time for this had 
not yet come. The path which opened to His mind and that which 
opened to hers were different. He must go forward by slow steps, 
and begin by simply confirming the faith of the few disciples who 
were the foundations of His Church. 


D.& & : 


Beginning with ii. 18, the account of the first visit of Jesus to Jerusalem 
is given. There can be little doubt that the five or six disciples were with 
Him in this visit. Ver. 12 states that they went with Him from Cana to 
Capernaum, and that they (not He alone) remained there not many days. 
It is then said (ver. 18) that He went up to Jerusalem; and at the close 
of each story of what He did there (vv. 17, 22), the relation of His words 
or actions to the thoughts of the disciples is referred to. When we add to 
this the evident design of the writer to set forth the growing faith of the 
disciples in their association with Jesus, the probability in the case rises 
almost to certainty. 

There are four points of special interest connected with these verses 
(13-25):—1. As the miracle at Cana had by reason of the supernatural 
power exhibited in it confirmed their faith, two means of a different order 
are now employed for the same end. The driving out of the dealers is an 
exhibition of His prophetic zeal. It was the power of the prophet that 
awed and overcame those who had desecrated the sacred place. The im- 
pression made on the disciples was immediate and profound (ver. 17). 
The testimony comes to them in a new line. As related to the scene at 
Cana, however, it comes in the right order of proof. The miracle is the 
first onueiov, the prophet’s work is the second. The matter recorded in ver. 
18 ff. is of another character. As we see by ver. 22, it was not fully under- 
stood at the time. The scene at Cana and the one with the dealers taught 
their lesson at once; the disciples believed (ver. 11), and they remembered 
and applied what was written (ver. 17). But this scene suggested a ques- 
tion which they could not answer. It was a question, however, to which 
their minds might naturally often turn, and it was one which would lead 
them to the thought of the wonderful element in His person and charac- 
ter. It worked asa proof by reason of the strangeness belonging to it. 
What could be the significance of those remarkable words? What a won- 
derful man must He be who could utter them of Himself! The different 
character of the signs, as the author brings them | efore us, may well ar- 
rest attention. 2. In respect to the last point (ver. 18 ff), it is said that the 
disciples did not come to the right apprehension of the meaning of Jesus’ 
words until after He rose from the dead. In the following verses, persons 
are spoken of who were led by the signs to believe, but not to believe in 
such a way that Jesus could trust Himself to them. These statements 
show clearly that the author is marking in the progress of his narrative 

34 


530 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


the development of faith. These indications, also, are of such a nature 
that they point us to an author contemporary with the facts as the one 
who gives them. They are of the simple, artless sort, which men removed 
from the actual scenes do not think of. 38. The signs referred to in ver. 
23 are not described or related in the chapter. The inference which must 
be drawn is, that the writer purposely selects those things only which af- 
fected the disciples, and those even which moved them in a different way 
from the miracle, properly so-called, which they had witnessed at Cana. 
4. We may add that, at this point, ch. lil. opens with a testimony which 
lies wholly within the sphere of words. 

As to the questions arising in connection with these verses, which 
relate to the difference between this Gospel and the Synoptics, it may be 
said, in the first place, that both of the two things mentioned seem better 
suited to the beginning of the public life of Jesus than to its end. The 
demand for a sign, with the particular answer here given, is more easily 
accounted for as made on His first appearance, than at the period when, 
after three years of ministry, He comes to Jerusalem for the last time 
and enters it with a sort of triumphal procession. It will be noticed, in- 
deed, that in the Synoptical account these words about the temple are 
only mentioned as what the false witnesses reported that they had heard, 
and that Mark says, apparently with reference to this matter (comp. Mk. 
xiv. 59 with 58), that they did not agree with one another in their state- 
ments. This may most readily be explained, if the words of Jesus had 
been uttered two years before. As for the driving out of the traders, on 
the other hand, the act on the part of Jesus which is here related would 
seem to be just that which, in the first impulse of His mission, He would 
be not unlikely to do. It belongs in its character, as we might say, to 
first impulses, and not to the feelings of that later time when the deadly 
conflict with the Jewish authorities was at hand. It is, moreover, just 
such an act as—awakening astonishment by reason of its boldness and the 
prophetic impulse which characterized it—might naturally induce the 
leading Jews to ask the newly-appearing prophet what sign He had to 
show. The difficulty with respect to these points lies, therefore, not in the 
fact that this Gospel places the occurrences at the beginning of the history, 
but in the fact that the Synoptics (Matt. and Mk.) place them (or, rather, 
one of them) at the end. We may not be able to explain this difficulty, 
but the limitation of the Synoptic narratives may, in some way, have oc- 
casioned the representation which they give. Such questions belong, in 
large measure, with the comprehensive one, as to why the earliest writers 
confined themselves almost exclusively to the Galilean story. 


XII. 


CHAPTER ITI. 


The first twenty-one verses of the third chapter contain the account of 
the interview between Jesus and Nicodemus. This interview occurred 
during the visit to Jerusalem at the Passover, and, when viewed in its 


CHAPTER III. 531 


close connection with ii. 13-25, it cannot be reasonably doubted that the 
story is inserted here as a part of the testimony to Jesus. It is the first 
testimony of the words, which play so important a part in what follows, as 
the Cana miracle was the first of the works. On this passage the follow- 
ing suggestions may be offered :—1. It is evident that Nicodemus was one 
of those whose attention was aroused by the “signs” alluded to in ii. 28. 
His mind must, therefore, have been in a susceptible state, beyond most 
of those around. him, and he came to Jesus honestly to inquire after the 
truth. The course taken by him on the occasion referred to in vii. 45-52 
makes it probable that he was established in his belief in consequence of, 
and as following upon this interview. His action at the time of vii. 45 ff., 
was both honorable and courageous. So was that which is related of him 
in xix. 88-42. The latter action showed love to Jesus of a most tender order. 
And yet the mere statement of the author of this Gospel that he made 
his first visit to Jesus by night has been, as it were, the only thing borne 
in mind respecting him, and has determined the estimate of his character. 
The author, however, does not say that this first coming was by night 
because of unworthy fear, much less that Nicodemus was marked in his 
whole career by this characteristic. 2. That he visited Jesus with a mind 
open to conviction, and with an honest desire to hear what He had to say, 
is evident from the second verse as most naturally explained. There is 
no reason to believe that his first words were spoken in any other than a 
straightforward and sincere way. We must believe that some conversa- 
tion on the part of both parties took place between ver. 2 and ver. 3. It 
is probable that Nicodemus came to inquire as to what Jesus had to say 
about the Messianic Kingdom, and that, after introducing the whole con- 
versation by the words of ver. 2, he soon raised the question which he had 
in mind as to that subject. Otherwise, the words of Jesus in ver. 3 have 
an abruptness which is almost inexplicable. 3. The idea of Nicodemus 
with regard to the kingdom was, of course, the ordinary one of the time, 
according to which it was to be a temporal kingdom for the Jews. The 
entrance into it was through a Jewish birth, so far as the chosen nation 
was concerned. Jesus strikes at the very foundation of this idea, and 
makes the entrance to be only through a birth of another sort—a birth of 
the spirit. The difficulty which Nicodemus sets forth in the question of 
ver. 4 is connected with this marvelously new idea, and is to be inter- 
preted accordingly, and not according to the literalism of its words. The 
state of Nicodemus’ mind is that of ver. 9: “ How can these things be?” 
—that is, the new doctrine isincomprehensible. He stood, in this regard, 
where the Jewish opponents of Paul stood, when he taught the doctrine 
of justification, not through possession of the law and the being a Jew 
outwardly, but through a new and living principle, even faith in Jesus 
Christ. 4. The meaning of the word dvw%ev—whether from above or anew 
—must be regarded as doubtful. The arguments in favor of the former 
meaning are: (a) The use of the word in the sense from above in the only 
other instances in John’s Gospel which can be compared with this case. 
There are, however, only two such instances. In xix. 23 it is used of the 


532 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


tunic of Jesus, which is said to have been woven from the top throughout. 
(b) One of these two instances is in this present chapter (ver. 31). This 
fact—although the word occurs in the report of the expressions of John 
the Baptist on another occasion—would seem to indicate what the writer 
understood by it. (c) The Johannean idea of the spiritual birth is that 
of being born of God, of the Spirit, that is, from above, and not of a new 
or second birth. Born of the Spirit is an expression found in this very con- 
versation. (d) For the idea of a second birth ré/v or debrepov would have 
been more naturally selected. On the other hand, it is claimed (a) that the 
understanding of Nicodemus was that it was a second birth (see ver. 4) ; (0) 
that the word was so understood by the translators of the Peshito, Coptic, 
Old Latin and Vulgate versions; (c) that in the passage from Artemidorus, 
which is referred to by Godet—the only instance in the classics where 
dvubev yevvacba is used, it has this meaning; so also the adverb in the two 
other passages cited by Godet in his note from Josephus and the Acta 
Pauli; (d) that the use in Gal. iv. 9 justifies this meaning; (e) that, if 
Jesus had here meant from above, He would have used the expression éx 
6cov, instead of this adverb. The tendency of the majority of commenta- 
tors has been, on the whole, towards the latter view, or towards the posi- 
tion taken by R. V., which places anew in the text, and from above in the 
margin. If the second view is adopted, it must be observed—as is now 
generally admitted—that the word does not mean precisely again (raAw) 
or a second time (debrepov), but, as in Gal. iv. 9, from the beginning, as indi- 
cating the idea of beginning over again, and thus of a completely new birth. 
The writer of this note would merely express his own view that from above 
is somewhat more probably the correct rendering of the word, because 
this meaning seems more in accordance with the general Johannean idea 
of the spiritual life—that it comes, in every sense, from heaven—and also 
because this is evidently the meaning of dvwev in ver. 81. That Nicode- 
mus spoke of a second birth does not seem to be the measure for the 
determination of Jesus’ thought. In the bewilderment of his mind as to 
the words of Jesus, any idea of birth must have seemed to him to 
suggest a second birth of some sort, and especially as his idea of 
the kingdom was, that it was to belong to Jews by reason of their birth. 
Nicodemus was evidently unable to grasp the thought of Jesus with 
a clear apprehension of it. 5. With reference to ver. 5, the following 
brief suggestions are offered: (a) If we take the conversation as it stands 
recorded, we can hardly explain the words of this verse, unless they con- 
nect themselves with something which might easily have been before the 
mind of Nicodemus when the interview began. (b) This thing must have been 
outside of his old, Pharisaic ideas, for the whole exposition of the entrance- 
way and life of the kingdom is clearly intended to take him wholly away 
from those ideas—to awaken him, as it were, by a startling contradiction of 
what he had previously had in mind, to a new world of thought. (c) The 
only thing which can have suggested the words here used must, therefore, 
have been the teaching and work of John the Baptist. That this work and 
teaching had affected the mind of Nicodemus we may believe because of his 


OHAPTER III. 533 


coming to Jesus. His coming, in itself, showed that his attention had been 
easily turned to the great subject of the kingdom. A mind thus ready 
could not have overlooked the remarkable work of John, or have failed, 
if his attention was given to it, to consider the chief elements of John’s 
doctrine. (d) One of the striking expressions of John, in setting forth 
his office and his relation to Jesus, was that respecting baptism with 
water and with the Spirit. If Nicodemus had known of John’s preach- 
ing, it would seem that he must have had his attention drawn to this 
expression. (¢) In explaining the matter of the entrance into the king- 
dom, therefore, it would not be unnatural for Jesus to turn the mind 
of Nicodemus away from his past ideas to the ideas belonging to the 
Christian system by uniting these two words water and spirit. The work 
for which the forerunner prepares the way, and which He himself 
introduces and sets on its course, is that by which men are drawn away 
from the outward and temporal view of the kingdom to individual spir- 
itual life. (f) If there is in the words this uniting of His work with 
John’s, we may easily understand why the word water falls away at 
once and the further development is wholly in the use of the word spirit. 
(g) The immediate and primary reference in tdaro¢ is, accordingly, not to 
baptism as found in the Christian system, though, in the fullness of the 
idea of the sentence in the mind of Jesus, there may have been a second- 
ary reference to it. But whatever may be said as to this point, there can 
be no doubt that the main thought of Jesus, which was intended to be 
conveyed to Nicodemus, was that of the spiritual birth as essential to mem- 
bership in the kingdom. 6. The meaning of odpé, as used in ver. 6, is to 
be limited to the physical idea, and not to be regarded as including the 
moral. The object of this verse is to confirm, by the contrast here indi- 
cated, the necessity of the new birth. The natural birth, as into the Jew- 
ish people, can only result in what pertains to the physical or psychical 
sphere, but the kingdom of God is in a higher sphere. The aim of Jesus 
is, throughout, to show Nicodemus that his old views were utterly wrong. 
7. The thought of ver. 8 is immediately connected with ver. 7. Nicode- 
mus should not marvel at the idea of a new birth of the spirit, for the 
analogy of nature shows results coming from invisible sources. But it 
seems not improbable, also, that there is a suggestion here of the origin 
of membership in the kingdom as being widely different from what he 
had thought. It is an influence working in an unseen way, which may 
affect any one of any nation, and may leave any one unaffected—which 
neither moves along the lines of ordinary birth nor is connected with it. 
8. The suggestions already made serve to explain the words of Jesus in 
the tenth verse. The object of what precedes having been to set forth the 
spiritual nature of the kingdom, the expression of astonishment follows, 
that one whose office it was, as teacher of Israel, to comprehend the Old 
Testament in its deepest meaning, should be so unable to grasp the 
spiritual idea. 


534 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


XIII. 


1. At ver. 11, Jesus makes a step in advance in the discourse, and now 
assumes in a more formal way the position of the teacher of this teacher. 
He declares to him, first of all, that He is qualified to make known to him 
the truth, because He has seen and knows; He has, what no human 
teacher has, the heavenly knowledge (vv. 11,18). But Nicodemus, through 
dwelling in the psychical rather than the spiritual region, is not ready to 
receive and believe that which is to be communicated. 2. This want of 
belief on the part of Nicodemus does not seem to be referred by Jesus 
directly to sin or the sinful will, as in the case of the Jews afterwards, but 
to the fact that his thoughts are wholly in the outward and visible, as in- 
dicated by his questions respecting the new birth. The conversation 
apparently is designed to be an educating one to the end of faith, and so 
there is no sharp rebuke, but only the effort to bring him to see the need 
of entering into a higher sphere. 3. The earthly things must refer to the 
new birth, because this is the only matter which had been spoken of 
(elxov, ver. 12). The spiritual change, though having its origin and origin- 
ating force in heaven (dvobev, é« tod mvetuaroc), is yet accomplished on earth. 
It is, indeed, the earthly work of the new kingdom. The (w7 aidéviw¢ opens 
and begins here. This was the fundamental thing to be presented in 
answer to the question with which we may believe the conversation to have 
been commenced. If this could not be understood, what possibility could 
there be of understanding the things which were beyond this—the heav- 
enly things? 4. The heavenly things must, undoubtedly, be indicated in the 
words of this conversation—otherwise there would be little significance in 
mentioning them. If, however, they are thus mdicated, they must be 
found in what follows, and must, apparently, be centered in the mission 
and crucifixion of the Son of man tothe end of the salvation of men. 
The fundamental fact and truth of the Gospel—the divine provision for 
bringing men to eternal life through believing on the only-begotten Son— 
cannot be understood by one who does not apprehend the necessity of the 
new birth, that is, by one who does not know that the kingdom of God is 
a kingdom in and over the soul, not to be entered by belonging to a par- 
ticular nation. The necessity of the new birth may be realized on earth 
and the new birth is accomplished on earth, but the great divine plan, 
with its wide-reaching relations, which involves and is carried out by means 
of this spiritual regeneration, is a thing belonging to heaven, and one which 
must be revealed by the Son, who descends out of heaven and who is in 
heaven. Ver. 13 holds, in the thought as well as in its position, the inter- 
mediate place between ver. 12 and ver. 14: ver. 12, the heavenly things 
are mentioned; ver. 13, the Son is the only one who can reveal them; 
ver. 14, what they are. 


XIV. 


The passage from ver. 16 to ver. 21 is supposed by Westcott, and by 
Milligan and Moulton, among the most recent writers on this Gospel, as 


CHAPTER III. 535 


well as by the writers whom Godet mentions, to contain reflections of the 

evangelist on the words of Jesus already spoken. On the other hand, 
Alford, Keil and others hold that these are the words of Jesus. The 
grounds on which the former view is maintained are the three referred to 
by Godet, and one or two others which may be closely united with them. 
As for these three, it must be admitted that they are deserving of serious 
consideration. The argument from the past tenses cannot be pressed, as 
it might be in some other writings, for the tendency towards the use of 
the aorist instead of the perfect is manifest in the New Testament, and, in 
this case, the reference in vv. 16, 17 is apparently to the act of love already 
accomplished, and besides, the 7 of ver. 19 may be intended to cover a 
time before the appearance of the light, as well as the time of or after that 
appearance. The argument derived from povoyev4c, to which other pecu- 
liar expressions are added by Westcott, such as do the truth, is the only one 
of weight. It would seem not improbable that John may have taken this 
word from Jesus, but the use of it by Jesus in this early conversation with 
Nicodemus is a thing hardly to have been expected. Was it not too soon 
after His first coming forward as a teacher, and was it not unlikely that 
He would have employed this peculiar term for the first time in a conver- 
sation with such a man? The argument derived from the fact that Nico- 
demus takes no longer any part in the conversation is of comparatively 
little force, because at ver. 14 Jesus passes from the earthly to the 
heavenly things, respecting which Nicodemus might naturally have been 
only a listener to what'was told him. The connection of the 16th verse 
with what precedes by jor is possible consistently with either view, but, 
considering the absence of any statement pointing to the writer as giving 
his own thought, it favors the assigning of the words to Jesus. The 
natural and easy progress of the discourse, if they are thus understood, 
and the appropriate close which they form to all that is said, together 
with the antecedent probability that the evangelist would not so abruptly 
join his own words to those of Jesus, are the arguments which bear most 
strongly against those already mentioned. The only instance in which it 
may be regarded as clear that the evangelist in any such way weaves his 
own matter into the narrative, is in the latter part of ch. xii., and there he 
only gives a kind of summary, at the close of Jesus’ public work, of His 
teachings and their results. This, however, is quite a different thing from 
an immediate joining of his own words to those of Jesus as if they 
belonged to the same development of thought. It is claimed, indeed, 
that the writer connects his own reflections with the words of John the 
Baptist at the end of this chapter. But even if this is admitted, it will be 
observed (a) that ver. 31 is not so closely connected with ver. 30 as ver. 16 
is with ver. 15 (ver. 16 opens with y4p, while ver. 31 has an independent 
construction) ; (b) that it is less difficult to suppose that Jesus used the 
words of vv. 16-21, than that John the Baptist used those of ver. 31 ff. ; 
and (c) that the writer may more easily be supposed to have been ready to 
supplement what John said with his own thoughts, than to add words of 
his own to what Jesus had said. It may be added (d) that by thus closely 


536 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


joining his own reflections to the discourse of Jesus, he must have known 
that he was not unlikely to mislead the reader, and to make him suppose 
that Jesus had uttered those central words of the Gospel (ver. 16), which 
He had not uttered. Is it probable that, in the first case where he pre- 
sented Jesus’ own testimony in words, he would have allowed himself to 
make such an impression ?—While it cannot be said, therefore, that vv. 
16-21 are certainly not the words of John, there are strong grounds to 
believe that they are not, and the probability of the case must be regarded 
as favoring the assigning them to Jesus. 

In the verses of this discourse with Nicodemus we meet, for the first 
time in this Gospel, the words (07 aidvoc. The careful examination of 
the use of this phrase by this author will make the following points man- 
ifest :—(a) The phrase Cw?) aidvog is used as substantially equivalent to 
fw. For example, when Jesus says v. 24: He that believeth hath eternal life, 
and in v. 40: that ye may have life, it cannot be doubted that the fw# of the 
latter case is the (wi aidvio¢ of the former.—(b) The («7 aidévoc, according 
to John’s idea, is possessed by the believer as soon as he believes; comp. 
iii. 86, v. 24, vi.54. He that believeth hath eternal life; he that eateth my 
flesh hath eternal life. It is a thing of the present, therefore, and not 
merely of the future——(c) That eternal life is thus present, is indicated by 
the explanation given by Jesus as to what it is, xvil. 3: This is eternal life 
to know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent. The 
knowledge of God is eternal life, and this knowledge the believer has in 
this world (comp. 1 John 11.18: because ye know the Father, v. 20: we 
know him that is true)—(d) The. eternal life also belongs to the future; 
comp. vi. 27, the meat which abideth unto eternal life; xii. 25, he that 
hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto eternal life; iv. 86, gathereth 
fruit unto eternal life; v. 29, the resurrection of life-—(e) Eternal life, 
viewed with reference to the future, is connected in thought with expres- 
sions containing the phrase ei¢ tov aiéva; comp. vi. 51, If any man eat of 
this bread, he shall live forever and the bread is my flesh; vi. 54, he that 
eateth my flesh hath eternal life; vi. 58, not as the fathers did eat and 
died, he that eateth this bread shall live forever. The conclusion which we 
may draw from these facts is, that, to the view of this author, eternal 
life is rather a permanent possession of the soul than a future reward; 
that it begins with the new birth, and continues ever afterwards, as well 
in this world as in the world to come; that it moves onward uninterrupt- 
edly, so that there is no sight or taste of death, viii. 51-52. In this sense, 
the adjective is qualitative, rather than quantitative—eternal life is a 
peculiar kind of life. But when we ask why this particular qualitative 
word is used to describe the life, the suggestions of this Gospel lead us to 
believe that it is due to the fact that the life endures ei¢ rdv aiéva—that it 
never has any experience of death—that it is endless. The qualitative 
word is thus also a quantitative one, and is used because it is quantitative. 
The endless life begins on earth. 

The word judgment, in these verses, is possibly to be interpreted, with 
Meyer and others, in the sense of condemnation (kardxpioic), and possibly, 


CHAPTER III. 537 


with Godet and others, in its own proper sense. It is not to be doubted 
that, though xpiowe means judgment, it sometimes has in the New Testa- 
ment the idea of condemnatory judgment carried into it by the force of 
the context or of the subject under discussion. This is true of the word 
judgment in our language. That this is the meaning of xpioce in these verses 
is indicated by the contrast with the word save; by the contrast between 
believers and unbelievers, so far as the general representation of the New 
Testament writers sets forth their fate; by the fact that ver. 19 naturally 
suggests the idea of condemnatory judgment; and by the references to 
the final judgment as including all men, which are found elsewhere. 
The other view is favored by the fact that neither here norin ch. vy. 24 
ff.,is the word kardxpeorg used. This word is, however, found only twice in 
the New Testament (2 Cor. ili. 9, vii. 8). Karaxpivw does not occur in 
John’s Gospel, except in the doubtful passage, viii. 1-11. It is to be 
observed, also, that the tendency of the Johannean thought is towards 
the inward sphere, rather than the outward; and as his conception of 
eternal life is not of the future reward or blessedness, so much as of the 
spiritual life in the soul, never seeing death, so it would seem natural that 
his idea of the relation of the believer to judgment should be that of 
having its issues already decided in the soul by the possession of faith, 
and thus of escaping judgment in its more outward form. While recog- 
nizing the force of the considerations in favor of giving to xpioue the idea 
of judgment as distinguished from condemnation, the writer of this note 
believes that the other view is more probably the correct one. Viewed 
in relation to the decision as to destiny, the believer as truly as the unbe- 
liever, it would seem, must be subject to this decision. In both cases 
alike, it is made, in the sense here intended, in the man himself. It is 
made already in each case, and no more in the one than in the other. 
But if the meaning is condemnation, it is true that the believer is not 
condemned, and that the unbeliever has been condemned already by and 
because of his unbelief. The 19th -verse supports this meaning, for it 
represents the «piow as being that which is connected only with the rejec- 
tion of the light, with the loving of darkness, and with the deeds which 
are evil and are to be reproved (ver. 20). But the xpioie which relates to 
such works and the men who do them is a condemnatory judgment. 


AN. 


On verses 22-30 we may remark: 1. The object of the passage is, evi- 
dently, to introduce a final and impressive testimony of John the Baptist 
to Jesus. The insertion of this testimony indicates the importance 
which the writer gives, in his own mind, to John as a witness. It is 
most simply and easily explained, if we suppose that the writer was the 
unnamed disciple and had gained from John the first and strong impulse 
towards the life of faith. The emphasis laid upon this testimony and 
that in i. 19-35 will partly, if not wholly, account for the prominence given 
to John in the Prologue. We may well believe that these words of their 


538 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


old master or friend, being brought to their knowledge, strengthened 
greatly the belief of the five or six original disciples. 2. The statement 
of the 24th verse may be intended to correct a wrong impression, which 
readers of the Synoptics might derive from them as to the relation in 
time between the imprisonment of John and the beginning of Jesus’ pub- 
lic ministry. But, whether this be so or not, this statement shows that 
the portion of Jesus’ life which is recorded in these first chapters antedates 
the Synoptic account of His public work. 38. The words of ver. 27 are best 
taken as conveying a general truth, which in the present instance finds its 
application to both of the persons compared. That they have a reference 
to John himself is indicated by the close connection with ver. 28, where 
he denies and affirms only with respect to his own office, and with ver. 
26, in which his disciples call upon him, as it were, to claim superiority 
to the new prophet, or at least equality with him. His answer to the 
complaint and implied demand of these disciples is, that he is content 
with the position and work assigned to him by God. He takes joyfully 
what God has given him, though it even involves a decreasing and passing 
away before the higher glory of Christ. But the words also refer, in his use 
of them, to Jesus, for it was the application to Him which was calculated 
especially to bring his disciples to a state of contentment with the pre- 
sent and prospective condition of things. He must increase, because He 
is the Christ. 4. These verses respecting John, though representing an 
incident in the country region of Judea after the close of the Passover 
feast, are so nearly connected with the first visit to Jerusalem, that they 
may be regarded as belonging, in the author’s arrangement of testi- 
mony, with what occurred at that time. If we view the matter in this 
light, we find that the disciples had now received the onueiov consisting in 
a wonderful miracle, the onueiov in the strict sense, and, in addition to this, 
the proofs or onueia given by the remarkable act of the prophet, by the 
great prophetic declaration respecting the temple, which offered food for 
thought even until His resurrection made its meaning clear, and by the 
words addressed to Nicodemus, which spoke to them both of the earthly and 
the heavenly things connected with the kingdom of God, the knowledge 
of which on His part showed that He had descended from heaven. Fol- 
lowing upon all this, they had heard a last word from John, which an- 
swered, as it were, to the first suggestion which had pointed them to Jesus. 
He had said to them at the beginning, that he was not the Christ but only 
the forerunner, and had bidden them go and see the greater one for whom 
he was preparing the way. In the words addressed to his own followers, 
he now says to these former followers also, that his joy as the friend 
of the bridegroom is full, and that, while his work is closing, the one to 
whom they have joined themselves is to increase and to establish the king- 
dom. The presentation on the part of the author of this testimony in 
these different lines and the selection of these narratives which contain 
them are manifestly in accordance with an intelligent plan. But the plan 
is of just that character which attaches itself to, and finds its foundation 
in, the remembered experience and development of the inner life. 


CHAPTER III. 539 


XVI. 


With respect to the question whether vy. 31-36 are a portion of the dis- 
course of John the Baptist to his disciples, or whether, on the other hand, 
they are added by the evangelist, two suggestions may be offered: 1. In 
a certain sense, these verses form the conclusion of one section of the 
book. The testimonies which came to the disciples at the beginning of 
their course and in connection with the time of the first Passover, and 
which are apparently arranged with special care by the author, here come 
to their end. That at such a point the writer should allow himself to 
pass from the history. into reflections of his own, would be less surprising 
than it would be elsewhere. The passage might be regarded in this re- 
spect, as having somewhat of the same position as the summary passage 
at the end of ch. xii. The case is different with vv. 16-21. 2. The diffi- 
culties in supposing John the Baptist to have used expressions such as we 
find in these verses are much greater than those which are alleged, in vv. 
16 ff.,as bearing against our understanding that the words there used 
were spoken by Jesus. It will not follow, therefore,—even if we hold that 
the evangelist gives his own thoughts and words in vv. 31-86,—that he does 
the same thing also in vv. 16-21. 

The considerations which favor the view that vv. 31 ff. are the words of 
the evangelist are the following: (a) The greater appropriateness of the 
thoughts to the time of the evangelist’s writing, than to that of the Bap- 
tist’s speaking. The thoughts, it is claimed, are beyond what the Baptist 
could have had. (b) The phraseology is that of the writer of the Gospel, 
and not in accordance with what we know of John the Baptist. On the 
other hand, this view is opposed by the very close connection of these 
verses with those which precede, 27-80; and by the fact, as it is claimed, 
that there is a marked consecutiveness and coherence in the whole pas- 
sage viewed as one discourse. Godet affirms that all the details of the 
discourse are in harmony with the character of John the Baptist. It can 
hardly be denied, however, that we seem to pass into a new form of ex- 
pression, as we move from ver. 30 to ver. 31, and that in the latter verse 
we seem to be in the atmosphere of the evangelist’s language. Moreover, 
ver. 32a is strikingly like ver. 11, and vv. 34-36 bear the stamp of expres- 
sions of Jesus which were used ata later time. The words of ver. 32b, 
on the other hand, are truer to the standpoint of John the Baptist, than 
to that of the writer near the end of the apostolic age. Perhaps the most 
correct view of the passage may be, that it is a report of what John the 
Baptist said, but that, under the influence of his own thoughts of Jesus’ 
work and exaltation, and especially of what He had set forth in His con- 
versation with Nicodemus in the earlier part of the chapter, he was led to 
express the Baptist’s thought with an intermingling of his own language, 
or even with some intermingling of his own thought. The phenomena 
of the passage which point, in some measure, in the two opposite direc- 
tions, would be satisfactorily met by such a supposition. But the entire 
separation of these verses from the historical occasion referred to in what 


540 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


precedes can scarcely be admitted, consistently with the probabilities of the 
case. 

The words of ver. 82b, whether used by the Baptist or the evangelist, 
must be understood in a comparative, not in an absolute sense—this is 
proved even by ver. 38. There is no serious difficulty in any apparent 
opposition between this sentence and ver. 29 as compared with ver. 26. 
Indeed, the difficulty is much greater in case the words are supposed to 
be those of the evangelist, for the Gospel-message had had wide success 
before he wrote this book. 

The word éogpdyicev of ver. 88 seems to be used in connection with the 
general idea of the inner life which so peculiarly characterizes this chap- 
ter and this Gospel. The testimony of Christ to what He has seen and 
heard is the witness to the great spiritual truth—the plan of God for sal- 
vation and the life of faith (see ver. 16). The man who receives this wit- 
ness, and thus believes, gives the answering confirmation of his inward 
life to the truth of God in this which is witnessed. He sets the seal of his 
own soul’s belief to the words of Christ as the words of God, and the union 
of the soul with God is thus accomplished in the full sense of the word. 
He who does not receive the witness, in like manner, puts himself thereby 
apart from God and His life. Comp. 1 John v. 10 ff.: “ He that believeth 
not God hath made him a liar; because he hath not believed in the wit- 
ness that God hath borne concerning His Son. And the witness is this, 
that God gave unto us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that 
hath the Son hath the life; he that hath not the Son of God hath not the 
life.” 

The last clause of ver. 34, if the reading without 6 6eéc is adopted, is in a 
general form, and the precise application and meaning are somewhat un- 
certain. This form of the text is probably the correct one. We must 
observe, however, that the clause is introduced as a proof of the preced- 
ing, that is, a proof of the proposition that he whom God has sent speaks 
the words of God. The natural evidence of this would seem to be that 
the Spirit is given to Him without measure, rather than that the gift of 
the Spirit, when this great gift is made to the world or the souls of be- 
lievers, is an unlimited one, or that the Son Himself gives the Spirit with- 
out limitation. The subject of the verb gives is, therefore, probably to be 
supplied from 6 6eé¢ of the preceding sentence, and not from the subject 
of Aadei. For the same reason, the application of the general phrase is to 
the Son, although there is no airé in the sentence. The connection with 
the following verse, also, serves to show that the thought is of the Father 
as giving to the Son. 


a VAL. 


If the words of vv. 31-36 are words of the evangelist himself, they are 
most naturally to be taken as his statement of the truth (as he saw it at 
the time of writing), which was involved in what John the Baptist had 
suggested by the comparison between himself and Jesus as the rapaviyuoe 
and the viudioc, and by the words, He must increase. They thus indicate 


CHAPTER III. 541 


what he himself thought, afterwards, that the testimony affirmed when 
fully apprehended in the wide reach of its meaning. If they are, on the 
other hand, the words of John the Baptist, that prophet must have been 
granted a vision of the exaltation and work of Christ which was beyond 
that of his time—a thing which, considering his peculiar office in relation 
to the Messiah, would not seem impossible. John was not only the great- 
est of the prophets of the older system, he was the last of the prophets. 
He was the one who handed over the truth of the Old Testament times, 
as it were, to the New Testament times; the one who pointed to Jesus the 
earliest disciples of the new system. Why may it not have been granted 
to him to see what Jesus was, to know that He possessed the Spirit with- 
out measure, and to understand that his own ministration of repentance 
was to be supplemented and perfected by the ministration of faith? If 
Abraham, with whom the covenant was originally made, rejoiced in the 
foreseeing of the day of Christ, and saw it with rejoicing, it would seem by 
no means strange that John the Baptist might have had a vision which 
opened to him more than others saw—and that he might have expressed 
what it brought to his mind, either in the precise words which we find 
here, or, if not this, in words which could be filled out in their significance 
by the evangelist while yet moving in the sphere of his thought. 
However we may view the words, they suggest an inquiry of much in- 
terest—namely, how far may we believe that the faith of the disciples, of 
whom the author is particularly speaking, had advanced at this time? 
They had had before them manifestations of His power, His zeal, His out- 
look on the future, His claim to have descended from heaven, His insight 
into the nature of the kingdom of God, His view of eternal life as related 
to faith, and finally they had had a closing testimony of John the Baptist 
which was, apparently, more. full and emphatic than any that he had 
given them at the beginning. They had thus seen all that they could 
hope to see, so far as the different kinds of evidence were concerned. 
But we cannot suppose that their belief as yet answered fully to the 
abundant measure of testimony which had been given them. What we 
are told in the Gospels of the slowness of their development in the new 
life, and in their comprehension of its teachings and mysteries, is alto- 
gether in accord with what we should expect from the circumstances in 
which they were. The strangeness of the doctrine of the spiritual king- 
dom and all that belonged to it, and the ever-deepening mystery in the 
character of Jesus, as He spoke to them of Himself and of the eternal life 
of the soul, must have made belief seem a hard thing oftentimes. They 
were opening in their life to a completely new world. Every day, every 
thought almost, brought them to new wonders. How could the inward 
life, long educated under the Jewish ideas, and with the controlling influ- 
ence of the temporal and outward view of the kingdom, keep pace in its 
progress with the evidences which were set before them? The evidences 
might come rapidly—they might come fully ; but for faith to grow to its 
fullness, they must be repeated again and again, they must work their 
way into the mind gradually, they must find themselves partially under- 


542 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


stood at one moment, but partially also only at a later, and perhaps a 
much later, moment. One manifestation of power or insight may have 
made them believe as soon as it was given; another may have only sug- 
gested questioning, or left them in bewilderment, until the great fact of 
the resurrection enlightened all the way which led onward to it. 

When, however, the testimony was to be recorded, years after the his- 
tory was ended, it was necessary that it should be given in the words in 
which it was uttered, and of course, as thus given, it would convey to the 
reader, who had entered into a deeper understanding of the Christian 
truth, a proportionally deeper and clearer meaning. To be appreciated 
asa part of the development of the apostles’ belief, it must be viewed 
from the standpoint of the time in their progress when the words were 
uttered. When it is claimed that there is no advance of thought in this 
Gospel, that we reach the end immediately from the beginning, etc., those 
who make the criticism may be called upon to consider the author’s plan 
and its necessary limitations. He does not propose to prove his doctrine 
—that is, the great truth that Jesus is the incarnate Logos—by a doctrinal 
course of argument, as if in a treatise. In such a work, he might have 
arranged his matter altogether at his own will. But he proves by a bio- 
graphy, and in accordance with a plan which involves two ideas: testi- 
mony and answering belief. He must select and arrange, accordingly, 
within the limits thus imposed. The advance indicated in a book of this 
character must be found largely in the growth of the impression of the 
testimony, rather than in that of the testimony itself. And even with re- 
gard to the impression, the necessities of the biographical element may 
prevent the presentation of a steady progress. Life, whether external or 
internal, does not move as the critical mind is disposed to demand that 
this Gospel should move. 

Moreover, as to the presentation of ideas, Jesus had before Him, on the 
occasion mentioned in the beginning of this third chapter, one of the 
leading men of the Jewish nation, a man, no doubt, of intelligence and 
learning—‘ the teacher of Israel.” This man came to test and judge 
Him as a professed prophet, and to ask Him with reference to the king- 
dom of God. How can we suppose, in such a conversation, that there 
would have been no utterance of the deeper truths of the new teaching. 
That the occasion was near the beginning of the public ministry is a mat- 
ter of no importance here; the presence of the particular man was the 
determining point. The man’s condition of mind and spirit called for 
the setting forth of the earthly and heavenly things, and we may believe 
that it was because they were thus brought forward, that he was gained as 
a disciple, as he might not have been by another kind of discourse. 
Another listener, or body of listeners, on another day, might have called 
for a more elementary or plainer method of instruction. But that other 
day might as easily have been a year later than this one, as a year earlier. 
The teaching was determined by the opportunity, not the opportunity by 
the teaching. 

We may also look at the matter in another light. If we conceive of the 


CHAPTER IV. 543 


discourse with Nicodemus as intended to bear, in the way of testimony, 
upon the minds of the disciples, or even upon them as being present and 
hearing it, we may well believe that Jesus thought it fit to give expression 
to thoughts which they could not yet fully comprehend, but which might 
find a lodgment in their minds and become seed-thoughts for future 
growths. Suggestive and always asking for explanation, such words as 
these must have been, first, a witness for them to some deep life and 
power in Him who uttered them; then, matter for reflection and further 
inquiry ; then, as something of a similar character was uttered afterwards, 
a help towards further knowledge; and so continually a means of opening 
the mind to more light and of strengthening the heart in faith with every 
increase of knowledge. 

In the case of these disciples, who were to be the intimate companions 
of His life and afterwards the source of instruction and authority in the 
Church, it was especially important that such seed-thoughts should be 
given for their future meditation, and this, too, at an early time in their 
discipleship. We see, in this Gospel, how much higher a place in the 
sphere of testimony is given by Jesus Himself to the words than to the 
works. It would seem that it must have been so, because the system 
itself was truth. These chief ministers of the truth must, therefore, above 
all others, have been educated by the words ; and, we may believe, by 
words which, even from the first, called them to higher things than they 
were able at the moment to attain. What such a process of education 
made of the Apostle John, we can see in his writings, and surely, if it 
moved forward by the repetition of the same truths oftentimes, it was no 
education without progress. The progress, however, must be found in the 
testimony and the faith as working together. 


XVIII. 
CHAPTER IV. 


With reference to the first eighteen verses of the fourth chapter, the 
following points may be noticed: 1. The statement of ver. 1, as related to 
the narrative, is introduced simply as accounting for the occurrence of the 
incident about to be mentioned. In relation to the plan of the book, how- 
ever, it seems to belong with other passages in which the writer is at pains 
to show how carefully Jesus avoided all things which might hasten the 
final catastrophe before the appointed hour. He moved in all His life, so 
the writer would have his readers understand, with reference to that hour. 
2. The words of ver. 2, which are a correction of the report which came 
to the Pharisees, can hardly have been added merely for this purpose. 
There must have been an intention on the evangelist’s part to give his 
readers a fact of some consequence in itself with regard to the work of 
Jesus. The significance of the fact may possibly be found in the relation 
of Jesus to John. The baptism of water was the peculiarity of John’s 
office, that of the Spirit the peculiarity of His own. In introducing the 


544 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


new system, however, it was natural that there should not be an abrupt 
and entire breaking off of the old. John was the one who opened the 
way, and the union of what followed with what preceded was through him. 
This union, in connection with the great symbolic act of baptism, was 
most naturally manifested by the continuance of what John had done; 
but the passing away of the old and the entering in of the new, was sug- 
gested by the fact that Jesus did not Himself baptize with water, but only 
with the Spirit. 

3. The word oirw¢ of ver. 6 is to be understood, with Godet, Meyer, R. 
V., and others, as equivalent to as He was, without ceremony. 4. The 
sixth hour almost certainly means noon here, the reckoning being from 
six in the morning, the beginning of the Jewish day. This method of 
reckoning is quite probably the uniform one in this Gospel, but it is not 
certainly so in every case. In the matter of counting the hours of the 
day, there is everywhere a tendency to vary, at different times, by reason 
of the fact that, whatever may be the starting-point of customary reckon- 
ing, the daylight hours are those which represent the period of activity 
and of events. It is to be remembered, also, that the author was living 
in another region from that in which the events recorded had taken 
place. 

5. The conversation here opens very naturally, and there would seem 
to be no difficulty in supposing that Jesus may have directly answered 
the remark of the woman with the words of ver. 10. The difference, in 
this regard, between this case and that of Nicodemus (iil. 2, 3), is notice- 
able; in the latter, some intervening conversation must be supposed. 
6. The living water of which Jesus speaks in ver. 10 is supposed by Godet 
to be the eternal life, and he refers to vv. 18, 14, as showing this to be the 
correct view. The words of those verses, however, speak of this water as 
being a well of water springing up into eternal life. We find also, in the 
sixth chapter, that the living bread and the bread of life are presented as 
that which is the means and support of life in the believer. It would 
seem more probable, therefore, that, in this expression, that which forms 
the basis and principle of the new life is referred to, than the new life 
itself. That which Jesus gives to the world—in one view, grace and truth, 
in another view, Himself as the source of life—may be understood as that 
to which He refers. 7. The word eternal life, in ver. 14, is placed in a par- 
allelism with ¢e¢ rdv aidva, and, for this reason, it seems here to be carried 
forward in its meaning to the future. The thought in this place is of the 
future and final blessedness, as well as of the present inward life, and the 
former is thrown into prominence, as the contrast is intended to be between 
the passing away of the satisfaction coming from the earthly source and 
the never-ending blessing of the life in union with Him. 

8. The turn in the conversation at ver. 16 is somewhat difficult ‘to ac- 
count for. It must be explained in connection with the progress of the 
story, and hence we may believe that it has reference to the end which 
Jesus had in view respecting the woman’s spiritual life. In the case of 
Nicodemus, He met one of the leading men of the Jewish nation, who had 


CHAPTER IV. 545 


come to ask Him concerning the kingdom of God. Nicodemus’ attention 
had been already aroused and his mind had moved in the domain of this 
great subject. In the case of this woman, on the other hand, attention 
was to be aroused, and, both for herself and the people of her city, the 
wonder of His personality and His knowledge must be brought before her 
mind. For this reason, partly if not wholly, it may be supposed that He 
left the words concerning the living water to make their impression, and 
turned at once to a new point which might even more excite her aston- 
ishment and stir her thought. This new point, also, would have a bear- 
ing upon her own personal life and awaken her moral sense. Godet 
thinks that Jesus did not wish to act upon a dependent person without 
the presence of the one to whom she was bound. The objection which 
Meyer presents is conclusive—‘ the husband was nothing more than a par- 
amour.” The reply which Godet makes, that the prophetic insight may 
not have been awakened in Jesus with regard to her antecedents until 
He heard her reply, “I have no husband,” is, as Meyer remarks, “a quite 
gratuitous assumption,” and, it may be added, one which contradicts all 
the probabilities of the case. The commentators have pursued this 
woman and her five husbands relentlessly, some of them even making all 
of the five, like the sixth, not her husbands, and some thinking of separa- 
tion by divorce from some of them or that she had been unfaithful and for- 
saken them. But there is no foundation for suppositions of this character, 
as there is generally none for similar conjectures of one kind or another 
which, in other cases, a certain class of writers on the Old and New Tes- 
taments are disposed to make. Even Meyer, who holds that the five hus- 
bands had been lawfully married to her, says such a history had already 
seared her conscience, and appeals to ver. 29 as proof of this. He is 
obliged to add, however, “ how ? is not stated.” Ver. 29 says nothing about 
her conscience; it says only that she saw that Jesus knew the facts of her 
past history. It was His knowledge that impressed her. 


>. b. a 


The evident sincerity and earnestness of the woman in what follows 
may lead us to believe, that, in the words which are given in ver. 20, she 
did not intend merely to turn the conversation from an unpleasant sub- 
ject. Whether she was yet awakened to desire instruction in righteous- 
ness from Jesus or not, she no doubt put the question with an honest. 
purpose. The explanation given by Godet here is the more natural one, 
as compared with those of the writers who go to either extreme of inter- 
pretation which he mentions. In the reply of Jesus, the following points: 
may be noticed :—1. The development of the thought here is, as it is in 
the interview with Nicodemus, determined by the state of mind of the 
person with whom Jesus was speaking, and by the circumstances of the 
conversation. At the same time, the conversation moves toward a final 
result which involves an important testimony, and in connection with 
this fact the story finds its place among these narratives which are selected 

35 


546 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 

by the author for purposes of proof, and as giving actual proofs which 
were brought before the minds of the disciples. The great truth of the 
spirituality of religion is brought out here, as it is in what was said to 
Nicodemus. But here it is suggested in connection with the matter of 
worship, instead of the entrance into the kingdom of God, because this 
was the question which occupied the mind of the one with whom Jesus 
Was now speaking. If, however, God is a Spirit and true worship must 
therefore be spiritual, it naturally follows, for the mind that moves far 
enough to comprehend the truth, that the life in union with God must be 
entered by a new birth of the Spirit. But there is something further here: 
namely, a distinct declaration of the Messiahship of Jesus. This had not 
been stated in terms to Nicodemus, or in the scenes at the first Passover, 
or at the wedding-feast at Cana. In the matter of testimony it was an 
addition to all that preceeded—the word from Jesus Himself saying: I am 
the Christ. He had said what might imply as much in His words to 
Nicodemus. He had suggested the thought by His reference to rebuilding 
the temple, and had given evidence of Messianic power in the first miracle. 
But now He declares it in a sentence which can have but one meaning. 
On His return, therefore, from Jerusalem towards Galilee after the first 
Passover, the last element in the testimony is presented to the disciples— 
through this chance conversation, as it seemed, in a Samaritan town— 
which may lead them to be confirmed in their belief that Jesus is the. 
Christ, the Son of God. 

The reason why this declaration was made to this Samaritan woman, 
and not publicly in Jerusalem, is explained, on the one hand, by the fact 
already alluded to—that the “hour” of Jesus was the directing-power of 
His life in relation to the entire matter of His manifestation of Himself, 
and, on the other, by the retirement and remoteness from the central life 
at Jerusalem of this town in Samaria. But for the inner life of the disci- 
ples it mattered little where the testimony was presented to their minds, 
while in the due order of impression its place was necessarily and properly 
after the testimonies mentioned in the earlier chapters. The declaration 
now given at the end would naturally throw its influence back, as they 
thought of it, upon all which had been heard or seen before, and would 
become a guiding and illuminating power in their reflections on what had 
occurred, and also on what they might find occurring in the future. We 
may see Clearly, therefore, how the writer follows, in the insertion of this 
chapter, as truly as before, an intelligent plan. 


».@.G 


With reference to particular points in vv. 21-26 the following sugges- 
tions may be offered :—1. In the words of ver. 21 we may see from the 
outset that Jesus’ desire was to draw attention to the spirituality of 
worship, and it is not improbable that, as the account of the conversation 
was given to the disciples, it was His design to turn their thoughts also 
away from the ideas of place, which belonged to their former education, 


CHAPTER Iv. 647 


and to show them, at this early stage of their new life, the great difference 
between the new and the old.—2. The distinction made between the Jews 
and the Samaritans in ver. 22 is apparently to be determined as to its 
precise meaning by the last clause of the verse. It was because salvation 
was from the Jews, that it could be affirmed that they worshiped that 
which they knew and the Samaritans, that which they knew not. The 
latter did not stand on the same ground with the heathen nations. They 
were not entirely without the knowledge of the only true God. But they 
were not in the line of the Divine education under the Old Covenant, 
they did not receive the full revelation which had been made, and they 
were not the nation in the midst of whom appeared the Christ—to know 
whom, as well as the true God, is the eternal life. They were moving 
apart from the light, rather than in the light—3. The true worship is 
evidently set in opposition to that of place, and thus to the ideas of both 
parties. But the added words show that Jesus in His thought goes be- 
yond this mere opposition, and enters into the idea of spiritual worship as 
considered in itself. The foundation of it is the fact that God is a spirit. 
He therefore seeks as His worshipers those who worship in that sphere 
where He Himself dwells. The zveiva is the part of man which is 
kindred in its nature to God, and which is capable of real fellowship and 
communion with God. It is that part of man into which the Divine 
Spirit enters by His influence and power. The only full communion 
with God, therefore, must be in the zvetya. But as the rveiva of man is 
in and with him wherever he may be, he must be, as a worshiper, inde- 
pendent of place, so soon as he understands the true sphere and nature of 
worship. The addition of the word 44/6ea must also be explained, it 
would seem, by the contrast with the idea of place. It cannot, for this 
reason, as well as for those given by Godet and Meyer (that the Jew or 
Samaritan could offer a sincere prayer, and that it follows so soon after 
aAyfvoi), have the meaning in sincerity. Doubtless, it partakes of the 
signification of aA76voi in this place, and means truth as answering to the 
true idea.—4. Godet supposes that John may have been present with 
Jesus and thus have heard this conversation. This is not impossible, 
though the impression of the narrative is that all the disciples had left 
Him for the time. That Jesus should have repeated the substance of the 
conversation to them soon afterwards, would seem very natural. It was 
an interview so remarkable in its results, indeed, that the disciples could 
hardly have failed to question Him particularly concerning it, and the 
truth which He had expressed was so adapted to the needs of their minds 
that He could not but have desired to bring it before them. There is, 
therefore, no difficulty in the fact that John is able to report the conversa- 
tion, even if he was not an ear-witness of it. 


XXII. 


The following points in vv. 27-38 may be noticed:—1. The impression 
produced upon the mind of the woman was that which came from the 


548 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


wonderful knowledge of Jesus respecting herself, that is, her past history. 
That upon Nicodemus, which led him to go to Jesus, came from the 
miracles. The influence which induced him to become a disciple, if 
indeed he became one in consequence of that first interview, was derived 
from the truth which he heard respecting the kingdom of God. The 
woman, though her past life differed from that of Nathanael, seems to 
have been affected by the same manifestation of unexpected knowledge or 
insight. That she should have personally met the Christ, seems almost 
impossible to her mind—that one who had exhibited such knowledge 
might perchance be the Christ, she could not but believe. This divided 
state of mind, as between the possibility and the impossibility, is expressed 
by the form of her question (uri) addressed to the people of her city.— 
2. The words addressed by Jesus to the disciples in vv. 82, 34 do not seem 
to belong immediately to the testimony contained in this chapter, but 
they must have offered the disciples matter for reflection in respect to His 
mission. Vv. 35 ff., on the other hand, called their thought to their own 
mission as related to His. The interpretation of these last verses must 
take into account the fact that what is said is evidently suggested by the 
circumstances of the present scene, and, on the other hand, the fact of 
the general form of the statement. We may believe, therefore, that, just 
as the remark of the disciples about eating led Jesus to say what is 
recorded in ver. 34,—a word which teaches them of His relation to the 
Father,—so here, the sight of the people who were approaching gives 
Him a vision of the future and wide-extended work of the Gospel, as the 
disciples were to carry it forward. The general truth, in each case, is 
illustrated by what is taking place at the hour of their conversation. As 
related to the present scene, the disciples have returned in season to see the 
approaching people who are ready to believe, and perhaps to have part in 
receiving them as believers ; but the work of sowing has been already done 
by Jesus. He has prepared for the result. And the ordering of the 
Divine plan in this way is, that they may share together in the rejoicing. 
This is a picture and representation of the future. So it will bein all 
their work; they will enter into the labors of others, and, at the end, both 
sowers and reapers will rejoice. So far as concerns the present scene, the 
sower is, undoubtedly, Jesus; but, as the words extend in their meaning 
and application over all the ministry of the disciples, the sowers may be all 
who have gone before them in the work of the kingdom of God. This 
twofold and enlarged application of the passage answers, apparently, all 
the demands of the several verses.—3. The word 767 is probably to be 
connected with ver. 35, although there is no serious difficulty in joining it, 
as Godet does, with the following verse.—4. The phrase Cw aidvo¢ in ver. 
36 seems to be clearly used in the sense which is common in other 
writings of the New Testament, but not so in John—that is, as referring 
wholly to the future life. 


CHAPTER IV. 549 


».@.40 5 


1. The repetition of the statement of ver. 29 in ver. 89 is confirmatory 
of the view given in the preceding note of the character and source of the 
impression produced on the woman’s mind. The “many ” alluded to in 
ver. 41 believed because of His word. We have, accordingly, in this whole 
section from iii. 1 to iv. 42, cases of persons who had their faith awakened 
by personal communication with Jesus and by listening to what He said. 
2. The expression referring to the matter of belief which is peculiar to 
this case of the many, is that they said they knew this man to be the 
Saviour of the world. The testimony of Jesus, as thus indicated, was to the 
end of the universality of His work. Weiss, in his edition of Meyer’s 
Commentary, holds that this expression is put into the mouth of these 
Samaritans by the evangelist, opposing thus the view of Meyer who agrees 
with Godet. But the natural pointing of the words of Jesus with respect 
to worship is towards the possibility of true worship in the case of any 
man, and independently of place, and this question of worship was the one 
which these people were most likely to have discussed with Jesus as the 
great question pertaining to their nation and the Jews. If in their com- 
munications with Him they become convinced of His wonderful charac- 
ter, and had even a glimpse of this independency of place belonging to 
the true worship, their thought must have gone out beyond national lim- 
itations to a universal worshiping of God. That they had a clear and full 
comprehension of this, as the writer had at the time of his writing, is not 
probable. Such a supposition is not required by their use of the words. 
But that they should have expressed the thought, which they must have 
derived as intimated above, by these words, is not to be regarded as un- 
natural. Jesus taught His disciples by the suggestion of great thoughts. 
They had but a feeble grasp of them at the first. Ata later time, they 
entered into deeper knowledge. But the story, as told from the standpoint 
of the later period, must be interpreted, oftentimes, not from the time of 
the recording of it, but from that of the events. An illustrative example 
may be found in xvi. 80. How true to the life are the words of the disci- 
ples which are there recorded: “ Now we know that thou knowest all 
things, and needest not that any one should ask thee.” And yet, how 
evident it is that in relation to what His meaning was their minds had, at 
the most, only a glimmering of the light. Indeed, the very words of Jesus 
which follow seem to intimate this: “Do ye now believe? Behold the 
hour cometh, yea, is come, that ye shall be scattered every man to his own 
and shall leave me alone.” The word which He spoke to Peter at the end 
with reference to His departure to the unseen world, might, in a certain 
sense, be applied to His life with His disciples in the region of the truth: 
“Thou canst not follow me now, but thou shalt follow me afterwards.” 
So, in this case of the Samaritan believers, the words which were used 
were the expression of the first outgoing of their thought beyond the 
boundaries of their own nation and beyond the Jews. But the apprecia- 
tion of what salvation for the world was—this could only be gained many 


550 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


years afterwards. The story tells what they said, and they may well have 
said these words. The meaning of the words to their minds must be 
judged of, not by what we know, but by what they knew. 


XXITI. 


1. The explanation of ver. 44 which is given by Godet and Meyer, is in 
all probability the correct one: namely, that Jesus made His entrance upon 
His ministry in Galilee only after He had been at Jerusalem and had, as 
it were, assumed His office there—and after He had there gained the atten- 
tion of the people in some degree—because of His knowledge of the gen- 
eral truth stated in this verse. Of the very recent writers on this Gospel, 
Keil, Westcott, Milligan and Moulton hold that the reference of the 
words his own country, so far as Jesus is concerned, is to Judea, and not to 
Galilee. He went away from Judea to Galilee, therefore, because He did 
not find honor in the former region. Westcott even thinks that it is impos- 
sible that John should speak of Galilee in this connection as Christ’s own 
country. But let us observe: (a) that John does not anywhere state that 
Jesus had His home or birthplace in Judea; (6) that in vii. 41, 42, to 
which Westcott refers, the people question as to whether He can be the 
Christ because He comes from Galilee as they suppose; (c) that Philip 
speaks of Him to Nathanael in i. 45 as of Nazareth, and Nathanael, in i. 
46, hesitates to believe because of this fact; (d) that He is called Jesus of 
Nazareth in all the Gospels; (e) that according to Matthew and Luke, who 
give the story of his birth at Bethlehem, His childhood’s home was Naza- 
reth; (/) that the proverb here used is referred by the earlier Gospels to 
Nazareth ; (g) that the words: He came to his own, i. 11, which are some- 
times referred to as favoring the idea that Judea is meant here, have no 
real force as bearing upon the question, first, because all the Jews were “ His 
own” and not merely the Judean Jews, and secondly, because, if this be not 
so, there is evidently in those words no exclusive reference to His first visit 
to Jerusalem, but, on the other hand, a pointing to the whole attitude of 
the Jews, especially the leading Jews, towards Him. The relation of 
Jesus to Nazareth is presented in such a way in all the Gospels—this one 
as well as the earlier three—as to show that it was evidently looked upon 
as His home and that Galilee was His country, notwithstanding the fact that 
His birth had taken place at Bethlehem. 2. Ver. 43 takes up the narra- 
tive from vv. 1, 2 of this chapter and carries on the story of the return to Gal- 
ilee, which had been interrupted by the account of the meeting with the 
woman of Samaria, etc. Those first verses intimate that Jesus had had 
very considerable success in Jerusalem and Judea—He was making and 
baptizing, it was said, more disciples than John. Ver. 45 indicates the 
same thing. The connection of the verses is, therefore, unfavorable to the 
view that the proverb is introduced here as referring to Judea. Weiss, on 
the other hand, holds that the connection here is’ with the matter of leav- 
ing Samaria, and he explains the 44th verse by saying that Jesus leaves 
Samaria, where He had already gained honor (ver. 42), to labor to the end 


CHAPTER IV. 551 


of gaining it in Galilee—the disciples were to be left to reap the harvest in 
Samaria, while He was to go as a sower to a region where, according to 
the proverb, the foundation work was still to be done. But, in addition 
to what Godet says against this view, there is every reason to believe that 
the disciples accompanied Jesus into Galilee. The connection of this 
statement with the idea of sowing and reaping (vy. 35-88), is quite improb- 
able. Those verses contain an incidental saying suggested by the circum- 
stances of the visit to Sychar. But now the story moves on to an entirely 
new matter, and it is not to be believed that the writer would expect his 
readers to think of such a connection, without bringing it out more clearly 
in what he was writing. 


».0.6 A's 


With reference to vv. 46-54 it may be remarked: 1. The writer seems 
purposely to introduce the allusion to the former miracle at Cana. He is 
about to close that portion of his narrative which is, in any sense, united with 
the story of the first visit of Jesus to Jerusalem. The closing section of this 
part is a miracle wrought by Jesus, and in the same region where the story 
began. We may believe that this miracle set its seal upon the faith that 
had grown up in the minds of the disciples in connection with all the tes- 
timony which had now been received by them, as the former one had 
established the beginning of their belief, founded upon the first sight of 
Jesus. The careful arrangement of the author’s plan, as related to the 
bringing out of the two ideas of testimony and belief, is seen again here, 
as it is both before this and afterwards. 2. That this story of the healing 
of the son of the royal officer is not to be identified with that in Matt. 
viii. 5 ff., Luke vii. 2 ff, is maintained by most of the recent commentators 
on this Gospel. The main points of difference, which are certainly very 
striking, and which bear upon all the elements of the story, are pointed 
out by Godet. In the case of two stories of common life, where the sick 
person was in one a son, in another a servant; where the disease was in 
one a paralysis, in the other a fever; where the person performing the 
cure was, in one, at one place, and in the other, at another; where all the 
words used on all sides were different ; where, in one, the petitioner for the 
cure urges the physician to hasten to his house that he may cure the sick 
person before it is too late, and, in the other, tells him that it is unneces- 
sary for him to go to the house at all; where in the one the petitioner finds 
the sick person healed on the same day on which he makes his request, 
and in the other only learns the fact on the next day ; and where, to say the 
least, there is no evidence that the petitioner was the same person in the two 
cases, but, on the other hand, he is described by different words, and all his 
thoughts as related to the matter are different, it would be supposed that 
the two stories referred to different facts. But we are not expected by the 
exacting critics to deal with the New Testament narratives in this way. 
Weiss thinks that the oldest form of the Synoptic narrative is here found in 
Matthew and that he means by zaic¢ son, (not servant), that is to say, the vide 
of John, and that Luke misapprehended the meaning, and called the zaic, 


. 
. 


552 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


dova0¢. May not Weiss himself possibly have misapprehended the meaning? 
Luke’s advantages for determining this question would seem, on the whole, 
to be equally great with those of a scholar of this generation. But while 
Luke did not know that the sick person was a son, and not a servant, he 
is, according to Weiss, nearer the original source than Matthew, in saying 
simply that he was sick and near to death, instead of saying that he had 
paralysis. John, however, we may observe, moves off in another line, and 
thinks he had a fever. The reconstruction of the Gospel narratives must 
be admitted to be a pretty delicate task, when it has to make its winding 
way through the work of bringing two such stories into one. 3. The part 
of this passage which is most difficult to be explained is the 48th verse. 
The father who comes to Jesus seems to give no indication of any want 
of faith. On the contrary, his coming is, in itself, apparently an evidence 
of faith. Ver. 50 shows that he was ready to believe, even on the founda- 
tion of Jesus’ assurance that his son lives, and without any movement on 
Jesus’ part towards Capernaum. Immediately on his return home, and 
on seeing the fulfillment of the word of Jesus, he becomes His disciple. 
It is possible, indeed, that this word of Jesus in ver. 48 was the turning- 
point for the nobleman from a weak towards a stronger faith ; but nothing 
in the narrative clearly indicates this. It is possible, on the other hand, 
that this call for miraculous aid turns the thought of Jesus to the general 
state of mind of the people, and that He has reference to this only in His 
words. But the words zpoc airéy, and the difficulty of supposing that He 
would address a man under such circumstances in this way, when the 
man’s faith was not at all of the character described, are serious objections 
to this view. Probably we must explain the verse by combining both 
views, and at least find in the bearing of the words upon the man him- 
self some designed educational influence as to the true nature of faith. 
4. The miracle here wrought differs from the one recorded in ii. 1-11, in 
that it was wrought at a distance. It is in this respect that it gives a new 
testimony, and for this reason, as we may believe, it is introduced into the 
narrative. The other points in which its character varied from that of the 
one in Cana were less important for the writer’s purpose. 


XXV. 
CHAPTER V. 


The conclusion to which Godet comes with regard to the feast men- 
tioned in the first verse—that it was the feast of Purim—is probably, 
though not certainly, correct. This feast will meet satisfactorily the fact 
of the absence of the article (which seems to be the original text), and the 
apparent demands of the narrative with respect to time. In a story 
which, notwithstanding the fact that it is evidently planned on the prin- 
ciple of selection, yet follows carefully the chronological sequence of 
events, it is scarcely possible that a whole year between this first verse 
(that is, what happened at the time of this feast) and vi. 4, would be 


CHAPTER V. 553 


altogether omitted. But this would be the fact, if this feast was a Pags- 
over. The same would be the case, substantially, if it was Pentecost. At 
the time of the other feasts of the year in which the first Passover occurred, 
Jesus had probably (according to the impression of the narrative) been 
absent from Jerusalem. The feast here referred to, must, therefore, have 
been either the Passover or Pentecost, if it was one of the more promi- 
nent feasts. The objections to the view that it was Purim do not appear 
to have special weight. As for the allusion to such a minor feast, it is to 
be observed that the narrative is not given for the occasion, but for what 
occurred. The miracle and the discourse belonged to the testimony. 
They must be recorded, of course, whenever they happened to occur. 
As for the presence of Jesus at this feast and His absence a month later 
at the Passover (vi. 4), His action, provided He was absent at the latter 
festival, may be accounted for in connection with the plan of His life and 
work. The appointed hour was not to be hastened. Keil is undoubtedly 
correct in saying that all which can be positively affirmed is, that the feast 
occurred between the Passover mentioned in ii. 18 and the one alluded to 
in vi.4. But we may go beyond positive affirmations, and may look for 
probabilities. Looking at these, we find that the limits within which it 
may be placed are December and April (iv. 35 and vi. 4), and this fact 
points towards the feast of Purim. 

With respect to the miracle and the man on whom it was wrought, the 
following points may be noticed: 1. The peculiarity of the miracle, as 
distinguishing it from the one mentioned in iv. 46 ff, is found in the long 
continuance of the illness. This miracle does not seem, however, to be 
recorded for its own sake, so much as with reference to the discourse to 
which it gave occasion. 2. It is held by many writers, that the words 
which Jesus addressed to the man, when he met him again after the heal- 
ing: “Sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee,” prove that the 
man’s disease was occasioned by his sin. While this may be the fact, it is 
yet not certainly so. Jesus is evidently comparing the penalty of sin with 
the sickness. But it is not necessary, for this reason, to hold that the sin 
caused the sickness. Is He not rather urging him to become free from 
the spiritual malady in which he, like other men, is involved, as he had 
become free from his physical malady? The evidence that the bodily 
maladies referred to in the Gospel narratives were generally occasioned by 
special sins on the part of the individuals concerned, is very slight The 
opinion that such is the case is, substantially, founded wholly upon con- 
jecture. 38. The fact mentioned in ver. 13, that the man was cured by 
Jesus without knowing who He was, is one which strikingly marks this 
story. It must have affected the minds of the disciples, as their thoughts, 
full of wonder, were turned more and more towards what Jesus was and 
what He was doing. 4. The opposition of the Jews is represented as 
excited by two things: first, by Jesus’ violation of the Sabbath, and sec- 
ondly, and in a still higher degree, by what His defense of Himself against 
their first charge seemed to them to involve. This last matter is evidently 
the starting-point for the discourse which follows, and thus it is in connec- 


554 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


tion with this point that the whole substance of this chapter—both in its 
earlier and its later portion—is introduced. The idea which these Jews 
had of Jesus’ claims is an important element in the chapter, as related 
to its thought. 


XXVI. 


There can be no reasonable doubt that what the Jews charged upon 
Jesus was, that He made Himself equal with God—icov 76 6e6. To this 
charge it is, that He addresses Himself; and the question of the chapter 
is, whether He accepts their understanding and defends His claim, or 
whether He explains Himself as not affirming what they allege, and thus 
escapes their charge by placing Himself in a position, not of equality with 
God, but of inferiority to Him. In connection with this subject, there are 
some points of special interest which may be noticed. 

1. Viewing the book in the light of its plan, we may observe that, in 
the gradual development of the proof that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of 
God, the Divine Logos, the matter of His equality with God is the highest 
point. We should expect it to be brought forward as the latest rather 
than the earliest thing, and to be set forth by progressive testimony, rather 
than all at once. This would be a thing especially to be expected in a 
book in which testimony and proof were intended to move, in any measure, 
along with experience. The phenomena of the book are in accordance 
with what we should thus expect. The testimony of various sorts to vari- 
ous ends, which have been already referred to in these notes, have all 
been presented before this one is first introduced. The development of 
the testimony with reference to this point, on the other hand, is progres- 
sive. We do not find it, and cannot expect to find it, in its full presenta- 
tion, in the present chapter. 

2. The portion of the proof which is given here is suggested, as it 
naturally must have been, by the circumstances of the case. The work 
performed was that of healing, accompanied by a turning of the thought 
of the one who was healed to the new spiritual life. Jesus calls the 
thoughts of the Jewish adversaries, therefore, to the work which He has 
to do with relation to men and to the great question of judgment and sal- 
vation. These things pertain to His Messianic office in respect to which 
He is the messenger of the Father to the world, His commissioned agent 
for the carrying out of His plan. He presents Himself necessarily, there- 
fore, with a certain element of subordination. But, with this element of 
subordination essentially connected with His office, there is set forth 
equality. The Son does what the Father does; even the greatest of all 
works, in the sphere of thought which is opened,—the gift of spiritual life 
and the final judgment are even wholly in the hands of the Son; the 
resurrection and the eternal destiny of all are in His power. And men 
are to honor the Son even as they honor the Father. What could have 
been the thoughts of His adversaries, as they heard these claims to 
equality in working and in honor, except that He actually assumed to 
Himself that equality which they had charged Him with assuming? 


CHAPTER V. 555 


They could not have believed that He was explaining away the offensive- 
ness to their minds of His words in ver.17.. They certainly did not be- 
lieve this, as we see by the later chapters in the narrative. 

3. They did not claim that He made Himself the same with the Father, 
but equal with Him. It must be observed that the evidences for His 
claims are such as, when taken in connection with their charge, were 
calculated to impress them with the conviction that He was supporting 
His assumption of the equality of which they spoke, and not putting Him- 
self on a lower position.. The miraculous works—even greater things 
than they had seen—and the Old Testament Scriptures were His wit- 
nesses. He even declared that He did not look to human testimony. 
The appeal to such evidences after such a charge, the declaration even 
that the Old Testament had its meaning and end in Him, could not have 
sounded in the ears of those hearers as a withdrawal of any claim to that 
which they had accused Him of claiming. 

4. What must have been the thought of the five or six earliest disciples, 
as they added these words which rested upon this miracle to all that they 
had heard or seen before. Certainly their thought must have moved 
forward to higher ideas of Jesus, and what He now said.must have made 
them wait eagerly and wonderingly for further revelations. 


e 


XXVII. 


The discourse of Jesus is made by Godet to consist of three parts. Per- 
haps, it may better be divided into four. From ver. 19 to ver. 30, Jesus 
evidently gives His answer to their charge and explains His powers and 
office. From ver. 31 to ver. 40, He gives the evidences on which He rests 
in His declarations respecting Himself. From ver. 41 to ver. 44, He sets 
before them the reason why they will not accept Him for what He is—it 
is because they have not in their hearts the love of God. From ver. 45 to 
ver. 47, He points them to the final issue for themselves of their rejection 
of Him, and declares that it will be the author of the books containing 
their own law, who will be their accuser before God and whose writings 
will be their condemnation. 


AXVITT. 


Vv. 19-29.—1. The reference in ver. 19 ff., to the union between the Son 
and the Father is to the complete union in working, which is founded 
upon love, and upon the immediate seeing of what the Father does which 
is connected with this love, and to that subordination in love, with respect 
to His earthly work, which necessarily appertains to Him as fulfilling the 
commission of the Father. No subordination beyond this is necessarily 
indicated by the words. 2. The answer which Jesus makes to the Jews 
is, therefore, not a denial of His equality with God, but an affirmation 
that, in His work alluded to, what He claims for Himself is only in har- 
mony with God’s plan and is in the union and subordination of love to 


556 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


Him. 3. The thought is especially turned to the great work of the Son 
in reference to man. There seems to be no ground for doubting that the 
word Cworciei, as used at the end of ver. 21, refers to spiritual life, and that 
it is this subject which is spoken of in vv. 24-27. The thought is thus 
connected with that in ii. 17 f., though the development of it is not the 
same, but is determined by the circumstances of the case. The words 
“and now is” of ver. 25, and the addition of the words “in the tombs,” 
“come forth,” and “resurrection of life,” etc., in vv. 28, 29, which are not 
found in the earlier verses, can hardly be explained except as we hold 
that there is a turn of thought towards the future judgment at ver. 28, 
which has not been referred to until that point. 4. The use of the word 
judgment in this passage 24-27, as also vv. 28, 29, is kindred to that in iil. 
17 ff. The same reasons, substantially, may be urged for giving the sense 
of condemnatory judgment to the word, as were presented in the note on 
the former passage. The manifest reference to the final judgment in vv. 
28, 29, taken in connection with the general representation of the judg- 
ment in the New Testament, makes this distinction between favorable and 
unfavorable judgment altogether probable here.—5. The judgment 
alluded to in the earlier verses is, as it were, anticipatory of that men- 
tioned in the later ones. This use of the word belongs in connection 
with the general idea presented in this Gospel, and brought out in this 
passage, that the eternal life begins in the soul when the man believes, 
and is not only a future possession to be hoped for, but a present one 
already realized. The judgment, in this sense, is a thing already accom- 
plished, both on the favorable and unfavorable side. When the spiritu- 
aliy dead hear-the voice of the Son of God, they pass out of death into 
life; when the physically dead hear His voice, they also pass into life,— 
but the latter passing into life is only the consummation of what is desig- 
nated by the former. The decision is really made in the act of believing. 
The life moves forward from the moment of that act, and the last step in 
the process is only like all the others—a step in a progressive develop- 
ment. The same is true, on the other side, of the one who does not 
believe —6. The words vide avOpdrov, being without the article, are best 
taken as indicative of quality, rather than as equivalent to the same 
words with the article. At the same time, they do not exclude the 
Messianic idea. To the Son is given the authority to execute judgment 
because, as the Son of man, He isa son of man. This relationship which 
He has in nature to those who are to be judged is the ground on which, 
in the great plan of salvation, He is made the judge, and the question of 
life and death is made dependent on belief in Him. The qualitative 
character of the expression vid¢ rod avfp., including at the same time a 
certain reference to the title-character which belongs to the words when 
the article is added—this is, not improbably, the combined idea which is 
to be found in the two other cases in the New Testament, which are 
similar to this; comp. Rev. i. 18, xiv. 14. But in those passages, the 
influence of the words in Dan. vii. 18 may be more direct and manifest, 
and accordingly the explanation given here is less strongly indicated.— 


= 


CHAPTER V. 557 


7. Weiss holds, with respect to the last words of ver. 29, that the resurrec- 
tion of those who have done evil is only for the purpose of the condemna- 
tory judgment, and that thus, both here and elsewhere in the New 
Testament, no resurrection of the evil-doers, in the proper sense of the 
term, is spoken of—that the term as applied to them is to be understood 
only, as it were, kar’ avrigpacv. The doctrine of the resurrection of the 
unbelieving and evil portion of mankind is set forth, indeed, only in a 
few passages in the New Testament, and in these only in a general way. 
It seems, however, to be stated distinctly in Acts xxiv. 15, apparently also 
in this place, and possibly in 1 Cor. xv. 22. Passages such as Phil. iii. 11, 
Luke xx. 85 may be explained without involving an opposite doctrine. 
That the resurrection should be mainly referred to as connected with 
the righteous, is not strange, for it was for them the consummation of 
the blessedness of that life to which the New Testament writers would 
turn the thoughts and hopes of men. 


XXIX. 


Vv. 81-40.—1. The presentation of the testimony on which He rests 
His claims is opened by Jesus with the words of ver. 31. These words 
must be interpreted in connection with viii. 14, and must therefore be 
understood as conveying the idea, that, if the only witness which He has 
to offer is His own, He is content to be judged by the ordinary rule. 
Such, however, is not the fact. He is supported by the testimony of 
another, and that other even God Himself. Being thus able to appeal to 
this highest of all testimony, He is also able to say (vill. 14) that, though 
in a given case He actually bears witness of Himself, the witness is 
nevertheless true.—2. That the dddo¢e of ver. 32 is God, and not John the 
Baptist, is indicated by the reference to THE testimony in ver. 36, which 
clearly points back to this verse, and by the evident parenthetical and 
subordinate character of the reference to John. This reference to John, 
however, is quite significant, especially in connection with the prominence 
given to John’s testimony in all the earlier part of this Gospel. The 
witness of John would have led these Jews to the truth, if they had 
suffered themselves to be influenced by it. It was a divinely-appointed 
testimony—preparatory and at the foundation. But it was not that on 
which Jesus rests and that which proves the truth. This latter is the testi- 
mony which comes from God only. 

8. The testimony which comes from the Father is manifestly declared, 
in the first place, to be that of the miraculous works. Whether there are 
two other forms of testimony referred to, or only one, it is somewhat 
difficult to determine. That which is given in the Oid Testament Scrip- 
tures is distinctly set forth; and this may, not improbably, be all that is 
intended by the words of vv. 37-40. It may be, however, that in ver. 37 
there is a reference to something else—which, as it would seem, can be 
only the voice of God in the soul. The latter is favored by the fact that 
the direct mention of the Scriptures does not occur until ver. 39, and 


558 ADDITIONAL NOTES BY THE AMERICAN EDITOR. 


even an indirect allusion to them is not apparent until ver. 38. The 
words, “‘ Ye have neither heard his voice at any time, nor seen his form,” 
may be regarded as pointing in the same direction. On the other hand, 
had this reference to the Divine voice in the human soul been intended, 
it would seem natural that it should have been brought out with greater 
fullness and clearness. On the whole, the reference to the testimony in 
the Scriptures may be regarded as covering all that is said in vv. 387 ff, 
and the words of ver. 37b may be taken ina semi-figurative sense, as 
implying that they had not really recognized God in His true teaching 
and the pointing of His-revelation towards the Messiah and the Messianic 
kingdom, when they read and searched the Old Testament writings.—4. 
The verb épevvare is, in all probability, an indicative. The development 
of the thought does not suggest a demand or exhortation, but a state- 
ment of their failure, through unwillingness, to appreciate the testimony 
of the book which they themselves were always looking into and the 
study of which they demanded. 

5. The two testimonies which are here set forth—the works and the 
Scriptures—bear witness, the first as, in the strict sense, a onuciov which 
made known the power of God as possessed by Jesus; the second, as show- 
ing that the indications of the Old Testament all looked towards such a 
person and teaching and work as they now saw before them. To announce 
the coming of this Messianic era and the Messiah Himself, John the Bap- 
tist had appeared and given his witness to them. He had aroused their 
attention and interested their minds for the time. He had thus, as it 
were, opened the door for them to appreciate the new testimony presented 
in the works, and to understand fully the old testimony contained in the 
Scriptures. That they did not yield to the force of the testimony, either 
old or new, was indisputable proof that they had not the word of God 
abiding in them—that they had really never seen or known Him in His 
revelations—that their will was not to receive the witness which was 
given. 


SAX. 


Vv. 41-44. The reason of their failure to accept the evidence presented 
to them is set forth, in these verses, in two forms. The first and fundamen- 
tal reason is the absence of the true love of God in their hearts. The 
second reason, into which the first developed itself in its special manifes- 
tation, is the unwillingness to accept a Messiah who did not come in the 
line of earthly glory. The views of a temporal kingdom, as they held 
them, were connected with the selfish desire of exaltation. They were ready 
to receive one who came to them with no testimony but his own, and in 
his own name, if he only met these earthly views. But to the Divine 
testimony, whether in the sacred writings, or in the wonderful works, or in 
the words of the forerunner, they were unwilling to listen, because the one 
to whom all this witness was borne appeared among them simply as the 
messenger of God to tell the Divine truth, and by making known the true 
eternal life, to bring all who heard Him to personal righteousness and the 


CHAPTER V. 559 


possession of the kingdom of heaven within themselves through believing 
on the Son of God. 


XXXII. 


Vv. 45-47. 1. Meyer and Weiss hold that the last judgment is not re- 
ferred to in these verses, because Christ is represented as the judge on that 
day, and therefore cannot be spoken of as an accuser in connection with it. 
Keil affirms the opposite, saying that, as the Jews did not acknowledge 
Jesus to be the Messiah or the judge, this consideration can have no 
weight in the decision of the question. The true view of this matter is, 
not improbably, to be found as we observe the peculiarity of the thought 
of this chapter and of other parts of this Gospel which are kindred to it. 
This writer does not leave out of view the final judgment, but his mind 
moves in the sphere of the present and permanent inward life, and the 
end is only the consummation. Ina certain sense, therefore, judgment 
is present, though it is also in a certain sense future. The mind of the 
hearer or reader is left to pass from the one to the other, and thus to in- 
clude both. 2. Moses is here spoken of as the foundation of the Jewish 
legal system and thus as, in a sense, the foundation or centre of the Old 
Testament. It may be that, according to this view of the matter, he and 
his writings are referred to as if including the whole idea of the Old Testa- 
ment Scriptures; see ver. 389. If the reference is to the Pentateuch only, 
the allusion is doubtless to Deut. xviii. 15, and the other points which Godet 
mentions in his note. 

That this first formal discourse of Jesus, which is recorded in this Gospel, 
is intended by the evangelist to serve as testimony to his readers cannot be 
questioned. That it is, in this respect, an advance upon what has pre- 
ceded, is also clear. The relation of Jesus to the Father is here set forth 
—not indeed as fully as it is in later chapters, but in a part of the unfold- 
ing of its true idea, and as it is not in the conversation with Nicodemus. 
The occasion on which this discourse was given, it must be remembered, 
was a year, or nearly a year later than that conversation, and much must 
have been done and said by Jesus in the interval. That Jesus in the open- 
ing of the second ‘year of His ministry should have advanced in His 
teaching as far as this discourse might indicate, cannot justly be regarded 
as improbable. It was, moreover, with the leading Jews that He carried 
on this discussion, not with the common people. If the deeper truths re- 
specting His person and His relations to the Father were to be set forth 
in His earthly ministry at all—and how strange it would have been, if no 
such declaration had been made,—it would seem that, at this time, the 
beginnings of the full teachings might appear. The discourse of this 
chapter stands no less truly in its legitimate and natural historical posi- 
tion, as related to the teachings of the chapters which precede and follow, 
than it does in its proper place in the progress of the testimony, which 
the author brings before his readers in proof of the great doctrine of his 
book. 





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