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THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHFS GOSPEL, 
 
 AS SHOWN FKOM ITS COINCIDING WITH AND ILLUSTRATING 
 
 THE SYNOPTICS. 
 
THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL, 
 
 DEDUCED FEOM 
 
 INTERNAL EVIDENCE, 
 
 WITH 
 
 ANSWERS TO OBJECTIONS 
 
 DEBITED FEOM 
 
 THE MODE OF TEACHING, THE STYLE, THE DOCTRINE OF 
 THE LOGOS, AND OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES. 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES ORR. 
 
 o ewfiaKa/jiev, dirar^r^eWo/iev v/itv. — I JoHN i., 3, 
 
 " Cur ita crediderim, nisi quid te detinet, audi." — Hobacb, Epistola, ii. 
 
 " Conjectures and hypotheses are the creatures of men, and will always be found very 
 unlike the creatures of God." — Newton. 
 
 WILLIAMS AND NORGATE, 
 
 14, HENKIETTA-STEEET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON; ' 
 
 AND 20, SOUTH FKEDERICK-STEEET, EDINBURGH. 
 
 JOHNSON AND RAWSON, 89, MARKET-STREET, MANCHESTER. 
 
 1870. 
 

 i\ ' ■ ' '' -^ '^^^v. 
 
 a?3 
 
 JOHN PALCONBE, PEINTEE, 53, UPPER SAOKVILLE-STEEET, DUBLIN. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 That there is a growing tendency at present amongst 
 the leaders of advanced religious thought in these 
 countries to discredit the Authenticity of the Fourth 
 Gospel, must, I think, be evident to any one who is 
 at all conversant with this class of literature. This 
 tendency, originating with the publication of the works 
 of Strauss, De Wette, Baur, and other German critics, 
 received a great impulse from the appearance, some three 
 years since, of the learned work of the lamented Rev. 
 John James Tayler, late Principal of Manchester New 
 College, London, entitled, " An Attempt to ascertain 
 the character of the Fourth Gospel ; especially in its 
 relation to the three first," — a work most favourably 
 reviewed by some of our periodicals of great authority. 
 And since that time this tendency has been confirmed by 
 the publication of Dr. Davidson's very learned and 
 valuable " Introduction to the study of the New 
 Testament," in which he decides unfavourably as to 
 the authenticity of this, as well as several other portions 
 of our Christian records. Whilst on the other side, 
 judgment has been allowed to go almost by default, no 
 attempt having been made, so far as this writer is aware, 
 to defend the authenticity of this Gospel, if we except 
 
Vi PREFACE. 
 
 Mr. Rowland's "Evidence from Tradition and from 
 the Fathers applied in support of the Apostolic origin of 
 the Fourth Gospel." 
 
 In opposition, therefore, to so many learned authorities, 
 whose opinion is confessedly deserving of the most serious 
 consideration, it may seem presumptuous in the present 
 writer to enter upon that defence. But alteram partem 
 audi is a good principle of British justice. And if it be 
 the glory of Protestantism to refuse to subject the 
 individual judgment to church authority, we should be 
 equally careful to " Prove all things," and to assert what 
 Jeremy Taylor calls " the liberty of prophesying" in those 
 matters that concern the very foundations of our faith. 
 
 With this view, the author, in the early part of last 
 year, published a series of letters on the above subject in 
 the pages of " The Inquirer," with the kind permission 
 of the Editor. These were hastily written with no view 
 to ulterior publication, but simply meant to record his 
 dissent from the conclusion arrived at by Mr. Tayler and 
 others, and to assign his reasons for that dissent. So 
 much had been written, of late years, on either side, in 
 the pages of our periodicals, that he had been led for some 
 time previously to devote considerable attention to the 
 subject ; and somewhat dissatisfied with the arguments 
 on both sides he had subjected the Gospels themselves to 
 a minute and searching examination, carefully collating 
 the Three looked upon as the more authentic, and com- 
 paring their statements of the facts and circumstances in 
 the life of Jesus with those recorded in the Fourth. The 
 
 result was that amidst many acknowledged discrepancies 
 
 discrepancies, indeed, most difficult to be accounted for 
 
 he was inuch struck with numerous evidently undesigned 
 
PREFACE. Vll 
 
 coincidences. Statements in the Synoptical accounts that, 
 taken by themselves, had seemed unlikely or even con- 
 tradictory, had^ by the testimony of the Fourth witness, 
 been either reconciled or rendered credible. In some 
 cases, whereas the former were evidently derived from the 
 testimony of others, the testimony of the latter was as 
 evidently that of an eye-witness. These were, to his own 
 mind at least, such marks and tokens of credibility as 
 could not be resisted. In a British court of justice, 
 where the object of both judge and jury is to weigh 
 evidence, and from diifering and seemingly discordant 
 testimony to elicit truth, the evidence of a witness that 
 explains such testimony, and all unwittingly corroborates 
 some previous statements, — such evidence is usually 
 credited, being supposed to bear upon itself the stamp 
 and impress of its own trustworthiness. So it seemed 
 to him in this case. How far he is right in thinking so 
 it will be for the reader to decide. 
 
 In his reading on the subject he had never seen these 
 coincidences pointed out as they seemed to him to merit. 
 The discrepancies had been relied on, and as he thinks 
 magnified, as destructive of all trustworthiness in the 
 later historian. By his letters he wished also to draw 
 to the former the attention of more learned and able 
 commentators than himself. Having failed seemingly in 
 this, he would now submit this argument from coinci- 
 dences, with his answers to objections, in a more regular 
 and appropriate form. At the conclusion of the letters, 
 some correspondents, personally unknown to him, in both 
 the sister countries of England and Scotland, were pleased 
 to express their satisfaction with his argument, and their 
 strong desire that he would embody it in some more 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 permanent and accessible form. This he has now 
 endeavoured to do in a manner more suited to the great 
 importance of the subject, adding such new matter as 
 seemed worthy to be noted, considering such objections 
 of Dr. Davidson, Strauss, and others, as seemed to him 
 of most importance, but carefully avoiding any such 
 Greek citations and critical discussions as would only tend 
 to embarrass the English reader. The question is one, 
 not for the learned exclusively, but which the author 
 would submit to the calm good sense, and discriminating 
 judgment of the British Public. 
 
 Clonmel, March, 1870. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction, 
 
 PAGE 
 1 
 
 PART I. 
 
 COINCIDENCES. 
 
 Chapter I. — The Baptist's Testimony, . . .5 
 
 II. — Where did Jesus commence his Ministry ? . 10 
 
 III. — The Calling of the Apostles, . . .17 
 
 IV.— The Cleansing of the Temple, . . .22 
 
 "V. — Christ's Journey through Samaria, . .26 
 
 VI.— The Feeding of the Five Thousand, . . 30 
 
 VII.— The Portraits of the Two Sisters, . . 35 
 
 Vni. — Christ's Entrance into Jerusalem, . . 39 
 
 IX. — Christ before Caiaphas and Pilate, . . 42 
 
 X. — The Last Supper, . . .46 
 
 XI. — The Betrayal and Crucifixion, . . .54 
 
 XII. — The Resurrection, . . . .58 
 
 XIII. — Subsequent Appearances, . . .63 
 
 XIV. — The Appearance in G-alilee, . . .68 
 
 XV. — Retrospective, . . . . .71 
 
 PART II. 
 
 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 
 
 Chapter I. — The Mode of Teaching, 
 
 II. — The Self-assertion of the Christ, 
 ni.— The Style, 
 
 IV. — The Introduction to the Gospel, 
 v.— When Written, 
 VI. — ^The Doctrine of the Logos, 
 VII. — The Johannine Doctrine of the Logos, 
 Vin.— The Conclusion, 
 
 76 
 
 82 
 
 85 
 
 91 
 
 99 
 
 105 
 
 110 
 
 114 
 
THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHFS GOSPEL. 
 
 INTEODUCTION 
 
 DiVEESiTY of statement is the most marked characteristic of all 
 human testimony. Anyone familiar with the process of sifting evi- 
 dence in a court of justice is fully aware of this. No two independent 
 parties, however truthful, will give, in all respects, a precisely 
 similar account of the same circumstances. Such is the diversity of 
 mind, that that which strikes one the most forcibly, fails, it may be, 
 to arrest the attention of the other. Difference of position in point 
 of observation contributes to augment this diversity. Even a differ- 
 ence in point of time, the influence of reflection, the accession of 
 new information, wiU lead the same witness to vary in his own 
 testimony. One witness possessed of a more retentive memory, a 
 more lively imagination, or a greater command of language, will 
 leave on the minds of his auditors quite a different impression from 
 another witness. And so well recognized is this law of evidence, 
 that a too uniform coincidence begets suspicion, lest it should be 
 the result of a corrupt collusion. Whilst, on the other hand, the 
 diversity of statement as to facts and events may become so great 
 as to be absolutely irreconcilable and contradictory. 
 
 Now the question to be solved is this : — Are the facts and events 
 in the life of Jesus, as recorded in the Fourth Gospel, so entirely 
 different from those recorded in the others, as to be thus absolutely 
 irreconcilable ? That the whole style and conception of the work 
 is different we admit; so much so as to prove the writer to be 
 quite a distinct and independent witness ; or one at least who has 
 largely benefited, in his conception of Christ's character and office, 
 hy time, more mature reflection, and experience. We also admit 
 that the style itself, properly so called, so widely differs from that 
 of another book of the New Testament — the Apocalypse — usually 
 ascribed to the same writer, by the early Church, as justly to excite 
 grave suspicions that both could not be the composition of the same 
 
2 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 author. The difference of the mode of teaching attributed to Jesus 
 by the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel is at once so obvious as to 
 strike the most careless reader. In the former, save in the sermon 
 on the mount, and in a few like instances, Jesus is continually 
 represented as speaking " unto the people in parables." In the 
 latter, he seldom speaks in parables, though he does continually in 
 highly figurative, symbolic, and oft impassioned language. And 
 whilst the Synoptists are careful — at least two of them — to trace 
 his lineal descent from Abraham the father of their nation, and 
 from David, their most warlike monarch, in order to prove him 
 to be " the righteous Branch" of whom their Prophets prophesied ; 
 whilst these give us a comparatively human view of the character 
 and office of the Christ, as if his mission had been simply " to have 
 redeemed Israel;" the author of the Fourth Gospel gives us a 
 highly spiritual and exalted view of it, though one also sanctioned 
 by prophetic language that Jesus was " the light of the world," — 
 " the true vine" of God's planting in the land of Palestine — "the 
 bread of God that cometh down from heaven and giveth life unto 
 the world," — and even "theiogfo.s" or " word of God" that once 
 spoke unto the fathers by the Prophets, but was now " made" 
 or revealed in " flesh" and " dwelt amongst us" in the person of this 
 Jesus of Nazareth " full of grace and truth." 
 
 The explanation of these differences, and the reply to some 
 objections that have been raised on them, to the authenticity of 
 John's narrative, will be reserved for the second part of this treatise. 
 The first part will be devoted to a consideration of the facts them- 
 selves of Jesus' life, — not certainly with a view to present such a 
 harmony of the gospels ' as has been fi-equently attempted, but to 
 see whether there be anything in the facts so irreconcilable as to 
 render the evidence flagrantly contradictory ; and to note especially 
 those diversities of statement that a little consideration may happily 
 fit into each other, and those brief coincidences, which when 
 evidently undesigned, bear with them, more than any concurrent 
 statements, a conviction of their truth. 
 
 And here it may be remarked that in the high court of criticism, 
 Gospel witnesses are to be judged of, as it is now generally admitted, 
 by the same rules of evidence as we judge of other witnesses. 
 Their assumed infallability can no longer be allowed to cover or 
 excuse manifest inconsistencies. The same, but certainly not a 
 greater degree of rigour, is to be applied to their statements, that 
 we apply to those of ordinary witnesses in a court of justice. A 
 
INTRODUCTION. 6 
 
 witness is not to be discredited, and put out of court, because he 
 gives us more enlarged views, and more distinct conceptions of the 
 events in question, than those who have preceded him, which may 
 have been on his part the result of a more extended range of vision, 
 and more mature experience. And if the strongly concurrent 
 testimony of the first three witnesses in this case has excited no 
 more unfavourable suspicion than that they have copied from a 
 previous record ; or, as it seems more likely, that they concurred 
 in embodying in their simple narratives those oral traditions of the 
 life which constant repetition had previously stereotyped ; is our 
 fourth witness to be discredited, because, writing after the lapse of 
 another generation, in a country far distant from his native Galilee, 
 amongst a people with, to him, new modes of thought, and thus 
 with much more enlarged experience, he has recast for us, with far 
 higher views, the whole story of the Saviour's life ? 
 
 That there is a tendency on the part of critics to exaggerate the 
 importance of Gospel discrepancies, appears from the fact that they 
 dwell almost entirely on these, to the neglect of the coincidences. 
 Who that has read the able, searching, but deeply hostile criticisms 
 of Strauss on the Gospel E,ecords, can fail to have been struck with 
 their uniform one-sidedness ? He exhausts indention in impeaching 
 the credibility of the witnesses. And even in the last learned work 
 of the B,ev. J. J. Tayler — a man distinguished for his integrity. 
 Christian moderation, and exceeding fairness to an opponent — in the 
 first section of his work on the Fourth Gospel we have this very 
 strong statement. Speaking of the difference betwixt it and the 
 Synoptics, he writes: — 
 
 " This difference goes much deeper than mere diversity of style 
 or individuality of conception — the mere omission, or insertion, or 
 simple re-arrangement of particular facts and particular sayings ; 
 for in these more superficial aspects the three first Gospels also differ 
 very considerably from each other. The difference between the 
 Fourth Gospel and the other three affects the whole conception of 
 the person and teaching of Christ, and the fundamental distribution 
 of the events of his public ministry." 
 
 That it seemingly " affects the teaching of Christ" has already 
 been admitted ; and the reason of that will be hereafter explained, 
 as before intimated. But that it " affects the whole conception of 
 the person,'" save to those who see in the Logos a proof of Christ's 
 Deity, that surely is an exaggeration. For in John's Gospel, in 
 the very first chapter which speaks of him as an embodiment of the 
 
4 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Logos, in the 45th verse, he is called by one of his own disciples 
 " Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph." Nor in this Gospel is the 
 miraculous conception once spoken of, though Mary, as " the Mother 
 of Jesus," is repeatedly introduced. And in the 8th chapter, verse 
 40th, Jesus is represented as describing himself to the Jews as " a 
 man that hath told you the truth, which I have heard of God." 
 And further, as to this difference affecting " ihe fundamental distri- 
 bution of the events of his public ministry,"— surely all the witnesses 
 introduce Jesus to us on the banks of Jordan in company with the 
 Baptist, though the fourth does not actually record his baptism ! 
 All represent the Baptist, in like manner introducing him, in almost 
 identical language, as " one mightier than himself" — one " preferred 
 before him" — " whose shoes latchet he is unworthy to unloose," to 
 the notice of his countrymen. All conduct him unanimously, at 
 the close of his ministry, to the city of Jerusalem, amidst the 
 applauding expectations of excited thousands, — to the hall of Pilate 
 and the cross of Calvary, through the hostility of the Jewish priest- 
 hood, as they all testify to his betrayal by one of his own followers 
 In the garden of Gethsemane. And all testify to his Interment in 
 the sepulchre of Joseph, and concur In representing him as having 
 arisen from that sepulchre and being afterwards seen by many of 
 his followers. And Is it therefore just to say that their other 
 differences affect " the fundamental distribution of the events of his 
 public ministry" and life? Whether such Is the fact, will appear 
 still more fully from the following coincidences. 
 
PART I. 
 
 COINCIDENCES IN THE GOSPEL NARRATIVES. 
 
 CHAPTEE I. 
 
 THE baptist's testimony to the CHRIST. 
 
 The records of the Baptist's testimony to Jesus as the Christ, as 
 contained in the first three Gospels, are curiously coincident, and are 
 manifestly derived from a common source. That Matthew, or either 
 of his co-evangelists was present on the occasion, is no where 
 intimated by them. Matthew, a tax-gatherer in Capernaum, was in 
 all likelihood, at that time " sitting at the receipt of custom." 
 Luke records the story admittedly at second hand. The Baptist, 
 long before these men had been called to be disciples of Jesus, had 
 been shut up by Herod in the prison of Macherus, on the Eastern 
 side of the Dead Sea. And it is not likely that Jesus himself had 
 narrated to his own disciples this eulogium of the Baptist on himself. 
 The Evangelist Mark, however — such is the tradition of the 
 early Church — wrote under the supervision, or at least reported the 
 testimony of the Apostle Peter. And though, according to this 
 testimony, Peter was not then called to be his follower, yet if we 
 turn to John's Gospel — i., 40 — we will have little diflSculty in deter- 
 mining its source. There we find that not only Peter, but Andrew 
 his brother, and a third party, whose name is not given, but who 
 was in all likelihood John the Evangelist himself, were present on 
 the banks of Jordan, and "heard John — the Baptist — speak,'' 
 when " looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith, ' Behold the 
 Lamb of God.' " Yea further, two of these three — as it appears 
 from verse 35th — had been disciples of the Baptist long before they 
 became disciples of Jesus. Philip also, another disciple as we 
 learn from the same chapter, was at this time attending on the 
 Baptist's ministry. And so was Nathaniel of Cana, whom some 
 commentators identify with Bartholomew. So that we have no 
 difficulty, not only in tracing the source from which the first three 
 
6 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Evangelists derived their account of the Baptist's ministry, but we 
 learn the cause which first drew the attention of these men to 
 Jesus himself, and disposed them afterwards to leave their occupa- 
 tions, and become his followers. And had John not^ written, 
 doubts might more justly have been thrown on the Baptist's testi- 
 mony, by modern critics, as then these might have asked, From 
 what source did Matthew, Mark, and Luke derive their record of it? 
 As to the difference betwixt John's account of the Baptist's 
 preaching and that given us by the Synoptists, of which some 
 critics have made much, the latter, it is evident, give us an out- 
 line of the Baptist's teaching generally, while the former confines 
 himself to his testimony to the Christ. And as to the terms in 
 which, according to the two histories, the Baptist speaks of him, 
 the language presents simply that variety of form, yet similarity of 
 substance, that usually characterizes the evidence of true witnesses. 
 The Synoptists uniformly make the Baptist speak of Christ as " one 
 mightier than I" — " There cometh one mightier than I after me, 
 the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to unloose" — Mark i., 7. 
 And John attributes these words to him — i., 26, 27 — " There 
 standeth one among you whom ye know not; he it is who coming 
 after me is preferred before me ; whose shoes latchet I am not worthy 
 to unloose" Here indeed there is so much of a coincidence as 
 might lead to the supposition that the author of the Fourth Gospel 
 saw the others, and quoted from them with a difference ; but he 
 gives us so much additional matter, and in so different a form, liiat 
 he must be treated as an independent witness. Thus, he tells us 
 that this was the Baptist's testimony to a deputation of " Priests 
 and Levites from Jerusalem," who had been sent down to ask him, 
 " Who art thou?" " He confessed and denied not, but confessed 
 I am not the Christ." And when pressed further to explain him- 
 self— "that we may give an answer to' them that sent us" — he 
 replied, " I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, make 
 straight the way of the Lord, as said the prophet Isaiah." Now, 
 the Synoptists tell us nothing of this deputation from Jerusalem, 
 but they all represent the Baptist as applying to his own mission 
 and office this quotation from Isaiah. Nay, more — for Matthew 
 tells us that it was when he " saw many of the Pharisees and 
 Sadducees coming to his baptism" that he thus saluted them: " O, 
 generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath 
 to come" — and uttered the above testimony to the mission of the 
 Christ. And are not these Pharisees and Sadducees of whom 
 
COINCIDENCES. 7 
 
 Matthew speaks precisely that deputation from Jerusalem of whom 
 John tells us, though he does not ascribe the same violence of 
 language to the Baptist? 
 
 And yet we are told by Mr. Tayler, in the work above referred 
 to, page 4, that " the Fourth Gospel stands out in decided contrast 
 and contradiction to the three first." How far there is a " contradic- 
 tion" here it will be for the reader to decide. To me there is a 
 greater one amongst the first three themselves ; for Luke tells us 
 that it was " to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of 
 him" that the Baptist addressed that cutting speech — " O, genera- 
 tion of vipers," &c. — a thing most unlikely; whereas Matthew 
 confines it, with more propriety, to " the Pharisees and Sadducees." 
 Further, it is said by Mr. T., page as above, that the Fourth 
 Gospel " omits all mention of the baptism of Jesus by John." 
 True, it does not narrate the fact, but it certainly alludes to it in 
 these words (i., 33, 34) — " But He that sent me to baptize with 
 water, the same said unto me — Upon whom thou shalt see the 
 Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is He which 
 baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw and bare record that 
 this is the Son of God." 
 
 And yet again, it is said that the Fourth Gospel " represents 
 John as saying at once, on seeing the Spirit descending on Jesus, 
 ' Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.' " 
 Now surely it represents no such thing. These words are addressed 
 to that deputation of the Priests and Levites, to whom the Baptist 
 had previously testified — " There standeth one among you whom 
 ye know not;" for we read (i., 29, 30) — "The next day John 
 seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, 'Behold the Lamb of 
 God ; this is he' " — evidently addressing some of that deputation 
 who had been with him on the previous day — " of whom I said, 
 after me cometh a man which is preferred before me, for he was 
 before me." 
 
 It would seem from the tenor of John's Gospel that this deputa- 
 tion from Jerusalem had come down to Bethabara subsequent to 
 the time of Christ's baptism. After this event Jesus withdrew 
 forty days into the wilderness, as we learn from the Synoptics. 
 That wilderness was, no doubt, a portion of the " wilderness of 
 Judea," spoken of in Matt, iii., 1, in which John the Baptist 
 preached. On his return from that retirement, we may suppose 
 that Jesus again visited John on the banks of Jordan, in order to 
 find some one to accompany him on his way back to Nazareth. On 
 
 B 
 
8 THE AUTHENTICITY OP JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 this occasion it was that John pointed him out to the Jewish depu- 
 tation, and to " two of his own disciples " And the day following, 
 as we read-John i., 43-" Jesus would go forth to Galilee, and 
 findeth Philip," a native of Bethsaida in Galilee— one it would seem 
 previously known unto Jesus,— and desiring his company, saith 
 unto him, "Follow me." Thus, these words of John to the 
 Priests and Levites— " There standeth one among you whom ye 
 
 know not" are fully explained when we understand him to refer 
 
 to the previous visit of Jesus, on which occasion John had baptized 
 him, as related in the Synoptics, and "bare record that this is the 
 Son of God." 
 
 Much, however, has been made of the Baptist's statement in verse 
 31st — " And I knew him not ; but that he should be made manifest 
 to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water." This, it is 
 said, is inconsistent with Matthew's statement, iii., 14 — " But 
 John forbade him, saying, I have need to be baptized of thee, and 
 comest thou to me ? " But what does it imply ? Simply that up 
 to the period of his baptism John did not know Jesus as the Christ. 
 He may have known him previously as a young man of excellent 
 character, who had no occasion to come to him to confess his sins 
 and be purified in the waters of the Jordan. He may have known 
 him, as the language attributed to him by Matthew implies, to be a 
 young man of loftier mind and purer morals than himself. Besides, 
 Luke's history leads us to suppose that there was such previous 
 knowledge, if not relationship, betwixt the families of John and 
 Jesus, which will account for what is said in Matthew. And yet, 
 until his baptism, John may have never thought of Jesus as the 
 Christ. Even the people of Nazareth, where he had been brought 
 up, as we learn from Luke, knew him as a young man of excellent 
 character, and when, " as his custom was, he went into the syna- 
 gogue on the Sabbath day, and stood up for to read, they 
 wondered at the gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth." 
 But when he announced himself as the party spoken of by Isaiah, 
 they no more knew him in that capacity, but " rose up, and thrust 
 him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill that they 
 might cast him down headlong." 
 
 That the Baptist afterwards, shut up for months in the prison of 
 Macherus, his bold spirit broken and subdued by his confinement 
 and the tyranny of Herod, should have sent two of his own 
 disciples to ask Jesus — " Art thou he that should come, or look 
 we for another ?" seems to me not so unaccountable as it has been 
 
COINCIDENCES. » 
 
 represented. Previous to John's imprisonment, according to the 
 Synoptics, Jesus had given few signs of that high office to which 
 John believed him to be called. Not till after that imprisonment 
 had Jesus entered on his Galilean ministry. In the distant 
 Maoherus tidings had reached the imprisoned Baptist of one who 
 had left Judea, and the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, and who 
 confined his ministry to Galilee. Can we wonder at the stern 
 old Baptist wondering whether this was he of whom he had once 
 testified to the Priests and Levites — " After me cometh one 
 who is mightier than I, who will baptize with the Holy Spirit 
 and with fire, whose fan is in his hand and will thoroughly 
 purge his floor?" Can we not sympathize with the faltering faith 
 of him who, as Jesus testified, once a prophet and " more than a 
 prophet," is now as "a reed shaken with the wind?" However 
 this may be, the seeming inconsistency here alluded to is no longer 
 betwixt the Fourth Gospel, and the account in the Synoptics, but 
 applies solely to the latter, and therefore requires here no further 
 observation. 
 
 On the whole, therefore, John's evidence as to the Baptist's 
 testimony is strictly consistent with the other evidence. And it is 
 John alone who tells us (chapter ill.) of that noble testimony of the 
 Prophet of the Wilderness to the rising reputation of the younger 
 preacher, when both were still teaching in the country of Judea. 
 When " certain Jews" came to John and thought to excite his 
 jealousy of Jesus by saying unto him: — " Eabbi, he that was with 
 thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same 
 baptizeth, and all men come to Mm;'" the magnanimous reply was, 
 " A man can take unto himself nothing, except it be given him from 
 heaven ; ye yourselves bear me witness, that I said, I am not the 
 Christ, but that I am sent before him. He that hath the bride 
 is the bridegroom : but the friend of the bridegroom, that standeth 
 and heareth him, rejoice th greatly because of the bridegroom's 
 voice : this my joy therefore is fulfilled." 
 
10 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 WHEEE DID JESUS COMMENCE HIS MINISTRY? 
 
 All our historians concur in representing Galilee as the first 
 scene of the Saviour's ministry, though they differ widely both as 
 to place and time, John stating that his first miracle was performed 
 at Cana, the city of Nathanael, a few days after he left the Jordan 
 in Philip's company, perhaps, also, in company with Andrew and 
 Peter, with Nathanael, and John himself, the disciples who may 
 have accompanied him to the marriage ; whereas Luke brings him 
 back to " Nazareth, where he had been brought up," and there 
 represents him as inaugurating his ministry in that very synagogue 
 where " his custom had been to read the Scriptures," though he 
 also intimates that he had made himself known in Capernaum 
 previously ; whilst Mark makes his first act to be the calling of 
 Andrew and Peter, James and John, from their fishing on the 
 Lake of Galilee; and Matthew says that, "leaving Nazareth, he 
 came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in 
 the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim," that Isaiah's prophecy 
 might be fulfilled. This, however, was after he had heard that 
 John was cast into prison. 
 
 Now, though Jesus did not enter on his principal ministry in 
 Galilee till after John's imprisonment, we cannot suppose that 
 having been at his baptism proclaimed the Beloved of God, he 
 would remain wholly quiescent in the interval — that he would give 
 no sign of the divine power that actuated him. Nor have we any 
 reason to suppose that John's imprisonment took place immediately 
 after the baptism of Jesus. Between these two events an 
 interval may have occurred not only of months but years. Where 
 was Jesus during this interval ? Of this period Matthew and Mark 
 tell us nothing; but John does tell us that he was making 
 repeated visits to Jerusalem on the occasions of the festivals, and 
 labouring to convince the Priests and Levites there, of the truth 
 that the Baptist had announced to them. 
 
 Is John's account, therefore, unlikely in itself, or is it funda- 
 mentally at variance with the other narratives? Was it Jesus' 
 duty to retire immediately after his baptism, and to confine himself 
 entirely to the remote Galilee ? or was it his business to submit 
 his claims to the chief rulers of his nation ? — the men who had 
 
COINCIDENCES. 11 
 
 sent that deputation to the Jordan to ask the Baptist, " Who art 
 thou?" In his temptation in the wilderness, recorded only by the 
 Synoptists, the Evil One suggests to him, " If thou be the Son of 
 God cast thyself down " from a pinnacle of the temple in attestation 
 of thy claims. His mind was evidently engrossed at this very 
 early period with the thought of how he is to convince of his 
 Messiahship Judea's priests. John tells us that he commenced 
 his ministry by making repeated efforts to the same purpose, until 
 he found, by their hostility, he was endangering his life. Then, 
 but not till then, it was that he withdrew to Galilee, " because the 
 Jews sought to kill him." And is there no coincidence of design 
 in this conduct with that of the tempting thought attributed to 
 him in the wilderness? And though the Synoptics pass over in 
 silence this great gap in the history of the life, could Jesus have 
 been more worthily or appropriately employed than as the Fourth 
 Gospel represents him — discussing with the teachers of his country 
 his claim, now so cordially admitted by us, to be the " Sent of 
 God," " the Light of the World?" 
 
 Passing over, however, this less important coincidence betwixt 
 this tempting thought attributed to him in the Synoptics, and the 
 actual conduct ascribed to him by John, have we any evidence to 
 warrant the supposition that Jesus made Jerusalem and Judea the 
 chief scene of his ministry at first, as John's Gospel represents ? or 
 did he not once show himself there from the period of his baptism 
 till a few days before he suffered death, as represented by the 
 Synoptics? Mr. Tayler has, with much truth, observed: — "The 
 three first Gospels divide the public ministry of Christ into two 
 distinctly marked and broadly separated periods — that which was 
 passed in Galilee, and that which was passed in Jerusalem. The 
 first of these periods is introduced by the descent of the Spirit on 
 Jesus at his baptism by John ; the second by the transfiguration, 
 which has all the appearance of being a renewal and a reinforce- 
 ment of the original consecration at baptism. This distribution of 
 events into two periods, with the initiations of baptism and the 
 transfiguration severally prefixed to each, marks with the strongest 
 characters the common type of the Synoptical conception of the 
 ministry of Christ." 
 
 This observation is true generally, though " this distribution of 
 events into two periods" may be more "distinctly marked and 
 broadly separated " in the conception of Mr. Tayler than in that 
 of these evangelists; but the question is, was there not a third 
 
12 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHn'S GOSPEL. 
 
 period in the ministry of Jesus anterior to either of them, as John 
 would lead us to believe — a period betwixt the baptism and the 
 imprisonment of the Baptist— a period passed over by the Synop- 
 tists as one of which they had little or no personal knowledge, but 
 which is evidently implied in the very language with which they 
 introduce their first period, ^^ Now after that John was put in 
 prison, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the king- 
 dom of God?" 
 
 In this respect, however, Mr. Tayler represents " the Fourth 
 Gospel as standing out in direct contrast and contradiction to the 
 three first," seeking on this ground to invalidate its authenticity. 
 He writes, page 4: — "Instead of postponing the commencement 
 of Christ's ministry till John was cast into prison, the fourth 
 Evangelist describes it as subsisting for some time side by side 
 with that of John — the two preachers' baptizing together in the 
 same neighbourhood. Instead of cautiously advancing his claims, 
 and only towards the close of his ministry distinctly announcing 
 himself as the Christ. — Jesus, in the Fourth Gospel, from the very 
 first, reveals his high character and office by an unreserved disclosure 
 of the Divine word incarnate in him, and engaged in open discussion 
 respecting his claims to authority with the Jews of Jerusalem." 
 
 Granting that he did, does this in any degree contradict the 
 accounts of his preaching in Galilee afterwards, as given by the 
 Synoptics? Nay, in his preaching, as we might expect, are there 
 not continual references to, or, at least, an Implied connexion with 
 this anterior period passed chiefly in Jerusalem amidst its priests 
 and Pharisees? 
 
 Before proceeding, however, to adduce evidence of this, I would 
 take exception to the above language of Mr. Tayler, by which he 
 implies that the Synoptics represent Jesus as " cautiously advanc- 
 ing his claims, and only towards the close of his ministry dis- 
 tinctly announcing himself as the Christ." The fact Is, In his 
 very first appearance in the synagogue of Nazareth, his own city, 
 after his baptism, Luke represents him as laying claim publicly to 
 be the party spoken of by the prophet, in consequence of which he 
 exposed himself to violence ; and a higher claim he never put forth 
 according to John's Gospel, even when he announced himself to 
 the Jews of Jerusalem as " the Light of the World." And if we 
 turn to Matthew's Gospel, In his very first sermon on the mount, 
 we find him speaking as " one having authority," couching his 
 address thus: " Ye have heard that it hath been said by them of 
 
COINCIDENCES. 13 
 
 old time, &c. ; but I say unto you" — " many will say unto me in 
 that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name, &o. ; and 
 then will I profess unto them, I never knew you ; depart from me ye 
 that work iniquity." Does such language imply anything of " caution 
 in advancing his claims " to be considered a teacher come from God ? 
 Is it not a distinct announcement of himself in his highest office, 
 as judge of our humanity from the very first? — an announcement 
 which only gives offence to our modern critics, it would seem, 
 when preferred, in John's Gospel, before the Scribes and Pharisees 
 in Jerusalem. 
 
 Besides, what mean those references in this sermon, and in other 
 parts of the Synoptical teachings, to men who " break command- 
 ments, and teach men so," who allow men to " swear falsely by 
 the temple, but not by the gold of the temple," who " blow 
 trumpets before them when bestowing alms, and love to pray 
 standing in synagogues and at corners of streets," " false prophets," 
 " Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites," so defective in righteousness 
 that unless ours exceed it we " shall in no case enter into the king- 
 dom of heaven?" Does Jesus speak of a.ny class of the simple 
 villagers of Galilee amongst whom he lived, and to whose neigh- 
 bours he is now addressing himself, and holding them up for 
 execration? Or does he speak of men whose false teaching and 
 hollow piety he had been a painful witness to in Judea and 
 Jerusalem? Had he never previously entered into controversy 
 with these men, and, according to his own rule of action, " told them 
 their faults to themselves alone ? " Is not his whole language the 
 fruit of a bitter experience acquired previously from his controversies 
 with Scribes, — his whole discourse a running commentary on their 
 teaching, — the very spirit of this discourse a burning indignation 
 against men who, he foresaw, would for his sake " persecute, and 
 say all manner of evil falsely," against his disciples? Why for 
 " his sake," if he had not previously made himself, by his severe 
 censures, obnoxious unto these men ? Matthew's Gospel, then, 
 in its very first chapters, presupposes this previous history given 
 us by John. We cannot thoroughly understand or appreciate 
 the former without we know the previous hostility between Jesus 
 and these Jews which John discloses. So contrary to fact is it, 
 that " the fourth stands out in direct contrast and contradiction to 
 the three first." 
 
 Take another illustration. In the 8th chapter of Matthew, when 
 Jesus cured the leper, he said unto him, " See thou tell no man, 
 
14 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 but go thy way ; show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that 
 Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them." A testimony to 
 whom, if not to the priests of Jerusalem? And why does he send 
 this man away to the far distant Jerusalem to testify of a prophet 
 of whom its priests, so far as this Gospel has informed us, as yet 
 knew nothing? Does not the act itself prove that Jesus was 
 already known to these priests, that his claims had been rejected 
 by them, as John asserts, and that his object in sending the man 
 was not simply that he should offer the gift that Moses com- 
 manded, but that the fact of his being cleansed by the power of 
 Jesus might testify to these men that he was the Christ? 
 
 Again, if we turn to the 9th of Matthew, we find that on one 
 occasion thus early in his ministry, on his return from Gadara by 
 ship to "his own city," Capernaum, he was accused by "certain 
 Scribes " of blasphemy for saying to one sick of the palsy, " Son, 
 be of good cheer ; thy sins be forgiven thee." If we compare this 
 account in Matthew with Luke in loco, we will find that these 
 " certain Scribes" were "Pharisees and doctors of the law sitting 
 by," or awaiting his return, who " were come out of every town 
 of Judea and Jerusalem." What were these men from the dis- 
 tant Judea wanting with Jesus in the remote Capernaum ? Had 
 the reputation of the young teacher and moralist attracted them ? 
 It is at an early period of the ministry, according to the Synoptics. 
 Had they come to profit by him, or is it that they might " watch 
 him ? " Having failed to stone him in the streets of Jerusalem, 
 they come to see if they may not convict him of some capital 
 offence against their law, for according to John Jesus had offended 
 them by curing an impotent man on the Sabbath day. In their 
 presence he now cures one sick of the palsy, and they would pervert 
 his language into blasphemy — a crime capital by their law. To 
 prove to these men that he had "power on earth to forgive sins, 
 lie varies that language, and says to the sick of the palsy, " Arise, 
 take up thy bed, and go unto thine house." Still hostile to him, 
 however, when he goes, as we are told in the same chapter, to a 
 feast, at the house of Levi, his follower, they accuse him to his own 
 disciples of eating and drinking with publicans and sinners. Jesus 
 goes into a synagogue on the Sabbath day, and cures a man with 
 a withered hand, and these men dog his steps to watch him. His 
 disciples go through a field of corn on that day, and pluck a few 
 ears, rubbing them in their hands, and these men think to entrap 
 their Master into some admission fatal to them, or prejudicial to 
 
COINCIDENCES. 15 
 
 himself? And why all this hostility to a young teacher of so 
 inoflfensive morals? Blot out John's narrative, and what key 
 have we to unlock the conduct of these actors in the Synoptics? 
 Admit the general correctness of his history, and we understand at 
 once not only the impelhng motive of these Pharisees, but the 
 conduct towards them of Jesus himself. Well, had Jesus proved 
 their disposition on his past visits to Jerusalem? On repeated 
 occasions had they sought to stone him. On the Baptist's impri- 
 sonment he had left their neighbourhood, fearing no doubt a like 
 or more fatal termination to his own labours. On meeting them 
 in Galilee, Jesus, knowing their thoughts about him, ask them, 
 " Why think ye evil in your hearts ? " These men, unable to deny 
 his miracle, accuse him of " casting out devils by the Prince of 
 the Devils." Thus persecuted by them, he chooses out twelve 
 disciples " to be with him." Until another baptism of the Spirit, 
 on the mount of transfiguration, disposes him " stedfastly to set 
 his face to go up to Jerusalem," that he might " lay down 
 his life and take it again," and thus triumph over his enemies by 
 the victory of the cross. 
 
 If we follow him to Jerusalem, we find in these histories further 
 unmistakable evidence that this was not his first visit since his 
 baptism to the holy city, nor this his first interview in the citadel 
 of their power with Judea's priests. Luke tells us that when he 
 beheld the city he wept over it, saying, " If thou hadst known, 
 even thou, at least in this thy day, the things that belong to thy 
 peace, hut now they are hid from thine eyes." And Matthew, in his 
 23rd chapter, after recording that awful denunciation of these 
 Scribes and Pharisees in the temple itself, thus represents Jesus as 
 apostrophizing their city, " O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that 
 killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how 
 often would I have gathered thy children together even as a hen 
 gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.'' With 
 what truth could Jesus have said this, had he never previously, 
 in his character of Messiah, visited that city ? Was it by confining 
 his ministry to Galilee that he had "o/few" attempted to gather 
 Jerusalem's children together?* Or what mean those tears 
 
 * Dr. Davidson, in Lia Introduction to the New Testament, Vol. ii., page 358, &c., 
 labours hard to get rid of the force of these words, " horn often." To me, however, 
 the attempt is a clear case of special pleading, and cannot, I should think, on a calm 
 review of it, be entirely satisfactory to the doctor himself. Even could he trace the apos- 
 brophe of Jesus to some apocryphal writing, of Christian origin, now lost, called " The 
 
16 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 spoken of by Luke, or to what purpose were they shed, had he not 
 previously attempted to make known to its citizens " the things 
 that belonged unto its peace?" It is well known with what 
 devout aiFection every Jew looked upon Jerusalem the holy. 
 When destroyed by her enemies the Psalmist had written of her 
 (cii., 14), " Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and favour 
 the dust thereof." A citizen of Nazareth, had not Jesus in his 
 youth, with the natural ardour of his countrymen, rejoiced to 
 " stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem?" When baptized to his 
 high and holy office, the first aspiration of his heart must have 
 been to bring " peace within her walls, and prosperity to her 
 palaces," by his own glorious message of glad tidings. " Sent to 
 the lost sheep of the house of Israel," his first desire must have 
 been to purify the worship of the sanctuary, and to manifest his 
 power, as John tells us he did, by the pool of Bethesda, to the 
 accredited teachers of his nation ; and only when rejected by them 
 to warn them that the vineyard would be taken from them. Driven 
 out by her hierarchy, and his life repeatedly threatened, he would 
 naturally mourn over his former disappointed hopes, and could with 
 truth exclaim, " How often would I have gathered thy children 
 together, and ye would not." By experience, however, as well as 
 by inspiration, he had learned that there were " other sheep not 
 of this fold," whom he was to gather into the Great Father's 
 flock, " while the children of the kingdom were to be cast out? " 
 And on going up to that city he so loved once to look upon, 
 consciously to suffer death at the hand of its rulers, what wonder 
 if, contrasting his youthful aspirations with his more matured 
 and deeper intuitions, he should be moved even unto tears, especially 
 when he foresaw how her " enemies would cast a trench about her, 
 and compass her round, and lay her with the ground, and her 
 children within her — because she knew not the time of her 
 visitation." 
 
 Wisdom of God," which had not appeared till Jerusalem had already been destroyed, 
 still Christ's awful invective against its priests, on the supposition that this was a first 
 interview, remains to be accounted for, as well as those tears shed on first beholding 
 it, if he had made no previous attempts to make known to its citizens the things that 
 belonged to its peace. 
 
 The Doctor thinks, however, that he may have made such attempts in the few days, or 
 even during " several weeks" before the Passover at which he died. If so what record 
 have we of them? or why does he intimate in every speech at this time that the king- 
 dom shall be taken from them— that "now they are hid from thine eyes?" Tome, 
 verily, the Doctor's " attempt" to explain the " how often" is, as he characterizes that 
 of Weizacher's, "futile." 
 
COINCIDENCES. 17 
 
 If.it be still urged, why has not Matthew and his co-evangelists 
 given us some more definite account of these early but post-bap- 
 tismal visits of Jesus to Judea and Jerusalem than such obscure 
 references, the answer is at once obvious. Matthew was at this 
 time a tax-gatherer in Capernaum, " sitting at the receipt of 
 custom." Perhaps he took but little interest in the movement^ of 
 Jesus at the time. He is badly prepared to write that portion of 
 the history, and therefore wisely confined himself to things he had 
 himself observed either before or subsequent to his calling. Peter, 
 who is supposed to have been the source of Mark's testimony, was 
 also at this time pursuing the occupation of fisherman on the lake. 
 Luke has collected the materials of his history evidently from such 
 Galilean sources. But John, who was also a fisherman on the lake, 
 is a young man of pious disposition, as evinced by his being a 
 disciple of the Baptist before he was known to the Christ. Beloved 
 by him afterwards, he had early learned to appreciate the true 
 nobility of his character, and may have been repeatedly his com- 
 panion on their visits to their nation's festivals. In writing his 
 narrative, therefore, he gives us his experience of him, even " from 
 the beginning.'' And because it is more full, appreciative, and 
 spiritual, are we to reject it as unworthy of our confidence ? 
 
 CHAPTEK III. 
 
 THE CALLING OF THE APOSTLES. 
 
 How very abrupt and unsatisfactory the calling of Christ's first 
 followers, according to the Synoptists ! According to Mark's and 
 Matthew's history, the calling of Peter and Andrew, and the sons 
 of Zebedee, was the first act of Jesus's ministry. Without any 
 intimation of any previous knowledge on either side, before Jesus 
 had done any wonderful works, or his fame had been established 
 as a public teacher, we are told that on his simple invitation these 
 men " straightway left their nets " — their usual occupations — their 
 only means, so far as we know, of supporting themselves and 
 families, "and followed him!" How very unlike, judging from 
 the ordinary conduct of humanity, what we would expect ! 
 
 Luke, indeed, places the calling of these men somewhat later, 
 and after " the fame of him had gone out into every place of 
 the country round about." He also intimates some previous 
 acquaintance with Simon Peter on the part of Jesus, "into whose 
 
18 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHNS GOSPEL. 
 
 house in Capernaum he had entered, and cured his wife's mother of 
 a great fever." He likewise suggests a powerful motive for these 
 men's conduct, for he tells us that it was when " pressed by the 
 people," when teaching by the lake, Jesus saw two ships near 
 at hand, and "entered into one of them, which was Simon's." 
 And when he had left speaking, he said to Simon, "Launch out 
 into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught." But Simon 
 pleads, " We have toiled all night, and taken nothing;" and yet, 
 on complying with the Master's wish, they enclose " a great mul- 
 titude of fishes, so that the net brake." The narrative of this 
 evangelist, therefore, supplies a reason for the conduct of these 
 men — and yet one but partly satisfactory for their " forsaking all 
 and following him." It also accounts more fully for the form of 
 the invitation, as recorded by the others: " Follow me, and I will 
 make you fishers of men." 
 
 Now, the fourth Gospel gives us no account of this calHng of these 
 disciples by the Lake of Galilee ; and nothing can be more at variance, 
 and utterly discordant, than the narrative it gives of the first interview 
 of these men with the Great Teacher, when placed side by side 
 with that in the Synoptics ; yet, though evidently written with no 
 design to explain the others, it gives us a perfectly satisfactory 
 account of the matter. We find from it that the conduct of these 
 men on the Lake of Galilee was the result of no sudden impulse, 
 but of a previous acquaintance with Jesus on the banks of Jordan, 
 where his forerunner was baptizing, who had pointed him out to 
 one, if not to two, of them, as " The Lamb of God." " One of 
 the two who heard John — the Baptist — speak was Andrew, Simon 
 Peter's brother." The other, it is reasonable to conclude, was 
 John the Evangelist himself. He and James were partners with 
 Andrew and Simon in the other ship. Two of these were origin- 
 ally citizens of Bethsaida, as was also PhiUp. The sons of Zebedee 
 seem to have been natives of Capernaum. May not some of these 
 men have gone up from these towns, as Jesus himself did from 
 Nazareth, at the time spoken of in John's Gospel, to hear, if not 
 to be baptized of, the Prophet of the Wilderness ? Philip, as we 
 have seen, " findeth Nathanael," whom some identify with Bar- 
 tholomew, an inhabitant of Cana, and introduces him to Jesus. 
 This introduction would seem to have taken place on the very day 
 that Jesus " would go forth to Galilee." And bearing in mind the 
 custom of the East to travel together in parties, we may well suppose 
 that Philip's object was to secure Nathanael's company. And 
 
COINCIDENCES. 19 
 
 if we suppose, as the narrative seems to suggest, that Simon, 
 Andrew, and the beloved disciple, returned to Galilee with Jesus, 
 Philip, and Nathanael, here is a little travelling company of 
 six, whose intercourse on that journey moulded five of them into 
 willing apostles, at a subsequent time of the future church, and 
 who formed that little body of " disciples " invited with Jesus and 
 his mother, on their way through Cana, to the marriage feast. 
 
 It will be said, however, that the Synoptists represent Jesus as 
 "driven of the Spirit into the wilderness" after his baptism, where 
 he spent "forty days, being tempted;" and how, then, could he 
 have gone up to Galilee at this time, as John's narrative suggests? 
 This objection has been so much insisted on, that though this 
 explanation, so simple in itself, has already been suggested, it may 
 be well more definitely to repeat it. John, as we have seen, does 
 not tell us of the baptism of Jesus, but of his identification as the 
 Christ, on the occasion when " the Jews sent priests and Levites 
 from Jerusalem to ask him, Who art thou?" This seems to have 
 been an occasion subsequent to the baptism, and may have occurred 
 at the end of those forty days spent by Jesus in the wilderness, 
 when he would naturally revisit the multitude at Jordan, to seek 
 out some to accompany him to Galilee. The two narratives, 
 therefore, so seemingly dissimilar, are easily reconcilable, and their 
 very dissimilarity, when reconciled, lends to their statements the 
 greater probability. 
 
 Much has been made, however, of the phrase, " Lamb of God," 
 by which the Baptist is here said to have characterized the Christ. 
 This, it is argued, is a phrase not likely to have been used by the 
 prophet of the Wilderness, and imputes to him that sacrificial 
 view of Christianity which was the growth of a later age. But 
 the phrase may have been used by him, as most expressive of the 
 meekness and innocence of Jesus, quite apart from all idea of 
 sacrifice ;* or it may, without at all impeaching the general veracity 
 of our historian, have been unwittingly ascribed by him to the 
 Baptist, writing after the lapse of many years. Account for it as 
 we may, the phrase in itself is quite too inconsiderable to invalidate 
 the importance of this history to the elucidation of the Synoptics. 
 
 As to the Apostolic college, John, of all the Evangelists, 
 
 * In the passage on Isaiah to which the phrase seems to refer — " He is led as a lamb 
 to the slaughter, and as a sheep before the shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his 
 mouth" — the leading idea is the unresisting innocence of the victim, and in this sense 
 John seems to use it. 
 
20 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 enables us to explain satisfactorily how it was that six — three of 
 them honoured with Christ's more especial confidence — became 
 members of it. And though he says nothing of the selection of 
 the others — some of them Christ's own immediate relatives, — ^like 
 the first followers of the Arabian prophet ; and though their calling 
 presents no inconsistencies to be explained, yet their selection, 
 under the circumstances that Christ did so, may be worthy a word 
 of comment. The second James, we know, was related to Jesus, 
 for Paul calls him— Gal. i., 19— " the Lord's brother." That he 
 was not, however, his full brother we also know, as in all the lists 
 of the Apostles he is called '' the son of Alpheus." And yet, as 
 in the Synoptics, he is always spoken of with Joses, or " Judas, 
 the brother of James," as son to Marj'^, it seems lawful to infer 
 that Mary was united by a second marriage to Alpheus after the 
 death of Joseph, who is not once mentioned after the baptism of 
 Christ. Here, then, we have two more of the Apostolic college — 
 James and Judas — Christ's half brothers. And he seems also to 
 have had another near connexion in Levi, or Matthew the Evange- 
 list, whom Mark designates also as " of Alpheus," though it may 
 have been by a former marriage, but whose call to be a follower 
 preceded that of the others, and was made under the following 
 peculiar circumstances. 
 
 It was on the occasion, spoken of in the last chapter, after an 
 absence of " some days" from Capernaum — Mark ii., 1 — on enter- 
 ing into " the house" — his usual place of residence — that he found 
 those " Pharisees and doctors of the law" awaiting his arrival, who 
 had come out of every town of Galilee, Jordan, and Jerusalem* If 
 we may credit the Fourth Gospel, with these Judean Pharisees he 
 had already come in contact, and was fully aware of their animus 
 towards him — an animus which appears in their conduct on this 
 occasion, as they think to pervert his language in curing the sick of 
 the palsy into the crime of blasphemy — an offence capital by their 
 law. If we do not credit the Fourth Gospel, the Synoptics assign 
 no valid reason for the presence of these men, at this early period of 
 his ministry, from the distant Judea and Jerusalem. What too, 
 is the conduct of Jesus himself towards them ? After vindicating 
 his language, and curing the man, he left the house to them, and 
 passing out of the city, " went forth again by the seaside," and " as 
 he passed by, he saw Levi, the son of Alpheus, sitting at the 
 
 * Compare Matt, ix., 1 : Jlark ii,, 1 ; Luke v., 17, &o. 
 
COINCIDENCES. 21 
 
 receipt of custom, and said unto him, Follow me, and he arose and 
 followed him." Levi, from his office, was evidently a man of some 
 weight in Capernaum, and being the son of Alpheus, must have 
 been well known unto Jesus. What was his object in calling him 
 at the time ? Having withdrawn so lately from Judea, where he 
 had been in danger of being stoned, the presence of these men from 
 Jerusalem itself, in the distant Capernaum, on his return to it, 
 naturally excited apprehension. Is it not as a measure of precau- 
 tion that he asks the companionship of the tax-gatherer? That 
 the mind of Jesus laboured under apprehension at the time, of a 
 fate similar to John's, is evident from his repeated injunctions to 
 those he cured, to " say nothing to any man." And when the 
 leper " began to publish and blaze abroad the matter" of his cure, 
 we are told in Mark i., 45, " that Jesus could no more openly enter 
 into the city, but was without in desert places." For such appre- 
 hension on the part of Christ the Fourth Gospel affi)rds the only 
 rational explanation. And hence the calling of Levi at this early 
 period, a man of note and connected with the family. 
 
 Levi, in all likelihood looked down upon hitherto by his con- 
 nexions on account of his occupation, is manifestly delighted to be 
 thus taken notice of, and confided in by his wondrous relative. 
 " He makes him a great feast in his house, and a great company of 
 publicans and others sat down with him." Jesus accepted the 
 invitation, but when the Scribes and Pharisees saw it, they say unto 
 his disciples, " Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners ?" 
 Then follows their accusation of the disciples themselves for pluck- 
 ing and eating the ears of corn on the Sabbath day, and their 
 " watching Jesus " when he went into the synagogue, and cured 
 the man on the Sabbath day with the withered hand, " that 
 they might accuse him." Here is an act so akin to the cure 
 of the impotent man in Jerusalem on the Sabbath, as told 
 us by John, that we at once understand the animus of these 
 Pharisees, and why it is that Jesus " looks round on them with 
 anger, demanding "Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath days or 
 to do evil, to save life or to kill ? " And these men, we are told by 
 Luke, were " filled with madness, and communed one with another 
 what they might do to Jesus," or, as Mark relates, " the Pharisees 
 went forth and straightway took counsel with the Herodians how 
 they might destroy him." In consequence of which, " Jesus with- 
 drew himself with his disciples to the sea," and desired that " a 
 small ship should wait on him." 
 
22 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 It was under these circumstances, according to both Mark and 
 Luke, and after a night spent in prayer, that Jesus finally ordained 
 the Twelve. One of his objects assigned by Mark is " that they 
 should he with liim," as well as that he might send them forth to 
 preach. No doubt he foresaw that his own ministry would be 
 short, and therefore wished to discipline a few active missionaries 
 of his new religion. He also wished to have with him as travelling 
 companions men in whom he could confide, and hence the deeper 
 guilt of Iscariot the traitor. It was shortly after this, that his 
 friends, thinking him beside himself, and fearing that he would 
 commit himself with Herod's government, no doubt, in inau- 
 gurating this bodyguard, " sought to lay hold on him." But 
 what had Jesus hitherto done in the north of Galilee, according to 
 the Synoptical accounts, to excite the deadly animosity of these 
 Pharisees from the distant Jerusalem and Judea? Evidently 
 nothing. Ignore John's Gospel, and those antecedent visits of 
 Jesus to Jerusalem of which it informs us, and we leave their con- 
 duct totally unaccounted for. Admit it, and we at once perceive 
 the predisposing animus of these men, and the object of their visit. 
 We also perceive the reason why Jesus confined his ministry at 
 this time to Galilee, — his reason for the oft-repeated caution to his 
 hearers that they should not make him known, — his reasons also 
 for the ordination of the Twelve — until his new baptism on the 
 mount of transfiguration finally prepared his mind for "the decease 
 that he was to accomplish at Jerusalem." 
 
 CHAPTEK IV. 
 
 THE CLEANSING OP THE TEMPLE. 
 
 In taking up the subject of this chapter at this period of the life, it 
 is not because I mean to assign it to the same place In Christ's 
 history that the Fourth Gospel does, but because this has been 
 made the subject of remarks most unfavourable to that Gospel's 
 authenticity. " In no Instance," says Mr. Tayler, " Is the difference 
 between the Synoptical and the Johannine narrative more strik- 
 ingly exemplified, than in the position which they respectively 
 assign to the expulsion of the money-changers from the Temple. 
 The Fourth Gospel puts It at the opening of Christ's ministry, on 
 the occasion of the first Passover, with a view, no doubt, to establish 
 his prophetic authority from the first In the face of the Jews, and to 
 
COINCIDENCES. 23 
 
 give him at once the vantage ground which he is described as 
 occupying with them in his subsequent controversy through the 
 sequel of the history. The Synoptists, with certainly far more 
 semblance of probability, place the transaction at the end of his 
 public life, after his triumphant entry into Jerusalem, when he 
 had already acquired a wide-spread prophetic fame," &c. 
 
 In the latter remark of Mr. Tayler, every candid critic will concur 
 as to the Synoptical being the more probable place for this event in 
 the history of Jesus. And yet, however great the discrepancy, and 
 however difficult to account for, a careful comparison of their state- 
 ments reveals such a striking coincidence that it may be fairly 
 concluded there is the " soul of truth in both." 
 
 Before proceeding to consider those statements, however, let us 
 ask, is it not possible that there may have been a remonstrance on 
 the part of Jesus with the chief priests and rulers of the Temple as 
 to this desecration of its outer court, on some previous visit, such as 
 John speaks of? Is it likely that he would have proceeded to such 
 extremities on his first visit to their city in his capacity of Messiah ? 
 And if such a remonstrance on his first visit, may not this 
 have led to this misplacement of the final event by the Fourth 
 Evangelist ? 
 
 That there were such previous visits to Jerusalem betwixt his 
 baptism and crucifixion, as John tells us of, we have already argued 
 to be likely. Jerusalem was the true and fitting centre of all great 
 religious effort. It was the place where thrice a year, from all 
 regions, members of the Jewish nation congregated. Apart from 
 his own obligation and disposition as a Jew to attend those festivals, 
 true policy would suggest to him what we are told his brethren 
 did — " Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may 
 see the works that thou doest. If thou doest these things, show 
 thyself to the world." And it would not be, till compelled by actual 
 violence and just apprehensions for his own life, that he would cease 
 " to walk in Jewry," and confine his ministry to the remote Galilee, 
 sending the lepers whom he cured, as he does in the Synoptics, 
 to " show themselves to the priests for a testimony unto them." 
 
 If then such visits were made by Jesus after his baptism, we can 
 readily understand how the desecration of the court of the Gentiles, 
 by using it for purposes of traflSc, would seem repulsive to the mind 
 of Christ. We cannot suppose that in his controversies with the 
 priests he would keep silent as to that abuse. His Father's house 
 was designed as a house of prayer " for all nations, but ye have 
 
 c 
 
24 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHU'S GOSPEL. 
 
 made it a den of thieves." The introduction of the cleansing where 
 John puts it* maybe regarded as intimating those previous remon- 
 strances. But it is so described as to apply only to the actual 
 cleansing on his last visit by Christ himself. 
 
 On this occasion, as all the Evangelists testify, Jesus was attended 
 by a great multitude of his Galilean followers and others, who, in 
 the very presence of their priests, hail him as " the King of Israel 
 who Cometh in the name of the Lord." In this respect at least 
 John's Gospel is coincident with the Synoptics. And to render 
 his entrance more marked, as both authorities record, Jesus sends 
 his disciples for a colt, and for the only time in his life that we read 
 of such a thing, rides into Jerusalem, as one of their old judges, 
 amidst the shouts of that exulting throng, which led the Pharisees 
 to confess— " Perceive ye how ye prevail nothing ; behold the world 
 is gone after him." On his entrance there, according to the Synop- 
 tical accounts, he " went into the temple of God, and cast out all 
 them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables 
 of the money-changers, and the seats of them that sold doves." 
 
 These acts — I quite agree with Mr. Tayler in thinking — the 
 Synoptists place with much greater probability at this period of the 
 life, " when he had an enthusiastic multitude at his back to support 
 his claims." But surely they are not the acts of one, entering for 
 the first time into that old city of Jerusalem in his character of 
 Messiah — of one a comparative stranger to its citizens, who had 
 hitherto confined himself to the land of Galilee, and who had, up 
 to this period, never come in contact with its resident priests? 
 With respect to this entrance, too, the Fourth Gospel not only 
 confirms the testimony of the others, but assigns the reason, which 
 the others do not, for the citizens joining in that ovation with his 
 Galilean followers — namely, the raising of Lazarus — " for this 
 cause the people also met him." 
 
 That Jesus should, as has been said, have remonstrated with the 
 priests, at the first Passover after his baptism, on the unseemliness 
 and impropriety of making a house of prayer a public market, seems 
 not unreasonable, and a vague recollection of this may account for 
 John's placing the other events at this period of his history. But 
 
 * Mr. Tayler intimates that the author of this Gospel put it here designedly, " with 
 the view, no doubt, to establish his prophetic authority from the first in the face of the 
 Jews," &o. But is it at all likely that a spwigus author would have designedly opposed 
 his unsupported and improbable statement in this matter to the authority of the other 
 
 Evangelists ? 
 
COINCIDENCES. 25 
 
 that Jesus proceeded on this, occasion — unsupported as he was by 
 the following he afterwards possessed — ^to the extremity of " making 
 a scourge of small cords, and driving them all out of the temple, 
 and the sheep and the oxen, pouring out the exchanger's money," 
 &c. — this seems unlikely. This treatment, violent on his part, 
 without previous remonstrance, these merchants and money- 
 changers would not at that time so tamely have submitted to; 
 and its insertion here may perhaps be attributed to that confusion 
 of mind, and mixing up of events and circumstances, to which, as 
 all may observe, old age is liable — to which, in fact, all are more or 
 less liable who endeavour to recall the past. Such a remonstrance 
 on Christ's first visit may have become confused and associated in 
 our author's mind with his more decided action in his last. 
 
 But what then ? Is John's narrative to be wholly discredited on 
 account of this discrepancy, and Matthew's not, when he tells us — 
 seemingly in order more literally to fulfil a prophecy — that Jesus 
 on this occasion rode into «Terusalem on two animals instead of one, 
 as the others testify — " sitting upon an ass, and a colt the foal of an 
 ass?'' 
 
 And now with regard to the striking coincidence to which I have 
 alluded. On the driving out of the cattle, when the Jews asked, as 
 was natural, " What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou 
 doest these things?" or, as the Synoptists report his words, " By 
 what authority doest thou these things, or who gave thee this 
 authority?" Jesus is represented by John as answering, " Destroy 
 this temple and in three days I will raise it up." Of this the 
 Synoptists tell us nothing, but they do tell us that one of the 
 accusations brought by the false witnesses against Jesus before 
 Caiaphas was — " This fellow said, ' I am able to destroy the temple 
 of God, and to build it in three days." Nay, further, when Jesus 
 was suspended on the cross, they represent those that passed by 
 reviling him, saying, " Thou that destroyest the temple and buildest 
 it in three days, save thyself." 
 
 On the authority of all the Evangelists, therefore, we are warranted 
 in believing that some such expression had been used by Jesus ; and 
 yet it must have been used more recently than John leads us to 
 suppose, for it seems quite fresh in the minds of his revilers, and 
 may have been the bitter and exulting taunt of those money- 
 changers and others whom he had so recently interrupted in their 
 traffic, and ignominiously driven out. The question, therefore, 
 arises, is such coincidence an undesigned one ? Had some spurious 
 
26 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 author of the Fourth Gospel taken it from the others, would he 
 have introduced it at a time so improbable in itself, and so flagrantly 
 at variance with the other Gospels? Is the whole story in John's 
 Gospel a clumsy plagiarism, introduced for no purpose seemingly, 
 quite out of its natural connexion ? or is it one of those undesigned 
 coincidences betwixt honest credible witnesses, that affix to their 
 testimony the stamp of truth ? 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 Christ's journey through samaria to galilee. 
 
 The Fourth Gospel, after the Passover mentioned in the second 
 chapter, represents Jesus' ministry as " subsisting side by side " for 
 some time with the Baptist's, in the country of Judea, and then 
 after the Jews' attempt to excite John's jealousy against the 
 younger preacher, it teUs us in the fourth chapter that Jesus 
 " left Judea and departed again into Galilee." But as nothing of 
 this is told us in the Synoptics, of course this portion of the life, 
 however natural and probable, is, by those who reject the 
 authenticity of this Gospel, also discredited. 
 
 Did these histories profess to give us a full, minute, and 
 chronological biography of the Christ, some weight might attach 
 to such a discrepancy. But none save Luke professes to 
 " write in order of all things from the first ;" and he evidently 
 derived his information from Galilean sources, chiefly from the 
 Gospel of Matthew, and probably of Mark, written previously. 
 These are evidently disjecta membra of that wondrous life lived in 
 Palestine — not agreeing Avith one another in many instances — in 
 some cases personal recollections; — in Luke's case, the accounts 
 handed down by others, written in the form we have them, not at 
 the time of their occurrence, but in all cases many years after- 
 wards, and therefore presenting such discordancies of statement as 
 we might naturally expect. Under such circumstances their 
 silence as to this portion of the life is surely a matter of no moment. 
 In all writings of a like nature, difiiculties will present themselves 
 which after the lapse of so long a period it may be impossible 
 to reconcile. Even in contemporary affairs, how hard is it some- 
 times for the judge to unravel the true facts of the case, and the 
 real sequence of events, from the evidence of discordant witnesses 
 
COINCIDENCES. 27 
 
 in a court of justice. But when that evidence, however dis- 
 cordant, is found in some points, quite unexpectedly, to fit, and 
 dovetail into one another, he finds that he has firm ground to go 
 upon, in pointing out such coincidences to the jury as the 
 landmarks of the truth. Such are the proofs of authenticity which 
 I would elicit from these histories, and from this journey through 
 Samaria especially. In this case, however, it is not the contradic- 
 tion betwixt the witnesses that is sought to be explained, for the 
 Synoptists tell us nothing of such a journey, but it is a want 
 of sequence, or seeming contradiction on the part of the Fourth 
 writer himself, which, by their testimony, I would endeavour to 
 clear up. 
 
 The Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel at least agree in this, in 
 assigning, not Nazareth, but Capernaum, after his baptism, as 
 Christ's place of residence. Matthew says that " leaving Nazareth, 
 he came and dwelt in Capernaum." Luke says, after his expulsion 
 by the Nazarenes he " came down to Capernaum and taught them 
 on the Sabbath days," though he also refers to a visit to Capernaum 
 previously — " Whatsoever we have heard done in Capernaum do 
 also here in thy country." And John says, referring probably to 
 that previous visit, that after the marriage in Cana, " he went 
 down to Capernaum, he, and his mother, and his brethren, and his 
 disciples, and they continued there not many days." This visit then 
 seems to have been the one alluded to by Luke, as made anterior 
 to that when his citizens rejected him. It is true John speaks of 
 no works done by Jesus in Capernaum at this time, but he does 
 tell us of his changing water into wine on his way there at Cana. 
 Whether it was the fame of that action that preceded him to 
 Nazareth, and is there alluded to by Luke, we know not. It was 
 at a later period that he cured Simon's wife's mother, and the son 
 of the nobleman who was sick in Capernaum. But the coincidence 
 as it stands is sufficiently remarkable. Both histories lead us to 
 infer that Jesus ceased to be an inhabitant of Nazareth soon after 
 his baptism. Both point to Capernaum as a place repeatedly 
 visited by him. And Luke assigns the conduct of the citizens of 
 Nazareth as his reason for leaving it and making the other his 
 future residence. 
 
 That Jesus therefore may have made repeated visits to Jerusalem 
 on the occasion of the national festivals whilst living there, may be 
 assumed as possible, though the Synoptists do not mention them. 
 That he may have been accompanied by John the son of Zebedee 
 
28 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 on such occasions, betwixt whom and Jesua there seems to have 
 arisen a strong attachment, as well as by some other of the 
 disciples we have already deemed probable. That John, his future 
 historian, who describes this journey with all the circumstantiality 
 of an eye-witness, may have lingered with him in the country 
 of Judea on the expiration of the festivals, to listen to his teaching, 
 is also possible, instead of hastening back to resume his fishing on 
 the lake. And in giving us an account of this portion of the 
 Saviour's history, he distinctly intimates that we are to understand 
 him as speaking of a time anterior to the other accounts, of which 
 he seems to have been cognizant; for he writes — iii., 24 — as if to 
 guard himself against the charge of inconsistency, that " John was 
 not yet cast into prison." 
 
 But in giving us this account of the return journey through 
 Samaria he falls into the following inconsistency, which the 
 narrative of Luke enables us to explain, thus connecting these 
 Gospels most remarkably. After the Interview of Jesus with the 
 woman of Samaria, John tells us — iv., 40-41 — that they spent two 
 days in Samaria at this time, and " departed thence and went into 
 Galilee, for Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no honour in 
 his own country." In this statement, seeing that Jesus was going 
 into his own country Galilee, where Nazareth was, John does not 
 seem, however accurate, to be very logical. Nor is he more so in 
 that which follows, for in verse 45 he says — " When he was come 
 into Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things 
 he did at Jerusalem at the feast." Here then we have not only one, 
 but clearly two non-sequiturs in his statement, which, had it 
 contained the visit to Nazareth mentioned by Luke, would have 
 sufficed to make all consistent. Nazareth he had visited, according 
 to Luke, at a very early period of his history. There it was that 
 Jesus had testified " JVo prophet is accepted in his own country" — 
 Luke iv., 24. And was it not some remembrance of this former 
 visit, on the part of John, that causes him thus seemingly to 
 stumble in his narrative? He does not mention it, but makes 
 Jesus pass on to Cana, where on his last visit he had made the 
 water wine, and assigns his former rejection by the Nazarenes 
 as his reason for passing by their city, though his way to Cana 
 from Samaria lay directly through Nazareth. 
 
 Here then is not only a marked coincidence betwixt John's 
 and Luke's narratives ; but here, in order to render John's state- 
 ment logical and consistent, we must revert to, and explain it by 
 
COIXCIDBNCES. 29 
 
 St. Luke's — evidently one of those undesigned corroborations of a 
 defective witness which any judge would seize on, as an indication 
 of his truth. 
 
 Mr. Tayler, however, has adduced the cordial reception given to 
 Jesus by the Samaritans on this journey, and his residence in 
 their city for two days, as a strong argument to disprove John's 
 testimony;* because Luke tells us — ix., 52 — that on his last 
 journey from Galilee to the Holy City, " a village of the 
 Samaritans did not receive him because his face was as though he 
 would go to Jerusalem." It is actually implied that gladly would 
 they have received him, had he remained with them. Their 
 national jealousy was excited because he would not — because he 
 would go to worship, as they thought, in the rival temple of 
 Jerusalem ; so that, as I take it, there is here a confirmation, and 
 not a contradiction, of John's testimony by this Evangelist. In 
 sending forth the Twelve Christ certainly, according to Matthew, 
 directs them, saying — " Go not into the way of the Gentiles, and 
 into any city of the Samaritans enter ye not;" but this by no 
 means proves that he had not himself passed through Samaria, and 
 been cordially received by its inhabitants. He also tells the 
 Twelve, " Verily I say unto you ye shall not have gone over the 
 cities of Israel till the son of man be come;" and his reason 
 possibly may have been that the cities of Israel were better 
 prepared to receive the message, though perhaps less disposed to 
 receive the messenger, than those either of the Gentiles or 
 Samaritans. 
 
 But Mr. Tayler further argues that John's statement "is still 
 more at variance with Acts viii., 5-14, where we learn that Christ 
 was first preached in Samaria by PhiHp." Well, no doubt 
 amongst the Apostles, Philip was the first who " preached Christ 
 unto them," but a reference to Acts viii., 1, shows us, that even 
 before Philip's visit, on account of the great persecution that arose 
 against the Church at Jerusalem, the Christians " were all scattered 
 abroad throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the 
 Apostles." So that Samaria must have heard the word of God 
 before Philip visited it. And to imagine for a moment that the 
 inhabitants of a small strip of country lying between Galilee and 
 Judea, the great scenes of Christ's ministry, had not heard of the 
 
 * See J. J. Tr's., Fourth Gospel, page I 
 
30 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 fame of this great teacher up to the time of Philip's visit to them, 
 is to make a supposition most unlikely indeed. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FEEDING OF THE FIVE THOUSAND. 
 
 With respect to these repeated visits to Jerusalem recorded in 
 the Fourth Gospel, as the writer neither intimates the time of the 
 Baptist's imprisonment, nor tells us of the ordination of the 
 Twelve, it is difficult certainly to determine how many were made 
 previous to that imprisonment, and therefore to the time at which 
 Matthew and Mark take up the history. That the first visit to a 
 Passover spoken of in the second chapter, is thus accounted for, 
 and also the facts of the third, there can be no doubt, for the 
 writer there intimates that " John was not yet cast into prison." 
 The fourth also presents no difficulty, as it but records the events 
 that occurred on his way back through Samaria and Cana, the 
 second time, down to Capernaum, where the nobleman came to 
 him to heal his son. To this period of the life we may also safely 
 assign the visit spoken of in the fifth chapter, where Jesus is 
 recorded to have cured the impotent man by the pool of Bethesda 
 on the Sabbath, an act which so excited the hostility of the 
 Pharisees. We have no reason to conclude that there was not 
 time for this, and indeed the subsequent visit spoken of in the 
 seventh chapter, before the Imprisonment of John. It was on his 
 second visit, that the Jews began to " persecute Jesus and seek to 
 slay him," because he had not only healed the man, but vindicated 
 his healing him on the Sabbath day, by what seemed to them the 
 blasphemous argument, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
 work." And it is not to the introduction of the seventh chapter 
 that the Evangelist intimates — " After these things Jesus walked 
 in Galilee, for he would not walk in Jewry because the Jews 
 sought to kill him." And yet in this chapter he takes him up " to 
 the feast of tabernacles, though not openly, but as it were in 
 secret." 
 
 Between these two chapters, however, we have in the sixth, " the 
 feeding of the five thousand," " and walking on the water," the 
 only events of the Galilean ministry which John records in 
 common with the Synoptists — events which might be supposed to 
 
COINCIDENCES 31 
 
 aid us in our chronology, but which like the cleansing of the 
 temple, have been introduced, according to the judgment of nearly 
 all commentators, and indeed according to the thread of the 
 narrative itself, out of their proper place. In the end of the fifth 
 chapter, our author leaves Jesus in the temple, discussing with the 
 Jews the testimony of Moses. And in the opening of the sixth, 
 he says — " After these things Jesus went over the sea of Galilee 
 which is the sea of Tiberias," without intimating how he got there. 
 Nor is it more consonant with the opening of the seventh chapter, 
 where our author, after detailing a residence of some time in 
 Galilee, says — " After these things Jesus walked in Galilee, for he 
 would not walk*^in Jewry for the Jews sought to kill him" — 
 evidently referring to the events detailed in the fifth chapter. 
 
 The events, therefore, in the sixth chapter are evidently out of 
 place, and should be assigned to some later period of the ministry, 
 and yet they tally in so many respects with the same events as 
 recorded in the Synoptics, that, make what we will of the events 
 related, the two histories should stand or fall together. 
 
 According to John's testimony, Jesus made at least three visits 
 to Jerusalem at this period of his ministry — a visit to a Passover, a 
 visit to a feast, name not given us, at which he cured the impotent 
 man, and a third to " the feast of tabernacles," when the Jews 
 sent their officers to take him, and after which they themselves 
 " took up stones to cast at him." And besides these, there is a 
 Passover spoken of as " nigh " in the sixth chapter, which Jesus 
 does not seem to have attended. This would give us a year at 
 least for his pre-Galilean ministry. And we can well believe that 
 after the divine call he had received to become a preacher of truth 
 and righteousness, he would not, without strong reasons for it, 
 confine his ministrations to one portion of his countrymen. Jeru- 
 salem was the place, and these national festivals most fit occasions, 
 for meeting large numbers of them, come up to worship from all 
 regions. Of these occasions he would avail himself so long as he 
 could do with safety to himself. And the conduct of Jesus on his 
 third visit, as recorded by John, manifestly indicates this growing 
 apprehension for his own safety. " He went up not openly," as 
 before, " but as it were in secret." And when he found on these 
 repeated visits, that his life was again and again threatened by its 
 rulers, and if we suppose that he heard about the same time of the 
 Baptist's imprisonment, we can well understand his motive for 
 making the distant and more retired Galilee, for a season at least. 
 
32 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 the theatre of his labours, which he may have done from the 
 Passover spoken of in John's sixth chapter till that at which he 
 suffered death. 
 
 Even in Galilee his increasing popularity would soon make him 
 an object of curiosity, if not suspicion, to Herod's Government, as 
 intimated in the Synoptics (see Luke ix., 9). But " in Jewry he 
 could no longer walk," as his cutting reproofs of Scribes and 
 Pharisees had already aroused the deadly hostility of Judea's 
 priests. And hence his oft-repeated caution to his followers that 
 they " should not make him known." Let us see, then, what is 
 the line of action which these Synoptists attribute to him in Galilee, 
 and whether it is consistent with these previous circumstances of 
 his life. 
 
 His first act is, according to Mark and Matthew, to summon Peter 
 and Andrew, James and John — men, as we have seen, previously 
 well known to him — to leave their occupations on the Lake of 
 Galilee, and to accompany him in his journeys. We next read of 
 him m Matthew, delivering that remarkable sermon on the mount, 
 in which he embodies all the essentials of religion and morality ; 
 and so emphatically warns his audience against the conduct and 
 teaching of the Scribes and Pharisees. After this he goes about 
 " all Galilee," but chiefly the region of Capernaum, where he is 
 on the bounds of Herod's jurisdiction, " teaching in their syna- 
 gogues, and healing all manner of sickness, and all manner of 
 disease." Even here, however, the hostility of the Pharisees fol- 
 lows him. On his return to Capernaum, after a short absence, he 
 finds these men, and " doctors of the law " from Judea and 
 Jerusalem awaiting him, with no friendly designs evidently. After 
 some altercation with them about the cure of the sick of the palsy, 
 he leaves the house, and summons Levi to accompany him. He 
 enters a synagogue, and in their presence cures the man who had 
 his hand withered, as he had cured the impotent man in Jeru- 
 salem on the Sabbath; and as we read in Mark iii., 6: "The 
 Pharisees went forth, and straightway took counsel with the 
 Herodians against him how they might destroy him. But Jesus 
 withdrew himself, with his disciples, to the sea, and a great 
 multitude followed him." 
 
 Then follows his more energetic action as dangers increase 
 around him of choosing out of all his followers twelve, one, as it 
 were, for each of the tribes of Israel, " that they should be with 
 him, and that he might send them forth to preach, and to have 
 
COINCIDENCES. 33 
 
 power to heal sickness, and to cast out demons." After this event 
 we find the Baptist still living, but his once powerful mind broken 
 down by his imprisonment, so that Jesus compares it " to a reed 
 shaken with the wind." However, shortly afterwards Herod cut 
 oif John's head, and his disciples " took up the body and buried 
 it, and went and told Jesus." 
 
 " When Jesus heard this," as Matthew tells us (xiv., 13), " he 
 departed by ship into a desert place apart ; and when the people 
 heard thereof, they followed him on foot out of the cities." Such is 
 a brief outline of the Galilean ministry of Jesus up to this time, 
 according to the Synoptics ; and how far it is consistent with, or 
 presupposes those previous visits to Jerusalem spoken of by John, 
 it is for the reader to decide. 
 
 It was in a " desert place," " belonging to the city called Beth- 
 saida," as Luke describes it (ix., 10), that all concur in representing 
 Jesus as feeding " the five thousand," being that " great multi- 
 tude" that had "followed him on foot out of the cities." The 
 Bethsaida here spoken of seems to have been the city afterwards 
 called Julius, which lay to the north or north-east of the Lake of 
 Galilee, where he was out of Herod's jurisdiction ; and as Caper- 
 naum lay to the north-west, the people, to have followed him, 
 must have passed round the northern extremity of the lake. It is 
 true there is a discrepancy here betwixt Mark and Luke as to the 
 locality, as well as betwixt them both and the Fourth Evangelist. 
 Mark says, that after feeding the people he " constrained his 
 disciples to get into the ship, and to go to the other side before 
 unto Bethsaida," which, unless we take the liberty of translating 
 the Greek proposition, -^^og, " over against," as our translators have 
 done in the margin, would imply that the desert place did not 
 belong unto'.Bethsaida ; whilst the Fourth Gospel speaks of " other 
 ships coming from Tiberias," a city to the south-west of the lake 
 " near to the place where they did eat bread," as if the Bethsaida 
 spoken of in Luke was that betwixt Capernaum and Tiberias. 
 
 Keconcile these discrepancies as we may, here is a chapter from 
 Christ's Galilean ministry introduced, certainly without much 
 regard to order or connexion, into a history which confines itself 
 almost exclusively to his ministry in Judea. The questions arise : 
 Whence came it ? Is it the vague recollections of an old man, 
 who loves to dwell on, if not to magnify, his Master's cha- 
 racter, and on whose memory some minute facts have imprinted 
 themselves, though no longer able to follow the sequence of 
 
34 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 events? Or is it a plagiarism of some spurious author of the 
 second century, who inserts it here so inartistically, in order to 
 give the work the greater air of probability? Or are both his- 
 tories the record of a legend that grew up around the character of 
 Jesus through the admiration of his followers ? Whatever the award, 
 both should be regarded as equally true or equally unreliable. 
 
 If we compare the histories more minutely, we find betwixt 
 them the following additional discrepancies : — AU the Synoptists 
 tell us that the disciples say to Jesus, " Send the multitudes away, 
 that they may go into the villages and buy themselves victuals." 
 Whereas the Fourth Grospel tells lis that Jesus said to Philip, 
 "Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?" And 
 whereas Philip answers, " Two hundred pennyworth of bread is 
 not sufficient for them " — in Mark we read, that in reply to 
 Christ's command, " Give ye them to eat," the disciples say to 
 him, " Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of bread, 
 and give them to eat." 
 
 Again John tells us — seemingly with the peculiar minuteness of 
 an old man's memory in some things — that it was " Andrew, 
 Simon Peter's brother " — his own companion on the banks of 
 Jordan in his early youth — who said to Jesus : " There is a lad 
 here which hath five barley loaves, and two small fishes ; but what 
 are they amongst so many ? " With the particularity, also, of an 
 eye-witness, he tells us " there was much grass in the place," and 
 that they "gathered the fragments together, and filled twelve 
 baskets," in which, however, he agrees with the Synoptists. The 
 latter say, however, that it was " to pray" that Jesus departed into 
 a mountain afterwards; whereas John says it was because he 
 " perceived the people would come and take him by force to make 
 him a king." 
 
 The walking on the water by Jesus after the ship is similarly, 
 though not in like words, described by both. But whereas John 
 represents them as going to Capernaum, which lay " over against" 
 the Bethsaida called Julius, Mark says " to Bethsaida " simply, 
 and Matthew and Luke to " the land of Gennesaret." These are 
 discrepancies, fatal certainly to the popular doctrine of inspiration, 
 but are they unusual or unaccountable at such a distance of time in 
 the evidence of otherwise credible witnesses ? " The main facts of 
 the history remain the same. The discrepancies are matters of 
 detail. But would not a spurious author, cognizant of the previous 
 histories, have carefully avoided them ? " 
 
COINCIDENCES. 35 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE POBTKAITS OF THE TWO SISTERS. 
 
 In this age of science, when the reign of law, both in the physical 
 and moral world, is equally the deduction of reason and experience, 
 I am well aware of the very grave difficulty which such facts as 
 those referred to in the last chapter oppose to the authenticity of the 
 Christian records, however much they may have contributed at one 
 time to their reception. It may be pleaded that our knowledge of 
 law in this imperfect state is too limited for us to say absolutely 
 when law is violated. However mysterious to the ignorant, we 
 know it is the same law of gravitation which causes the stone to 
 descend that causes the smoke to ascend, thus producing the most 
 opposite visible effects. In like manner, in presence of new 
 discoveries in science made almost daily, whereby our knowledge 
 of law has been much extended, even within the present generation, 
 all tending to enhance the superiority of mind over matter, it 
 would seem presumptuous in us to say what is possible and what not. 
 On the other hand, it is the testimony of experience how speedily 
 extraordinary legends develop themselves and accumulate about 
 characters looked up to as remarkable, not only in future genera- 
 tions, but even within the lives of their contemporaries. On this 
 principle it is now the fashion, after the example of Strauss, to 
 explain away the Christian miracles. For my own part, however, 
 I must confess my total inability to separate the (to us) supernatural 
 element from the historical matter in the Christian scriptures. 
 Could I do so, as it now appears to me, I would only leave 
 unaccounted for that wondrous movement in the religious world, 
 that clearly had its origin in the life and death of this Jesus of 
 Nazareth. In this enlightened century, with all the propogandism 
 of the Press to aid us, we all know how difficult it is, and what 
 effort and time it takes, to make any change in religious belief. 
 But here is the greatest movement ever made in the world's history 
 due to a few months' teaching of a young man in an obscure Koman 
 Province ; by a Eoman Governor ignominiously put to death. Of 
 all miracles recorded in these books, there is perhaps than this no 
 greater miracle, save it may be the character of that Jesus as there 
 sketched to us by men certainly of otherwise no literary eminence, 
 who could not have originated it, — a miracle as undeniable by the 
 most sceptical who will study it, as by the most orthodox. 
 
36 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 However, this is a question which does not at present come 
 before us. The supernatural difficulty presses not more heavily 
 on the Fourth Gospel than it does on the Synoptics. And how- 
 ever different the former may be in style and manner, and many of 
 the events recorded, the facts, so far as we have advanced, we have 
 seen to be not inconsistent with the other histories. Nay, these 
 records, in some points, so incidentally dovetail into the other as to 
 prove them to be the testimony of an eye-witness — that the Fourth 
 Gospel, in its leading features, is a writing of the same stamp, 
 though written probably about a generation later, as we shall see, 
 hereafter, — and that there is the soul of truth in both. 
 
 In the last chapter I noticed the want of sequence in the events 
 recorded by our author, and attributed it to a vagueness of memory 
 on the part of an old man, whose mind, clear on other points, has 
 failed to retain the natural order of occurrences. Experience 
 testifies that the recollections of the aged, however accurate as to 
 particulars that may have impressed themselves on the mind in 
 youth, become very desultory and confused in their general 
 features when they assume the form of a lengthened narrative. 
 And such are precisely the features of this Gospel. Had it been 
 " an historical treatise on the life of Christ," as some suppose, it 
 would have been equally destitute of those minute coincidences 
 which bespeak the recollection of an eye-witness, and free from 
 those anomalies that so markedly characterize it. Had it been a 
 recast of old materials in a later age, by one personally unacquainted 
 with the facts, the author would, like Luke, have taken care to 
 " write in order" of all things delivered to him. We would not 
 have had a chapter like the sixth thrust into the narrative in the 
 place in which we find it, regardless of all connexion. We would 
 not have had it assigned as a reason for Jesus going into Galilee 
 that he himself had testified, " a prophet hath no honour in his own 
 country." Nor would we have had an account of a visit to Judea 
 prefaced by the assertion that " Jesus would not walk in Jewry." 
 These are anomalies to which no respectable author of a spurious 
 gospel or " historical treatise" would have committed himself. But 
 they are quite consistent with a consciousness of integrity, and may 
 be satisfactorily accounted for by that desultoriness of memory which 
 all may experience who try after many years to recall past events, 
 but which is peculiarly observable in the recollections of the aged. 
 
 But in Luke's Gospel, however consonant it may be in some of 
 its chapters with the previous histories, we find, as in John's, much 
 
COINCIDENCES. 37 
 
 new matter, — especially that portion from chapter ix., 51, to 
 xviii. — difficult to fit into the narrative of the other Evangelists. 
 To him we are solely indebted, not only for some of Christ's most 
 exquisite parables, as that of the good Samaritan, the prodigal son, 
 the rich man and Lazarus, &c., but also for the account of the 
 appointment and mission of the seventy disciples. He also tells us 
 of a journey of Jesus "through Samaria and Galilee" to Jerusa- 
 lem, about which the others are equally silent. And from his 
 extreme dissatisfaction with Capernaum and Bethsaida, recorded In 
 the tenth chapter, the parable of the good Samaritan, and the cure 
 of the ten lepers, of whom one was a Samaritan, we may infer that 
 much of this period of the life was passed in Samaria. At least, 
 these references to Samaritans confirm John's testimony that he 
 was more readily received by this people than his own countrymen 
 the Jews. And here It is that we come on. another coincidence 
 still more remarkable betwixt these two Evangelists. 
 
 It was in this period of the life as we are told by Luke, x., 38 — 
 that Jesus " entered into a certain village, and a certain woman 
 named Martha received him Into her house. And she had a sister 
 called Mary, who also sat at his feet, and heard his word. But 
 Martha was cumbered about much serving." In these few lines, 
 how complete the characters of the two sisters given to us at 
 greater length by John ! Apart from the names, like two cartes 
 of the same parties by different photographers, we recognize at 
 once the sisters of Lazarus. Mary is the quiet, silent, meditative 
 character, who " sat at his feet and heard his word " — who in 
 John's narrative " sat still In the house " — who " when she saw 
 him fell down at his feet," and who at the supper afterwards 
 lavished upon those feet her costly ointment. Martha " Is 
 cumbered about much serving " — at that supper " Martha served," 
 — she Is " troubled about many things," and by the grave of her 
 brother, when Jesus tells the people to take away the stone, at 
 once cautions him that the smell would be offensive. Is this 
 description of character fortuitous ? Or has Luke's mention of the 
 two sisters formed the foundation of a myth which some future 
 unknown writer enlarged and embellished Into the story of the 
 resurrection of Lazarus, borrowing the latter character from Luke's 
 parable of the rich man, and transforming him Into a brother of the 
 sisters ? The supposition is Ingenious, but would not its admission 
 destroy all faith in these Gospel histories? In that case, John's 
 story Is not a legend, but an artful Invention fabricated for a 
 
38 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 purpose, with all the adjuncts of place, time, and circumstance. 
 This Martha and Mary — whose act is spoken of through all the 
 Churches as a " memorial of her " — are made residents of Bethany 
 — an act or plot devised to bring into the most striking contrast 
 Christ's power over death and the hostility of the Pharisees ; and 
 the fame of him whom all men honour as the most perfect personi- 
 fication of life and truth founded on a fiction ! 
 
 Suppose it, however, founded upon truth, as well as that told us 
 solely by Luke, of the widow's son of Nain, how it may be asked, 
 did John, a Galilean fisherman, acquire that more intimate know- 
 ledge of the two sisters which his Gospel exhibits beyond the other 
 Evangelists ? It may be replied that his residence in Jerusalem 
 for years after the crucifixion would naturally lead him to cultivate 
 the acquaintance of a family so beloved by the Master. With 
 this family he represents Jesus on the most intimate terms of 
 acquaintanceship. The sisters' message to him is, " Lord, behold 
 him whom thou lovest is sick." And the fact, that Luke tells us 
 of, that " when he entered into a certain village, a certain woman 
 called Martha received him into her house," would seem to 
 intimate a previous acquaintanceship which must have been formed 
 at a date previous to the events in the Synoptical Gospels, and may 
 therefore warrant us in crediting those accounts of previous visits to 
 Jerusalem of which John speaks. 
 
 At any rate, esteem as we will this coincidence , betwixt Luke's 
 and the Fourth Gospel, as to the portraits of the sisters, it Is 
 certainly for his personal feelings towards this family, as represented 
 by the latter, that the character of Jesus Is so prized, by many. In 
 no action of his life, perhaps, does Jesus manifest himself so 
 " touched with a feeling of our Infirmities," as when he wept with 
 the sisters at the grave of Lazarus. Mr. Tayler would have us 
 believe that this Gospel unduly magnifies Jesus as the Logos, and 
 yet it is in this Gospel only that we find such a record as this — 
 " Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus." And if It 
 discloses in a more spiritual sense his divine and lofty sonship, to it 
 also we are indebted for our most perfect knowledge of his deep 
 human sympathies. The question therefore arises, is such know- 
 ledge founded on a record of actual facts or fiction ? And though 
 this question may determine nothing as to the authenticity of the 
 Gospel, yet It Is surely worthy of our consideration, how much less 
 without this Gospel would we have loved and appreciated the 
 Christ. 
 
COINCIDENCES. 39 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CHRIST'S ENTEY INTO JERUSALEM. 
 
 We have seen that, according to this Gospel, Jesus made at least 
 three visits to Jerusalem to the festivals previous to the Passover 
 at vsrhich he suffered death. And we have argued that all may 
 have been made anterior to the time of the imprisonment of the 
 Baptist, and therefore consistently with the Synoptical accounts. 
 In fact, as we have shown from various coincidences, such visits as 
 John speaks of, are absolutely required to the better understanding 
 of the conduct of Jesus and his Apostles as given in the Synoptics, 
 — the latter in leaving their fishing on the lake of Galilee imme- 
 diately when called on, — the former in his invectives against 
 Pharisees, and confining his teaching so exclusively to that province. 
 That this wa.s the view of this Gospel taken by the early Church 
 we learn from this testimony of Eusebius. That historian, in 
 writing of the order of the Gospels in Book iii., chapter 24, says — 
 
 " Of these his (John's) Gospel, so well known in the Churches 
 throughout the world, must first of all be acknowledged as genuine. 
 That it is however with good reason placed the fourth in order by the 
 
 ancients may be made evident in the following manner 
 
 Matthew having first proclaimed the Gospel in Hebrew, when on the 
 point of going also to other nations, committed it to writing in his 
 native tongue, and thus supplied the want of his presence. But after 
 Mark and Luke had already published their Gospels, they say that John, 
 who all this time was proclaiming the Gospel without writing, at length 
 proceeded to write it on the following occasion. The three Gospels 
 previously written having been distributed among aU, and also handed to 
 him, they say that he admitted them, giving his testimony to their truth. 
 But that there was only wanting in the narrative, the account of the 
 things done by Christ, among the first of his deeds, and at the 
 commencement of the Gospel. And this was the truth. For it is 
 evident that the other three Evangelists only wrote the deeds of our Lord 
 for one year after the imprisonment of John the Baptist, and intimated this in 
 
 their history This Apostle therefore in his Gospel 
 
 gives the deeds of Jesus iefore the Baptist was cast into prison, but the 
 other three Evangelists mention the circumstances after that event." 
 
 In this age of historical criticism, when the fashion has been to 
 " rehabilitate " the dead, and give an entirely new aspect to the past, 
 we know how little weight is sometimes given to the evidence of 
 
 D 
 
40 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN's GOSPEL. 
 
 history. But if this testimony of Eusebiiis be of any weight, the 
 " one year " that he here speaks of would date from the Passover of 
 which John speaks in his sixth chapter, which has, as I have 
 argued, been placed out of its natural order, to the final Passover 
 at which he suffered death. 
 
 It may be possible, however, to assign another reason for John 
 writing this portion of Christ's history than that given by 
 Eusebius. Having removed from Jerusalem after the death of 
 Mary the mother of our Lord to the far distant Ephesus, as bishop 
 of a church that Paul had founded, John's remaining thirty or 
 forty years of life, perhaps more, were spent amongst a people of 
 Grecian origin, of ideas new to him, strangers to Judea, and yet of 
 highly intellectual minds. The natural objection which such 
 a people would make to Christianity would be that its author, 
 according to all the published accounts of him, having undertaken 
 to subvert the Jewish worship, had confined his teaching to the 
 remote Galilee, and never set his face in Jerusalem itself, the very 
 seat and centre of it, but on one occasion, at which time, according 
 to its own advocates, he had been put to death by its chief priests. 
 That a like reproach was brought by the enemies of Christianity 
 we find from the writings of Celsus about the middle of the second 
 century that Jesus " had for his disciples only despised men of the 
 lowest kind, publicans and fishermen." And John himself puts 
 this objection into the mouth of some members of the Sanhedrim 
 (vii., 48) : " Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed ? " 
 May it not have been to obviate such objection that John writes, 
 or causes to be written, these personal recollections, and records 
 repeated visits of Jesus to that city, and discussions with the 
 recognized teachers of Judaism in the temple itself, anterior to 
 the time at which the Synoptists take up the history? On each 
 occasion he represents him as claiming a Divine authority, and in 
 proof of that claim doing works of healing ; just as in the Synoptics 
 he is represented as saying to the sick of the palsy, in presence of 
 the Jewish doctors, " Arise, and take up thy bed," that " ye 
 may know that the Son of Man hath power on earth to forgive 
 sins." Thus, in John, he cures the impotent man, and to prove 
 himself " the Light of the World," opens the eyes of the man that 
 was born blind, appealing in like manner to these works: "The 
 works that I do bear witness of me that the Father hath sent me." * 
 
 * In page 5 Mr. Tayler says : "The Fourth Gospel presents us with a selection of 
 
COINCIDENCES. 41 
 
 We come now, however, to another entrance into Jerusalem, 
 about which all the witnesses testify ; but to explain, or even 
 justify the manner of it, on the part of a teacher from the remote 
 Galilee, it is absolutely necessary that we should suppose anterior 
 visits, and controversies with its priests, at which the claims of 
 Jesus had been advanced, and yet rejected. On coming into 
 Bethpage and Bethany, contrary to all his former habits and usual 
 demeanour, he sent for a colt to the neighbouring village, and, 
 surrounded by a multitude of his Galilean followers, as well as 
 " much people " of the city that went forth to meet him, made a 
 public entry seated on the animal, the multitude on either side 
 spreading their garments in the way, and others taking branches of 
 the palm tree and spreading them in the way, and all shouting, 
 " Hosanna to the Son of David ! Blessed be the King of Israel, 
 that cometh in the name of the Lord." Nay more, he goes into 
 the temple itself, and evinces his authority by " casting out those 
 that sold and bought in the temple." 
 
 And why did he thus endanger, as it would seem, the peace of 
 that great city, and outrage the authority of the governor of the 
 temple, with all its hosts of priests and rulers, and Pilate the Roman 
 governor himself looking on from the town of Antonia, if this entry 
 were not the very apotheosis of repeated visits and claims of a like 
 nature, as John tells us, intended by the Christ as a consummation 
 of a long series of hostilities betwixt himself and the Jewish 
 hierarchy ? Had we only the accounts in the Synoptics, difficult 
 it would be, indeed, to justify such an invasion of the sacred city, 
 even by one claiming to be the Messiah, without his having pre- 
 viously submitted those claims to the judgment of those best 
 qualified to decide. The Synoptists represent the entrance as made 
 by Jesus on his first approach to Jerusalem, before he had any 
 time for discussion with its priests. Such discussions they do 
 
 just seven miracles, intended apparently to furnish a specimen of the various modes 
 and occasions of Christ's miraculous workings, &o." In this, however, he is not quite 
 correct, for in addition to the seven he enumerates, this Gospel speaks of miracles 
 performed by Jesus at the first Passover (ii., 23), though it does not describe any save 
 the cleansing of the Temple ; and to the influence of those miracles on the mind of 
 Nioodemus it attributes the visit of that member of the' Sanhedrim to Jesus. 
 
 It also in the fourth chapter attributes to Jesus the miracle of knowing the previous 
 history of the woman of Samaria, which became to her the sign that Jesus was the 
 Christ ; and in the eleventh, of knowing that Lazarus was dead in Bethany, whilst 
 Jesus and his disciples were yet in Bethabara, facts not enumerated by Mr. Tayler, 
 
42 THE AUTHENTICITY- OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 inform us of subsequently ; and also that Jesus declined to give 
 them any satisfaction. In just indignation seemingly, these priests 
 ask him, " By what authority doest thou these things, or who 
 gave thee this authority ? " and, in lofty disdain, he answers them 
 by another interrogatory: "The baptism of John, was it of 
 Heaven, or of man?" Nay, he goes on to tell them that " the 
 vineyard shall be taken from them," that " the Lord of the Vine- 
 yard shall come and destroy these wicked husbandmen ; " and as 
 John represents him saying: " When ye have lifted up the Son of 
 Man, then shall ye know that I am He; " so here are these words 
 attributed to him : " The stone which the builders rejected, the same 
 is become the head of the corner," language implying that the 
 stone had already been rejected by these builders. So that 
 to justify Christ's conduct and language we must pre-suppose 
 those prior visits to Jerusalem recorded by this Evangelist. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 CHEIST BEFORE CAIAPHAS AND PILATE. 
 
 The reticence of the Synoptists as to Christ's first visits to 
 Jerusalem throws an air of mystery, also, around his conduct, as 
 described by them, before Caiaphas and Pilate ; and had we not 
 John's narrative to explain it, it would present no little difficulty. 
 Coming up from Galilee for the first time since his baptism, and 
 entering their city in the manner he had done, and, through fear 
 of his following, driving from the temple the permitted traffic so 
 needful for the sacrifices, we have seen that to the natural question 
 of the rulers he replied contemptuously by another question, 
 and positively refused to tell them by what authority he did 
 those things. And when made a prisoner, and taken before the 
 high court of his nation, he in like manner refused to answer any- 
 thing to the charges alleged against him, till he was solemnly 
 adjured by the high priest to say whether he were " the Christ the 
 Son of God." Now, this taciturnity, and conduct at least seem- 
 ingly contemptuous, is easily understood on the supposition that 
 this is only the last of a series of interviews with these men in which 
 Jesus had advanced his claims, as John tells us, to be the Christ, 
 " the Light of the World," the true Siloa, " the Bread of God, 
 that Cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world." 
 
COINCIDENCES. 43 
 
 Had it been his first interview with the hierarchy of Jerusalem, as 
 the Synoptists lead us to suppose, would not such conduct have 
 been unaccountable on his part, and gone far to justify his treat- 
 ment by these Pharisees ? 
 
 No doubt, according to the Synoptics, with some of these men, 
 at a much earlier period of his ministry Jesus had come in contact. 
 But the imputed conduct on either side from the very first betrays 
 a previous hostility. And even before meeting with them, so far 
 as these inform us, in his very first sermon on the mount as we have 
 seen, he denounces their conduct to his audience in Galilee as " men 
 of sad countenances," who act so that they "may have glory of 
 men." On their part these men watch Jesus, try to entrap him 
 with their questions, and even in Galilee take counsel to kill him. 
 This antagonism evidently had its origin at a period much anterior 
 to the Galilean ministry. So pertinaciously does it follow him that 
 he soon begins to anticipate his doom. In the far distant C^sarea 
 Philippi he tells his followers that " the Son of man must suffer 
 many things, and be rejected of the elders, and the chief priests and 
 the scribes." And hence it is that on coming up to Jerusalem, he 
 keeps no terms with them, but publicly denounces their hypocrisy 
 to the populace in the Temple itself. And when finally betrayed 
 into their power, he " answers nothing," or only, after this manner, 
 as Luke records — " If I tell you ye will not believe, and if I also 
 ask you ye will not answer me or let me go." 
 
 But towards Pilate the Roman governor, we would have expected 
 less of this reticence. It had been no part of Christ's mission to 
 denounce his extortion and injustice. He had ever been careful to 
 stand well with the civil government. When asked for it, he had 
 paid the capitation-tax or tribute. When the ensnaring question 
 of the Herodians was put to him, he had told them to " render unto 
 Caesar the things that are Caesar's." And he had withdrawn him- 
 self when in Galilee his followers would have compromised him, 
 by taking him by force and making him their leader. 
 
 In the hall of Pilate then, when brought before that governor by 
 the chief priests, and accused of " perverting the nation and forbid- 
 diug to give tribute to Csesar, saying that he himself is Christ a 
 king;" — and when Pilate asks him " Art thou the King of the 
 Jews ? " the Synoptists all concur in representing Jesus as replying 
 " Thou sayest" — an answer which, if unexplained, must have impli- 
 cated him, as being an admission of the treason alleged against him- 
 And yet so far from explaining it, though repeatedly questioned- 
 
44 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN S GOSPEL. 
 
 Jesus is said by the Synoptists to have " answered nothing, so that 
 Pilate marvelled greatly." 
 
 According to this statement, therefore, Jesus confesses the charge 
 alleged against him. He explains nothing. Without any seeming 
 reason, he remains obstinately silent. And yet the Koman governor, 
 despite his own admission — who could not be ignorant of his great 
 popularity — that the city was at that moment crowded with the 
 Galilean followers who had a few days before hailed him as their 
 king — and whose duty it was to deal sharply with one who did not 
 disclaim such treason — is made to declare, " I find no fault in this 
 man." Nay, he seeks to release the prisoner, and finally takes 
 water and washes his hands before them, saying, "I am innocent of 
 the blood of this just person, see ye to it." 
 
 If we turn, however, to the Fourth Gospel we get a much more 
 natural and probable account of the matter, and one which evinces 
 it to be from an eye-witness, which we have no reason to think any 
 of the Synoptists were. When the chief priests led Jesus " unto 
 the hall of judgment," we are told that they themselves " went not 
 in lest they should be defiled." Accordingly Pilate went out to 
 them and asked, "What accusation bring ye against this man?" 
 After which he entered into the judgment hall again and called 
 Jesus and said unto him, "Art thou the King of the Jews?" — to 
 which question, Jesus, not having been present at the accusation 
 replies, " Sayest thou this of thyself, or did others tell it thee of 
 me?" 
 
 In these words, then, Jesus neither admits nor denies the charge 
 against him. But by Pilate's answer we are justified in supposing 
 that, by look or manner, he reproached the governor for attributing 
 the charge of sedition to him who had counselled these Pharisees to 
 " render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's." Pilate answers 
 deprecatingly "Am I a Jew? Thine own nation and the chief 
 priests have delivered thee unto me; what hast thou done?" To 
 which Jesus, so far from preserving a sullen and uncalled for silence, 
 replies, " My kingdom is not of this world" — not a worldly kingdom. 
 Had it been so I had Galilean followers enough who would 
 willingly have fought " that I should not be delivered to the Jews; 
 but now is my kingdom not from hence." In some surprise Pilate 
 asks him " Art thou a king then?" — to which Jesus in explanation 
 says, " Thou sayest that I am a king" — as much as to say call me 
 what you will, as he is not less a king who reigns over the minds 
 of men than he who commands their bodily homage, but " to this 
 
COINCIDENCES. 45 
 
 end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world that I 
 should bear witness to the truth. Everyone that is of the truth 
 heareth my voice" — every true man is my subject. 
 
 Here then it is this free explanation in the judgment hall, of which 
 the Synoptics tell us nothing, that sends out Pilate to the Jews, 
 declaring as they do tell us, " I have found no fault in this man 
 touching those things whereof ye accuse him." Here is Christ's 
 conduct no longer mysterious, or seemingly obstinate. In this 
 narrative, probably of that " other disciple who was known to the 
 high priest," we have a clear, satisfactory, and much more likely 
 account of it. Pilate's conduct is no longer inconsistent. And it 
 is not till the Jews accuse Jesus of making himself "the Son 
 of God," and the timid Pilate returns and asks him, " Whence art 
 thou ?'' — that he, knowing how fruitless further explanation would 
 be, "gave him no answer." 
 
 That John, a fisherman on the lake of Galilee, should be that 
 " disciple known to the high priest" of Jerusalem may seem 
 unlikely; and yet there is some reason to suppose that he was 
 somehow connected with the priestly office. Polycrates, a bishop, 
 of Ephesus, in the second century, calls him " a priest who wore the 
 petalon," or priestly mitre, inscribed " Holy to Jehovah." And 
 though commentators have been much puzzled what to make of this 
 in a Christian Apostle, representing the language of Polycrates as 
 metaphorical, and not founded on fact, yet it seems far more likely 
 that one of these golden plates had been in John's possession as an 
 heirloom, which perhaps he was fond of exhibiting, and thus gave 
 rise to his successor's representation. The circumstance at least is 
 worth considering, as tending to identify him with the " disciple 
 known to the high priest." 
 
 John's Gospel, however, differs materially from the others in 
 representing Jesus as answering the high priest who asked him " of 
 his disciples and doctrine," freely in this manner, — " I spoke openly 
 to the world, I ever taught in the synagogue, and in the temple 
 whither the Jews always resort, and in secret have I said nothing." 
 The explanation of this however is simple. John tells us that they 
 " led him away to Annas first," possibly in order that he being now 
 an old man, perhaps unable to attend the council, might have an 
 opportunity of seeing and questioning the prisoner, possibly, in 
 order to give the council time to assemble at the house of Caiaphas. 
 The questions put by Annas, it may be, are given in John's Gospel, 
 to whom Jesus answers in deference to his age and dignity, whilst 
 
46 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 the examination before Caiaphas is omitted. Whereas the Synoptists 
 pass over the former, and take us at once to the house of Caiaphas, 
 save Luke who implies the lapse of some time, saying, " As soon as it 
 was day," they led him to their council ; and before this he represents 
 the men that held Jesus as mocking and smiting him, which they 
 did, according to John's Gospel, for his answer to the high priest. 
 However this may be, the question again arises, are such discrepan- 
 cies more likely, in the work of a spurious author ; or of one conscious 
 that he is testifying the truth ? 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE LAST SUPPER. 
 
 Into the much-vexed question of the Paschal Supper I will not 
 enter at much length. Save on the theory of his plenary inspira- 
 tion, the difference of date assigned to it by our author, in no way 
 affects the authenticity of his Gospel, however it may the writer's 
 correctness. Once admit the liability to error as to dates, the verbal 
 accuracy of expressions, and true order of events — a liability not to 
 be wondered at after the lapse of years, — and what does it amount 
 to? The discrepancy as to this matter is not greater than that 
 about the cleansing of the temple, — not greater than many existing 
 in the Synoptics. And after all is it so certain that there is an error 
 on our author's part ? The Synoptists describe Jesus as partaking 
 of the Passover, and instituting the Supper on " the first day of 
 unleavened bread." But the first day of unleavened bread was, if 
 we insist on strict literal accuracy, the day after the Passover, the 
 15th of Nisan, and not the 14th, when " the Passover must be 
 killed" — a popular loose way of speaking,* which our critics pardon 
 in the Synoptists; but with John they insist on strict literal 
 accuracy when he commences his 13th chapter with the words 
 " Before the Passover." 
 
 In his 18th chapter, however, verse 28th, John again writes — 
 " And they (the Jews) went not into the judgment hall lest they 
 should be defiled, but that they might eat the Passover." Here it 
 
 * " Popular and inexact language," Dr. Davidson calls it in Vol. ii., p. 403, of his 
 " Introduction," which he rightly interprets to mean the 14th of Nisan. But why then 
 insist that John, by the use of this word " before," places this Supper on the 13th ? 
 
COINCIDENCES. 47 
 
 appears, if we insist on literal accuracy, that the time at which 
 Jesus eat the last Supper with his disciples must have been 
 anterior to the usual time of eating the Passover amongst the 
 Jews. If for " eat," however, we had any authority to substitute 
 keep in this passage, it would remove much of the difficulty ; for 
 we can well understand that during their great national festival 
 these priests would not choose to defile themselves, especially as the 
 next day (the Sabbath) was an " high day" amongst them. 
 
 But without making this change in the sacred text, is it not 
 still possible that both Jesus and the Jews eat the Passover on the 
 same Jewish day, that is the 14th day of the month Nisan, as Moses 
 had commanded (Ex. xii., 6.) The Jewish day as we know lasted 
 from evening to evening, and the Passover was to be killed and 
 eaten, as the English reader will see, according to the marginal 
 reading in the Bible, " between the two evenings." So that Jesus 
 and his disciples may really have eaten the Passover in the early 
 part of the 14th of Nisan, after sunset on the first evening when 
 the Jewish day commenced, and the priests may not have eaten it 
 till the second evening before sunset, and after the crucifixion. 
 
 The Hebrew expression here rendered, " Between the two even- 
 ings," is usually interpreted, as I am aware, between the " ninth 
 and eleventh hours" of the day, or our three and five o'clock in the 
 afternoon; such being the time, as Josephus intimates in his 
 " Wars," book 6th, chap. 9th, sec. 3rd, for the priests in his time 
 to kill the sacrifices. But Moses himself defines the Jewish 
 Sabbath (Lev. xxiii., 32) to be " from even unto even" — a rest 
 surely not only of two but twenty-four hours — usually interpreted 
 from sunset to sunset. And the command in Deuteronomy — xvi., 
 6 — is to " sacrifice the Passover at even, at the going down of the 
 sun" — a command which Aben Ezra and others interpret to mean 
 between sunset and dark — and if killed before the hour at which 
 the Jewish day commenced, the expression " in that night" (Ex. 
 xii., 8), denoting when it was to be eaten, would not be the 14th, 
 but the 15th of Nisan. But it was in that night in which the Jews 
 first ate of it that the destroying angel passed over the houses of 
 the Israelites. It was " at midnight" (Ex. xii., 29) that " the Lord 
 smote all the first-born in the land of Egypt;" so that midnight 
 must have been the midnight of the 14th — the day the festival was 
 instituted to commemorate. In this view I believe I am virtually 
 supported by Clement, Origin, Erasmus, Neandar, Alford, and 
 Ellicott, although I have not their works to refer to. 
 
48 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 And yet Mr. Tayler, in the ninth and tenth sections of his 
 learned work, gives us no less than over forty pages on the paschal 
 controversy, in which he speaks of the subject as " By far the most 
 extraordinary divergency between the three first Gospels and the 
 Fourth;" and asserts that " According to the Fourth Gospel, this 
 Supper must have taken place not on the 14th but on the 13th of 
 Nisan, and Christ himself have suffered on the 14th, the same day 
 on the eve of which the Passover was celebrated" (see p. 100); and 
 therefore " the two narratives are utterly incapable of reconcile- 
 ment." 
 
 Now that the crucifixion took place on the 14th of Nisan I 
 readily admit, for even Paul calls Christ (I. Cor. v., 7), " Our 
 Passover sacrificed for us," which he would not have done had it 
 not taken place on the same date as the Jewish Passover. And 
 Christ himself, in instituting the Lord's Supper, evidently assumes 
 the fact when he says, as the Synoptists tell us — " This is my body 
 broken for you — this is my blood of the new covenant," &c. — an 
 assumption without foundation had he not been crucified on the 
 14th of Nisan. And yet Mr. Tayler says (page 99) that, accord- 
 ing to Paul and the Synoptists, whose account of the institution he 
 refers to, " Jesus was crucified on the 15th of Nisan, the fiirst entire 
 day of the feast of unleavened bread." If so, there is really no 
 point in Paul's language, nor yet in Christ's reference to the old 
 covenant as about to be superseded, as given by the Synoptists. 
 But the words, " first entire day of the feast," here used by Mr. T., 
 shows us that he was confounding the Jewish reckoning with ours, 
 and explains the cause of this mistake. Every " day of the feast," 
 according to Jewish time, was an " entire" one, though difiering 
 from ours in having the night preceding it. And the day on which 
 Jesus suffered was the day of that night in which he instituted the 
 supper, and told them " the shepherd should be smitten, and the 
 sheep of the flock scattered abroad." 
 
 Dr. Davidson, also, who devotes seventeen or eighteen pages of 
 his very excellent work to this controversy, in Vol. ii., page 403, 
 writes: — " The Synoptists intended to express the fact that Jesus 
 partook of the legal Passover meal on the evening of the 14th of 
 Nisan. Hence he was crucified on the 15th, the day before the 
 Jewish Sabbath." Here the doctor acknowledges by the word 
 " intended " the Synoptists did not express the fact they " meant " 
 to do. But he also assigns the date of the crucifixion to " the 
 15th, the day before the Jewish Sabbath." 
 
COINCIDENCES. 49 
 
 Now, both histories coincide in this respect at least, that they 
 represent Jesus to have suffered the day before the Sabbath. 
 John tells us that the Jews, "because it was the preparation, that 
 the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath day, 
 besought Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they 
 might be taken away." And the Synoptists uniformly represent 
 the women as coming to the sepulchre on "the first day of the 
 week," " having rested the Sabbath day, according to command- 
 ment." Let us, however, clearly understand whether the infer- 
 ence is just, that he was crucified on the 15th, according to the 
 Synoptics, as both Mr. Tayler and Dr. Davidson represent. 
 
 " The Hebrew Passover commenced on the even of the 14th 
 Nisan, without any reference to the day of the week," writes Mr. 
 Tayler, page 124; and, "in the way of reckoning then customary 
 among the Jews, connecting the evening of one day with the 
 morning of the next as one continuous day " (page 125), it is plain 
 that " the eve of the 14th of Nisan " was the evening of the day 
 on which our Lord was crucified. And this is borne out by the 
 Levitical law. 
 
 According to Deuteronomy xvi., 6, as we have seen, the paschal 
 lamb was to be killed " at even, at the going down of the sun." 
 It was to be eaten " in that night, roast with fire and unleavened 
 bread" (Ex. xii., 8), and to be eaten " in haste,'' in remembrance of 
 the haste with which they came forth from the land of Egypt. 
 " That night " was the night of the 14th of Nisan, and as this pre- 
 ceded the day in the Jewish reckoning, the night of the 14th of 
 Nisan on which Jesus eat the Passover with his disciples was the 
 night of the same day on which he suffered, so that according to 
 the Synoptists he suffered on the 14th, and not the 15th, as Mr. 
 Tayler and Dr. Davidson assert. If he suffered on the 15th, then 
 more than twenty-fours must have elapsed between the last supper 
 and crucifixion contrary to both histories. And the only real 
 difficulty is that pointed out above, where John writes " eat,'' 
 seemingly instead of keep, the Passover. 
 
 On what grounds, however, does Mr. Tayler assert, that 
 " according to the Fourth Gospel this supper must have taken 
 place on the 13th of Nisan?" On this, that "In the opening 
 verse of the 13th chapter we were told that the supper was ' before 
 the Feast of the Passover,' and, to exclude all possibility of mis- 
 take, we are further told (xiii., 29), that at the conclusion of the 
 supper some words spoken by Jesus to Judas were understood to 
 
50 THE AUTHENTICITY OP JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 be an Instruction to him to buy what was necessary for the celebra- 
 tion of the feast." 
 
 Let us see whether this be entirely correct. What is really 
 asserted by the Evangelist is: "Now, before the Feast of the 
 Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come, that he should 
 depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own, 
 which were in the world, he loved them unto the end." Surely 
 much too " popular and inexact language," to quote the words of 
 Dr. Davidson in reference to " the first day of unleavened bread," 
 to bind the Evangelist to any particular date as to the supper. If, 
 however, we should assign any particular force to the word 
 " before " in this sentence, we might suppose that John meant to 
 assign Christ's reason for keeping the Passover in the first hours 
 of the 14th of Nisan, before the usual time of day, that the Jews 
 were wont to keep it, that he might sup with his disciples, for 
 Luke tells us that he said to them, " With desire I have desired to 
 eat this Passover with you before I suffer." 
 
 And with respect to what Jesus said to Judas, verse 29: 
 " Understood to be an instruction to him to buy what was necessary 
 for the celebration of the feast"— this could not, of course, refer 
 to the supper that was then ended, and may not to the Passover, 
 which, being eaten in haste and with bitter herbs, was not what is 
 understood by the word ^^ feast," which term applied more properly 
 to the seven days of unleavened bread, during which they were to 
 abstain from work, and to put all leaven out of their houses. 
 Against this it may have been that the disciples may have 
 understood Jesus to instruct Judas ; so little does their interpre- 
 tation " exclude all possibility of mistake." 
 
 But, further, Mr. Tayler refers to " two passages in the sequel 
 of the narrative —first (xviii. 28), where we are told that the Jews 
 when they led Jesus from Caiaphas to Pilate, would not enter the 
 heathen judgment-hall, lest they should disqualify themselves by 
 defilement for eating the Passover " — a passage, we have already 
 considered, showing that they may still have eaten it in the last hours 
 of the 14th Nisan, subsequent to the crucifixion; "and, secondly 
 (xLx., 14), where it is expressly stated that ' it was the preparation 
 of the Passover.' " Now, had Mr. Tayler compared this verse 
 with the Slst and 42nd in the same chapter, he would have seen 
 that the day John speaks of he also calls the preparation for the 
 Sabbath, " for that Sabbath was an high day " among the Jews, 
 being the one that occurred during the festival of the Passover. 
 
COINCIDENCES. 51 
 
 The "preparation of the Passover" really took place four days 
 previously, on the 10th day of the month Nisan (see Ex. xii., 3) ; or, 
 if we are to interpret it the day before the Passover, this would 
 make Jesus to have suffered, not on the 14th, but the 13th, con- 
 trary to Mr. Tayler's own statement. His statement is, that it 
 was on the 14th of Nisan, according to this Gospel, that Christ 
 suffered, and not the day before the Passover. So that this phrase 
 of John's, if it be not another instance of that " popular and inexact 
 language," must either mean the preparation for the Sabbath of the 
 Passover, or we are to understand by it that at that very time the 
 priests were killing the paschal lamb for their evening meal, and 
 offering up the morning sacrifice "about the sixth hour," at the 
 very time, as John would indicate, that these men shouted, " Away 
 with him, away with him; crucify him; we have no king but 
 Caesar." At any rate, both histories speak of the day on which 
 Christ suffered as " the preparation " — that is, the day before the 
 Sabbath — with which the above phrase is not inconsistent. 
 
 If, therefore, we have succeeded in showing that this " divergency 
 between the three first Gospels and the Fourth" is not so " extra- 
 ordinary" as has been represented, we would further request the 
 reader's attention to the following coincidences. Mr T. writes — 
 " In this (John's) narrative not a word is said of the commemorative 
 institution of breaking bread and distributing wine ; but in place of 
 it a symbolical act is introduced — the washing of the disciples' feet 
 by Christ, to which the Synoptists do not once refer, and for which 
 indeed they leave no room." See pp. 99, 100. 
 
 True it is that John tells us that on " supper being ended" Jesus 
 rose from table, laid aside his garments, took water and a towel and 
 " began to wash his disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel 
 wherewith he was girded." And equally true It is that the Synop- 
 tists do not once refer to this " symbolical act" of Jesus — an act no 
 less symbolical and impressive than one they do tell us of on a like 
 occasion, when Jesus " took a child and set it in the midst of them." 
 But John, with a strange remissness, does not tell us what 
 prompted Jesus to the act. And were it not for Luke, we would 
 have been left, In utter ignorance, to guess its cause. On turning 
 to his Gospel, however (xxll., 24), we read, " There was also a 
 strife among them which of them should be accounted the greatest." 
 Here then, as on the like occasion, the act of Jesus, as well as the 
 admonition with which he enforces the meaning of it, is satis- 
 factorily accounted for, — another instance of that undesigned 
 
52 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 coincidence of testimony on the part of witnesses so widely separ- 
 ated by time and place as should effectually establish their trust- 
 worthiness. 
 
 In commenting upon Luke, however, Dr. Davidson, in Vol. ii., 
 page 37, says — " The passage about the disputation of the disciples 
 has no proper connexion with its context. A similar fact had been 
 already related by the Evangelist (ix., 46), and we can scarcely resist 
 the impression that, if this be historical, its proper place is earlier." 
 
 But if there had been two disputations of the disciples previously 
 on the subject, why may there not have been a third at the last 
 supper? On the first occasion, as Luke tells us — and in this he is 
 corroborated by Mark (ix., 36) — Jesus rebuked them by taking a 
 child and " setting him in the midst of them." The second was 
 when the mother of Zebedee's children preferred her request to 
 Jesus on behalf of her two sons. What more likely at the last 
 Supper, when the manner and language of Jesus intimated that 
 something important was about to happen, that this spirit of 
 rivalry should again manifest itself, when he spoke of " the King- 
 dom of God" being about to come ? And hence the third emphatic 
 reproof administered to them, as reported by this Evangelist. 
 
 It is true that, according to Luke, Jesus gives them on this 
 occasion this admonition — " The kings of the Gentiles exercise 
 lordship over them ; but so shall it not be among you." However, 
 according to Matthew and Mark, it was on the previous occasion he 
 addressed this to them, when they were indignant with the two 
 brethren. About to leave them, when this strife breaks out anew, 
 justly indignant that his past reproofs had been of so little use, 
 Jesus now admonishes them by the emphatic action of washing 
 their feet, and thus enforces the meaning of the act — " For I have 
 given you an example that ye should do as I have done to you." 
 And the act so coincides with Luke's record and Christ's conduct 
 on a previous occasion, as very strongly to corroborate John's 
 statement. 
 
 But further, as to what occurred at that Supper with respect to 
 Judas, we have this discrepancy amongst the Synoptists. When 
 Jesus announced to them, " Verily, I say unto you that one of you 
 shall betray me ;" and when they all in sorrow began to say unto 
 him one by one, "Is it I?" Matthew indicates some delay or 
 hesitation on the part of Judas in responding, and makes Jesus 
 reply to him openly — " Thou hast said." This, however, is omitted 
 by Mark, and nothing more is given than this general reply of 
 
COINCIDENCES. 53 
 
 Jesus to the question of the disciples — " One of the twelve that 
 dippeth with me in the dish ;" or, as Matthew has it, " He that 
 dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me." 
 Luke only says, " They began to inquire among themselves which 
 of them it was that should do this thing." 
 
 Now, however natural the hesitancy of Iscariot in putting the 
 question, this open branding of him as a traitor in presence of his 
 fellows is not such an act as we would naturally ascribe to Jesus. 
 If Mark learned the circumstance from Peter, his silence about it 
 seems expressive. And what is the testimony of John ? He tells 
 us, in the very words ascribed to him by Matthew, that Jesus said, 
 " Verily, verily, I say unto you that one of you shall betray me." 
 But instead of the disciples asking Jesus one by one " Is it I ?" he 
 writes — " Then the disciples looked one on another, doubting of 
 whom he spake. Now there was leaning on Jesus' bosom one ot 
 his disciples, whom Jesus loved. Simon Peter therefore beckoned 
 to him that he should ask who it should be of whom he spake. He 
 then lying on Jesus' breast saith unto him. Lord who is it ? Jesus 
 answered, he it is to whom 1 shall give a sop when I have dipped 
 it. And when he had dipped the sop he gave it to Judas Iscariot 
 the son of Simon. And after the sop Satan entered into him. 
 Then said Jesus unto him, ' That thou doest do quickly.' Now 
 no man at the table knew for what intent he spake this unto him" — 
 the above conversation having taken place sotto voce. 
 
 Here then is an account of the matter at least much more con- 
 sonant to the character of Jesus. But if John's Gospel be not 
 authentic, what are we to say to it ? If this cleverly depicted scene 
 at the Supper table be ideal, Christ's character must be ideal also. 
 It is only through such traits and incidents that that character is 
 portrayed to us. Mr Tayler and Dr. Davidson are very indig- 
 nant that their opponents should ascribe to the author, on their 
 theory, any improper purpose. True, the purpose may be very 
 proper, but the character is no longer real, if these traits are the 
 fictions of the novelist. And in the above case I, for my part, can 
 only see one of two alternatives, either that the above is the 
 testimony of an eye-witness, or a very exquisitely devised work of 
 fiction. Matthew's statement seems more the artless work of legend 
 or tradition; but this, if not true, seems written artfully, well 
 calculated to deceive by its very circumstantiality. 
 
54 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE BETEAYAL AND CEUCIPIXION. 
 
 These events I will group together, as it is necessary to notice 
 them only very briefly ; for however discordant the histories have 
 been as to the early period of the life, when they bring Jesus to 
 Jerusalem on his last visit, they became to the end remarkably 
 coincident. There are still discrepancies, however, worthy to be 
 noticed, and these, not only betwixt the Fourth Gospel and the 
 others, but in the accounts of the Synoptists themselves, where 
 John's testimony becomes of the utmost value to us. 
 
 "We have another example of this in their respective accounts of 
 the betrayal of Jesus. The Synoptists tell us, — or at least Matthew 
 and Mark do, for Luke does not — that the betrayal originated in 
 " Bethany in the house of Simon the leper," on the occasion of a 
 woman — whom they do not mention — anointing the head of Jesus 
 with an " alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious," 
 which occasioned some indignation on the part of some of the 
 disciples, who said, " To what purpose is this waste ?" They do 
 not indicate the woman's motive; nor yet that the traitor was 
 indignant above others, but immediately tell us, " Then Judas 
 Iscariot one of the twelve went unto the chief priests to betray him 
 unto them." 
 
 But when we turn to John's Gospel, what a flood of light is 
 thrown on the whole subject. John does not tell us indeed of 
 Judas, going on this occasion from the house to the chief priests, 
 but he does tell us what it was that brought Jesus and his 
 disciples to that house in Bethany, that the woman's name was 
 Mary, the sister of him whom he had raised from the dead ; that it 
 was not the "head" but the "feet" of Jesus she anointed — a 
 circumstance more natural and likely ; that this Judas Iscariot was 
 a " son of Simon's," in whose house they were, according to the 
 Synoptics, and that it was he who gave utterance to the indignation 
 under the plea of charity, being of an avaricious disposition, though 
 the treasurer of the party. 
 
 Again, the discrepancy of the narratives as to Christ's conduct 
 in the garden of Gethsemane has been strongly commented on by 
 those unfavourable to the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel. 
 John does not tell us certainly of Jesus taking the three disciples, 
 
COINCIDENCES. 55 
 
 and retiring apart to pray on that occasion — all this had been 
 already told by the Synoptists — but when he reproves Peter for 
 cutting off the servant's ear, saying, " Put up thy sword into the 
 sheath, the cup which my Father hath givenme shall 1 not drink it" — 
 here language is attributed to him by John, so identical with that 
 used in prayer as recorded by the Synoptists, and the determination 
 expressed is so consonant with the concluding sentiment of that 
 prayer — " If this cup may not pass from me except 1 drink it, thy 
 will be done " — that there can be little difficulty as to the general 
 accuracy of two so diverging yet concurring witnesses. 
 
 Further, all the Synoptists tell us of one of the disciples 
 drawing a sword, and smiting off the ear of a servant of the high 
 priest, but none of them tells us either the name of the servant, or 
 of the disciple who did the deed. This may be accounted for on 
 the supposition that the former was not known to them, and that 
 during Peter's life, his brethren did not choose to particularize 
 him, and so expose him to the malice of the priests. When John 
 wrote, however, his enemies had done their worst upon him, and so 
 he gives us, not only the name of him who drew the sword — an 
 act so consonant to the character of Peter — but also of the servant 
 smitten on the occasion, for John seems to have been known to the 
 high priest's household, as we find him " speaking to her that kept 
 the door, and bringing in Peter." 
 
 And here we must pause to ask the impugners of this Gospel's 
 authenticity, why this particularity about the names of parties so 
 unimportant as that of this servant, to this great history, and 
 about events of so little moment as one of the disciples being 
 known to the servant of the high priest? Is this the cunning 
 device of some spurious author to impose on us by affecting a 
 knowledge of names and circumstances, as ideal as the creations of 
 some novelist, and fitting them into the previous histories of our 
 Lord ? This history is either founded on the testimony of an eye- 
 witness, or it is the work of some very clever cunning artist. To 
 do its opponents justice, few of them would allege the latter ; but 
 their confessed difficulty is, having denied its authenticity to give 
 some rational, probable account of its origin at Ephesus, at a time 
 and place so remote from the circumstances it describes. Some 
 indeed — such as F. C. Baur — think it must be of Alexandrian 
 origin, but this opinion is strongly contested by other critics. 
 Some regard it, not so much as a history, as a "theological 
 treatise " on the life of Christ which it evidently is not ; and if so, 
 
 E 
 
56 THE AUTHENTICITY OP JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 for what purpose is this introduction of unimportant names and 
 circumstances ? Some think it written by some Gentile Christian 
 of the second century for the purpose of magnifying Jesus as the 
 Logos. If so, he must either have invented, or derived his 
 information from an eye-witness as to those circumstances in the life 
 of Christ. The simplest solution surely is that which accepts it as 
 the authentic testimony of a man who loved to ponder in his old 
 age, on scenes that had so deeply interested him, and in which, as 
 the disciple whom the Master loved, he had himself borne no 
 unimportant part. 
 
 Take, further, the respective accounts of the crucifixion of the 
 Christ. They all concur in the main circumstances. John tells 
 us, indeed, that Jesus " went forth, hearing his cross, to the place 
 called Golgotha," as it was customary for the condemned to bear 
 the instrument of their punishment. However, we must qualify 
 John's statement by that in the Synoptics, and suppose that the 
 soldiers, soon finding Jesus unequal to the burthen, " laid hold of 
 Simon the Cyrenian, the father of Alexander and Rufus, and him 
 they compelled to bear the cross." Of this Simon, John says 
 nothing; and yet, with the others, he mentions "the parting of 
 the garments," the " two malefactors," and each gives us a separate 
 version of the inscription on the cross. 
 
 Here, then, is one criterion by which to test the accuracy of 
 each. "Which of these versions is the most likely ? The inscrip- 
 tion, indeed, was sufficiently public and notorious to be easily 
 accessible to all. " The place where Jesus was crucified was nigh 
 to the city." It was written in " Hebrew, and Greek, and Latin," 
 according to both Luke and John. Yet we have no reason to 
 think that any of the Evangelists had seen it but John himself. 
 In fear for their own safety, his other male followers had forsaken 
 him. And hence all the Evangelists give it differently, while they 
 concur as to its general import. Matthew gives it thus: "This 
 IS Jesus, the King op the Jews." Mark says it was: " The 
 King op the Jews." Luke thus records it: "This is the 
 King op the Jews." But John tells us, as if alluding to this 
 difference: "And the writing was, Jesus op Nazareth, the 
 King op the Jews." 
 
 That Pilate wrote it to spite the Jews for compelling him to 
 do an act so repugnant to his own sense of justice we have good 
 reason to believe. Each form of the inscription manifests this. 
 From Luke we learn they had already told him the man was a 
 
COINCIDENCES. 57 
 
 Galilean. In bringing their charge against him of perverting the 
 nation, they must have given him some name, though it is not 
 mentioned, and may even have spoken of him contemptuously as 
 from Nazareth. To gall them more, Pilate would not omit from 
 the inscription the offensive title. And if a sad spectator of his 
 Master's sufferings, we can well suppose that John had read again 
 and again that inscription on the cross above him, perhaps in 
 its threefold character, for we have no right to assume that he 
 was an illiterate man. And his version, as being the most stinging 
 to Jewish pride, may justly be considerei the most accurate, even 
 if we had not the writer's own most emphatic assertion of the 
 fact. For our author gives his testimony pointedly and confidently 
 as a thing known to many beside himself, adding, " This title, 
 then, read many of the Jews, for the place was nigh to the city." 
 
 Further, John gives the remonstrance of the chief priests with 
 Pilate against this inscription, and their suggestion of a change in 
 the wording of it, which Pilate refuses to make, all which Was 
 matter personally unknown to the Synoptists, and which could 
 not have been given us, save by one who had been present, and 
 deeply interested in the case ; and which could hardly have been 
 invented with such regard to character and circumstance, save 
 for a purpose, which I will not ascribe to this Evangelist. 
 
 Finally, when Joseph of Arimathea went to Pilate, and craved 
 the body of Jesus, as Mark tells us, " Pilate marvelled if he were 
 already dead; and, calling the centurion, asked him whether he 
 had been any while dead." And with this agrees this testimony 
 of John, that when the soldiers came to Jesus they "found him 
 dead already," and that one of them pierced his side, and " forth- 
 with came out blood and water." And then follows that remark- 
 able testimony so much commented on by critics, " And he that 
 saw it bare record, and his record is true, and he knoweth that he 
 saith true, that ye may believe." Here we have, on the part of a 
 sacred writer, as solemn an affirmation as man can make as to a 
 certain fact being actually witnessed. He does not assert, indeed, 
 that he himself witnessed the soldiers piercing the side of Jesus ; 
 but he does affirm most emphatically the trustworthiness of the 
 evidence. Here Is no question of coincidence. The question is, 
 are we to believe this sacred writer when he pledges his veracity as 
 to the truthfulness of the party whose evidence he records. The 
 affirmation is made with no reference to the question of authen- 
 ticity now before us. It refers solely to a question that had arisen 
 
58 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 in the early church amongst Greek converts whether Jesus Christ 
 had actually " come in the flesh," or whether that body crucified 
 on Calvary were not really a phantom. These men said that it 
 was. This writer affirms this testimony in contradiction of them. 
 We are now told that the book was written in order to magnify 
 Jesus as the Divine Logos. Here its author writes to contradict 
 a party who, for the purpose of doing so, denied his humanity. 
 This writing emanates from Ephesus, where John lived, and who 
 wrote letters to the same effect. The question, therefore, for the 
 English reader is, simply, Had this writer John's authority, or, at 
 least, the authority of an eye-witness, for this solemn affirmation? 
 Or does he make it on the authority of some legend or tradition, of 
 whose truth he personally knew nothing ? 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE RESUEEECTION. 
 
 We come now to consider the posthumous history of the Christ; 
 and here the great difficulty is, no longer to reconcile the statements 
 of the Fourth with those of the Synoptical Gospels, but to reconcile 
 the latter with one another. Our business will be to try to extract 
 some consistent harmonious account from all. 
 
 In the July number of The Theological Review, for 1866, the Kev. 
 C. Kegan Paul, in his review of Kenan's work " Les Ap6tres," 
 observes : — " We will, therefore, only say this much, that all 
 harmonies of the accounts of the resurrection signally fail. But 
 in so failing the discrepancies which remain only serve to give a 
 more life-like picture than could be gained in any other way of the 
 confusion, the cross-reports, the incoherence of statement on the 
 part of those who were engaged in the transactions of that memor- 
 able day." 
 
 Should we fail in this attempt, therefore, we can hardly do worse 
 than others ; and had we none but the Synoptical accounts, the 
 attempt to reconcile them would seem hopeless. Their confusion 
 is the more remarkable as the Apostles' first care, after the depar- 
 ture of our Lord, as we learn from the book of " Acts," was to 
 choose one from the disciples in the place of Judas, to " be a wit- 
 ness with us of the resurrection." That the event itself had made 
 a deep impression, as was natural, is evident from the recorded 
 
COINCIDENCES. 59 
 
 speeches of Peter, from the altered tone of these men's conduct, and 
 from the summary given of their whole teaching at this time — 
 " preaching through Jesus the resurrection from the dead." And 
 yet, in the published accounts given of the event afterwards, the 
 statements are not less confused, unsatisfactory, and contradictory 
 than those already considered betwixt the Fourth Gospel and the 
 Synoptics. 
 
 So far, indeed, as the interment is concerned, all of them are 
 agreed. All tell us of Joseph of Arimathea — " a rich man," 
 according to Matthew, " an honourable counsellor," Mark calls 
 him, " a good man and a just," says Luke, — going to Pilate and 
 begging the body of Jesus ; that he took it down and " wrapped it 
 in a clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb hewn in the 
 rock, and rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre," and that 
 that day was " the preparation." In this pious work he was watched 
 by Mary of Magdala, and another Mary, who " followed after and 
 beheld how the body was laid." 
 
 With this account that of John's is substantially similar, save 
 that he tells us that Joseph was joined in this pious duty by 
 Nicodemus, another member of the Jewish council, " which at first 
 came to Jesus by night." He also tells us that Nicodemus brought 
 with him " a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred 
 pounds," and wound the body " in the linen clothes with the 
 spices." Whereas the Synoptists say that the women " bought 
 sweet spices and ointments that they might come and anoint him." 
 It is possible that both may have contributed spices to embalm the 
 body ; but the discrepancy, as it stands, is one that shows how little 
 careful the writer was to shape his record in accordance with those 
 that preceded it. Nay, even in his subsequent account, he makes 
 no mention of these spices being found afterwards in the sepulchre. 
 
 It is, however, as to what actually occurred at that sepulchre 
 " very early in the morning on the first day of the week " that we 
 find our Evangelists all at variance. That these women went there 
 for the purpose specified above cannot be doubted ; but the con- 
 fusion of the accounts, as Mr. Kegan Paul observes, " only gives 
 us a more life-like picture of their own confusion, and the cross- 
 reports" in consequence. Matthew tells us that " there had been a 
 great earthquake," that an angel had " descended from heaven and 
 rolled back the stone, and sat upon it;" that his presence had 
 utterly terrified the Roman soldiers watching by the tomb; but 
 that he spake encouragingly to the women, saying — " Fear not ye, 
 
60 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 for I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified," &c. — that the 
 women " departed quickly, and ran to bring his disciples word," 
 and that as they went Jesus met them, and said, " All hail." 
 " And they came, and held him by the feet, and worshipped him. 
 Then said Jesus unto them. Be not afraid, go tell my brethren that 
 they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me." 
 
 Of this earthquake and the guard of Roman soldiers neither 
 Mark nor Luke tells us anything. Neither do they intimate how 
 the stone was rolled away ; but both tell us that on their approach 
 the women, to their surprise, found the sepulchre open ; for, as the 
 former says, they had been discussing the question — " Who shall 
 roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre ? for it was 
 very great." Further, Mark's account of what they saw is, not an 
 angel outside, but " entering into the sepulchre they saw a young 
 man sitting on the right side clothed in a long white garment.^'' The 
 young man speaks to them, and in almost the very words attributed 
 to the angel, says, " Be not affrighted, ye seek Jesus of Nazareth 
 which was crucified ; he is risen, &c. ; but go your way, tell his 
 disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee; there 
 shall ye see him as he said unto you." Mark gives us no hint, and 
 indulges in no supposition as to who this " young man" might be; 
 but afterwards tells us that Jesus appeared _/??'sf to Mary Magdalene, 
 who went and told them that had been with him, as they mourned 
 and wept.* This is worthy to be noted, as it agrees with John's 
 record in this reference to Mary Magdalene, and seems to ignore 
 that of Matthew, as if his account had been founded partly on the 
 reports of the soldiers. 
 
 When we turn to Luke, however, we find another and quite 
 
 * This latter passage certainly, with what follows of Mark's Gospel, is rejected by 
 modem critics as unauthentioated by the most ancient MSS. Still it serves to indicate 
 the tradition of the early church. And there is no doubt of Mark's testimony as to the 
 "young man" in the sepulchre being seen by the women ; and if Mark had for this 
 statement the authority of Peter, the same authority may have given rise to what 
 follows. Dr. Davidson, in Vol. ii,, p. 115, of his "Introduction," after giving the 
 
 evidence on either side respecting these verses (Mark xvi., 9 to the end), observes : 
 
 " It is difficult to decide between the conflicting evidence. The fact that Irenaeus 
 and probably Justin Martyr, had this portion before them in their copies of the Gospel, 
 is sufficient to outweigh the evidence of all the MSS. which omit it, because they 
 reach up to a much earlier time." And again (p. 116)—" Great respect is due to the 
 opinion of textual critics like Griesbaoh and Tischendorft; who are against the authen- 
 ticity of the verses. But it cannot be denied that the weight of external evidence is on 
 the other side." 
 
COINCIDENCES. 61 
 
 different account. According to him also, the women " entered 
 into, the sepulchre, but found not the body of the Lord Jesus. 
 And it came to pass as they were much perplexed there about, 
 behold two men stood by them in shining garments^ These men 
 address them much after the fashion of the " young man," and 
 " angel" in the preceding Gospels, asking, " Why seek ye the living 
 among the 4ead? he is not here, but is risen." But instead of 
 directing them as the " young man" had done, and both the angel 
 and Jesus himself had done in Mathew's Gospel to "go and tell 
 his disciples that he goeth before you into Galilee," the admonition 
 is, — " Remember how he spake unto you when he was yet in 
 Galilee, saying the Son of man must be delivered into the hands of 
 man, and be crucified, and the third day rise again." 
 
 Now the question is, to deduce some probable consistent supposi- 
 tion from these " cross-reports." Of course, the record of all these 
 historians is founded on report, not on personal observation, and 
 hence the discordance. They all state, however, that Mary 
 Magdalene was one of these women — the woman that John says 
 Came and told him and Peter, and whom they afterwards left weep- 
 ing by the sepulchre. With her Matthew and Mark associate 
 another Mary, and Luke adds " Joanna and other women." Mark, 
 however, confirms John in this that Jesus " appeared ^irsi to Mary 
 Magdalene, and that she went and told them that had been with 
 him." And Luke also confirms him in one respect, and that a 
 material one — " that Peter arose and ran to the selpulchre, and 
 stooping down he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and 
 departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass." 
 
 How are we, however, even with these coincidences to aid us, to 
 thread our way through the remaining difficulties ? In this manner, 
 as it seems to me with the help of John's testimony to aid us, which 
 seems indeed to be only in part what he himself had witnessed, and 
 partly, what had been reported to him by Mary Magdalene. Let 
 us then suppose that when the women first saw the sepulchre open, 
 Mary left her companions, and without waiting to investigate as the 
 other women did, ran back to tell Peter and the other disciples, 
 putting this construction on the occurrence that John says she did, 
 " They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we 
 know not where they have laid him." In her absence on this 
 errand, the other women go into the sepulchre as Mark testifies, and 
 find a " young man sitting clothed in a long white garment," being 
 " the linen clothes" of which Jesus had not yet divested himself, in 
 
62 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 which he had been buried, and in which he had appeared, to the 
 terror of the Koman soldiers, sitting on the stone at the door of the 
 sepulchre. On the women's departure, he must have divested him- 
 self of these, leaving them in the sepulchre ^where they were found 
 by Peter, and in their place seems to have obtained some garments 
 possibly of the gardener, which may afterwards have led to Mary's 
 mistake on seeing him, and thus taken his departure. When Peter 
 and John come subsequently, they find the sepulchre empty of all 
 but the linen clothes, " laid by themselves," as Luke testifies ; "and 
 the napkin," as John says, " that was about his head, not lying 
 with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself." 
 After their departure, on Mary's return, she, as she stands weeping, 
 " stoops down and looks into the sepulchre," the place still compara- 
 tively dark, and sees what she in her imagination magnifies into 
 " two angels," but really the grave clothes as John had seen them, 
 " in white sitting the one at the head, and the other at the feet 
 where the body of Jesus had lain." Her account gets abroad, and 
 meets us in Luke's version of the matter " as two men in shining 
 garments." That Mary in her affright saw no " angels" is evident 
 from her own story. She hears a voice addressing her, " woman, 
 why weepest thou?" — which she supposes in her confusion to pro- 
 ceed from the sepulchre, but immediately on answering " she turned 
 herself back and saw Jesus standing, but knew not that it was Jesus.' 
 That the first question proceeded from him however, would appear, 
 both from Mary's action in turning herself back, and the fact that 
 Jesus repeats it with this addition "Whom seekest thou?" — a 
 usual thing to do when the first question is not answered satis- 
 factorily. She seeing him possibly in altered raiment, at least 
 altered in appearance from the Master once known to her, rushes 
 into another mistake, suggested possibly by the locality, and 
 " supposes him to be the gardiner." And it is not till Jesus 
 addresses her by name, _and in his usual tone of voice, that she 
 answers instinctively in her native dialect " Rabboni," and no doubt 
 as Matthew tells us of the women, " held him by the feet and 
 worshipped," or at least threw herself down in the Eastern mode of 
 salutation, which elicited the message — " Go tell my brethren," or 
 as John has it, " Touch [or hold] me not, for I am not yet ascended to 
 my Father, but go to my brethren and say unto them, I ascend 
 unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God." 
 On the simplicity and truth-like nature of John's story, I need 
 not comment, — nor how admirably it is told if indeed a work of 
 
COINCIDENCES. 63 
 
 fiction. No doubt there are many and grave difficulties that still 
 surround the whole subject, as every thinking Christian feels, and 
 easy it is to start objections. Our present object is, not to answer 
 them, but simply to harmonize the narratives; and the above 
 attempt is submitted, in all confidence, to the unbiassed considera- 
 tion of the reader. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 SUBSEQUENT APPEARANCES. 
 
 However incoherent the testimony of the Synoptics as to the 
 resurrection, and however impossible to be harmonized without 
 John's testimony to aid us, it is no less meagre and conflicting 
 as to the posthumous appearances. Omitting those doubtful 
 verses in Mark's Gospel, we have only the testimony of two of 
 them on this point, one of them not an Apostle, and confessedly 
 writing from the reports of others. And those testimonies are so 
 conflicting, that whilst Matthew tells us of an appearance in 
 Galilee, according to Luke it would seem as if no such appearance 
 could have taken place, for he represents Jesus, on that night 
 after he had risen and appeared to the eleven, as commanding 
 them to " tarry in Jerusalem until indued with power from on 
 high," and then says that " he led them out as far as to Bethany, 
 lifted up his hands and blessed them, was parted from them, and 
 carried up into heaven." 
 
 We know how these discrepancies have been naturally seized on 
 by the unbeliever, and perhaps magnified, to take from the 
 Christian all gi'ound for faith in these documents, and in the 
 resurrection itself. We do not refer to them, certainly, for such a 
 purpose. The question before us is the trustworthiness of a certain 
 record. Such discrepancies are freely quoted to invalidate the 
 authenticity of the Fourth Gospel. It may then be permitted to 
 show that if valid against it, the same argument would be equally 
 valid against the whole Christian records. For no greater discre- 
 pancy can be established against it, than here confronts us in the 
 accounts of the Synoptists. '^ 
 
 One circumstance, at least, these discrepancies prove, that there 
 was no collusion on the part of the Evangelists. That the 
 
64 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 rumoured resurrection from the dead of such a teacher as this 
 Jesus of Nazareth should have given rise to a variety of statements 
 and contradictory reports, is only what all experience would lead 
 us to expect. These statements the Gospels reflect to us. That 
 such " a rising from the dead " was wholly unanticipated by his 
 Apostles or the Evangelists, all the histories testify. That it pro- 
 duced a wonderful efiect upon their minds, changing their whole 
 expectations and manner of life, and through them producing a 
 corresponding change in the history of the world itself, — such are 
 the phenomena that the unbeHever has to account for. Was it a 
 mistake on their part that led to the introduction and propagation 
 of Christianity ? We are not concerned to show how Jesus was 
 raised up, or in what body — whether a real or " spiritual" — or 
 "pneumatic" one, as Dr. Davidson calls it — he appeared to his 
 disciples. Sufficient it is for us to know that their senses were 
 impressed, so as to beget a deep consciousness of his actual living 
 presence. If asked how this was done, we reply that there are 
 many things in this world outside the range of our philosophy. So 
 long as science cannot tell us, beyond a certain organization of 
 nerves and bones and ligaments, how it is that mind acts on 
 matter, even in this life, or how it is that the vital principle, in the 
 animal and vegetable kingdoms out of dead inert matter, builds up 
 for itself a living feeling structure, so that the little acorn becomes 
 transformed into the giant oak, or the unconscious embryo into the 
 self-acting, thinking, perfect man, so long it is useless to dogmatize 
 as to what can, or cannot take place under the Divine Providence. 
 How lately it is since that property of light was discovered, that 
 has enabled men of science to apply it to the purpose of photo- 
 graphy, and that property of electricity to the purpose of 
 telegraphy, and when such — at one time miracles — so long lay 
 concealed in the world of matter from the most patient scientific 
 research, is it for any of us to dogmatize as to what may or may not 
 take place in the world of spiritual existence ? 
 
 How that mortal body, therefore, deposited by Joseph of 
 Arimathea in the sepulchre, had become transformed into that 
 " spiritual body " which is no longer subject — to the astonishment of 
 the disciples — to the laws of matter, it is not our business to 
 explain. If asked how it is that the dead inert matter we call 
 bread becomes transformed in a few hours after its consumption 
 into a portion of our own living, feeling organization, despite even 
 Professor Huxley's doctrine of protoplasms, we might feel at a loss 
 
COINCIDENCES. 65 
 
 to say. We only know the fact that the living animal can assimi- 
 late some substances, and that if it attempt to assimilate others, the 
 result is death. So it is that the Scriptures only assure us of the 
 fact that the minds and senses of the disciples had been convincingly 
 impressed with a conscious sense of Christ's living presence after 
 death, contrary to all expectation on their part of such event ; — and 
 that one — John says two — of his own immediate followers, surprised 
 and incredulous at the reports of the women, had examined his 
 sepulchre, and found it empty of all but the grave clothes; and 
 that the words of the women saying that he was alive, " seemed to 
 them as idle tales." Even when he appeared to themselves as 
 they sat at meat, It seems they were incredulous at first, though 
 " terrified and aiFrighted as if they had seen a spirit." And 
 Matthew who corroborates John's testimony about an appearance 
 in Galilee says, " When they saw him they worshipped him, but 
 some doubted." This then is not the evidence of men wishing to 
 impose on others their own imaginary terrors. And as to John's 
 testimony — the point that now concerns us — this so agrees in the 
 main, and yet in some respects so difiers from the Synoptists', that 
 it becomes a matter of exceeding interest. 
 
 John tells us, as we have seen, that Christ's first appearance after 
 his resurrection was to Mary Magdalene ; and in this, apart from 
 the doubtful passages in Mark, he is corroborated by Matthew to 
 this extent that he says Mary was one of the women whom Jesus 
 met on their way to tell his disciples. How they knew him to be 
 Jesus, beyond his saying to them " All hail," Matthew does not 
 teU us, but according to John, Jesus reveals himself to Mary in a 
 manner so truth-like, so exquisite and touching, that his narrative 
 must either be accepted as genuine, or condemned as a very clever 
 attempt to impose on our credulity. 
 
 The next, which is the first appearance Luke relates, is to " two 
 of them on that same day on their way to Emmaus." But like 
 Mary's, '* their eyes were holden ; that they should not know him." 
 John does not tell us of this appearance, though Paul refers to it in 
 1st Corinthians, xv., 5. But, in order to invalidate John's testimony, 
 Dr. Davidson argues that " the representation given by Luke" of 
 the risen Jesus, " is inconsistent with his (John's) Gospel," — ^that 
 in the latter " he did not appear in a gross material form, but in a 
 state not subject, though visible, to the usual conditions of matter." 
 This is true to some extent, and yet what is Luke's testimony ? 
 That two of his intimate disciples failed to recognize the person of 
 
66 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 their Master in a long walk and conversation with him, supposing 
 him to be "a stranger in Jerusalem ;" nor were their eyes opened 
 till he made himself known to them, by taking bread blessing and 
 breaking it as he had done at the last supper, when, to their astonish- 
 ment, he " vanished out of their sight" or ceased to be seen of them. 
 
 The third appearance is to the twelve, on " the same day at 
 evening being the first day of the week when the doors were shut 
 where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews." " Jesus 
 came," John says, " and stood in the midst and saith, Peace be unto 
 you, and showed them his hands and his side." That he was seen 
 " of the twelve" Paul says ; and Luke gives us a very graphic account 
 of this appearance who tells us that whilst the two disciples, just 
 returned from Emmaus were relating their experience, " Jesus him- 
 self stood in the midst of them and said. Peace he unto you ;" and 
 when they were terrified and in doubt, Jesus, to assure them, 
 " showed to them his hands and his feet." Luke certainly attributes 
 to him language but little consistent with a spiritual existence — 
 " handle me and see for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see 
 me have" — language analogous to that which John ascribes to him 
 when he says to Thomas, " Reach hither thy finger, and behold my 
 hands, &c." Luke also makes him ask " Have ye any meat?" and 
 when they gave him a piece of a broiled fish and an honeycomb, 
 says, " he took and did eat before them" — a tradition which may 
 have arisen from the action ascribed to him by John in Galilee when 
 he told them to " Bring of the fish ye have now caught," on which 
 occasion he is said to " have given them bread and fish likewise; 
 but not himself to have eaten anything. Attach, therefore, what 
 authority we may to these statements, they all evidently had their 
 origin in the Apostolic testimony referred to by Paul in his first 
 letter to the Corinthians, and which meets us in the doubtful pas- 
 sages in Mark where we are told that "he appeared to the eleven 
 as they sat at meat." The Fourth Gospel written at Ephesus and 
 the third probably at Rome, after a period, the latter of some 40, 
 the former of 70 or more years, concur suflficiently in their general 
 import to warrant a foundation, at least, of Apostolical authority. 
 The authority for Luke's is supposed to have been Paul who concurs 
 in this, that both mention " Cephas" or " Simon" as one of the two 
 to whom Christ made himself known. The other Cleopas, or 
 Klopas, is spoken of by John as the son or husband of one of the 
 Mary's that stood by the cross. 
 
 So far then, it would seem, that the Fourth Gospel is quite close 
 
COINCIDENCES. 67 
 
 enough in accord with the Synoptist Luke, as not to justify on this 
 ground, Dr. Davidson's verdict of " unhistorical." And though 
 Luke represents Jesus as " eating and drinking with the Apostles 
 after his resurrection," and attributes in his book of Acts (x., 41), 
 a similar statement to the Apostle Peter, yet some allowance must 
 be made for a writer who speaks confessedly from report, especially 
 in describing the actions of a spiritual existence. For that 
 Luke also supposes some great transformation to have taken 
 place is evident from his description of him being " parted from 
 them," and contrary to the law of gravitation, " carried up into 
 heaven." 
 
 We come now to another appearance that rests solely on John's 
 testimony — a second one to those eleven, " eight days after," when 
 they " were within, and Thomas with them," the doors being shut. 
 The reason given for it is the incredulity of the absent Thomas on 
 the first occasion, who refused to believe, like a modern philosopher, 
 on any lesser evidence than his own senses. This evidence is given 
 him in presence of his brethren, with this pointed admonition, 
 " Blessed are they who, not seeing, are yet believing,"* words suf- 
 ficiently justified, without ascribing any transcendental gloss to 
 them, as Dr. Davidson has done, by the simple fact, that it was 
 quite impossible that all his followers, to the end of time, could 
 continue to receive such satisfaction. 
 
 Now the question arises. Is this appearance an invention on the 
 part of this author ? We have nothing, certainly, to corroborate 
 this statement in the concurrent tradition. Neither have we any- 
 thing to corroborate that of Paul as to a separate appearance unto 
 James and to " five hundred brethren at once." If these occurred, 
 why not this also ? The admonition above ascribed to Jesus is 
 not so transcendental in spirit as that ascribed to him in the 
 doubtful verses of Mark's Gospel: "He that believeth, and is 
 baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be 
 damned." This we might suppose written by some transcendental 
 author of the second century to magnify the importance of belief 
 in Christ. But why suppose the other to be the invention of some 
 spurious author, who thus gives us " the lie circumstantial of person, 
 time, and place ? " 
 
 ' See Greek text — /jiaKdpioi oi fii) \S6vTes koI iruTTeicravTfs. 
 
68 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 THE APPEAEANCE IN GALILEE. 
 
 The appearance in Galilee, the subject of the 21st chapter of this 
 Gospel has no connexion with the main body of the work. The 
 Gospel is complete without it. It opens with the announcement 
 that " the word " or will of Deity " was made " or revealed in 
 " flesh," in the person of him to whom the Baptist testified; and it 
 concludes with the assertion, that " these are written that ye 
 might believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of God, and that 
 believing ye might have life through his name." In the whole 
 body of the work there is no promise, as in the other Gospels, that 
 he would be seen of his disciples in Galilee after his resurrection, 
 and no command that they should " go before him into Galilee." 
 This chapter is evidently an appendix, an after-thought, written, 
 of course, for some purpose, but evidently not to supply any 
 omission in the work itself. Such is and must be the judgment of 
 all critics; but with Grotius, many say that it is the work of 
 another hand than the Evangelist's, added, in all likelihood, after 
 John's death, possibly by some member of the church at Ephesus. 
 Dr. Davidson says, " Probably a Jewish Christian, before the end 
 of the second century, wrote the supplement." 
 
 We cannot concur in this conclusion. His twelve reasons 
 against its genuineness appear to us unsatisfactory. No MS., he 
 admits, is so ancient as to want it. The style is not materially 
 different ; the difference of language not greater than that noticed 
 by him in the opening chapters of Luke's Gospel, and that owing 
 to a like cause — a reference on the author's part to previously 
 existing writings. 
 
 Hitherto this Gospel contains no direct reference to previous 
 ones, if we except where it speaks of the inscription on the cross, 
 and says that " John was not yet cast into prison," though 
 it does contain many remarkable coincidences. It is a direct, 
 independent testimony to the life of Jesus, claiming to be based 
 on direct evidence, expressed in the writer's own language, 
 without any of those parallel passages so notable in the Synoptics. 
 It widely differs from them in many things, and on that account is 
 all the more valuable, as the writer makes no attempt to harmonize 
 incongruities, or supply omissions in the earlier biographies, 
 though his work frequently does both. But here we come to an 
 
COINCIDENCES. 69 
 
 appendix of a stamp different from the body of the work, contain- 
 ing a manifest reference to the previous Gospels, and evidently 
 meant to supply an omission in their testimony. No doubt such an 
 appendix requires to be scrutinized -with great jealousy, if not to 
 be rejected, unless we can assign a sufficient reason for its 
 reception. 
 
 In the previous Gospels, at least in those of Matthew and Mark, 
 Jesus, at the last supper, is made to say to his disciples, " But after 
 I am risen again I will go before you into Galilee." Again, at the 
 sepulchre, the "angel" in Matthew, and the "young man" in 
 Mark, says to the women, " Go quickly, and tell his disciples that 
 he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall -ye see him, as he 
 said unto you." And again, in Matthew, when Jesus himself met 
 the women, he is represented as saying to them, " Go, tell my 
 brethren, that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me." 
 
 Here is a most remarkable reiteration of a promise and command 
 in two Gospels, both supposed to be founded on Apostolic testi- 
 mony ; and yet notwithstanding one of them tells us nothing of 
 any appearance in Galilee, its testimony, it Is supposed, having 
 been abruptly terminated by Peter's death. Matthew does, but 
 in that unsatisfactory way before referred to, where it is said, that 
 when the eleven saw him " in the mountain where Jesus had 
 appointed them ;" " they worshipped him, but some doubted." Luke's 
 testimony, as we have seen, is quite different, but being founded 
 admittedly on report, is not entitled to the same weight. 
 
 John had said nothing about this in the body of his work. He 
 had only told us of Jesus saying to them in general terms, " I 
 go away and come again unto you;" " a little while and ye shall 
 not see me, and again a little while and ye shall see me ; " " but I 
 will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no 
 man taketh from you." Had the Apostolic record, therefore, been 
 left in this state, it would, no doubt, have been very unsatisfactory. 
 And here we have a chapter affixed to this Gospel designed 
 manifestly to supply the deficiency. 
 
 But what, then ? Are we to charge some Jewish Christian of 
 the second century, himself a believer in the faith, with deliberately 
 inventing this appearance, and adding this chapter to the Apostolic 
 manuscript ? We have seen that Eusebius reports the tradition in 
 his day, that " the three Gospels previously written were handed 
 to him (John), and that he admitted them, giving his testimony to 
 their truth ; but that there was only wanting in the narrative the 
 
70 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 account of the things done by Christ, among the first of his deeds, and 
 at the commencement of his Gospel." May we not suppose, there- 
 fore, that on a review of his work, and on comparing it with the 
 others, it might seem to himself and friends there was still some- 
 thing wanting to the narrative — that here was a promise of Jesus, 
 according to Mark, unfulfilled, a direction given to them not complied 
 with, or, at least, very imperfectly, as recorded in Matthew's Gospel? 
 And might it not seem right to John and his amanuensis to 
 resume the pen — for that he had an amanuensis will be shown 
 when his style is treated of — and to add this testimony, not to 
 complete his own narrative, but to supply an important want in 
 the narratives of others ? We must either suppose this, or suppose 
 it to be some deliberate invention ; or, at least, that some vague 
 tradition was embellished, and palmed off on the church as the 
 testimony of one who was present on the occasion, for the writer 
 adds: " This is the disciple that testifieth of these things, and 
 wrote these things and we know that his testimony is true.'' 
 
 Whilst the chapter itself, however, is, in its main fact, so much 
 at variance with the testimony of Luke on matters subsequent to 
 the resurrection, it yet contains another of those coincidences with 
 that Evangelist and the others so remarkable throughout. The 
 disciples, finding themselves in Galilee as directed, and not knowing 
 as yet well what to think of it— he that "was to have redeemed 
 Israel" thus gone from them— at the instigation, as it would seem, 
 of Peter, have resumed their fishing on the lake. Peter and 
 Andrew, and the two sons of Zebedee, had been so employed when 
 Jesus first called them to be his followers. On that occasion, as 
 on this, they had " toiled all night, and taken nothing." On 
 that occasion Jesus was with them in the ship. Now he stands 
 awaiting them on the shore, but " they knew not that it was 
 Jesus." In this case how did the Master make himself known to 
 them ? By giving them a like command, which is attended with a 
 like result. On the first occasion, indeed, " the net brake," but 
 now, as if emblematic of their future success as " fishers of men," 
 " they are not able to draw it for the multitude of fishes." John 
 had not told us anything before about the draft of fishes. Not 
 once does he mention the occupation of these men on the Lake of 
 Galilee. Is this story, then, a plagiarism for a purpose by some 
 Jewish Christian, written afterwards and affixed, we know not by 
 what influence, to the recognized Apostolic treatise ? Is it a myth 
 of some unknown author of an historical treatise, alert in hitting 
 
COINCIDENCES. 71 
 
 off such coincidences ? Or is it John's corroboration and explanation 
 of the promise ascribed to Jesus by Mark and Matthew ? And is 
 this another mode of revealing himself to those disciples, as Luke 
 said he did to Simon and Cleopas, by " the breaking of bread? " 
 
 It appears, too, according to this narrative, that Jesus was dis- 
 pleased with Peter, whom he had occasion frequently to admonish 
 formerly, for leading away the disciples to their old mode of life. 
 He says to him very pointedly, " Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou 
 me more than these ? " pointing, no doubt, to the fishes they had 
 caught. Peter replies: "Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love 
 thee." And yet the question is repeated three times to his annoy- 
 ance and confusion ; and each time, to Peter's emphatic protesta- 
 tions, the response is, " Feed my sheep." 
 
 Dr. Davidson argues upon this that the object of the author was 
 to bring Peter into prominence. He says: "It is probable that 
 the work was at first undervalued by Jewish Christians, because of 
 the inferior position which Peter occupies in it." And what is the 
 effect of the above admonition if not to depreciate him who had 
 denied his Master below him of whom it is said, " If I will that he 
 tarry till I come, what is that to thee; follow thou me?" But, 
 verily, if this scene really occurred by the Lake of Galilee, we need 
 seek no other cause for the future " boldness " of Simon Peter, nor 
 ask ourselves how it was that the man who, with oaths, denied 
 Jesus in the hall of Caiaphas, became fifty days afterwards the 
 great Apostle of the Gospel, at the Feast of Pentecost, and to 
 their faces, defied the whole power of the Jewish priesthood. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 RETROSPECTIVE. 
 
 We have now reviewed the facts of the life of Jesus, as narrated in 
 these histories, and have not failed to note how widely they differ, 
 especially as to the first part of it. This difference we have made 
 no attempt to lessen unduly, but shown how necessary it is, even 
 had we not been told of them, to presuppose those anterior visits to 
 Jerusalem, and controversies with its doctors of which John 
 speaks, to understand fully his Galilean teaching. And throughout 
 the histories, we have traced a chain of incidents, at every link of 
 which they touch each other, from the testimony of the Baptist, the 
 
72 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 opening of Christ's ministry at Nazareth, the calling of the 
 Apostles, — xa the feeding of the multitude, the portraits of the two 
 sisters, the entry into Jerusalem, the cleansing of the temple, his 
 conduct before Pilate, until they finally coalesce in the crucifixion, 
 resurrection, and subsequent reappearances. These are incidents 
 surely not less worthy to be noted than their manifest divergencies. 
 They are just such incidents as any judge, commenting on conflict- 
 ing testimony in a court of justice, would feel bound to notice. 
 And the argument he would found on them would surely be, 
 not that the fourth witness was unreliable — not that he had 
 absolutely contradicted the other witnesses, but that he had told us 
 many facts and incidents, in many cases casting much light on 
 the testimony of the others, explaining much that had seemed 
 obscure and unaccountable, reconciling statements seemingly utterly 
 at variance, and corroborating much with all the clearness of an 
 eye-witness. 
 
 And yet Mr. Tayler in commenting on these differences says — 
 
 " It must be obvious, I think, to every one who has carefully gone 
 through the foregoing comparisons, that the old theory which so long 
 found acceptance in the Church, of John's having written his Gospel to 
 fill up and complete the earlier three, does not meet the actual conditions 
 of the case. John's is not so much another, as in one sense a different 
 Gospel. It is impossible to harmonize the two forms of the narrative. 
 One excludes the other. If the three first Gospels represent Christ's 
 public ministry truly, the Fourth cannot be accepted as simple reliable 
 history."* 
 
 That John did not write purposely to " fill up and complete the 
 earlier three," and that " it is in one sense a different Gospel," 
 I readily admit, which makes it all the more valuable to us. But 
 that "the one excludes the other," or that "it is impossible to 
 hai-monize " them, I leave the reader to decide. 
 
 The only fact of importance, I believe, in John's narrative that 
 has not been noticed, is the raising of Lazarus — a fact which it 
 is certainly very diflScult to place. Much however has been said of 
 it because the other writers do not mention it, and to the minds of 
 many it forms the chief objection to this Gospel's authenticity. 
 Those who deny the supernatural can, as they think, after the 
 manner of Strauss and K.enan, resolve the accounts of the other 
 
 * See " Fourth Gospel," pp. 6-7. 
 
COINCIDENCES. 73 
 
 miracles into legend, but here is one of a remarkable nature in the 
 neighbourhood of Jerusalem said to have been attested by an eye- 
 witness. It is not however the only one for which we are supposed 
 to have Apostolic testimony, and to which the Synoptists as well 
 as John attribute much of Christ's influence. The cure of the sick 
 of the palsy and of the man who had his hand withered was done, 
 as all the Synoptists tell us, in the presence of Christ's enemies as 
 well as his own disciples. And if we eliminate all the supernatural 
 from their narratives, we will leave, it is to be feared, but a very 
 shadowy and mythical Christ. When the Baptist sent two of his 
 disciples to Jesus to ask him, "Art thou he that should come?" we 
 are told that " in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities 
 and plagues, and to many blind he restored their sight," and told 
 John's messengers to go back and tell him what they had heard 
 and seen. That the Synoptists do not mention the raising of 
 Lazarus is no more strange than that John does not mention the 
 raising of the daughter of Jairus, though one of the three selected 
 by Christ to witness it. And to Luke alone are we indebted for 
 the beautiful story of the widow's son of Nain, restored by J esus 
 to his mother, a fact which he says occurred " the day after" he 
 cured the centurion's servant in Capernaum, when " many of his 
 disciples and much people were with him" — shortly after the 
 calling of Levi and the twelve, whose attention must have been 
 forcibly arrested by this his first act of resummoning the dead to 
 life. And if these two acts were done previously in Galilee, is it 
 so strange that another of the same kind should have been done in 
 the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, though unnoticed by these 
 authors?" 
 
 There is no doubt that much is made of this latter act by the 
 author of the Fourth Gospel. It is the third and last of those 
 great works, by which Jesus, as this writer represents, manifested 
 his power to the High Priests of Judaism, and by which he 
 accounts for their deadly hostility to him. By this act he seems to 
 have united against him the hostility both of Sadducees and 
 Pharisees in the Sanhedrim. By the first act, " the cure of the 
 impotent man," we may suppose the Pharisees alone would be 
 offended, "because he had done it on the Sabbath day." His 
 second, the opening of the eyes of the man born blind, was done 
 after they had " taken up stones to cast at him," in order to prove 
 that he was " the light of the world " — a proposition which he had- 
 asserted — John viii., 12 — and which these Pharisees had denied 
 
74 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 The third, is this great work at Bethany, performed some time 
 after he had been driven with violence from their city, by which he 
 announces himself as " the resurrection and the life," which led the 
 Pharisees to say among themselves, " Perceive ye how ye prevail 
 nothing, behold the world is gone after him," — on which occasion 
 they and the chief priests summon a council and determine — " If 
 we let him thus alone, all men will believe on him, and the Komans 
 will come and take away both our place and nation." 
 
 The Synoptists manifestly leave us very much in the dark as to 
 the cause of that hostility. That a great hierarchy, like that of Judea, 
 not more venerable for its antiquity than sacred in the eyes of 
 every Jew, and sustained by all the power of Rome, should have 
 pursued, with so unrelenting animosity, an humble teacher of 
 peace and righteousness in the distant Galilee, seems somewhat 
 beneath their dignity, especially if he had given them no previous 
 offence. His disposition to speak severely of the rulers of his 
 country, among the subjects of a different jurisdiction, from what- 
 ever cause it proceeded, might have been overlooked. And even 
 when he " stedfastly set his face to go up to Jerusalem," fore- 
 warning his disciples, as the Synoptists tell us, that " the chief 
 priests would kill him," had they no other reason than these disclose 
 to us, we might have supposed that a lesser punishment would 
 have satisfied them than dooming him to death. John's object is 
 clearly to unveil the antagonism subsisting betwixt Jesus and 
 these men from the very first, reporting perhaps more correctly the 
 substance and spirit than the very language of their disputations ; 
 and he dwells at length on this work at Bethany, in the immediate 
 neighbourhood of Jerusalem, not only to account for its citizens 
 joining with his Galilean followers in welcoming Jesus, but also for 
 the unanimity of the Jewish Council in determining on his death. 
 
 The Synoptists, also, make Jesus come from Galilee to Jerusalem 
 by the way of Jordan, or, at least, as passing through Jericho, sur- 
 rounded by a multitude all the way, in a seemingly triumphant 
 procession, without pausing almost till he enters the city, and 
 cleanses the temple of its traflackers — a proceeding we have deemed 
 unlikely on the part of Jesus, if this were his first visit, and in 
 Avhich they are much at variance with John's history. Luke, how- 
 ever, as we have seen, speaks of a journey through Samaria pre- 
 viously, of Christ's interview with Martha and Mary, and his 
 sending out the seventy — a period of time seemingly omitted by 
 Mark and Matthew. And John represents Jesus as going away 
 
COINCIDENCES. 75 
 
 into Bethabara, beyond Jordan, after the Jews had " sought again 
 to take him," " into the place where John baptized, and there he 
 abode." From this it was that he came at the summons of the 
 sisters to the grave of Lazarus. And after this he " went into 
 a country near to the wilderness, into a city called Ephraim, and 
 there continued with his disciples." " The wilderness " here 
 spoken of seems to be that to the south-east of Jerusalem, towards 
 the Dead Sea. " The city called Ephraim " was near to Jericho, 
 from which the Synoptists bring him up. Is not this, therefore, 
 the period alluded to by Luke? Bethabara was on the further 
 side of Jericho from Jerusalem. May it not have been whilst 
 residing there that he sent out the seventy ? In their absence may 
 he not have visited Bethany ? Dr. Davidson admits that this 
 portion of Luke's history is attended with much difficulty (Vol. ii., 
 p. 48) ; that " the Galilean ministry of Jesus is presented in a 
 diflFerent aspect by Luke from that of Matthew ; " that " instead of 
 Jesus spending the greater part of his ministry in Galilee, the 
 Evangelist shortens his abode there to throw the main portion of 
 that ministry into the journey which he took before suffering, 
 dying, and rising again." And again, in page 360, in speaking of 
 this time, he says: "A time that may have continued several 
 weeks before the Passover at which he died." 
 
 No doubt the matter is attended with much difficulty, not less 
 than to reconcile the different accounts given us of Paul's journeys. 
 Still it hardly justifies the assertion of Mr. Tayler, that "it is 
 impossible to harmonize the two forms of the narrative — that the 
 one excludes the other." Much less can it invalidate the force 
 of those coincidences now pointed out; and these indications 
 that that scene before Pilate, the inscription on the cross, and 
 what was done there by the soldiers, is here described to us on the 
 authority of an eye-witness, as positively declared. 
 
76 THE AUTHENTICITT Or JOHN'S GOSPEL, 
 
 PART II. 
 
 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE MODE OF TEACHING. 
 
 We have now to consider the objections that have been made to 
 the authenticity of this Gospel, founded still on internal evidence, 
 but on other circumstances than the divergency of the history from 
 that of the Synoptics. And the first of these we shall consider is, 
 the different mode of teaching which John ascribes to Christ — 
 a peculiarity that cannot fail to strike even the common reader. 
 
 But before entering on this subject, we must premise that we do 
 not claim for the reports of Christ's discourses in either history a 
 strict verbal accuracy, and less so for those reported by this 
 Evangelist. We believe that the doctrine of verbal inspiration, so 
 much insisted on by the so-called orthodox churches, has done a 
 great Injury to the cause of sound criticism, and to the authority 
 of those documents themselves, as it has generated in their oppo- 
 nents a too exacting judgment, requiring a uniformity too strict 
 and accurate, and magnifying into importance matters of really 
 trivial moment. For no other history than the sacred has so pre- 
 posterous a claim been advanced, and, consequently, none has been 
 scrutinized with so rigorous a judgment. The verbal correctness 
 of the Synoptics can be amply disproved by a simple collation of 
 parallel passages. And it would be to assume a startling miracle 
 in mnemonics — a miracle for which we have certainly no evidence 
 — that Christ's language in the Fourth Gospel, after a lapse 
 of some sixty years or more, was given literally and verbally 
 accurate. All that we have a right to claim in either case is a 
 substantial accuracy as to facts and sentiments, the form and out- 
 line of some parables included. Collate any narrative in the 
 Synoptics — the cure of the centurion's servant, the account of the 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 77 
 
 blind man healed at Jericho, the riding into Jerusalem — and the 
 most orthodox may satisfy themselves that we have no more than 
 this general agreement. And if it be deemed impossible that 
 John could have reproduced from memory with verbal accuracy — 
 for we cannot suppose him to have taken notes — those long dis- 
 courses delivered to the twelve at the last supper, it is equally so 
 that Luke could have derived from tradition that exquisite word- 
 painting which characterizes the parables of the good Samaritan, 
 the prodigal son, the rich man, and Lazarus, &c., and which, in the 
 tradition of the Koman Church, seems to have gained for him the 
 reputation of an artist. 
 
 Now, in John's Gospel, if we except the parable of " the Good 
 Shepherd, that giveth his life for the sheep," a manifest allusion to 
 Zachariah xiii., 7, " who knoweth his sheep, and is known of 
 them," referring to Ezekiel xxxiv., and the simile of the vine 
 tree and its branches — an allusion seemingly to what he had said 
 to the Pharisees about " the vineyard and wicked husbandmen," as 
 given in the Synoptics, a parable taken from Isaiah's prophecy; 
 save these, we find few of those parables without which, in Galilee, 
 as we are told, he did not speak unto the people. That he did 
 not always confine himself to parables, however, even there, we 
 have abundant evidence in the sermon on the mount. But in 
 John we have a much higher, more symbolic, and impassioned 
 style of imagery. Nicodemus must be " born again." His dis- 
 ciples must " eat of the bread that cometh down from heaven." 
 They must " abide in him " to be nourished, as the branches of the 
 vine are by its sap — must " enter by him into the sheepfold," and 
 under his guidance " go in and out, and find pasture ; " whilst he 
 himself is " the Light of the World " to guide them, " the Bread 
 from heaven " given of God to nourish them, " the Living Water " 
 to assuage their thirst. No doubt much of this highly figurative 
 language was used by Jesus, which is not given us by the 
 Synoptists, for they do report language equally bold and figurative 
 when they make him say, " I beheld Satan as lightning fall from 
 heaven; " and again, " Nevertheless, hereafter ye shall see the Son 
 of Man sitting on the right hand of Power, and coming in the 
 clouds of heaven." 
 
 This impassioned language — the utterance of high and lofty 
 feeling — his Synoptical historians seem to have been unable to 
 comprehend ; they understood it literally, and therefore much of 
 it would not be reported by them. Even some of his parables, of 
 
78 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 no difficulty to us, these men required him to explain. They vera 
 looking for a temporal prince, not spiritual bread bestowed on 
 them from heaven. So that even if this language were used by 
 Jesus, which John attributes to him in Capernaum, and on which 
 Mr. Tayler, Dr. Davidson, Strauss, and others, have laid so much 
 stress as indicating the thought of a later age, it would not, in all 
 likelihood, have been reported by them. John tells us, and we 
 can well believe him, that it gave them so much offence at the 
 time, that " many of his disciples went back and walked no more 
 with him." And according, also, to the Synoptics, we find him, 
 in a later period of his ministry, exclaiming against Chorazin, 
 Bethsaida, and Capernaum, for having, through some cause, 
 rejected him — possibly for such language, from which they would 
 infer that he was beside himself. 
 
 These things are pointed out here to show that some of this 
 difference, so observable in the two reports of Christ's teaching, 
 may be justly ascribed to his reporters. The Synoptists wrote at 
 a time when the prevailing expectations of the early Christians as 
 to a speedy visible return of Jesus to the earth to establish the 
 Messianic kingdom, had not been made to give place, by the hard 
 logic of events, to more spiritual conceptions. And that expecta- 
 tion breaks out in the language that these attribute to the Christ: 
 " And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and 
 lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh " (Luke xxi., 
 28). But John lived to an age that saw these expectations dissi- 
 pated. With him Christ's "kingdom is no more of this world," 
 and Christ's teaching acquires the deep spiritual meaning of his 
 own experience. 
 
 Besides, different minds are of different temperaments, and the 
 writings of each, even of historians, are in some degree a reflex of 
 his peculiar temperament, education, and state of information at 
 the time. One is a man of fact, and the other of sentiment ; one is 
 a poet, another a philosopher. What strikes the mind of one is 
 not that which appeals most forcibly to the other, which is dwelt 
 on, and remembered. ' The man of learning and observation will 
 give a very different account of the same transaction from that 
 given by the unlettered peasant. And had John written when 
 the Synoptists did, no doubt he would have given us a very 
 different version of the Saviour's history. In the facts of the early 
 ministry, and in a higher tone of sentiment, it might and would 
 have differed from theirs, but not in its intimations of a Messianic 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 79 
 
 kingdom upon earth. Then the ardent expectation of the speedy 
 and literal fulfilment of Christ's prediction before Caiaphas would 
 have broken out, as it has done in the Book of Revelation: 
 "Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him; 
 and they also which pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth 
 shall wail because of him." 
 
 The minds of those to whom we must trace the first origin of 
 the Synoptical accounts were evidently rude and realistic, on 
 whom deep sentiment and lofty imagery would have been lost; to 
 whom it was necessary to convey moral sentiment in parable to fix 
 it in the memory. These have, therefore, recorded for us the 
 parables and acts of Jesus. But they have not caught the higher 
 inspiration of him who said, when all humanity seemed leagued to 
 crush him, " And yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me." 
 And when he speaks of the " Son of Man coming in his glory, and 
 all his holy angels with him," his high imagery these have under- 
 stood literally, as they had not an opportunity of correcting their 
 ideas, like the fourth Evangelist, by a more matured experience. 
 When John wrote, however, not only had "the Spirit of Truth come 
 to lead him into all truth," but the hard teaching of experience had 
 come to give him the true spiritual meaning of Christ's predictions. 
 The vineyard had been taken from the wicked husbandman. The 
 armies that had laid waste Jerusalem had prepared the way for the 
 Son of Man coming in his kingdom. The Synoptists wrote 
 amidst the clouds and darkness of the impending struggle ; John 
 when the thick clouds had passed, and the glory of a brighter day 
 had beamed upon him. And why should he now record the old 
 parables — once of doubtful import to him, by which it was pre- 
 figured? Once it was indeed true, as the Synoptists tell us, that 
 " no man knoweth the Son but the Father;" but John has realized 
 that " grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." The warnings of 
 Jesus as to false Christs and false prophets are matters of the past, 
 and " the true light now shineth." 
 
 The above suggestions, which the reader can amplify and verify 
 for himself, will account in part for the altered style of this 
 Evangelist. But another cause of the seeming difference in the 
 mode of teaching here ascribed to Jesus may be clearly traced to the 
 practice of Christ himself In this Gospel we find him chiefly in 
 controversy with Scribes and Pharisees, men of learning and 
 intelligence on religious subjects ; quite a different class from the 
 rude peasantry of Galilee. Even in the Synoptics, when he 
 
80 THE AUTHENTICITY OE JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 addresses himself to these, his language is very different from what 
 it is to the unlettered multitude. When asked the question, 
 " Why speakest thou unto them in parables ? " the answer is, 
 " Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the king- 
 dom of heaven, but to them it is not given." These parables he 
 explains to his own disciples. But when he addresses himself to 
 Scribes and doctors the appeal is plainly to " what is written in the 
 law, how readest thou ?" When these men accuse his disciples of 
 violating the Sabbath by plucking and eating ears of corn on that 
 day, his answer is a reference to "what David did," to what the 
 priests themselves do blamelessly on the Sabbath ; and, finally, he 
 dismisses them with another reference to their own Scriptures; 
 " But go ye and learn what that meaneth (Hos. vi., 6), I will have 
 mercy, and not sacrifice." When these men would entrap him 
 with their questions about the tribute money, the resurrection, and 
 the great commandment of all, Jesus does not respond in parable, 
 but in the words of Moses, " The first of all the commandments is. 
 Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, &c. ;" " God is the 
 God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob ; not the God of the 
 dead, but the living ;" and our duty is to " render unto Csesar the 
 things that are Csesar's, and to God the things that are God's." 
 When he in turn propounds a question, it is about what David 
 meant in the 110th Psabn, " The Lord said unto my Lord, &c." 
 And if he does tell them in a parable about " a vineyard let out to 
 wicked husbandmen," it is almost in the language of Isaiah (v., 7), 
 whose " vineyard of the Lord of Hosts was the house of Israel." 
 
 John's Gospel is chiefly occupied with these discussions with the 
 Pharisees, in the city of Jerusalem itself, the seat of their power ; so 
 that we should expect a different style of teaching in it to that 
 addressed to the rude peasantry of Galilee. And if in John, we 
 find him telling these men that they " are not Abraham's children, 
 but of their father the devil, and the works of their father they will 
 do," what is this but the same in substance as the Synoptists 
 attribute to him in the Temple when he reproaches them as " blind 
 guides" — " whited sepulchres" — " devouring widow's houses, and for 
 a pretence making long prayers." Their Prophets had foretold tliat 
 the Messiah would be a " light to lighten the Gentiles" as well as 
 "the glory of my people Israel;" and John represents Jesus as 
 discussing this point with them — see chap, viii., 12, to the end — 
 claiming to be that light, that Abraham their father had foreseen 
 in him that light, in proof of which, at their temple's gate he opens 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 81 
 
 the eyes of one born blind, as when, in Galilee he directs the lepers 
 whom he cleansed to "go show themselves to the priests, /or a 
 testimony unto them." 
 
 Hence the high, exalted, spiritual tone of this Gospel ; as well 
 as that spirit of recrimination which some think so foreign to their 
 ideal of Christ. It records, not parables to peasants who listened 
 with admiration, but discussions about the meaning of their own 
 Scriptures with learned doctors, who reviled and vilified this Naza- 
 rene. Christ claims in it, to be not only that " Son of David" 
 whom these men expected, but one whom — even as the Synoptists 
 tell us — " David had called Lord ;" — of whom Isaiah had said that 
 " the Gentiles should come to his light" — of whom Zachariah 
 speaks as a Shepherd to be smitten — " the good shepherd that 
 giveth his life for the sheep." To his own disciples, the old " vine- 
 yard of the Lord of hosts" being given over to destruction, Jesus is 
 " the true vine and his Father is the husbandman." He is the 
 spiritual " bread from heaven" of which if a man eateth he shall 
 live for ever; " not as your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness 
 and are dead." Many of those disciples thought this " an hard 
 saying." Such language gave offence to them, and is not reported 
 by the Synoptists. It is, however, the imagery in which high 
 impassioned feeling clothes itself, and in which Jesus was wont to 
 indulge himself as we learn from the Synoptics when he compares his 
 coming to the lightning shining from the East even to the West. But 
 such bold metaphors conveyed no meaning to many of his disciples. 
 They were looking for one who was in a more substantial realistic 
 manner to " have redeemed Israel." It was needful for Jesus to 
 go from them, that the spirit of truth might come to them. Only 
 after many years of watching, waiting, and profound reflection on 
 his Master's teaching, did it come to him in all its fulness, of whom 
 the Master said, '.' If I will that he tarry till I come what is that 
 to thee." And then it was, though late in life, that Jesus was 
 revealed to him as the divine or spiritual " word of God," " made 
 flesh" for human guidance. He became " the true vine" of a more 
 "comprehensive Judaism than priest or Pharisee had ever dreamt of 
 -^" the great tree" of the Synoptics, whose very leaves would suffice 
 for the healing of the nations^" the living water" or true Siloa, 
 that " fountain" of which Zachariah speaks that should " be opened 
 to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin 
 and for uncleanness." This purpose of his coming had been but 
 dimly apprehended even by the Synoptists. But to John, not only 
 
82 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 had the Comforter, but Jesus himself in spirit come according to 
 his promise, and " led him into all truth." 
 
 CHAP TEE II. 
 
 THE SELE-ASSEKTION OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 We have now considered why it is that " for the pithy sayings and 
 popular parables of the Three First Gospels, the Fourth substitutes 
 long argumentative discourses;"* and attributed it partly to the 
 different class of individuals, — the Jewish doctors of Jerusalem — 
 with whom Jesus is represented as discussing his claims to be con- 
 sidered the Christ. But there is another objection to the mode of 
 teaching ascribed to him in this Gospel, on which Strauss in his 
 " New Life of Jesus," has laid much stress, and which as it weighs 
 heavily on the minds of many who have considered this question, 
 may be worthy of some notice. This is the self-assertion which this 
 book ascribes to Jesus, so inconsistent with his usual character for 
 humility. 
 
 By the Synoptists, Jesus is represented as asking, " Why callest 
 thou me good ? none is good but one, that is God ;" whereas by John 
 he is represented as asserting himself thus — " My Father worketh 
 hitherto, and I work" — " the Father loveth the son, and showeth 
 him all things that himself doeth" — " I and my Father are one." 
 
 Strauss makes the most of this argument, and says: — 
 
 " The speeches of Jesus about himself in this Grospel are an uninter- 
 rupted Doxology, only translated out of the second person into the first, 
 from the form of address to another, into the utterance about a self ; and 
 the fact that they are found edifying even at the present day, can only be 
 explained by the habit of transforming them into the second person. 
 When an enthusiastic Christian calls his Master, supposed to have been 
 raised to heaven ' the light of the world,' when he says of him that he 
 who has seen him has seen the Father that is God himself, we excuse the 
 faithful worshipper such extravagance. But when he goes so far as the 
 Fourth Evangelist, and puts the utterances of his own pious enthusiam 
 into the mouth of Jesus, in the form of his own utterances about himself) 
 he does him a very perilous service."! 
 
 * See 6th page of Mr. Tayler's work. 
 
 t Authorized Translation of "A New Life of Jesus by F. Strauss, pages 272, 273, 
 Published 1865. 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDBKED. 83 
 
 If alleged against the doctrine of " plenary inspiration" — against 
 those who advocate the full verbal accuracy of this Gospel — the 
 argument may be possessed of some weight, but loses much of it — 
 becomes indeed light as air, the moment it is admitted that the 
 strength of those expressions may be due somewhat, or in great 
 measure, to the enthusiasm of the Evangelist. We do not however 
 mean to deny that Christ did not assert himself If conscious of a 
 divine mission it was his duty to have done so, in the very presence 
 of those priests of Judaism. All prophets do so. Isaiah " cries 
 aloud and spares not." Jeremiah " stands in the gate of the Lord's 
 house and proclaims there his word." These men assert their 
 superior knowledge. They declare themselves at one with God. 
 
 Strauss admits that parallel assertions of himself are to be found 
 in the Synoptists; for instance when he says that " All things are 
 delivered unto me of the Father, and no man knoweth the Son but 
 the Father, &c." If so, the argument loses all its force as an 
 objection solely to the Authenticity of John's Gospel, which indeed 
 its author would admit. It is plain, however, that there is an element 
 of Christ's character, as portrayed in the two histories, actually 
 coincident. But Strauss argues in page 275 — that: — 
 
 " In the Fourth Gospel the substratum of all utterances of this 
 kind lies in all that is said about the higher nature of Jesus;" 
 whereas we conceive that those more frequent and emphatic utter- 
 ances were owing to the position in which the Fourth Gospel 
 places Jesus, namely, in direct collision with the priests and others 
 in Jerusalem, and that this assertion, not of himself but of his high 
 office — for he asserts that " of himself he can do nothing " (John v., 
 30) — is throughout the necessary result of this antagonism. 
 
 The very purpose for which John wrote his Gospel, as we have 
 premised, was to show to the unbelieving Jews and Greeks at 
 Ephesus and elsewhere, that Jesus had repeatedly, before his 
 last visit to the holy city, asserted there his claims to the 
 Messianic office, to be " the Light of the World," spoken of by the 
 prophets. And this assertion of himself he does make, quite as 
 emphatically, even according to the Synoptics, on his last visit: 
 " What is this, then, that is written," said he to the Scribes 
 (Luke xx.j 17), '" The stone that the builders rejected, the same 
 is become the head of the corner.'" In his parable of the vine- 
 yard taken from them, he is " the Heir," " the Son," whom the 
 lord of the vineyard sent unto them saying, " They will reverence 
 my son." In his disputations with them, he asks, " Why say they 
 
84 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 that Christ is the son of David ? for David himself calleth him 
 Lord, and why is he then his Son ? " In his admonitions to his own 
 disciples his warning is (Mat. xxiii., 8), " Be not ye -called Eabbi, 
 for one is your Master, even Christ,_ and all ye are brethren " — a 
 mastery which he assumed, undoubtedly, to himself. In his 
 description of the last judgment attributed to him by Matthew 
 (xxv., '61, &c.), " The Son of Man comes in his glory, and all his holy 
 angels with him." When adjured by the high priest, he asserts 
 his claim to the title, " Son of God." And even in the distant 
 Gralilee, as we have seen, when the doctors of Jerusalem inter- 
 preted his words as blasphemous, when curing the sick of the 
 palsy, he claims to have " power on earth to forgive sins." 
 
 It is not, therefore, to John's Grospel that this assertion of 
 himself by Jesus is by any means confined. It shows itself on all 
 occasions when he comes into collision with these Scribes and 
 Pharisees. If we reject this Gospel on that account we must 
 reject the others also. But the reason it becomes more prominent 
 in John's is because Jesus is there brought into collision more 
 frequently with these men; because it is, in fact, a Judean Gospel, 
 written to show that his last visit to Jerusalem was not the first in 
 which he put forth similar pretensions. Besides, when John wrote, 
 the apprehensions of Caiaphas in counselling his death had become 
 a fixed fact in history. Subsequent events had revealed the Christ 
 in an aspect more consonant with his own lofty claims, as put forth 
 by the Synoptists, which they did not seem at this time fully to 
 comprehend. In John's day, he stood confessed as that " Light 
 of the World " of which they had said nothing, but of which the 
 prophets had written ; — that " Son of David," whose lordship even 
 David had acknowledged ; that " Word of God," that goeth forth 
 to regenerate the world. 
 
 That Jesus should so assert himself, I have said, was only his 
 duty if possessed of a consciousness of a Divine mission, as it is 
 wont for all Christians to believe. Grant the existence of such a 
 consciousness, and it became incumbent on him to go up to 
 Jerusalem, and so to assert himself, not merely to peasants in 
 Galilee, but to the rulers of his country. That consciousness 
 might, no doubt, have been the result of an insane enthusiasm, as 
 those rulers thought, had -not results established its veracity. That 
 it was inconsistent with true humility and religious reverence can- 
 not be admitted. Strauss says that " no man of true religious 
 feeling could have uttered such expressions," but he must have 
 
OBJECTIONS CON8IDEEED. 85 
 
 expressed it' in some manner if he possessed the consciousness. 
 The objection is one, therefore, that involves a denial of all con- 
 sciousness of a divine mission on the part of Christ. 
 
 Strauss argues, however, as if the author of this Gospel attri- 
 buted to Jesus, what the Synoptists do not, a super-human con- 
 sciousness. But the evidence for this is clearly founded on 
 expressions meant as descriptive of Christ's spiritual relation to us 
 as the Divine Word. When he makes Jesus allude to his own 
 personal qualifications, his human consciousness of weakness and 
 humility breaks out in such expressions as the following: " I can, 
 of mine own self, do nothing; " " Ye both know me, and ye know 
 whence I am ; and I am not come of myself, but he that sent me 
 is true, whom ye know not;" "A man that hath told you the 
 truth, which I have heard of God." In John, as in the Synop- 
 tics, Jesus disclaims all intention of coming to them " in his own 
 name." Of himself he is nothing, and can do nothing. " The 
 word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's that sent me." 
 But he had come to them in that Father's name, and this is the 
 gist of all his self-assertion. And in the strength of that self- 
 conviction, and that he might be so glorified of God, he voluntarily 
 laid down his life. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE STYLE. 
 
 The style of any author is so much the result of his previous 
 education, the peculiar tone and temperament of his mind, his 
 familiarity with the language in which he writes, the influence of 
 those with whom he has associated, and a variety of such circum- 
 stances, most of which can be so little known to us after the 
 lapse of centuries, that the common reader might suppose the 
 objection must be slight that is founded on the peculiar form of 
 Greek in which this Gospel has come down to us. And yet one 
 of the strongest objections to its authenticity is founded on this 
 circumstance. In the Ncav Testament, in addition to this Gospel, 
 we have' letters attributed, with great probability, to John, the 
 style of which evince that they are from the same pen as the 
 Gospel; but we have also the Book of Revelation — with equal 
 probability, attributed to him also, which is both in style and 
 
86 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 conception extremely difFerent. Of this difference Mr. Tayler 
 treats very exhaustively with his usual learning and research, 
 discussing it through six sections of his work with a view to prove 
 a conclusion, which he avers to be " irresistible," that— 
 
 " If the Apostle John be the author of the Apocalypse, he cannot have 
 written the Gospel ; if he wrote the Gospel, he cannot be the author of 
 the Apocalypse." 
 
 Such is the conclusion, indeed, not only of Mr. Tayler, but of 
 Strauss, De Wette, and other German writers ; and yet, notwith- 
 standing this marked difference in style, it is certain that both 
 works were attributed to John by the early Fathers, though they 
 did not fail to recognize this difference. The Apocalypse, it is 
 conceded on all hands, is the earlier in point of time, but written, 
 as Mr. Tayler says, " when he must have been fifty at the very 
 least ;" the Gospel, as usually maintained, written " in extreme old 
 age," but for the authorship of which he thinks there is less 
 evidence. 
 
 Commenting on this he says, in the second section of his work : — 
 
 " I do not hesitate to say that so complete a transformation of the 
 whole genius of a writer between mature life and old age, as is implied 
 in the supposition that John could be the author at once of the 
 Apocalypse and the Gospel, is without a precedent in the history of the 
 human mind, and seems to me to involve a psychological impossibility." 
 
 And yet Dr. Davidson, who is no less destructive in his 
 criticism, says: — 
 
 " It is possible that the vehement and impassioned spirit which appears 
 in the Apocalypse may have been transformed into the calm stillness 
 which the work before us (the Gospel) exhibits — that age and reflection 
 may have caused great mental development, so that the writer became 
 speculative, mystic, spiritualistic, theosophic, in his last days. The 
 philosophy of Alexandria " — I would say of Ephesus — " coming in con- 
 tact with his Judaic mind, may have revolutionized it, while Hellenic 
 culture widened his views of Christianity." * 
 
 The doctor certainly thinks this change is "to the last degree 
 improbable," and yet to him it does not involve " a psychological 
 impossibility." 
 
 * Vol. ii., page 441. 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 87 
 
 Mr. Tayler's conclusion seems, therefore, a hasty one, and in 
 saying that such mental changes are " without precedent in the 
 human mind," seems to have forgotten " the complete transforma- 
 tion " that the events of not fifty years but days effected in the 
 equally marked character of Peter and the Apostles " at a time of 
 life when men's views and habits of thought are for the most part 
 permanently fixed," a transformation which, instead of the tremb- 
 ling cowards that deserted or denied their Master in the hour of 
 trial, made them his bold and intrepid defenders, who, in the very 
 presence of their priests, taunted them with putting to death " the 
 Holy One and the Just," and who, when cautioned to speak no 
 more in that name, so nobly answered, " Whether it be right in 
 the sight of God to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge 
 ye." If such was the transformation effected by the events of 
 fifty days, what may or must have been the change produced by 
 the events of — it may have been forty years or more, though Mr. 
 Tayler says, " little more than thirty years between the compositon 
 of the two works" — those years, at any rate of ardent expectation 
 as to what was coming on the world after the Holy City had been 
 destroyed by the Roman armies, when these early Christians fully 
 expected the Son of Man to reveal himself " in the clouds of 
 heaven," at the head of still greater armies, " coming to avenge 
 his own elect," and that " speedily," as he had been understood to 
 promise ? 
 
 " The most probable date for the composition of the Apocalypse 
 (Mr. T. says) must be placed somewhere between 60 and 70 a.d. — 
 the reign of Galba and the destruction of Jerusalem." If so it 
 was written amidst those very " wars and rumours of wars" so 
 ominously spoken of by his exalted Master, at the very time when his 
 disciples had been taught — (Luke xxi., 28)—" to look up and lift up 
 your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh." Like the old songs 
 of triumph that we meet with in the Prophets over the destruction 
 of Babylon — " Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth, &c." — " How hath 
 the oppressor ceased, the golden city ceased, &o." — so is this the 
 song of an anticipated triumph of the early Church over all enemies 
 of " the Lamb that was slain," but now " goeth forth conquering 
 and to conquer." Newton assigns its composition to the reign of 
 Nero. Irenaeus and the early Fathers to the persecution under 
 Domitian. The German critics, Strauss, Ewald, De Wette, and 
 others, substantially agree with Mr. Tayler, which date, as the latter 
 says, " carries internal probability along with it." And if this be so, 
 
 G 
 
88 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN's GOSPEL. 
 
 it was written at the very time that the Roman eagles were muster- 
 ing around " the carcase," — when the writer's mind was no doubt 
 eagerly pondering the prophecies to devine if possible what things 
 were coming on the earth, and when an ardent imagination would 
 be disposed to realize to itself visions of things that " must shortly 
 come to pass." 
 
 The Book contains such visions as the language of the Master, as 
 reported by the Synoptists — see Mat. xxiv., 30, M<ark xiii., 24, &o. 
 — would lead such a writer,— his imagination further stimulated by 
 Hebrew prophecy, most likely to frame for himself. He anticipates 
 events that would reveal to all the truth and greatness of his 
 beloved Lord. Even to the High Priest, no less than to his own 
 disciples Jesus is reported to have said, " Hereafter shall ye see the 
 Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coining in the 
 clouds of heaven." And John who was present, and may have 
 heard these words, thus writes in the Apocalypse (i., 7) : — " Behold 
 he Cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they which 
 pierced him, and all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him." 
 These visions, as Mr. T. observes, our author clothes "in the old 
 prophetic diction and imagery" of which his mind is now full, and 
 the meaning of which in his forced retirement he has been medita- 
 ting. Hence it is that this book of his is so strongly impregnated 
 with the idea of Chiliasm, " the prevalent belief of the primitive 
 Church" — that Christ would reign personally on earth for a thousand 
 years. Before he wrote his Gospel, however, these visions had 
 given place to more enlarged views of the Saviour's mission. 
 They had gradually faded before the dawning light of a deeper 
 inspiration, or a more enlarged experience. And now " the word of 
 God" is no longer seen by him as a conqueror on a war-horse, 
 followed by heavenly armies, " ruling the nations with a rod of 
 iron," and "treading them in the fierceness of his wrath;" but as 
 " the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," " full 
 of grace and truth." 
 
 The whole conception of the two works, therefore, is widely — 
 though not, perhaps, as Mr. T. says, " radically different." In both, 
 Jesus is " the word of God" — " the Lamb that was slain but is 
 alive for evermore ;" — who with his Father is to be " the light of the 
 new Jerusalem descending out of heaven from God." The concep- 
 tions of the writer are radically the same, but differing as widely in 
 their development as the ardent visions of futurity in youth differ 
 from the matured experience of age. And this at least may be said 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 89 
 
 in favour of our supposition that the respective dates of the two 
 works seem to favour it ; for it is certain that had John written the 
 Grospel first, he could not afterwards have written the Apocalypse ; 
 but it does not follow that having written the latter first, surrounded 
 by the thick clouds of a pregnant future, his mind may not have 
 undergone that development so necessary to the Gospel's authorship. 
 
 Hence also the difference of style, or comparative purity of 
 language used in the latter is readily accounted for. The Grreek 
 of the Apocalypse (as Mr. T. remarks, page 26), " is just such as 
 we should expect from a man who had never learned it grammati- 
 cally, but had picked it up from mere intercourse with those who 
 spoke it." If written about the reign of Galba, John must have 
 written it shortly after his departure from Judea, for fourteen years 
 after Paul's conversion we find him (Gal. il., 9) still an inhabitant of 
 Jerusalem. At this time, his mind would be full of those Messianic 
 expectations, nor would he have time to have acquired anything of 
 that Hellenic culture which he would naturally derive from his 
 intercourse with Greeks. He did not write his Gospel, however, 
 till perhaps forty years afterwards — after a long residence in Asia 
 Minor, where he must have become familiar with the language, — 
 where experience and reflection " caused great mental development," 
 and where coming into contact with the Greek philosophy, " his 
 Judaic mind widened its views of Christianity." The language, 
 " as Dr. Davidson says, is good Greek, much less Hebraistic than 
 that of the Apocalypse, and even than that of the Synoptists," — 
 all which is naturally accounted for by his long residence amongst 
 Greeks. 
 
 Besides are we not justified in assigning another reason for this 
 diiference ? In writing the Apocalypse by himself, in his forced 
 retirement in Patmos, brooding over the events he expected to be 
 realized, in the full vigour of life, he did not require any assistance. 
 The thoughts were his own, and the language was his own, quite 
 unmodified as yet by foreign intercourse. But if the Gospel were 
 the work of "his extreme old age," would he not require the 
 hands and eyes of others to aid him in writing down these records 
 of his Master's life ? He did require, it is said, the hands and feet 
 of others to bear him into the assemblies of the Brethren ; where, 
 in the very spirit of this Gospel, he usually preached the one short 
 sermon recorded by Mr. Tayler — the admonition of his exalted 
 Master — " Little children, love one another.'' Such a tradition 
 surely adds probability to this question of authenticity. It shows 
 
90 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 that in his old age, he was no longer the Boanarges that he had 
 manifested himself in youth — that time had mellowed his Christi- 
 anity into a closer unity with the spirit of the Master. And would 
 not such assistance, and his own previous use of the language for a 
 period of perhaps forty years, account suflSciently for the greater 
 purity of the Greek? 
 
 That he had such assistance seems to me evident from the form 
 of expression used in many places. Thus, in John xxi., 24 — " This 
 is the disciple which testified of these things, and wrote these things, 
 and we know that his testimony is true," — this which is adduced as 
 a proof of spuriousness, seems rather the testimony of his aman- 
 uensis, or some members of the church at Ephesus to its genuineness. 
 It is not such a record as would have been written by an author of 
 himself; nor yet by a Church or Christian of " a disciple" who had 
 not been an eye-witness. Take again John xix., 35 — " He that saw 
 it bare record, and his record is true ; and he knoweth that he saith 
 true, that ye might believe." This is evidently not the wording of 
 the witness himself, but of another party who records his testimony. 
 And in this opinion I am happy to find myself sustained by the 
 critical acumen of Dr. Davidson, who, in commenting on this text 
 in Vol. ii. — pages 436, 437 — thus writes, " Here the pronoun He 
 introduced before the word knoweth marks a person diflferent from 
 the eye-witness and testimony-bearer spoken of at the beginning of 
 the verse, who may have been the Apostle John, or perhaps was so 
 intended by the writer. The identification of the writer with the 
 eye-witness is neither logically nor grammatically right in the verse, 
 unless the words were — he that saw bears record, i.e., bears witness 
 now in the act of writing. The past " bare record" points to an 
 author who has already got the testimony of an eye-witness, and 
 refers to him as a credible person. ' His witness is true' are the 
 words of an author appealing to an eye-witness — of one who is him- 
 self convinced, and wishes to assure his readers that the statement 
 of his voucher is trustworthy." 
 
 To the above excellent criticism may we not add, however, do 
 not the words " he knoweth" imply that the eye-witness he appeals 
 to was actually present, or, at least, living at the time, and ready to 
 confirm his testimony ? In like manner John is not spoken of by name 
 in the Gospel, aa he is in the Kevelation, but as " the disciple whom 
 Jesus loved"— who " leaned upon bis breast at supper"— not as a 
 writer would speak of himself, but as another would speak of one 
 beloved and venerated as being beloved of the Master. 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDEEBD. 91 
 
 Offence has been taken at this language as if it were a boast, and 
 such as could not have been written of himself by a disciple of 
 Jesus. It is a boast, and yet not written of himself by any disciple. 
 But it is written by a disciple of an old man that the Church of 
 Ephesus had much reason to be proud of, as being now the only 
 surviving witness of the Master, who with Peter, and James his 
 brother, had been specially admitted to his confidence ; of one to 
 whom that Master said, even when reproving Peter, " If I will 
 that he tarry till I come, what is that to. thee ? Follow thou me." 
 John had indeed tarried till the kingdom of the Master came. It 
 had not come, however, in " those clouds of heaven," and inaugu- 
 rated with a warrior on " a white horse," and those legions of 
 armed angels, such as he had in the Apocalypse expected. Now 
 he had learned, what he had not then, that his Master's kingdom 
 was " not of this world," as had been said to Pilate. Jesus is no 
 longer in his estimation " the avenger of his own elect," but the 
 " bread of God," given of heaven to nourish our humanity — " the 
 living water" of which " he that drinketh shall never thirst." 
 
 CHAPTER IV, 
 
 THE INTKODUCTION. 
 
 Much objection has been made to the Introduction of this Gospel, 
 as if it were impossible, under any circumstances, that this could 
 have been the composition of a Galilean fisherman ; and its doctrine 
 of the Logos, from its being in the hands of controversialists, the 
 chief corner stone on which to build up the temple of the Saviour's 
 Deity, has been made, by critics, to fall upon and grind to powder, 
 as they think, the authority of the Evangelist himself And it is, 
 no doubt, in its conception, peculiarly remarkable. Matthew, 
 writing for the benefit of Hebrews, entitles his work — " The book 
 of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of Abraham ;" and gives 
 us, from the days of Abraham, the genealogy of " Joseph, the 
 husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called the 
 Christ." Mark, who writes more for the benefit of Gentiles, passes 
 over this genealogy, and makes the beginning of his Gospel coinci- 
 dent with " the voice of him crying in the wilderness." Luke gives 
 us a number of prenatal statements about the parents of both John 
 and Jesus, and seems to have been mojjt diligent in collecting 
 
92 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 traditions about their birth and infancy. But this Evangelist, in 
 his introduction, treats Christianity as not of earth but heaven, — 
 not as " the word" of one born of human parentage, but as that of 
 the Eternal himself, embodied for our instruction in humanity or 
 " flesh." Without a reference to Abraham, to David, or to any 
 human lineage, taking us at once up to the great source of all, as 
 Moses commenced his narrative thus — " In the beginning Grod 
 created the heaven and the earth," so John writes — " In the 
 beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the 
 word was God." 
 
 This introduction is certainly very unlike the plainness and 
 simplicity of the other narratives ; and when, moreover, it goes 
 on to speak of the creative power and life-giving energy of that 
 word — " in which was life, and the life was the light of men" — such 
 refined speculations, it is argued are more akin to the thoughts of 
 some Greek philosopher than a Galilean peasant — that the very 
 language used — the words Logos, Phos, Zee, &c. — all betray such 
 utterances. And hence the authorship of this Gospel is attributed 
 to some Gentile convert to Christianity, who, some time during the 
 second century, has been aiming, under sanction of the Apostle's 
 name, to incorpoi-ate with Christianity the doctrines of Plato, or the 
 refined speculations of the Alexandrian philosophy. 
 
 It becomes us, therefore, to account for this peculiarity on the 
 supposition that it was written by John, the son of Zebedee. And 
 to counterbalance such objection we have, it is to be remembered, 
 in addition to the concurrent testimony of antiquity that this 
 Gospel was the work of that Apostle, those remarkable coincidences 
 already pointed out, proving it to be the work at least of an eye- 
 witness. If the work of John, therefore, why is it that he begins 
 his history of Jesus in this remarkable manner ? 
 
 To answer this question with any degree of satisfaction to the 
 general reader, we must call his attention to the time, place, and 
 purpose in and for Avhich John is supposed to have written. 
 Matthew Levi, surrounded with the prejudices of his own cotmtry- 
 men, who took offence at the humble origin of the Saviour's life, 
 and thought that no good thing could come out of Nazareth, is 
 careful to record his birth at Bethlehem, and to prove his lineal 
 descent from David, and the fulfilment of prophecy in his 'life and 
 birth. Mark, the companion of Peter in his travels, writing at 
 Rome, omits such genealogy as unnecessary to Gentiles, and 
 confines himself to the words and actions of the Saviour's life. 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 93 
 
 Luke, the companion of Paul in his imprisonment (Col. iv., 14), 
 collects all the facts and traditions be has heard of Jesus, and fixes 
 carefully the date of those events (though it is now evident that in 
 one respect he is in error) to that portion of the reign of Augustus 
 when " Cyrcnius was governor of Syria," and to " ihe fifteenth year 
 of the reign of Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of 
 Judea." But when John wrote all this interest about the personal 
 history of Jesus had declined. Christianity had become an estab- 
 lished fact. Through Paul's labours it had far outgrown its 
 Palestinian origin; — had been preached in Syria, Asia Minor, 
 Macedonia, Greece, — in haughty E.ome itself, even in the palace of 
 the Caesars, — and had fully entered on its deadly struggle with the 
 mythologies of the world. A resident of Ephesus at the time he 
 wrote, and probaMy for some thirty years before at least, his mind 
 had outgrown its narrow Jewish associations. In the presence of 
 another civilization that his youth knew not of, he had learned much 
 from his residence amongst Greeks. Adapting his language to 
 their ideas, he usually speaks of " the Jews" generally as the oppo- 
 nents of Jesus, without confining that hostility, as the Synoptists 
 do, to the Scribes and Pharisees. In his ninth, eleventh, and 
 eighteenth chapters, indeed, he does particularize that sect as the 
 most active, but usually he uses the more general term Jews. 
 His Gentile readers knew little of these sections of his countrymen, 
 and he was more intent on combating the " vain jungling" of their 
 philosophy. His life, prolonged to a period much beyond that of 
 his fellow Apostles, enabled him to combat the inroads that that 
 was making on the simplicity of the early faith. How or when he 
 became overseer of the church at Ephesus we have now no accurate 
 means of knowing. It was one of those that Paul had planted. 
 Before its planting " a certain Jew named Apollos, born at Alex- 
 andria, an eloquent man, and mighty in the scriptures, came to 
 Ephesus, and spake and taught diligently, knowing only the 
 baptism of John" (see Acts xviii., 24.) After he had left for 
 Achaia, " Paul having passed through the upper coasts came to 
 Ephesus, and finding certain disciples, he said unto them, ' Have ye 
 received the Holy Ghost?' And they said, ' We have not so much 
 as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.' And he said, ' Unto 
 what then were ye baptized ? ' And they said, ' Unto John's bap- 
 tism.' " Whereat Paul explained to them Christianity more 
 perfectly, and " baptized them in the name of the Lord Jesus." 
 Such is the account we have of the first foundation of this 
 
94 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN's GOSPEL. 
 
 church at Ephesus. On this occasion we are told, that Paul went 
 into the synagogue of the Jews and spake boldly for the space of 
 three months, " disputing and persuading the things concerning the' 
 kingdom of God. But when divers were hardened, he departed' 
 from them, and separated the disciples, disputing daily in the 
 school of one Tyrannus. And this continued by the space of two 
 years, so that all who dwelt in Asia heard the word of the Lord, 
 both Jews and Greeks." This Tyrannus, a teacher of some form' of 
 Grecian philosophy, was no doubt one of those whose eloquence 
 and refined speculations had attracted the youth of those days in 
 numbers to his school. Here then the very cradle of Christianity 
 at Ephesus was the school of a Greek philosopher. And that the 
 Apostle had a marked success we learn for " so mightily grew the 
 word of God and prevailed that Demetrius, a silver smith, and his 
 fellow-craftsmen who made silver shrines for Diana," took alarm 
 lest their craft should be set at nought, and " the Temple of the 
 Great Goddess destroyed whom all Asia and the world worship- 
 peth." Having escaped this peril, Paul passed into Macedonia, 
 and on his next visit to this region, sent for the elders of the 
 church, told them of the " bonds and afflictions that awaited him 
 at Jerusalem," so that they " should see his face no more," and 
 thus emphatically warned them — " For after my departure shall 
 grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also 
 of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things to draw 
 away disciples after them." 
 
 To guard against these evils, he left Timothy vdth them when 
 he went into Macedonia — if we may credit his first letter to him — 
 that he might charge some that they teach no other doctrine; 
 neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister 
 questions rather than godly edifying. To him he addressed two 
 letters to the same purpose, though their authenticity is also 
 disputed by our modern critics. And as if not satisfied with this, 
 he addressed to themselves another when confined at Eome a 
 prisoner, full of much excellent exhortation as to their conduct, 
 though the authenticity of this is also disputed, and Dr. Davidson 
 enumerates five considerations which, taken together, he thinks, 
 " suffice to cast strong doubts on its Pauline authorship " 
 
 Be this as it may, it was amongst this people that we find John 
 at a period still later. When he came there, we have no definite 
 information. It is supposed to have been after the death of Mary 
 the mother of our Lord, who had been committed to his care. For 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDEKED. 95 
 
 a time he appears to have remained in Jerusalem. " He goes up 
 with Peter to the temple at the hour of prayer." In the reign of 
 Claudius, Herod had slain James his brother with the sword. " Four- 
 teen years after Paul's conversion, he and Barnabas went up to 
 Jerusalem, where he tells us he found James and Cephas and John 
 who seemed to be pillars." After this we find no mention of him in 
 connexion with the church at Jerusalem, when it is reasonable to 
 suppose he went to Ephesus. There he would come into imme- 
 diate contact with the philosophy of the Greeks. Paul in his day 
 had complained of its " fables and endless genealogies " — in all 
 likelihood its doctrine of emanations. And in John's time, the 
 subtle Greek intellect must have made still greater inroads on the 
 Christianity that Paul had preached. Unnecessary indeed would 
 it be for John to prove to these men the royal lineage of Jesus. 
 The wondrous works and life of Christ, his perfect character and 
 resurrection from the dead, must rather have disposed them to look 
 on and revere him with something akin to divine honours. To their 
 minds he would gradually be divested of his fleshy attributes, and 
 assume the character of a celestial visitant. Philosophy would 
 identify him with one of those Aeons which she taught had 
 proceeded from the great source of life. We find the idea very 
 early prevalent that Christ had not actually " come in the flesh " — 
 that his bodily appearance was no more than an appearance — that 
 it was to degrade the Christ to hold the doctrine of his incarnation, 
 or in any way to associate him with matter — in its view the source 
 of evil; and that consequently the whole facts of his sufferings, 
 death, and resurrection were no more than a dramatic representation. 
 John could not live and breathe in such an atmosphere without 
 his thoughts and language manifesting a continual reference to this 
 philosophy. His duty was to meet It, to combat it, to preserve 
 uncorrupted by it, if that were possible, the simplicity and truth of 
 Christianity. The latter idea he does combat, especially In his 
 Epistles. He tells us that Jesus Christ had " come In the flesh," 
 and to deny It was " that spirit of antichrist whereof we have 
 heard that it should come, and even now already is it in the world." 
 Paul writing to Timothy warns him to " Kemember that Jesus 
 Christ of the seed of David, was raised from the dead according to 
 my Gospel." Even In Timothy's day therefore this disposition to 
 disincarnate Christ was showing Itself. And hence the testimony 
 in John's Gospel that " he that saw It bare record and his record Is 
 true &c." and also In his Epistle that " there are three that bear 
 
96 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 record — the spirit, the water, and the blood ; and these three agree 
 in one." 
 
 It is however the other Platonic doctrine we find alluded to in 
 this Introduction. Philosophy had taught that there were certain 
 Aeons or emanations, proceeding from the great Source of life — 
 that God himself was inaccessible to man, dwelling with those 
 Aeons in some divine pleroma — a word indicating to their minds 
 the fulness or perfection of his own existence; — that of these 
 Aeons one was the Demiourgos, the active principle, the world- 
 creator, another the Logos, or thin^ng principle, the type in the 
 divine mind according to which the world was made. Others were 
 Zoe, the life-giving principle, and Phos or light, the principle that 
 imparteth to us understanding. Such was the philosophy to be 
 combated by the plain fisherman of Galilee — the "profane and 
 vain babblings" and "doctrines of demons" against which Paul 
 warns Timothy, " a wisdom by which as he testifies (1 Cor., i., 21) 
 the world knew not God." Paul was evidently impatient of it. 
 John lived amongst it, thought deeply of it, disputed with its 
 advocates. Has he here adopted it, or how, in this introduction, 
 does he treat it ? 
 
 In sitting down to give us a new history of the Gospel message, 
 one object we have attributed to him was to supply the omissions 
 of the former Evangelists in that part of Christ's history that 
 relates to his intercourse with the Chief Priests and scribes in 
 Jerusalem itself. Another was, according to Irenaeus that — 
 
 "Being desirous to extirpate the errors sown in the minds of men by 
 Cerinthus and those called Nicolaitans, he published his Gospel in 
 which he acquaints us that there is one God who made all things by his 
 word, and not as they say, one who is the Creator of the world, and 
 another who is the Father of the Lord — one the son of the Creator, and 
 another the Christ from the super-celestial abodes, who descended upon 
 Jesus the son of the Creator, but remained impassible, and afterwards 
 flew back to his own pleroma or fulness." * 
 
 However unreliable this may be as an historical authority, and 
 however seemingly confused this statement to us, the writer of 
 this seems to have grasped better than some modern commentators 
 the real purport of John's Introduction. We are to consider how 
 his views of his exalted Master would be refined, elevated, and 
 
 * Irenaeus adv. Haeies, lib. iii., o, 11, as quoted by Home in his Introduction. 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 97 
 
 spiritualized by time, and deep meditation on his ministry and o£Sce. 
 That John could ever have divested himself of his human associa- 
 tions with his beloved Master — he vcho had leaned on his breast at 
 supper, whose feet had been washed by him, who had been the 
 painful witness of his final sufferings, and the trusted guardian of 
 his mother till his death — that he a Jew could have so far divested 
 himself of these thoughts and recollections as to believe him to be 
 " very God of very God," as some Christians affirm that he here 
 teaches, it would indeed be most difficult to believe. And if this 
 were here asserted, it would go far to invalidate this Gospel's 
 authenticity. But his Master's wondrous life, and still more 
 wonderful appearance after death, would greatly exalt his ideas of 
 his mission. Christ had spoken of himself as " the true-vine" that 
 God had planted in the earth — as " the stone, the tried stone" 
 spoken of by the Prophet that had been set at naught by his nation's 
 builders; as " the bread of God that cometh down from heaven." 
 John may have treasured up many sayings of his Master that are 
 not given us by the Synoptists. These he may have made the 
 subjects of his testimony and daily meditations. Spared to a great 
 age his ardent realistic expectations, cooled and spiritualized by 
 mature experience, we can well understand how he would attain to 
 those conceptions of Jesus given in this history. 
 
 He would learn to regard him as the divine personification of a 
 spiritual "life," as the embodiment in humanity of that " Word" 
 which in " times past had been spoken unto the Fathers by the 
 Prophets," — as a man sent of God for human guidance — the true 
 spiritual " way" which leads humanity up to God. In the narra- 
 tives of the other Evangelists, the Saviour had given expression to 
 some beautiful parables. In reference to himself he had talked of 
 " a sower sowing the word," and the word, like seed, had fallen by 
 the wayside, which the birds of the air devoured up. But in John's 
 more expressive phraseology Christ was himself the word, the 
 expression of the Divine will to man, — " the bread" to be eaten 
 if we would live for ever, — " the way" to be trodden if we would 
 not err, — " the light" that enlighteneth every man. In the strength 
 of this imagery he seems to lose for a time the Saviour's personality, 
 that the reader may comprehend more perfectly this his mediatorial 
 office. To the weeping Martha, by the grave of Lazarus, Jesus is 
 " the resurrection and the life." To the woman of Samaria, by the 
 well of Jacob, he is " the living water, of which whosoever drinketh 
 shall never thirst." Apart from Jesus, man had no way, in John's 
 
98 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 estimation, of arriving at a true knowledge of God. But " he that 
 had seen him had seen the Father." " No man could come unto 
 the Father but by him." " For no man hath seen God at any time ; 
 the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath 
 declared him." 
 
 These exalted ideas of his Master, not only his own meditations, 
 but his disputations with these philosophers, would tend to 
 strengthen. And what wonder if, in sitting down to write this 
 history, his language should assimilate to that used by them, while 
 he combats the ideas developed in their schools ? They had talked 
 of a light emanating from God, and a word and life, and spoken of 
 these as distinct personal realities. But to John there was but one 
 life, one light, one word — that which existed in the mind of Deity, 
 and had, in these latter days, been " made flesh and dwelt among 
 us." The fountain or source of that light or word was, as those 
 philosophers taught, the great source of all. But of such Aeons or 
 emanations as they spoke of, no more than of that " sameness of 
 substance and equality of persons" so fiercely contended for by 
 Christians in after ages, John knew nothing, — here at least he 
 affirms nothing, save indeed to annul their existence. His beloved 
 master was his master still, the son of Mary who had expired upon 
 Calvary, whose body had been pierced, to whose humanity the 
 blood and water had borne their silent, but indisputable testimony. 
 But far above and bej'ond this, in his estimation, shone out that 
 revelation of the Invisible, of which the life of Jesus was but the 
 embodiment. It is not so much the personal history of Jesus of 
 Nazareth as of that life and light and word that shone in him, and 
 spoke by him, that John sits down to write. In his eyes then, as 
 to the Greeks around him, Christ's personal descent is nothing, the 
 circumstances of his birth are nothing to the purpose. The all- 
 absorbing topic is, no mundane facts about Bethlehem or Nazareth, 
 but the history of that Divine word that spoke to man in his Master's 
 life, — of that light which shone amidst human darkness, and which 
 the darkness comprehended not, — of that life which is not subject to 
 the power of death. What is it to him now that this life began in 
 the reign of Csesar Augustus, and terminated in that of Tiberius ? 
 The unbelieving Jew had stigmatized the Gospel as a new religion, 
 and the believing Greek would mould it into a new theosophy. The 
 former boasted of his law, as if it were eternal, existing ever in the 
 mind of God. John tells him that equally eternal is this new 
 religion, that " in the beginning was the word, and the word was 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 99 
 
 with God, and the word was God," — that eternal as the Deity was 
 this great principle of religious truth* The Greeks talked of a 
 world Creator, and of an Aeon of light, and an Aeon of life, but 
 " in it was life, and the life was the light of men ;" according to it 
 were all things made, and without adaptation to it "there was 
 nothing made that was made." To the shining of such a light 
 there came a man sent of God to witness. John " was not that 
 light," as some of his followers had imagined ; but was sent to bear 
 witness of that " which is the true light, which lighteth every man 
 that cometh into the, world." 
 
 Considering the circumstances in which John was placed then, I 
 would ask, is not such a suitable introduction to his history of what 
 he calls the Word, or Christianity ? It is not such an introduction as 
 he would have written in Judea, surrounded by his own country- 
 men, still full of their Jewish expectations. Nor is it one that he 
 could have written till near the close of the first century, when such 
 expectations were no longer tenable, and then only after deep 
 profound reflection on the Divine origin and spiritual nature of the 
 mission of the Christ. 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 "WHEN WRITTEN? 
 
 This is a question to be determined more by external than internal 
 evidence ; but as an argument has been deduced from the latter to 
 remit the work to a post- Apostolic age, its consideration comes 
 naturally within the scope of the present work. Mr. Tayler, in 
 the eighth section of his work, " On the Internal Indications of a 
 Later Age in the Fourth Gospel," page 88, thus writes : — 
 
 * In confirmation of the view here stated, I quote the following passage from 
 Strauss's " New Life of Jesus," Vol. ii., page 56 : — "The name of Messiah, as well as 
 the nation and their law, was considered by the Jews as among those things that had 
 existed in the mind of God, even before the creation of the world : that is, as God — as 
 they were taught by their own selfishness to believe — made the world for the sake of 
 the Jewish people, and for their sake also would send the Messiah into the world, he 
 must, at the same time that he sketched the plan of the universe, have also had in his mind 
 the Messiah, and his mission to it. Now the course of ideas of this kind is well known. 
 What was previously intended is converted into a fact already executed ; the ideal 
 becomes the real pre-existence." 
 
100 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 " The doctrine of the Logos, modifying the whole conception of the 
 person and ministry of Christ, which pervades from beginning to end 
 this remarkable book, could not, I think, have blended itself so inti- 
 mately with the popular preaching of Christianity at a very early age. 
 The facts recorded in the Synoptists are, it is true, implied in the 
 mingled narrative and argumentation of the Fourth Gospel ;* but they 
 are kept subordinate to the leading idea of the writer ; they are evidently 
 combined and moulded with a view to develop it. As we read, we find 
 it difficult to resist the impression that the simpler and more natural 
 history contained in Matthew or in Luke must have gone bef ore,t and that 
 this was more strictly conformable to primitive tradition than the 
 idealized vision of the incarnate Word held up by John. No doubt the 
 doctrine of the Logos existed anterior to the Apostolic age, but it was 
 confined to the higher sphere of philosophical thought, and came into no 
 direct contact with the popular mind." 
 
 On these grounds he proceeds to argue that this Gospel could not 
 have been written before the middle of the second century. In 
 page 150, indeed, Mr. Tayler acknowledges that — 
 
 " In every critical inquiry of this kind it is more easy to obtain a 
 negative than a positive result. If I am asked who was its author, or 
 when was it written, I confess I am unable to give a categorical answer. 
 If Papias, as Eusebius says, cited testimonies from the First Epistle of 
 John — as I can have little doubt that the author of that Epistle and the 
 Gospel were one and the same person — the author must have been 
 living, and both works probably written before the middle of the second 
 century. The death of Papias is usually assigned to 163 a.d. We find 
 thus a probable terminus ad quern. Can we suggest a terminus a quo? 
 . . . . Such a time I find most clearly indicated in the results of 
 the suppression of the Jewish revolt under Bar-Cochba subsequent to 
 135 A.D. This is, of course, nothing more than conjecture, supported 
 by no direct evidence.'' 
 
 That we may not be fighting about shadows, let us fix a 
 terminus ad quern, beyond which we cannot suppose the author- 
 ship of this Gospel to have extended, if Apostolic ; and then see 
 how much longer period Mr. Tayler requires for this doctrine to 
 " come into direct contact with the popular mind." The precise 
 date, of course, it is impossible to fix, but there is no valid reason 
 
 * If BO, the one does not " exclude the other," as argued in the first section, p. 7. 
 'Y Undoubtedly, but why " resist the impression ? " 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. ' 101 
 
 for placing it earlier than the last decade of the first century, which 
 some of the ancient Fathers do ; and modern critics, such as Le Clerc 
 and Bishop Tomline, assign it to the ninety-seventh or eighth year 
 of the Christian era. It is even quite possible that it was not 
 composed till the first decade of the second century consistently 
 with its Apostolic authorship. Irenaeus tells us, as quoted by 
 Eusebius, that John continued with them "till the times of 
 Trajan," a.d. 98 to 117. And Mr, Tayler supposes (page 12) 
 " John to have been not more than 18 or 20 when he joined 
 the ministry of Jesus." If, then, he lived and wrote his Gospel 
 " in extreme old age" we can hardly assign to him a less period of 
 life than close upon 100 years. We have many examples of men 
 in our own day whose lives have exceeded this, and whose mental 
 faculties have been unclouded till near their death. This would 
 place his death about the 110th year of the Christian era, and the 
 writing of the Gospel not many years previously. 
 
 How much longer, however, does Mr. Tayler require for the 
 doctrine of the Logos to "modify the whole conception of the 
 person and ministry of the Christ?" On this point he is some- 
 what indefinite, but by the above extracts, as we have seen, he 
 fixes his terminus a quo, after which it must have been written at 
 135 A.D., the date of the " suppression of the Jewish revolt under 
 Bar-Cochba." But this, he admits, is only " conjecture, supported 
 by no direct evidence." Here, then, the only difference betwixt 
 Mr. Tayler's and the date above assigned is some thirty or forty 
 years, if so much, for this terminus is quite conjectural ; and yet, 
 on the strength of this supposition, that " the doctrine of the Logos 
 could not at an earlier period have come into direct contact with the 
 popular mind," we are called on to reject the testimony of antiquity 
 as to this Gospel's Apostolic authorship ! Nay, further, as Papias 
 died in a.d. 163, and yet quotes John's Epistle in his writings 
 long anterior to his death, it is plain the Epistle, and, according 
 to Mr. Tayler's admission, the Gospel also, must have been in 
 existence before, and, perhaps, for some considerable time before he 
 quoted them, so that this " probable terminus ad quern " may be 
 antedated by perhaps some thirty years. 
 
 But further, the revolt of the Jews under Bar-Cochba, and its 
 suppression by Hadrian, had really nothing to do with popularizing 
 the doctrine of the Logos in the far distant Ephesus. Had the 
 Gospel been written in Judea it is just possible that there might 
 have been something in Mr. Tayler's conjecture. The final 
 
102 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN's GOSPEL. 
 
 dispersion of the Jews must have destroyed, amongst Christians, 
 any remaining traces of a Judaic spirit, and may have given freer 
 access to Hellenic and Oriental forms of thought. But in Ephesus 
 and Greece, Christianity had come into contact and collision with 
 the Hellenic theosophy long anterior to the revolt of Bar-Cochba. 
 Nor have we any reason to think that the doctrine of the Logos 
 had at all " blended itself with the popular preaching of Christian- 
 ity " at the time when the .book was written. The author was 
 evidently one of those men who originate new views of truth, not 
 one who follows subserviently the popular faith. 
 
 In page 84 Mr. Tayler admits that this Gospel had obtained 
 " the full and undoubting suffrage of the Catholic Church as the 
 production of an Apostle " in the time of Theophilus of Antioch, 
 178 A.D. Indeed, Theophilus, whose testimony is unquestioned, 
 quotes the work in these words, Lib. 2 : — 
 
 " These things the Holy Scriptures teach us, and all who are moved 
 by the Holy Spirit, among whom John says, ' In the beginning was the 
 Logos, and the Logos was with God.' " 
 
 Theophilus is said to have been bishop before 170 a.d. Eusebius 
 places his episcopate under the reign of the Emperor Verus, which 
 terminated 180 A.D. In his time, therefore, this Gospel was 
 distinctly recognized as the work of John. It must have existed 
 for some considerable time previously to have obtained for itself 
 the " full and undoubting suffrage of the Catholic Church as the 
 production of an Apostle." Had there been just grounds of 
 suspicion, as in the case of the Apochryphal Gospels, or the letter 
 to the Hebrews and 2nd Peter, we might expect such doubts to 
 have come down to us. And yet, on the strength of such con- 
 jectures as Mr. Taylor's, we are to set aside this suffrage of 
 antiquity ! In this nineteenth century we know how difficult it is 
 to gauge public opinion even on political questions, not to speak of 
 philosophical speculation, without an appeal to the constituencies. 
 To attempt, then, at the end of eighteen centuries, to gauge so 
 accurately the progress of a doctrine in the popular mind requires 
 surely more data than we could now possibly adduce ! A conjec- 
 ture of this kind is surely a very unstable fulcrum on which to rest 
 the lever that is to overthrow " the undoubting suffrage " of the 
 church of the second century. 
 
 But the fact of Papias quoting John's First Epistle, and the 
 testimony of Theophilus to the Gospel itself, are not our only 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDEEEO. 103 
 
 authorities, as Mr. Tayler admits, for the early existence of this 
 Gospel in the second century. Omitting the disputed Epistles of 
 Ignatius, and the work against Heresies ascribed to Hippolytus, 
 which furnished to the Chevalier Bunsen's mind conclusive evi- 
 dence of the authenticity of this -Gospel,* Justin Martyr, who 
 lived under the reign of Antonius Pius, a.d. 138 to 161, in his 
 "Dialogue with Trypho," calls Christ "the blameless and just 
 Light sent by God to men" — an epithet applied to him only in 
 this Gospel. He calls Jesus " the only begotten Son of the 
 Father," as John does, and has the same image, as we find in 
 John XV., about the pruning of the vine tree. In his " Apology " 
 he speaks of us in the language of John " eating the flesh and 
 drinking the blood" of Jesus in the Eucharist, and says, " Christ 
 said, unless ye be born anew ye cannot enter the kingdom of 
 heaven," a reference to Christ's words, as reported John iii,, 3. 
 In commenting on these passages, Mr. Tayler remarks, p. 62: — 
 
 "If there be reason to believe, on independent grounds, that the 
 Fourth Gospel was generally received as an authoritative and Apostolic 
 work before 138 a.d., it would not be an unfair inference that familiar 
 acquaintance with the Gospel had occasioned this general similarity of 
 thought and expression which I have pointed out in several passages 
 between the Martyr and the Evangelist. But the similarity in no one 
 instance amounts to a citation, and the conformity to the presumed 
 original is much less close than what it is in innumerable passages to the 
 Gospels of Matthew and Luke, &c." 
 
 If the above last cited quotation from Justin Martyr does not 
 " amount to a citation" from John, it looks very like it certainly, 
 for in what other place do we read that Christ said, " Unless ye 
 be born anew ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven?" . And 
 that the general similarity of thought and expression is much less 
 close than to the language of Matthew and Luke is easily accounted 
 for, when we remember that these Gospels are supposed to have 
 been written at least thirty years before John's. The latter, in 
 Justin's time, could not have been much over that time in existence. 
 
 * In Vol. ii., page 134, of his "Hippolytus," the Baron writes: — "For the hypo- 
 thesis about Marcian having, in the middle of the second century, used a more 
 authentic and not a mutilated text of the Third Gospel, is not more tenable than that 
 of referring the origin of the Fourth to about the end of the same century. The 
 Canon then contained the Four Gospels as we have th6m." 
 
 H 
 
104 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL, 
 
 He and his readers, therefore, must have been much more familiar 
 with the former than the latter. And indeed the latter had not 
 had time as yet to receive that " full and undoubting suffrage" of 
 the Church, which it had when quoted by Theophilus. 
 
 We are to remember the time it required in those days to multiply 
 copies, to disseminate them through distant countries, to assure 
 churches far removed from one another, without our means of 
 intercourse, of any writing's Apostolic origin. Justin does not 
 cite John's, nor either of the earlier gospels of Matthew or Luke, 
 by name. He does mention John as the author of the Apocalypse. 
 But the Apocalypse was one of the earliest writings of the New 
 Testament, save some of Paul's letters, written in all likelihood 
 before any of the Gospels. It had been, when Justin wrote, for a 
 long period in the hands of Christians, and recognized by them as 
 an Apostolic work; The recognition of these works as Apostolic 
 was not, at this time, the work of a general council, as it became in 
 a later age. Mr. Tayler complains (page 145) of " the church 
 suppressing criticism by authority." But the complaint applies to 
 a future period. To no church decree does this Gospel owe its 
 first recognition as Apostolic. This was the work of independent 
 churches, far removed from one another, speaking different 
 languages, without any regular means of intercourse. It was their 
 coincident acceptance of writings, conveyed to them by the hands 
 of missionaries, in whose statements they had confidence. These 
 Christians were certainly not critical, and may have been credulpus, 
 but from such testimony could hardly withhold assent. The Apoca- 
 lypse, on account of its Chiliastio views, being in fact the expression 
 of the then hopes and expectations of the church, was no doubt 
 popular, and is often quoted. The Gospel, written some thirty or 
 forty years afterwards, the fruit of a more mature experience, 
 becomes in its turn the expression of the views of Christians, 
 Bearing in mind its date, we find it obtains recognition quite as 
 early as the other. And, as Mr. Tayler well observes : — 
 
 '' By a curious change of position, the Fourth Gospel then first obtains 
 the full and undoubting suffrage of the Catholic Church as the produc- 
 tion of an Apostle, when the Apocalypse is beginning _ to fall in reputa- 
 tion, and doubts are already insinuated against its authenticity." — ^P. 84. 
 
 This was the natural action, not of church authority, but of a 
 new generation of , Christians freely forming its opinion of the 
 Apostolicity and appropriateness of the respective works. 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSlDEEED. 105 
 
 In reply, therefore, to the question prefixed to this chapter, we 
 have this Gospel quoted as John's by Theophilus, and in his time 
 received as such by the Catholic Church before a.d. 180. It is 
 evidently referred to, if not cited, by Justin Martyr, probably about 
 A.D. 150. At a stiU earlier period we find the First Epistle of 
 John quoted by Papiaa, a work admittedly by the same author. 
 We have no reason to place it earlier than the last year of the first, 
 or in the first decade of the second centtiry. And therefore it seems 
 to have obtained recognition quite as early comparatively as the 
 Synoptics, or the other works of this Evangelist. 
 
 CHAPTEK VI. 
 
 THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 
 
 In the argument for the post- Apostolic date of this Gospel, which 
 I have been combating in the last chapter, Mr. Tayler makes two 
 assumptions, which are, however, the basis of his argument, the 
 Validity of both of which I must call in question. The first is, that this 
 " doctrine of the Logos modified the whole conception of the person 
 and ministry of Christ" in the mind of the author ; the second, that 
 " it pervades from beginning to end this remarkable book." 
 
 With respect to the latter it is for the reader to decide. To me 
 the doctrine pervades only the opening verses of the first chapter. 
 Even in it the word Logos only occurs in two verses, in the 1st and 
 14th. In the 4th, 5th, 7th, 8th, 9th, the synonyme used for it is 
 Phos — flight. In the remainder of the Gospel, the word Logos 
 occurs about seventeen times ; but not once with any reference to 
 the doctrine of the Logos. It is used to denote Christ's own 
 word — John ii., 22, " They believed the word which Jesus had 
 said" — xii., 48, " The word that I have spoken the same shall judge 
 him"' — xiv., 24, " The word which ye hear is not mine," &c. — xv., 
 20 — " Remember the word that I said unto you." It is used to 
 denote the word of the Apostles — xvii., 20, " who shall believe on 
 me through their word." It is used in reference to the Jewish 
 scriptures — xv., 20, " That the word might be fulfilled which is 
 written in their law." And it is used to denote the word of God — 
 xvii., 6, " Thine they were, and they have kept thy word'' But in 
 no instance, save in John i., 12, and.i., 14, can it be interpreted to 
 
106 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 refer to the doctrine of the Logos.* Immediately after this intro- 
 duction, Jesus is spoken of as the Synoptists speak of him. In 
 i., 17, he is contrasted with Moses — " The law was given by Moses, 
 but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." In i., 38, the two 
 disciples to whom the Baptist pointed him out as the " Lamb of 
 God," ask him, " Master, where dwellest thou?" and they "abode 
 with him that day." And in i., 45, Philip calls him " Jesus of 
 Nazareth, the son of Joseph." 
 
 In his spiritual aspect, indeed, Jesus is not only " the word" of 
 God, but " the lamb of God," " the light of men," " the true -vine," 
 " the living water," " the bread from heaven," " the shepherd that 
 giveth his life for the sheep." But all these are similes derived 
 from the Hebrew prophecies, not from the Alexandrian philosophy. 
 Dr. Davidson speaks of this as a " metaphysical idealism" by which 
 this Gospel is characterized, and says " there is a symbolism showing 
 the same philosophical tendency as that of Philo." The only 
 symbolism is this rich Eastern imagery derived from the Hebrew 
 prophets, so absolutely necessary to the expression of the author's 
 spiritual ideas. These certainly are " metaphysical" in so far as all 
 spiritual ideas transcend the region of pure physics. But in John 
 we have no such abstruse speculations as we understand by the 
 word metaphysics. And if John represents Jesus as discussing 
 matters with the Jews, it is the very realistic question whether 
 " the works that I do bear witness of me"' — whether the physical 
 facts of opening the eyes of one born blind and curing an impotent 
 man prove him to be " sent of God." 
 
 In his human aspect, Jesus is still in this Gxjspel, as intensely as 
 
 * In Vol. ii., page 327, Dr. Davidson, whilst analyzing the contents of John's Gospel, 
 remarks : — 
 
 " It is observable that the appellation the word does not occur in the speeches of 
 Jesus himself; but that is no argument against its being synonymous with Christ." 
 
 If this were so, however, it might be an argument for their being synonymous, as the 
 Doctor imagines ; but what is the fact ? In xii. , 48, as we have seen, the appellation the 
 word occurs in a speech of Jesus, and the faculty of "judging" is attributed to it — " The 
 word {i \6yos) which I have spoken the same shall judge you in the last day." In 
 xiv., 24, " The word which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's which sent me." Is 
 this, I wonder, " no argument against its being synonymous with Christ ?" Again, xv., 
 3, " Now ye are clean through the word (rhu K6yov) that I have spoken unto you." Or 
 what will the Doctor make of xv., 25, " That the word might be fulfilled which is written 
 in their law?" Are not the above speeches attributed to Jesus ? And does not this 
 last use of it make the phrase synonymous with the memra of the Targums, but not 
 with the appellation Jesus Christ ? 
 
OBJECTIONS OONSIDEEED. 107 
 
 the Others, " the Son of man," personally known to these Jews as 
 possessing no ability of himself— vii-, 28, "Ye both know me, and 
 ye know whence I am." He is, as he tells the Jews (viii., 40), " a 
 man that hath told you the truth, that I have heard of God"— the 
 master upon whose bosom (xiii., 23) the disciple whom he loved 
 leaned at supper, — vi., 42, " Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father 
 and mother we know." The hard realistic fact of Christ's body 
 being pierced with a spear, to which John so emphatically testifies, 
 is surely no symbolism, though Dr. D. would symbolize the blood 
 and water, which John certainly adduced, as evidence of the fact. 
 And if John makes Christ say, " Whatsoever things the Father 
 doeth these doeth the Son likewise ;" Matthew attributes to: him 
 this language, " No man knoweth the Son, but the Father," &c. 
 And if in the former we read that God had given Jesus " power 
 over all flesh," in the latter we are told, " All power is given unto 
 me in heaven and in earth." 
 
 So far then from the " doctrine of the Logos pervading from 
 beginning to end this remarkable book," we only find it in the 
 introductory verses. Whenever the phrase is again used, as it is 
 frequently, it is in the same senses as it is used by the Synoptists. 
 In the explanation of the parable of the sower, we are told (Mark 
 iv., 14) that " the sower soweth the word" and again (Luke viii., 11) 
 that " the seed is the word of God." And thus we read in John 
 XV., 3 — " Now ye are clean through the word that I have spoken 
 unto you." And if John, in his introduction, uses it in a higher 
 sense, it Is because reflection had taught him that that word of the 
 sower was emphatically embodied in the life and character of the 
 sower himself. 
 
 With respect to the other assumption made by Mr. Tayler that 
 " this doctrine of the Logos modified the author's whole conception 
 of the person and ministry of Christ," we have already stated that 
 John's discussions with those philosophizing Christians of Ephesus 
 would emancipate his mind from its narrow Jewish peculiarities, 
 and assist his own reflections in leading him to those enlarged and 
 spiritual conceptions of his Master's office. But that the Platonic 
 doctrine of the Logos, as taught either at Alexandria or Ephesus, 
 modified his conception of the person of his Master, — of this I am 
 utterly at a loss for proof. This very Introduction is a contradiction 
 of the Platonic doctrine. In It the Logos is not " God from God" 
 as the Church afterwards expressed it, but " the- word was God." 
 In the words of Irenaeus, he published his Gospel to " show there 
 
108 THE AUTHENTICITY 01? JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 is one God who made all things by his word, and not one the 
 Creator of the world, and another the Christ from the super- 
 celestial abodes." The Johannine doctrine therefore is very differ- 
 ent from that of these Platonists. 
 
 Nor is it, as Dr. Davidson admits, coincident with the doctrine 
 of the Jewish Philo. In Vol ii., page 341, he says: — 
 
 " The Fourth Grospel has an important advance upon Philo's doctrine, 
 when it announces the incarnation of the Logos in Jesus. In this 
 respect the author expresses an idea foreign to the Alexandrian philo- 
 sophy. Whence this element was derived we cannot tell." 
 
 Why not evolve it therefore from the depths of the Apostle's 
 consciousness ? Why not suppose him capable of working out the 
 glorious thought of the divine word — the expression of the divine 
 will, being manifested in the life and character of Jesus ? 
 
 What really modified John's conception of his Master's office 
 was, as we have seen, the mature experience of those thirty years 
 or more, by which he had outlived his brethren and the destruction 
 of Jerusalem, and during which the spirit of truth had come and 
 " led him into all truth." Even in Paul's writings, though himself 
 a " Hebrew of the Hebrews, and touching the law,' a Pharisee," in 
 consequence of his education, and intercourse especially with men 
 of other countries, we see that tendency to spiritualize and emanci- 
 pate Christianity from the contracting infiuence of Judaism which 
 we find so fully developed in John's later writings. If we turn to 
 Matthew, a tax-gatherer of Galilee, who writes his Gospel 
 amongst Hebrews, and probably before the destruction of Jerusa- 
 lem by Titus, we find those rnaterialistic and Chiliastic views that 
 so distinguish the Apocalypse. " Immediately after the tribulation 
 of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not 
 give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers 
 of the heavens shall be shaken, and then shall appear the sign of 
 the Son of man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth 
 mourn, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds with 
 power and great glory " — Matt, xxiv., 29-30. Mark also -writes — 
 xiii., 24 — " But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall 
 be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars 
 shall fall from heaven — and then shall they see the Son of man 
 coming in the clouds with great power and glory. And then shall 
 he seiid his angel's, and gather together his elect. Verily I say unto 
 you that this generation shall not pass till all these things be done." 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 109 
 
 ■ These are words which these Evangelists attribute to the Christ 
 himself. What wonder If they had kindled thoughts and expecta- 
 tions amongst Christians of their real literal fulfilment ? Accord- 
 mgly when the Holy Land was invaded by Rome's conquering 
 armies, and " the abomination that maketh desolate" set up, the 
 persecuted disciples began to "rejoice and lift up their heads," 
 believing in the truth of their Master's promise that their " redemp- 
 tion draweth nigh." John, an exile in the isle of Patmos, " for the 
 word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ" — pondering 
 on the words of his ; exalted Master, on the mystic visions of 
 Ezeklel and other Prophets, and trying to forecast the future, sees 
 also visions of the coming glory of our Saviour's kingdom, and 
 sings his anticipatory song of triumph. He sees " one like the Son 
 of man in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks" who gives hijn 
 a message to the seven churches ; — again he sees " the throne of God 
 in heaven, and in the hand of Him that sat upon it a sealed book 
 written — and none able to open that Book but " the Lion of the 
 tribe of Judah of the root of David." The opening of those seven 
 seals by " the Lamb that was slain, having seven horns and seven 
 eyes which are the seven spirits of God" is next beheld by him, and 
 the pouring forth of all sorts of calamities upon the earth. And 
 finally he sees the Lamb as " the Amen the faithful and true 
 witness" — whose name is " the Word of God" — " to whom a bow 
 and crown- are given" — -mounted on " a white horse," leading forth 
 the armies of heaven, " conquering and to conquer." 
 
 The ardour of Imagination, however, which kindled these visions 
 had long given place, ere he wrote his Gospel, to the more spiritual 
 cojioeption of a " Sun of righteousness." The Apocalypse he 
 had entitled, " The revelation of things which must shortly come to 
 pass."' But " In his patience he had possessed his soul," and for 
 another generation had been spared to " tarry" on the earth ; and 
 yet no " coming in the clouds of heaven" as he once anticipated. 
 He Is now an old man who feels that he too must soon " put off 
 his tabernacle." The idea had gone abroad among the brethren 
 that " this disciple should not die" — an Idea which his great age 
 seemed now In some degree to warrant. Yet Jesus said not unto 
 him that he shall not die, but, " if I will that he tarry till I 
 come." What did it all m£an ? He had tarried, but Jesus came 
 not as he once expected. He had come, however, as the enlighten- 
 ing word of our humanity. He had become to his soul as the 
 heavenly manna, upon which their fathers had fed when in the 
 
llO THE AUTHENTICITY OP JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 wilderness. And he now sees in him, not the " Lion of the tribe of 
 Judah" who is to make " all nations wail because of him," but " the 
 true vine" of God's planting on the hills of Judah whose branches 
 shall expand from the East to the West and from the North unto 
 the South. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 JOHN'S DOCTRINE OF THE LOGOS. 
 
 Theke are two features which distinguish the Johannine doctrine 
 of the Logos, which should be carefully noted, as the varied senses 
 in which the term is used by different writers, have led to much 
 confusion. We have seen from Dr. Davidson that it is not identical 
 with the doctrine of the Jewish Philo. Nor is it coincident with, 
 but expressly contradictory of the doctrine of the Platonic Greeks. 
 And it is equally opposed to the Christian doctrine elaborated 
 afterwards in the schools of Alexandria, and which was so clearly 
 embodied in the original form of the Nicene creed — that the word 
 was " God/rom God, light /rom light, very God /rowi very God." 
 In all those . conceptions of it, the Logos was a different person. 
 Aeon, or hypostasis from the pleroma or source from which he 
 emanated — the Athanasian Creed even forbidding us to confound 
 the persons ; whereas John's statement is a distinct denial of this, 
 his assertion being that the Word, — whatever he meant by it — 
 " was God." 
 
 What he really means by the phrase, it is only just to our author 
 to gather from his own subsequent use of it. It is not for us to 
 affix to it what may be a fanciful or fictitious meaning. And if we 
 thus compare scripture with scripture, we see at once that it is a 
 phrase of most frequent use, not only in this, but other parts of the 
 sacred writings. When the Prophet says, " The Lord had sent a 
 word against Jacob, and it has lighted upon Israel," no one thinks 
 of personifying it, or supposes that the Prophet makes any allusion 
 to the doctrine of the Logos. Nor do we, when we read the beautiful 
 parable of Jesus about " the sower sowing the word." In John's 
 most frequent use of the term, it denotes, as we have seen, the word 
 of Jesus, and so expresses what we do by the term Gospel, though 
 not in the sense in which we limit it to the writings of an Evangelist, 
 but in the higher sense of the Gospel message, and of which Jesus 
 
OBJECTIONS CONSIDEEEB. Ill 
 
 was, in the conception of John, the actual embodiment. In sitting 
 down to Avrite a history of this Gospel message, he claims for it a 
 divine origin, but denies to it an existence as a distinct person or 
 hypostasis from God till its manifestation in the life and character of 
 the Eedeemer, declaring that " the word was God" — the expression 
 of the divine mind itself. 
 
 This is one peculiarity of John's doctrine, expressed more fully 
 in his First Epistle — " That which was from the beginning, which 
 we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have 
 looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life; for 
 the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and 
 show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, 
 and was manifested to us" — in the person of course of Jesus of 
 Nazareth. These emphatic and reiterated assertions of hearing, 
 seeing, looking upon, and handling, are evidently used in refutation 
 of the Gnostic doctrine of the unsubstantlality of Christ's person, 
 whilst the writer affirms the eternity, not of the man Christ Jesus, 
 but of the life thus manifested — a term which he uses as synony- 
 mous with " the word" or Logos spoken of in the Gospel. 
 
 It is also worthy to be noted that the terms " the word" and 
 " light" are also used synonymously by John, two distinct Aeons 
 In the Platonic philosophy, the latter of which has never been 
 personified like the Alexandrian Logos, In the Christian mythology. 
 In the early church at Ephesus, Indeed, there seems to have been 
 a tendency on the part of these Platonists, to identify John the 
 Baptist with their Aeon of light. The idea is not one, however, 
 that we find taking any general hold on the Christian mind ; though 
 this Evangelist devotes several verses of this Introduction expressly 
 to combat it. The idea may have arisen from the teaching of 
 Apollos in that city, who, as we read in Acts xviii., 25, " spoke and 
 taught diligently the things of the Lord knowing only the baptism 
 of John." However this may be, the circumstance that the Evan- 
 gelist devotes several verses to combat the Idea that the Baptist 
 was " the true light" shows that he had in view in writing this 
 introduction the crude ideas of the Greek Platonists at Ephesus, 
 and not the more developed doctrine of the Alexandrian theology. 
 
 That John should speak In his Gospel of his exalted Master as 
 an embodiment of that " word which was in the beginning with 
 God and was God," should not appear strange to those who 
 admit the Johannine authorship of the Apocalypse. There, we 
 find it said of the warrior on " the white horse " that " his name is 
 
112 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 called the Word of God." At this early period therefore the idea 
 had occurred to the mind of the writer. It is not possible that 
 " the doctrine of the Logos could have blended itself at this early 
 period with the popular idea of Christianity." Nor was it at all 
 necessary in order to account for it. The idea was a natural one — 
 one that must readily have presented itself to the mind of this 
 Apostle. He that had come, in the language of his own paraible, 
 sowing the divine word, and had gone to heaven, leaving after him 
 no record of that word, but the vivid and endearing recollection of 
 his own exalted character, — how natural that he should be spoken 
 of by a writer of John's imagination as that word itself! It is 
 quite usual for Paul to use the terms Jesus Christ as expressive of 
 the Grospel, as in that passage, " we preach Christ." Peter speaks 
 of " the word which God sent to the children of Israel preaching 
 peace by Jesus Christ." And John speaks of that word which was 
 sent as Jesus Christ, or embodied in the person of Christ himself, 
 and hence he calls him " the word of God." 
 
 On this point, however. Dr. Davidson remarks with his usual 
 keen critical sagacity — Vol. i., page 334: — 
 
 " The Messiah is called the Word of God in the ApocaJypse (xix., 13), 
 in the Gospel he is called the Word absolutely. The two phrases show a 
 different theological standpoint, the former savouring of Palestinian, the 
 latter of Alexandrian metaphysics. The one is the well-known Memr'a 
 of JehovaJi so frequent in the Targums, the other resembles Philo's idea." 
 
 And again in Vol. ii., page 297, when commenting on the 
 First Epistle of John, the Doctor writes : — 
 
 " Christ is not termed the Word absolutely, as he is in the Gospel. 
 He is the life, the eternal life which was with the Father, the Son of God, 
 not the Word. High as the epithets are they imply a conception of his 
 person inferior to the Gospel's." 
 
 However we may admire the critical acumen of these remarks, it 
 is more conspicuous than their correctness. For in no place in 
 John's Gospel is "the Messiah" or "Christ called the Word 
 absolutely." What is said is that the Logos or Word "was 
 made" or revealed In "flesh" in the person of Jesus — a very 
 different statement truly. To verify this, the reader has only to 
 substitute the term "Messiah" or " Christ" for " Word" and see 
 how it would read. "In the beginning was the Messiah or 
 Christ, and the Messiah or Christ was with God, and the Messiah 
 
OBJECTIOKS CONSIDEKED. 113 
 
 or Christ was God;— and the Messiah or Christ was made flesh" — 
 that is, loas made the Messiah or Christ! The two terms therefore 
 are not convertible. This is not what John affirms. He does not 
 call Christ "the word absolutely," but affirms that the word — 
 evidently a different conception from the living Christ — was 
 revealed in the character of the Messiah. That the incarnation of 
 that Word which he here affirms, was not Philo's idea, the Doctor, 
 as we have seen elsewhere admits. And it may reasonably be 
 doubted, if he had not got this Atexiondrian theory previously in 
 his mind, whether he would have found it in th© Grospel of John. 
 
 To those, however, who admit identity of authorship betwixt 
 the Gospel and John's First Epistle, it may be well to note that 
 Dr. D., after citing the testimony of the Fathers to the latter as 
 being the work of the Apostle^ thus writes. Vol. ii., 293 : — " Thus 
 the latter is well attested by the voice of antiquity. As far as 
 external evidence reaches, the authenticity seems to be secure." 
 
 And in commenting on the internal evidence, he admits that 
 " the Epistle moves in the same circle of ideas as the Gospel" — 
 that " its leading views and xepregentations are alike " — that 
 " the same images are used," and " the verbal coincidences are most 
 striking " — a list of which he has adduced. And yet he thinks 
 that "internal evidence is not favourable to Apostolic authorship," 
 — and that " the deviations of the Epistle from the Gospel, though 
 not numerous, are inconsistent with sameness of authorship." 
 
 As some of his reasons for so thinking would lead my mind to a 
 directly opposite conclusion I would here briefly refer to two of 
 them. One has been already cited. It is that " Christ is not 
 termed the Logos or Word absolutely as he is in the Gospel," — 
 on which it may suffice simply to remark that the pen that wrote 
 the following sentence — "And the Word was made flesh and 
 dwelt among us and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only 
 begotten of the Father full of grace and truth " — ^was the one to 
 which we would naturally attribute such lines as these — " That 
 which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which 
 we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our 
 hands have handled of the word of life, for the life was manifested, 
 &o." Here if he does not call him " the Word absolutely," he 
 speaks of a "Word of life," and a "life that was manifested" in 
 Jesus, as the author of the Gospel says, " In him was life, 
 and the life was the light of men." And it is plain that both 
 writings affirm the manifestation in flesh, or the reality of that 
 living body in which the Word or life was manifested. 
 
114 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 Another reason of the Doctor's for thinking " the internal 
 evidence not favourable to Apostolic authorship " is — 
 
 " There is little doubt that the water and the blood in xix., 34, are 
 symbolical, representing the cleansing and atoning efficacy of Christ. 
 But in the Epistle the language — ' This is he who came by water and 
 blood,' water and blood denoting baptism and the supper — the two 
 sacraments he instituted." 
 
 How anyone can see a symbol of " the atoning ei35cacy of Christ" 
 in the text, John xix., 34, I must confess my total inability to 
 understand. To me the writer is using no symbol, but testifying 
 most emphatically to a fact, or what he believed to be a fact. Nor 
 is First John v., 6, more symbolical. The writer says: "This is 
 he that came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by water only, 
 but by water and blood." What had Christ's own coming to do 
 with " the two sacraments?" He came, however, not " by water 
 only" in his own baptism, when John bore witness to him, but "by 
 water and blood," when the thrust of the soldier's spear sealed the 
 testimony of the cross. Thus the sentence contains two distinct 
 references to the Gospel record, proving too that the Gospel must 
 have been in existence when this Epistle was written. And to 
 impute symbolism to a writer who is evidently appealing to facts in 
 attestation of his record, however sagacious, is hardly a just mode 
 of criticism. And yet it is on the strength of such arguments we 
 are called on to set aside the unanimous testimony of antiquity ! 
 Criticize as we will, however, that spirit of earnestness which so 
 markedly characterizes this letter evinces it to be no spurious 
 production, but the dying testimony of the old Apostle to what 
 " his eyes had seen, his ears had heard, and his hands had handled 
 of the word of life ;" whilst " the weakness and repetitions" so 
 manifest in the second chapter (on which the Doctor comments in 
 his tenth reason) as unmistakably betray the tautology and 
 infirmity of extreme old age. 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 We have now completed the task which in the introduction we 
 sketched out. We have confined ourselves solely to such internal 
 marks of authenticity as imply the testimony of an eye-witness, or 
 
CONCLUSION. 115 
 
 coincide with and explain the testimony of other witnesses. And we 
 have endeavoured to answer such objections as have been founded 
 on the mode of teaching, style, and such like evidence. The 
 argument would be greatly strengthened by a view of the external 
 evidence, but this has been already given to the public by Mr. 
 Kowland in his " Evidence from Tradition and from the Fathers, 
 applied in support of the Apostolic origin of the Fourth Gospel." 
 As much has, of late years, been advanced to invalidate the 
 authority of that book in the New Testament, which gives us the 
 most exalted spiritual view of the mission of Christ, it has been our 
 object to lay before the English reader some knowledge of Avhat 
 may still be said in its support. And if, in doing so, we have 
 ventured to question the conclusions of men of great learning and 
 ability, whose praise is deservedly in all the churches for their 
 fearlessness and honesty, it is in no spirit of presumption, but from 
 a strong conviction of the invalidity of their arguments. 
 
 The argument that weighed most heavily with Mr. Tayler 
 against the validity of this Grospel, if we may judge from the 
 weight attached to it in his work, was the great difference in style 
 and matter betwixt it and the Apocalypse. And yet, as Dr. 
 Davidson has remarked: — 
 
 "It will not satisfy the demands of criticism to assume the non- 
 authenticity of the Grospel from the authenticity of the Apocalypse, or 
 the contrary, because respectable scholars still maintain identity of 
 authorship." 
 
 And though he afterwards remarks " that the critical sagacity of 
 those who attribute both to John cannot be applauded," yet I must 
 confess that, after a careful study of his own arguments on either 
 side, those adduced for that identity decidedly preponderate.* 
 
 * That the reader may be able to judge for himself of the Btrength of this evidence, 
 I will here enumerate a few of the particulars. 
 
 1st. We have seen that in both Jesus is spoken of, in one vray or other, as manifesting 
 forth in his own person the Divine word— a mode of speaking of him that we never 
 find used in the Synoptics. 
 
 2nd. In both Jesus is called " a Lamb,'' which the Synoptists never do, nor is he 
 BO called elsewhere in the New Testament, save in Acts viii., 32 — a quotation from 
 Isaiah liii., 7, where it is said that "he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter," and in 
 
 I. Peter i., 19 by Peter of course, who was John's companion in the ministry for a 
 
 time. Dr. Davidson founds an objection upon this that in the Kevelation it is the 
 neuter noun Sifvlov that is used, whereas in the Gospel it is tt/ti/ds. 2'Ae idea, however, 
 
116 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 This is not the place, however, to enter on the critical discilssion, 
 nor, in considering the question, have we noticed the doubts cast 
 upon the Apostolic authorship of The Revelation by Dionysius of 
 Alexandria, and other early fathers, who attributed it to John the 
 Presbyter of Ephesus. This we did not, as it seems to us the 
 historic evidence for its Apostolic authorship decidedly preponder- 
 ates. And there is so much in common in both works in their 
 mode of flpeaking of the Christ as " the Lamb of God," " the Word 
 of God," the light of the new Jerusalem; he that sendeth the 
 " hidden manna," or " bread from heaven," and giveth to drink of 
 the " river of the water of life;" that both seem in these respects 
 the production of the same mind. 
 
 The strongest argument against this — one that I do not remember 
 to have seen noticed by our critics— is that the Apocalypse contains 
 no such internal evidence as the Gospel does, that its author had 
 ever been in company with Jesus during his ministry on earth. 
 He ever speaks of him as one would who had never seen him but 
 in vision — as Paul does when he writes " the second man is the 
 Lord from heaven." The author sees one " like the son of man" 
 walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, but the 
 description of his person is evidently taken from the Book of 
 Daniel. And when he saw him "he fell at his feet as dead." 
 
 is the same, and the Apocalypaist may use the neuter, either from his habit of speaking 
 of it as a "lamb that was slain," or perhaps from his want of familiarity with the 
 Greek tongue at the time, whereas in the Gospel be may use afi.v6s in reference to his 
 meekness and innocence, for it was not a lamb but a goat that took away the sins of 
 the Israelites into the wilderness. 
 
 3rd. Both speak of Jesus as " the light," see Eev. xxi , 23 ; John passim, which the 
 Synoptists never do, save Luke ii., 32, who applies to him the prophetical epithet "a 
 light to lighten the Gentiles," &c. 
 
 4th. In John vii., 37, JesU3 says, "If any man thirst let him come unto me and 
 drink," and in Rev. xxi., 6, "I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the 
 water of life freely." 
 
 5th. As Dr. D. remarks — "In Apob. ii., 17, Jesus promises believers the hidden 
 manna," in the Gospel, vi , 32, " the true bread from heaven." 
 
 6th, In John xix., 37, the author quotes Zach. xii., 10— "They shall look on him 
 whom they pierced." And in Eev. i., 7, we read— "And they which pierced him," 
 showing the same thought in the mind of the writer, and that it dwelt on the fact of 
 the soldiers having pierced the side of Jesus, to which John testlHes. 
 
 In addition to the above, Dr. Davidson points out a number of words and peculiar, 
 phrases common to both writings, and justly i-emarks^" The manner of writing in the 
 Apocalypse often reminds one of that in the Fourth Gospel and Firiit Epistle, where 
 the same idea is expressed, both positively and negatively, and a certain parallelism of 
 thought and expression may be noticed." — See Vol. i., page 331. 
 
CONCLUSION. 117 
 
 " And he laid his right hand upon me, saying ' Fear not, I am the 
 first and the last; I am he that liveth and was dead, and behold I 
 am alive for evermore, and have the keys of hell and of death." 
 All this is very unlike what a companion of Jesus during his 
 ministry on earth might be expected to have written of him. 
 Besides, the revelation itself is not given by Jesus personally, to 
 John, as he appeared to Paul, but it is " sent and signified by his 
 angel unto hia servant John." Throughout the book we find no 
 such reference as an Apostle would have made to his earthly 
 ministry — no such presumptive evidence for its Apostolic author^ 
 ship as John's Gospel manifestly displays. In this respect the 
 presumption is much in favour of the opinion of Dionysius. And 
 yet the historic evidence refers it decidedly to John the Apostle. 
 
 Whether or not the work of an Apostle, it is evident that 
 the Apocalypse was the work of the Apostolic age. Written 
 about the reign of Galba, as Dr. Davidson shows satisfactorily, and 
 before the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, its Christology differs 
 no less remarkably than that of John's Gospel from that of the 
 Synoptists. The arguments of Mr. Tayler drawn from this source, 
 for the post- Apostolic authorship of the Gospel would apply equally 
 to the Apocalypse. In page 181 hew;rites: — 
 
 " Did we know him (Christ) through the Fourth Gospel alone, we 
 would not doubt that the author of that work regarded him as something 
 more than human — the incarnation of the Eternal Word." 
 
 Without stopping to controvert the statement, permit me to ask, 
 however, how does the author of Revelation speak of him? — as 
 " one who is set down -with the Father in his throne," and who 
 with the Father is worshipped by the " thousands of thousands " 
 that surround the throne in this manner, — " Worthy is the Lamb 
 that was slain to receive power and riches and vdsdom and strength, 
 and honour and glory, and blessing." There is then surely no 
 argument to be deduced from the Christology of the Gospel more 
 unfavourable to its Apostolic authorship than what may be founded 
 upon this. 
 
 Mr. Tayler is more judicious when he writes, page 174: — 
 
 " The Synoptical Gospels have preserved the oldest Palestinian tradi- 
 tions of the person and public ministry of Jesus. In the Epistles of Paul 
 we get an insight into the heart of the earliest controversy to which the 
 new religion gave rise. The Fourth Gospel contains the reflections of a 
 
118 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 profoundly devout and meditative spirit (probably of the Church of 
 Ephesus) on a survey of the ministry of Christ, interpreting it from his 
 own lofty point of view, and giving it the comprehensive application 
 which to that wider ken it seemed at once to yield. Briefly, we may 
 say, the Synoptists record the original facts, Paul and John exhibit the 
 results of a later reflection on those facts." 
 
 Just so; but why not suppose " the profoundly devout and medi- 
 tative spirit, probably of the Church of Ephesus," to have been that 
 of the old Apostle who had long out-lived Paul, and who was most 
 interested, if not fitted, to take that "comprehensive survey of the 
 ministry of Christ ? " Who could take it so well and comprehen- 
 sively, in the profound stillness of mature old age, as that disciple who 
 had " leaned on his breast at supper," who had been with him from 
 his annunciation on the banks of Jordan, till he hung upon the 
 Cross of Calvary, who had received from him his last great earthly 
 trust? Mr. Tayler seems to have thought that it was impossible 
 for the Apostle to have passed through so remarkable a mental 
 change as that indicated by the transition from the seer of Apoca- 
 lyptic visions to the more sublime seer of the religion of humanity. 
 He compares the case to two of our own poets, Milton and Dryden, 
 who " passed through remarkable mental changes ;" but theirs, 
 surely, were nothing to the Apostles' ? Look at Paul, who, at a 
 mature time of life, emancipated his mind from all the narrowness, 
 and bitter, persecuting spirit of an intolerant Pharisaism, and who, 
 without the advantages of a living personal intercourse with the 
 Christ, save in vision, became the chosen exponent of the free 
 liberty of gospel truth, with whom " circumcision availeth nothing, 
 nor uncircumcision, but that faith which worketh by love." Paul 
 attained to this liberty suddenly — may we not say miraculously, 
 compared with John — far outstripping Peter and the Apostolic 
 College at Jerusalem in the wide comprehensiveness of his views of 
 truth. May not John's mind, by more mature reflection, have 
 attained to the same wide comprehensiveness? His Epistles, 
 indeed, hardly display the full liberality of the Apostle to the 
 Gentiles. But he had before him the example of how Paul had 
 preached Christianity. His lot in mature life was cast among those 
 very churches that the more active zeal of Paul had planted. 
 Would not Paul's teaching and spirit also assist in more maturely 
 elaborating his own, as given in this record of the life? The great 
 revolution caused by the mission of Jesus in all his followers' 
 thoughts, and views, and feelings, was such as has never been 
 
CONCLUSION. 119 
 
 equalled in the world's history ; so that it is vain to compare John's 
 case to that of any European author. 
 
 In one respect, however, John, as he had been permitted to 
 outlive, had also been enabled to surpass Paul. The latter's 
 letters — at least the earlier ones — unmistakably indicate the 
 Chiliastic expectations on his part, that so remarkably distinguish 
 John's Book of Revelation. Paul even anticipates the end at an 
 earlier date — the coming of the Christ in glory previous to his own 
 decease — for thus he writes in his First letter to the Thessalonians 
 — iv., 17 — " Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught 
 up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and 
 so we shall ever be with the Lord." These views of Christ's 
 second coming, John was privileged to outlive. Long before the 
 earliest date that critics have assigned to his Gospel, he must have 
 begun to question their correctness. He had lived to see the 
 whole generation of those who lived full in the expectation of this 
 realization of the faith — all save himself gone to sleep and, " lo, 
 the end is not yet." And hence we find in this Gospel that wide 
 and spiritual interpretation of the mission that regards its purpose 
 to be the enlightening of humanity, — the " gathering into one of 
 the children of the living God," that there may be " one flock and 
 one Shepherd." 
 
 That the Book may have been written within about thirty years 
 
 of the time of this Apostle — cej^tainly within fifty — Mr. Tayler 
 
 admits. Why, then, set aside the evidence of the early Church ? 
 
 or why suppose an imposition practised upon those Christians at 
 
 Ephesus some of whom must have remembered the Apostle ? Or 
 
 why not rather attribute the work to him whose personal interest, 
 
 mature age, and varied experience enabled him, beyond any other 
 
 that history informs us of, to survey in a " profoundly devout and 
 
 meditative spirit, the ministry of Jesus?" That such proceeding 
 
 would be just, will I think appear to the reflecting reader from 
 
 the very embarrassment of critics adverse to its authenticity to 
 
 assign an otherwise probable date and authorship to the book. In 
 
 page 150 Mr. Tayler writes — " If I am asked who was its 
 
 author, and when was it written, I confess I am unable to give a 
 
 categorical answer." And though Dr. Davidson fixes the date to 
 
 about A.D. 150, on the question of authorship in Vol. ii., page 
 
 445, he writes — 
 
 " The subject presents a variety of embarrassing circumstances so that 
 it is difficult to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. Though the balance 
 
 I 
 
120 THE AUTHENTICITY OF JOHN'S GOSPEL. 
 
 of evidence is clearly against the Gospel's authenticity, it is not easy to 
 account for the early belief of its Johannine origin otherwise than by 
 assuming that it arose in the circle of John's disciples about Ephesus 
 under influences posterior to that Apostle." 
 
 But how could that " circle of disciples " have been imposed on, 
 some of whom must have remembered John ? 
 Again in page 446 the Doctor writes — 
 
 " It is singular that the author should have remained in miraculous 
 concealment, when we look at the fact from a modern standpoint." 
 
 Verily it is a miracle on the Doctor's theory, not only that the 
 author should have so concealed himself, but that he so imposed his 
 spurious work on John's disciples about Ephesus within less than 
 fifty years of the Apostle's death ! 
 
 Much has been said of the title " Boanerges," applied by Jesus 
 to him and his brother in their youth. The fiery spirit which that 
 indicated had, in all likelihood, in the reign of Herod Agrippa cost 
 the latter his life. And though it no doubt contributed its fire to 
 the visions of the Apocalypse, and accounts for that hostility to 
 Judaism, or rather to Jews generally that marks this Gospel, yet 
 in the order of nature, not to speak of the teachings of the 
 Master, it had had full time to burn itself down to those calm, but 
 still bright embers of inspiration that distinguish the writings of 
 this Evangelist. To what purpose, too, to revive the old story 
 discredited by Lardner, of John rushing out of the bath at 
 Ephesus from Cerinthus? If he did so, which is not impossible, 
 he was at least a younger man — perhaps fresh from Palestine — his 
 mind still full of Jewish narrowness — than when he required to be 
 carried into their assemblies, and preached the sermon so consonant 
 to the spirit of this Gospel — " Little children, love one another." 
 
 Mr. Tayler seems to have thought that his calling in question 
 the authenticity of this Book would not lessen its spiritual value, 
 nor much unsettle in the minds of others that habitual reliance on a 
 divine authority that most feel so essential to the support of faith, 
 —that " true faith does not depend on the mere words of a book " 
 — that it is " the deep mysterious sympathy that binds together all 
 spiritual natures which has its fons et origo in that new life infused 
 into the soul of our humanity by the loving character and spirit of 
 the Great Master." But who does not feel that in thus thinkino-, 
 our reverend brother was only judging others by his own more 
 
CONCLUSION. 121 
 
 lofty and Christian experience? Who, that has but little time to 
 judge of such things, has not found his own faith in " Jesus and 
 the resurrection" somewhat shaken by the very doubts that one 
 so learned and good and truthful has thus cast on this, once the 
 most prized portion of the Christian scriptures, and who, possessing 
 less of that " deep sympathy with the pure and spiritual " has 
 found his mind, all unwillingly it may be, merging into the dark 
 night of unbelief? 
 
 And yet, strange it is, that our lamented Brother should not 
 have recognized in this Gospel the testimony of that mind whom 
 the great Master loved ; for one more truly in unison with it was 
 not to be found in any of our churches. He, if any of us, had 
 surely " eaten of that bread which cometh down from heaven," and 
 drunk of that water which can eternally assuage the thirst. In his 
 character was that glorious aspiration realized " that they may be 
 one as thou Father art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be 
 one in us." His religion was free from all dogma and exclusiveness, 
 settled and grounded, and in deep sympathy with that spiritual life 
 which John tells us was incarnated in Jesus. None, I am con- 
 vinced, more highly prized John's views of Christianity than he who 
 had come to the " irresistible conclusion" that that Apostle was 
 not the author of this Grospel. Our human conclusions may, how- 
 ever, be erroneous, — and that his have been so in this case, it has 
 been my endeavour to demonstrate, with all respect for the 
 memory of their author. But it is not so with our diviner sympathies. 
 Those that unite us to the true, the good, the holy, — those must be 
 eternal and immutable as the God who made us. Those, as they 
 depend not on " the letter that killeth," " cannot be shaken," no 
 more than John's Gospel itself, by the vain breath of criticism. 
 These, then, with our deceased friend let us " hold fast" — to use 
 the imagery of the Apocalypse, " walking with him in white," that 
 Jesus may " confess our names before his Father and before the 
 angels."