-YAILE«¥MH¥EI^SIir¥''

JOHN THE PRESBYTER
AND THE FOURTH GOSPEL

BY

DOM JOHN CHAPMAN, O.S.B.

OXFORD
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
1911

HENRY FROWDE, M.A.
FUBLISHEE TO THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
LONDON, EDINBURGH, NEW YORK
TORONTO AND MELBOURNE

PREFACE
It is well to explain that the following argu
ments were written down in 1903 or 1904, as
the situation has somewhat changed since then.
Dr. Sanday referred to my MS., which he had
been so kind as to read, in his book. The Criticism
of the Fourth Gospel (1905), p. 252. Since then
I have rewritten some passages towards the end,
for the sake of clearness, and I have added refer
ences to subsequent writers. But the whole
matter seems to me just as clear as it did
when I first wrote it.

John Chapman, O.S.B.

Erdington Abbey,
Birmingham.
July, 1910.

Cum permissu Superiorum ordinis.
nihil obstat. J. McIntyre, Censor Deputatus.
IMPRIMATUR. * Eduardus Epus Birminghamiensis.

A 2

CONTENTS PAGE
§ 1. The difficulties in the fragment of the Prologue of Papias 7
§ 2. The two interpretations of toiis t&v Trpecr^vrepav \6yovs, t*'
'Av8p€as eOTtv, etc. ........ 9
§ 3. St. Irenaeus understands the Presbyters to be not
Apostles, but disciples of the Apostles . . -13
§ 4. Eusebius understands the Presbyters to be not Apostles,
but disciples of the Apostles  17
§ 5. Aristion and John were disciples of the Lord . . .20
§ 6. Papias knew John the Presbyter and Aristion personally 28
§ 7. Eusebius on John the Presbyter  33
§ 8. St. Irenaeus on John the Presbyter  41
§ 9. Early witnesses to the identity of the Presbyter and the
Apostle  49
§ ID. Apostle, Disciple, Presbyter  59
§ II. Philip the Apostle at Hierapolis  64
§ 12. Consequences of assuming the separate existence of John
the Presbyter  72
§ 13. The witness of John the Presbyter to his own identity . 84
Additional note on De Boor's fragment of Philip of Side . 95
Index  103

1 1
The difficulties in the fragment qf the Prologue
of Papias.
It is a sign of the times that Professor Mommsen,
shortly before his death, should have written, with
regard to the great question of the origin of the fourth
Gospel : ' Der Sitz der Johannes-Controverse ist Euse
bius' Bericht iiber den Papias, Hist. Eccl. iii. 39.' ^ There
was a time when scholars in Germany thought only of in
ternal evidence ; now every scrap of external evidence is
weighed and employed, and the results are more hopeful
and less bewilderingly diverse. It is possible now for
Conservative and Liberal, Catholic and Rationalist, to
assist one another, and to work together for the dis
covery of truth ; and though each of us is prejudiced
in his own fashion, the honest attempt to judge in a dry
light is commoner than it oncewas,^ and we learn much
from those who approach the same evidence from a
slightly different point of view.
The words of Papias referred to by Mommsen are
certainly of immense importance. They have been
interpreted in various ways, and have been subjected to
jnany conjectural emendations. One at least of the
innumerable commentaries upon thera, that of Dr. Zahn,
^ Zeitschriftfiir N.-T. Wiss. 1902, 2, p. 156.
' I am not sure that this is so true in 1910 as I thought it in
1903-4.

8 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §i
is of wonderful elaboration. Many are of great ingenuity.
But it cannot be said that the question is yet settled.
I do not despair, however, of reaching a definite and
convincing conclusion with regard to the real meaning
of Papias. In the following pages I shall examine the
available evidence with all possible care, and I shall be
obliged to disagree with theologians on both sides of
the Johannine question, and to agree in part with those
whose final results I reject.
I subjoin the words of Papias cited by Eusebius :
OvK OKvqcrai Si (TOi, Kal oaa Trore Trapa tcov Trpe<T^VTfpa>v
Ka\S>s efiadov Kal KaX&s kfivrjiiovevaa, o-vyKarard^ai raig
ipfiTjveiais, Sia^e^aiov/ieyos iivep avroav dXrjOeiav. Ov
yiip Tois ra woXXd Xeyovaiv e-)((upov ma-Trep ol iroXXoi, dXXa
ToIs TaXrjdfj SiSdcTKova-iv, oiiSe toTs rds dXXorpias evroXas
HvrjuovevovcTLv, dXXd toTs rds irapa tov Kvpiov rfj iriarei
SeSofieyas Kal dn avrrjs Trapayivo/j.iva9 r-^S dXrjdetas. Ei
Se ttov Kal 7rapr}KoXov6rjKcos ti9 tois npea-fivTepois eX6oi,
Toiis TWV irpea-^VTepcov dveKpivov Xoyovs, ti 'AvSpeas rj ti
Ilerpos elwev, rj ri ^iXnriros, fj ti Qcofids ^ 'IdKCo^os, rj ti
'ImdvvTis fj MarOaTos 17 ns erepos twv tov Kvpiov fiaSrjTwv,
a Te 'Apia-Tiwv Kal 6 irpea^vTepos 'Iwdvvrjs, rod Kvpiov
fiadrjTai, Xeyovaiv. Oil ydp to, eK twv ^i^Xiwv ToaovTov fie
w(f>eXeTv {nreXdji^avov, ocrov Ta Tvapd ^wcrrjs (pmvrjs Kal
fievov(j-r]s. — Eus. H. E. iii. 39.

f 2
The two interpretations of toOs twv npea-^vTepwu
Xoyovs, TI 'AvSpeas elirev, etc.
Who were the Presbyters ? Undoubtedly the simplest
way to translate tovs twv irpea^vTepwv dveKpivov Xoyovs,
Tt 'AvSpeas ^ ri Uerpos elirev is this : ' I inquired the
words of the Presbyters, that is to say, what Andrew or
Peter said,' &c., thus identifying the Apostles enume
rated with the Presbyters whose words are asked for.
At first sight this even appears to be the only possible
meaning, and Dr. Abbott, who does not accept this
interpretation, admits that the form of words is ' almost
irresistible evidence' in its favour.^ It has recently
been urged with great force by M. Michiels, by Dr. Zahn,
and by Dr. Bardenhewer.^ It results in making the
' Expositor, 1895, pp. 336-7.
' Michiels, L'Origine de V^piscopat, Louvain, 1900, pp. 301-5 ;
Zahn, Forschungen, vi, pp. 122, 134 foil. ; Bardenhewer, Gesch. der
altkirchl. Litt., pp. 538-9 ; and now by Lepin, L'Origine du 4* ivan-
gile (1907), p. 136, an author with whom I am sorry to disagree, on
account of the great admiration I have for his book. Funk speaks
with equal decision in his note on the passage, Patres Apostol.
(1901), i. 352 ; antf Batiffol has followed Funk {UEglise naissante,
3rd ed., 1909, p. 205, note). Similarly Gutjahr, Die GlaubwUr-
digkeit des Irenaischen Zeugnisses (Graz, 1904, pp. 77 foil.). But
the greatest authority is Lightfoot, Essays on Supernatural Religion
(1889), p. 145: 'What classes of persons he intends to include
under the designation of " elders" he makes clear by the names
which follow. The category would include not only Apostles like
Andrew and Peter, but also other personal disciples of Christ, such
as Aristion and the second John. In other words, the term with

lo JOHN THE PRESBYTER §2
epithet ' Presbyter ' identify the second John with the
former, instead of distinguishing the two. It has a still
more remarkable reaction upon Papias's first sentence,
in which he declares himself the direct disciple of the
Presbyters, for he appears in consequence as the disciple
of a good many Apostles. This is the more interesting,
as nowhere else is he called the disciple of more than
one, namely St. John.^
But instead of co-ordinating ti 'AvSpeas elirev with
Xoyovs, it is possible to subordinate it to Xoyovs, thus
making ' what Andrew and Peter said ' the subject of
the Presbyters' discourses : ' I used to inquire the
words of the Presbyters, what (they said) Peter and
Andrew said,' &c., so that ti 'AvSpeas einev is epexegetic
of Xoyovs. In this case the Presbyters are the disciples
and companions of the Apostles, they are not the
Apostles themselves.
This second interpretation is grammatically possible ;
in fact, between the two interpretations there is rather
a difference of sense than of grammar. In both cases
' the words of the Presbyters ' were ' what Peter and
Andrew and the rest said ', whether the Presb3^ers were
themselves Peter and Andrew and the rest sajdng the
things for the first time, or whether they were disciples,
repeating them from memory. The whole question
him is a synonyme for the Fathers of the Church in the first
generation.' Again, p. 146, note : ' WeifFenbach supposes that the
elders are distinguished from the Apostles and personal disciples
whose sayings Papias sets himself to collect. This view demands
such a violent wresting of the grammatical connexion in the pas
sage of Papias that it is not likely to find much favour'. It has,
nevertheless, found a good deal of favour since Lightfoot wrote in
1875. > Irenaeus, Haer. v. 33. 4.

§a JOHN THE PRESBYTER ii
what Papias meant, and what his readers would under
stand, depends upon their previous knowledge of who
the Presbyters were. To determine by this passage
who they were is a va-repov irporepov. Examples will
make this' clear. For the possibly ambiguous word
' Presbyter ' let us substitute first ' disciple ', which will
naturally be understood as equivalent to apostle, and
then 'bishop', which will naturally appear to exclude
the Apostles.
I. Toi)s twv naOrjrwv dveKpivov Xoyovs, ri 'AvSpeas ^ ri
Uerpos eiirev, ktX.
2. Toi>s TWV eiria-Koirwv dveKpivov Xoyovs, ri 'AvSpeas ^
ri Uerpos eiirev, ktX.
In the first case we instantly identify Peter and
Andrew with the disciples. In the second place we
instantly and without difficulty identify ' what Peter and
Andrew said ' with the Xoyoi of the bishops. Once we
have caught the sense of this second interpretation, the
reason for the clause ri 'AvSpeas, Sec, becomes evident.
On the assumption that the Presbyters are not the
Apostles, Papias did not want to be told of the Pres
byters' remarks about the weather, nor even of their
sermons on subjects of the day, but only such words as
reported the sayings of the Apostles : ' I asked the
words of the Presbyters, what (since, being elders, they
recollect) Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John,
Matthew, and the rest, told them.'
In order to discover whether the first or the second
interpretation is correct, we must first find out whether
' Presbyter ' must or can mean ' Apostle '.
Now it is evident that those who had the work of
Papias before them must have plainly seen whether he

12 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §a
used irpea-^ijrepoi elsewhere to mean Apostles or not.'^
We must therefore simply inquire how St. Irenaeus
understood him, how Eusebius understood him, and we
may add an examination of other uses of the word.
The result of our investigation ought to settle the
meaning of the passage beyond all controversy.
' Rufinus and the Syriac are of no use to us here, since their
renderings are just as ambiguous as the Greek. Dr. Zahn (p. 122)
had no right to quote them on his side.

§3
St. Irenaeus understands the Presbyters to be not
Apostles, but disciples of the Apostles.
St. Irenaeus uses irpea^vrepos as sjmonymous with
eiriaKOTTos in many passages. For instance, he speaks
to St. Victor of his predecessors Anicetus, Pius,
Hyginus, Telesphorus, and Xystus as irpea^irepoi ol
irpoaravres rrjs eKKXrjaias tjs ai) vvv dcpr/yji, — ol irpo aov
irp^a^vrepoi {Ep. ad Vict, Eus. H. E. v. 24). He calls
the episcopal succession ' successiones Presbyterorum
in ecclesiis ' (iii. 23), and the episcopate is ' Presbyterii
ordo ' (iv. 26. 3).^
But it is not such passages which concem us here.
It is clear that Papias means ol vpea^vrepoi in the
etymological sense, not in the ecclesiastical, and the
same use is common in St. Irenaeus.
I. The author of the verses against Marcus is never
called irpea^vrepos by St. Irenaeus; he is d Kpeiaawv
•fjfiwv (i. praef , i. 13. 3), superior nobis (iii. 17. 4), 6 Oelos
irpeafiilrrjs, divinae aspirationis senior, and 6 deo<piX^s
^ Yet presbyter in his time was applied to the lower order ; for
a curious passage on Acts xx shows that St. Irenaeus did not
identify the ' presbyters ' of v. 17 with the ' bishops ' of v. 28, for he
paraphrases v. 17 thus, with the insertioh of the ' bishops ' to corre
spond with V. 28 : ' In Mileto enim convocatis episcopis et presby-
teris' (iii. 14. 2). Similarly the letter of the Churches of Lyons
and Vienne calls St. Irenaeus a presbyter, when he was not yet
bishop (Eus. H. E. v. 4).

14 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §3
npea^vrris (i. 15. 6), ex veteribus quidam (iii. 23. 3), qui
dixit (iv. 4. 2), quidam ante nos (iv. 41: 2), and possibly
Tiy tSv irpo^ePni^orwv (v. 17. 4), unless Papias is here
meant.^ 2. The author of the sermon heard by St. Irenaeus,
possibly Pothinus,^ is repeatedly called presbyter:
' Quemadmodum audivi a quodam presbytero, qui audie-
rat ab his qui apostolos viderant et ab his qui didi-
cerant' (understand 'qui didicerant ab eis', iv. 27. i),
'sicut dixit presbyter' (ibid.), 'inquit ille senior' {irpe-
a^vrris or irpea^vrepos ? ibid. 2), ' sicut et presbyter dice-
bat' (iv. 30. i), 'talia quaedam enarrans de antiquis
presbyter reficiebat nos ' (iv. 30. 4). Notice that he is
not even a disciple of the Apostles, but of disciples of
the Apostles.^
3. Polycarp, ' who was not only made a disciple by
Apostles, and a comrade of many who had seen Christ,
but also was made bishop in Asia in the Church of
Srajn-na by Apostles ' (iii. 3. 4), is numbered among the
' It is not certain that all these passages refer to the writer
of the poem against Marcus. But Harnack {Chronol., p. 333,
note 2) has overlooked Lightfoot's proofs (given in the Academy,
Sept. 21, 1889, p. 116, and Clement of Rome, 1890, vol. ii, pp. 405-6),
that there are verses certainly in i. praef and iii. 17. 4. I think all
the other places were verses, in all probability. But Harnack and
Zahn {Forschungen, vi, pp. 61-3) may be right in suggesting Justin
in one or the other place.
° So Harnack, Zahn, and Sanday {Criticism of the Fourth Gospel,
p. 61).
' Therefore the preacher of the sermon is hot the same as the
presbyter of iv. 32. i, ' De duobus Testamentis senior Apostolorum
discipulus disputabat,' so that here Irenaeus has ceased to quote the
discourse. But equally in the middle of the discourse (iv. 28. i) we
have ostendebant presbyteri. Probably both these expressions refer
to Papias's book, as they cannot belong to the sermon we attribute
to Pothinus.

§3 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 15
Presbyters in the letter to Florinus : Tavra ra Soy^ara
ol irph fjiiwv Trpea^vrepoi, oi Kal rois diroaroXois av[i<poiTrj-
aavres, ov irapeSwKav aoi. ElSov ydp ae iraTs wv en ev rrj
Karw Aaia iraph rw IIoXvKdpirw, ktX. A little further
down Polycarp is referred to as eKeTvos 6 fiaKapios Kal
diroaroXiKhs irpea^vrepos.
4. Papias, 'the hearer of John, and companion of
Polycarp, a man of old time' (v. 33. 4), is very likely
quoted as 'senior apostolorum discipulus' (iv. 32. i,
probably npea^vrepos rather than irpea^tjrtjs being the
Greek), as I have just said in a note ; but of course
Polycarp may be meant.
5. The informants of Papias are often quoted (and
here is our most important point) as irpea^fjrepoi. This
is precisely what Papias himself called them. Did
Papias mean Apostles, as Bardenhewer thinks? The
answer given by St. Irenaeus is decisive : —
(a) ii. 22. 5 Kal irdvres ol irpea^vrepoi fiaprvpovaiv^
ol Kara, rfjv 'Aaiav 'Iwdvvrj rm rov Kvpiov iiaOtjrfj avfi-
jSe/SXTj/cdre?. . .
(/3) iv. 28. I 'Ostendebant presbyteri'.
(y) V. 5. I Aeyovaiv ol Trpea^vrepoi rwv diroaroXwv
/ladtjrai. {S) vi. 33. 3 'Quemadmodum presbyteri meminerunt
qui loannem discipulum Domini viderunt, audisse se
ab eo '.
(e) V. 36. I '/2s ol irpea^vrepoi Xeyovai.
iO V. 36. 2 ' Presbyteri, Apostolorum discipuli '.
{t]) V. 30. I Maprvpovvrmv avrwv eKeivwv rwv Kar o'^iv
rov 'Iwdvvrjv ewpaKormv.
In the last passage the word vpeafivrepoi does not
occur ; but I have quoted it because it obviously refers

i6 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §3
to the same persons. Of these extracts e alone is
unimportant for our purpose. A passage evidently
intended against a seemingly Marcionite dualism is
introduced by /3, and this could hardly be attributed
to an Apostle. In a, S, and 77 the presbyters are those
who had seen John the disciple of the Lord, —
St. Irenaeus means the Apostle,— 'who remained to
them until the time of Trajan ' (ii. 22. 5 and iii. 3. 4).
In y and ^ the presbyters are the disciples of the
Apostles. It is certain that in some of these passages
Irenaeus is citing Papias. I myself believe that he is
probably in all of them citing Papias's words, and giving
them greater importance by ascribing them to 'the
Presbyters' in general on the ground that in Papias's
prologue that author had declared that he was but
writing down their common witness. Still it does not
matter for our purpose if some of the passages are not
from Papias at all, but are independent traditions of
the Presbyters which Irenaeus had obtained from some
other source. For his witness is perfectly clear: the
irpea^vrepoi are invariably the disciples of the Apostles
(once a disciple of disciples, — this would usually be
irpea^vrrjs, or Kpeiaawv fffiwv, &c.), and never the Apostles
themselves. Papias is himself to Irenaeus a disciple of
John the Apostle, and therefore he is a npea^vrepos.
There can be no manner of doubt, therefore, that
Irenaeus understood the irpea^vrepoi mentioned in
Papias's prologue to be the disciples of the Apostles
and not Apostles.

Eusebius understands the Presbyters to be not
Apostles, but disciples of the Apostles.
On this point Dr. Zahn has made an unfortunate mis
take, and has misled Dr. Bardenhewer.
Eusebius remarks, says Zahn, that Papias gives us to
understand that he was not a hearer of the Apostles,
and also that ' Papias . . . acknowledges that he received
the sayings of the Apostles from those who followed
them '. Zahn comments thus : ' This second expression
of his judgement shows yet more clearly than the first,
that Eusebius bases himself upon the words of Papias,
ei Se irov koi TraprjKoXovOriKws ns roTs irpea^vrepois eXBoi,
rods rwv vpea^vrepav dveKpivov Xoyovs. He understands
then, as results with clearness from the two sentences
quoted, by the men, thrice called ol vpea^vrepoi and
never otherwise by Papias, " the holy Apostles'" {Forsch
ungen, vi, p. 122).
This is extraordinary : (i) Papias clearly declares that
he himself knew the Presbyters ; Saa nore wapk rwv
^pea^vrepmv KaXws e/iaBov Kal KaXws efivti/iovevaa can
mean nothing less. (2) Eusebius declares that Papias
only received the sayings of the Apostles from those
who followed them. (3) Zahn declares that Eusebius
understands the Presbyters to be Apostles !
Eusebius must have perfectly well comprehended the
distinction of Papias between his primary and secondary
sources. Papias says he has written down (A) what he
1314 B

i8 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §4
heard from the Presbyters themselves, irapd rwv irpea^v-
repwv, and (B) what those who came from the Presbyters
repeated of their discourses. To make Eusebius refer
only to the secondary source, as Zahn does, is quite
impossible. It is certain that the words of Eusebius
declare that Papias, who did know the Presbyters,
did not know the Apostles, and consequently that the
Presbyters whom he did know were not Apostles. It
follows with equal certainty that he understood rods rwv
npea^vTepwv dveKpivov Xoyovs, ri 'AvSpeas eiirev ktX. in the
second way : ' I asked for the words of the Presbjiiers,
what (they said) Andrew said,' &c.
It is not often that such scholars as Zahn and Bar
denhewer are found in so indefensible a position. But
there is even more to be said against it.
Eusebius, a little further on, says that of the two
Johns mentioned, Papias numbers the one among the
Apostles with Peter and James and Matthew and the
rest, while he places the other outside their number,
mentioning Aristion before him, ' and plainly calls him
a presbyter ', aa^ws re avrov irpea^vrepov ovofid^ei. Euse
bius means, of course, that by being called a presbyter
he is intentionally distinguished from the Apostles.
Thus there is no room for two opinions as to the view
of Eusebius on this question.
No one has ever pretended that any other writer
uses vpea^vrepoi to mean Apostles. But it is not super
fluous to refer to the use of the word by Clement of
Alexandria, in the same sense that we find in Irenaeus,
viz. disciples of Aposdes, or of disciples of Apostles.
For this see Zahn, Forschungen, vi, p. 79, notes ^ ', *, *,
where the necessary quotations are collected.

§4 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 19
It seems that no parallel is to be found for the sup
posed irpea^ijrepos = diroaroXos of Papias, while Irenaeus
and Eusebius are perfectly clear that irpeaP^repos means
a disciple of the Apostles. Now both these writers had
the book of Papias before them. They judged the
matter not from this passage only, but from the entire
work. It is impossible that Papias should have meant
' Apostles ' when he said ' Presbyters ', and yet that
neither Irenaeus nor Eusebius should have been able
to penetrate his meaning.^
It should also be remembered that Irenaeus had, no
doubt, independent experience of the use of the word
' presbyter ' in Asia, and that Eusebius had a larger
knowledge of second-century literature than we can have.
So far, therefore, the meaning of these words of
Papias appears to be decided beyond controversy.
1 It may be urged that the word ' Presbj^ers ' in the sense ot
' Fathers ' might include Apostles, in the mouth of a very early
writer. It might, but apparently it does not. It seems rather to
have a technical meaning — primitive sub-apostolic witnesses who
were not Apostles nor disciples of the Lord but usually disciples
of Apostles. They are witnesses to tradition and links. The
Apostles are not regarded as links ; they are the authentic teachers,
the originators of tradition and not a part of it. This is what
I gather from Irenaeus and Clement.

B 2

?5
Aristion and John were disciples of the Lord.
Scholars, who have not found Papias to be sufficiently
amenable to their views, have suggested emendations of
the text. It is easy to get rid of two Johns, by the
simple expedient of omitting the mention of one of
them. Renan and Haussleiter, on opposite sides, have
independently suggested the omission of the words Ij ri
'Iwdvvris in the preface of Papias. On the other side it
has seemed awkward that Aristion and John the Pres-
b)^er should be described by Papias as ' disciples of the
Lord'. What is the use, some scholars have felt, of
being able to deny that Papias was a disciple of John,
the son of Zebedee, if after all he had two disciples of
the Lord for his informants ? Dr. E. A. Abbott, conse
quently, declared in 1895 that the words ' disciples of
the Lord' were undoubtedly spurious, and were un
known to Eusebius, adding the somewhat wild conjec
ture, after Renan, that we should read ol [rwvl rov
Kvpiov [fiadrjrwv] fiaQrjrai. Professor Bacon has sug
gested the reading ol tovtwv nadr/rai, which is perhaps
still more violent. Harnack is willing to put up with
the text as he finds it, but urges that rov Kvpiov /laOrjrai
designates Palestinian Christians as opposed to Jews,
and does not necessarily imply that Aristion and John
had ever seen the Lord.'
' 'Chronol. i, pp. 660-1.

§5 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 21
It is difficult to suppose that any of these suggestions
are to be taken quite seriously. But in 1902 the late
Professor Mommsen lent the weight of his unrivalled
authority to the notion that the words rov Kvpiov /lae^rai
are an interpolation.^ They were known to Rufinus
and to Jerome, but they are passed over by the ancient
Syrian translator,^ and are not cited by Nicephorus
Callisti. It must indeed be admitted to be just possible
that the text of Eusebius had been already corrupted
(from Irenaeus?) before it was used by Rufinus and
Jerome, however unlikely this may seem.
I. The arguments of Mommsen are, however, not
very strong. The Syriac translation is so free that its
testimony on such a point is of little value. Nicephorus
might most naturally pass over the repetition as un
necessary and ugly ^ (. . . ^ MarOaTos ij ns erepos rwv
TOV Kvpiov iiaOrjrwv, & re 'Apiariwv Kal 6 irpea^^repos 'Iw
dvvrjs, rov Kvpiov fiadTjrai, Xeyovaiv). On textual grounds
it is safer to follow the Greek MSS. (which are unani
mous), supported by the fourth-century testimony of
Jerome and Rufinus.
2. But it is said that Eusebius implies the absence of
the words. This is a mistake. It may easily be seen,
on the contrary, that he implies their presence. He
quotes the words of Papias, and then, makes the com
ment : ' And Papias, of whom we are now speaking,
confesses that he received the words of the Apostles
' Zeitschn/tfUr N.-T. Wissenschaft, 1902,2, p. 156, ' Papianisches' .
' Rufinus has ceterique discipuli, a careless mistake, such as he is
accustomed to make, but one which shows he found the words in
his copy.
' I have just noticed that in copying the whole passage of Papias
I happened to omit precisely these words !

22 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §5
from those who had followed them, but says that he
himself was a hearer of Aristion and the Presbyter"
John. In fact {yovv) he mentions them frequently by
name, and records their traditions in his writings.'
There is not a word here to suggest that Eusebius
looked upon Aristion and the Presbyter John as disciples
of the Apostles and not as disciples of the Lord.^ On
the contrary, they are placed side by side with the
Apostles by Eusebius as by Papias, as though their
traditions were of the same directness, though of inferior
dignity.^ In fact Eusebius seems to distinguish between
'those who followed' the Apostles on the one hand,
and Aristion and the Presbyter John on the other. This
impression is amply confirmed further on, when Euse
bius says : ' Papias also hands down in his own work
^ Mommsen writes : ' Es kommt hinzu dass Eusebius weiterhin
ausdrflcklich sagt, dass Papias die apostoUschen Ausserungen auf
indirectem Wege erhalten {Uanias rovs fiev rav dTroaroKav Xoyovs irapa
rav avToh rraprjKoXovdriKOTav ofioXoyel irapiiKrjtpivai), dagegen die des
Aristion und des Presbyter Johannes, die er haufig namentlich an-
fOhrte, selber gehSrt habe (^ApuTriavos Se ktX.). Dies ist schlechthin
unvereinbar mit der Bezeichnung dieser Manner als ol rod Kvpiov
\ia6iyrai.' This unaccountable remark gives the real base of Momm-
sen's view! Yet it is obvious that Eusebius in the words quoted
distinguishes John and Aristion both from the Apostles on the one
hand and from followers of the Apostles on the other. He regards
them as disciples of the Lord who were not Apostles. How
Mommsen came to write this sentence is a mystery.
* Eusebius had introduced the quotation with the similar words r
Aur<5s yi fij]V 6 llairias Kara to npooifuov rav avrov Xdyui', oKpoar^v fih km
avTdirTijv ovdo/iraf iavrov yeviaSai rmv UpSiv ottootoXuh ifi^aivei, -napfCK-rfftlvai
Se TO T^s ma-Tcms irapa tS>i> cKelvois yvapifiav BiSdaKti, Si" &v <f)i](ri Xe^tav'
where napa tS>v eKeivois yvapip.asv declares that Papias's knowledge of
the Apostles was at second hand, but does not imply necessarily
that his knowledge of our Lord's actions and words was at third
hand. It is not excluded by this expression that Papias was
acquainted with two disciples of the Lord (and of the Apostles)
who were not Apostles.

§5 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 23
other narratives {Sirjy^aeis) of the words of the Lord [on
the authority] of the aforesaid Aristion, and traditions
of the Presbyter John.' Here again Aristion and John
are not witnesses to the words and traditions of the
Apostles, but Aristion relates words of the Lord, and
John gives his own ' traditions '.
Eusebius supplies us with an example of the latter.
He tells us the origin of the Gospel of St. Mark on the
authority of ' the Presbyter' ; and in this ' tradition ' the
Presbyter judges of the accuracy of the Gospel, not by
the testimony of Apostles and eyewitnesses whom he
had known, but authoritatively, as one who would be
recognized as knowing better than Mark, being himself
an eyewitness and disciple of the Lord.
Not merely, therefore, are Dr. Abbott, Professor
Bacon, Dr. Mommsen, and others mistaken in thinking
that Eusebius could not have read rov Kvpiov fiaOrjTai,
but there are actually abundant indications that he found
and accepted the words, and that he did not doubt that
Aristion and John were really ' disciples of the Lord '.
3. We can go further back than Eusebius. The
testimony of St. Irenaeus may be suspected by those
who accept Eusebius's distinction between the two
Johns, because St. Irenaeus certainly identified them.
But his evidence has a force of its own, even if we
suppose him to have been mistaken in this identification.
He regularly speaks of the Apostle John as ' the disciple
of the Lord ', and frequently when he seems to be citing
Papias.^ Now I argue that in St. Irenaeus's time it
would have been far more natural to speak of 'John,
the Apostle', or at least 'John, the beloved disciple'.
^ See the examples and references further on, p. 42.

24 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §5
I think it is evident that he must be following Papias,
unless he is exhibiting the usual custom of Asia, that is
of Papias's circle. Now if Papias really distinguished
two Johns, it is certain that he said a great deal about
the Presbyter, and probably he mentioned the Apostle
but little. It will in this case be the Presbyter that he
habitually designated 'the disciple of the Lord', and
St. Irenaeus would seem to be a witness to this custom
on the part of Papias or "of Papias's circle.
4. But the palmary argument, if more is needed, is to
be found in the words of Papias themselves : Ei Si irov
Kal iraprjKoXovOrjKws ns rots irpeafivrepois eXBoi, roils rwv
npea^vrepwv dveKpivov Xoyovs, ri 'AvSpeas ^ ri Ilerpos
eiirev, ^ ri ^iXiirvos, rj ri &w/ids ^ 'IdKw^os, fj ri 'Iwdvvrjs
^ MarOaTos, rj ns erepos rwv rov Kvpiov fiaOrjTwv a re
'Apiariwv Kal 6 irpea^vrepos 'Iwdvvrjs, rov Kvpiov /laOrjrai,
Xeyovaiv. Before giving the . interpretation of these words,
I quote a note of Harnack's on the subject ^ : ' Ich halte
es nicht fOr wahrscheinlich, dass der Satz a re Apiariwv
ktX. dem Sinne nach dem irpea^vrepwv Xoyovs ebenso
untergeordnet ist, wie der Satz ri 'AvSpeas ktX., viel-
mehr meine ich, dass er ihm parallel ist.' This seems
to be perfectly correct. We must understand : ' I used
to inquire for the words of the Presbyters (viz. what
they related that Andrew and Peter, &c., said), and
[I used to inquire] what Aristion and John are saying.'
Thus ri 'AvSpeas . . . eiirev ktX. is epexegetic of Xoyovs,
representing what those words related, while d re :Api-
ariwv Kal 'Iwdvvrjs . . . Xeyovaiv is co-ordinate with Xoyovs,
and hence the apparent change of construction from the
^ Chronohgie, p. 660, note.

§5 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 25
indirect question introduced by ri to the relative clause
introduced by a. From ri 'AvSpeas to /laOrjrwv is a
parenthesis explaining Xoyovs. The simple construction
is roi)s rwv irpea^vrepwv dveKpivov Xoyovs, a re 'Apiariwv
Kal 'Iwdvvrjs Xeyovaiv.
A. The result of this analysis of the construction is
to show clearly that John the Presbyter and Aristion
are not co-ordinated with the Apostles, but with the
Presbyters, and this is an exceedingly important result.
' If any happened to come who was a follower of the
Presbyters, I used to inquire the words of the
Presbyters . . . and what Aristion and John the Pres
byter are saying.' It is assumed that the Presbyters
apparently (at least for the most part), and Aristion and
John certainly, were alive at the time the questions were
asked. This time was evidently now long ago when
Papias wrote. He writes for a new generation, which
knows no Presbyters and has no Aristion or John, about
the days of his youth when he collected their sayings
at first hand when he could, or when he could not, at
second hand.
B. John and Aristion are not merely co-ordinated with
the Presbyters as surviving, but are lumped together
with them, since Papias inquired of any 'who was
a follower of the Pre^b3^ers' what John and Aristion
are saying ; so that followers of John and Aristion are
roughly included among followers of the Presbyters.
C. But Aristion and John are also marked oif from
' the Presbyters ' as well as lumped together with them.
It is not that Aristion is not called ' the Presbyter' ; for
if John has that title attributed to him to distinguish
him from John the Apostle, it does not follow that

26 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §5
Aristion was not also a Presbyter. But ' the words of
the Presbyters ' for which Papias inquired were nothing
but relations of the words of the Apostles, while Papias
did not ask what Aristion or John said that the Apostles
had said, but what they themselves were saying.
The distinction is clear. 'The Presbyters' could
only relate what they had heard from the Apostles;
Aristion and the elder John could relate what they
themselves remembered. And this is borne out by
the passage already quoted, where Eusebius says that
Papias related the Sirjy-fjaeis of Aristion and the napa-
Soaeis of John. Thus there is no doubt that Papias
singles out Aristion and John as ' disciples of the Lord ',
which the Presbyters,— we might almost say the other
Presbyters, — were not.^
We have thus arrived at certainty on two important
poirits, viz. that the ' Presbyters ' as a class are not the
Apostles but their disciples, and that Aristion and John
are disciples, not of the Apostles, but of the Lord.^
^ If any one should prefer to take 3 tc 'AptoriW k.tK. as co-ordinate
with Ti 'Avdpeas ktX., the same result will ensue, for in that case
Aristion and John are themselves co-ordinated with the Apostles
as primary sources of information ; ' I asked what the Presbyters
said that Peter, Andrew, &c., said, and what [they said that] Aris
tion and John say.' But the Greek seems to demand the view taken
in the text with Harnack (so also Corssen, Z. fiir N.-T. IViss. 1901,
ii, p. 209, note) ; besides, the present Xtyovaiv is unaccountable
except on the hypothesis that John and Aristion were living, — ^Why
then ask for their sayings at third hand, rather than at second
hand? ' The apparent contradiction that 'John the Presbyter' is yet
not strictly one of the class of Presbyters, though he is lumped
together with them and receives this special title, will be presently
explained by the obvious distinction that ' the Presbyter ' is a sort
of cognomen or title which distinguishes him from Presbyters in
the general sense.

§5 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 27
The evidence for each of these results has been com
plete and full, and the question need not be raised
again. The way is now clear for the discussion of the funda
mental question : ' Were there two Johns, or was there
one only ? '

§6
Papias knew John the Presbyter and Aristion
personally.
It is best to interpolate here the proof that Papias was
really a hearer of the two disciples of the Lord, John
the Presbyter and Aristion. This has been doubted in
England by Canon V. H. Stanton, and in Germany by
P. Corssen, to name no others.^ Both find their ground
for hesitation in the words of Eusebius : 'Apiariwvos Se
Kal rov irpea^vrepov 'Iwdvvov ayrrJKOov iavrov <f>rjai yeve-
adaf ovofiaarl yovv iroXXaKis avrwv jivrjfiove^aas ev rots
avrov avyypdfiftaaiv ridrjaiv avrwv irapaSoaeis (lU. 39. 7).
Dr. Stanton says: 'Eusebius himself appears .to be
doubtful about his interpretation of the words, for he
adds, " At any rate {yovv) he often refers to them (Aristion
and the Elder John) by name, and quotes also their
traditions in his book " '.
I. But it is not necessary to translate yovv ' at any rate ',
' at least ' ; it is more natural to render it by ' in fact '.
Fovv simply introduces instances, and means ' that is to
say ', en effet, though the context frequently may suggest
the sense ' at all events'.^ Here this latter sense seems
1 S\.sn\.Qi\\.,The Gospels as Historical Documents,\,'p.-s.(»q; Corssen,
Z.fUr N.-T. Wiss. 1901, p. 208. Similarly C. H. Turner, in /. T. S.,
Oct. 1908, p. 24, note.
' I am quite aware that Liddell and Scott call yoSv a ' restrictive
particle', and that schoolboys habitually construe it 'at all events'.
Nevertheless, even in classical Greek, its ordinary use is simply to

§6 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 29
to be even excluded. Eusebius simply asserts avrrJKoov
iavrov ^rjai yeviadai, 'he says he heard them person-
introduce a proof or example of a preceding statement, without
suggesting that this is the only or the principal proof or example,
and without implying any doubt whatever. For classical usage let
us take the first instance in Thucydides : Tij* yow 'Amiciji' sV toC tm
irXeiaTov SiA to Xenrdyeav dirraxriaaTOv ovarav avdpmroi aKovv oi avTol aei.
Here this is a further instance of the same law which had caused
the fertile provinces of Thessaly and Boeotia to be in continual
revolution and war. We cannot translate ' Attica, at any rate ', as
if the preceding generalization were ar doubtful one, but 'Attica, to
give a converse instance '. So in Eusebius himself yovv appears :
1. 2. 12 yeypanrat •youi' : i. 2. 24 ttjv yovv iir\ TtXfi ^a(nXeiav avrov
AavtrjX 6 rrpoiprfrr)! ktX. : i. 3- 3 °^'^^ yovv irporepov eK^avr/Bev els dvBpanrovs
. . . Ma>v(r^f ktX. : i. 3. 4 ov irporepov ymiv ktX. These are the first
instances I find, and the meaning is in each case ' in fact ', not ' at
all events '. In the first two Eusebius introduces a prophecy to
prove a doctrine laid down. It would be absurd to make yoiiv
restrictive here ! The two others similarly introduce a proof of the
holiness of the Name of Jesus, because it was given by Moses to
his successor, where Eusebius has certainly no doubt as to the
validity of his argument, whether we are iinpressed by it or not.
These first five instances of yovv (which I find in as many minutes)
are sufficient. But ex abundantia we will turn to Book III, with
which we are dealing. The first five examples are in passages
from Josephus (iii. 6, 12-13-16-19, and 8. i). The context of the
last is not given. The other four all introduce instances of a general
proposition, and in every one the sense excludes ' at all events '.
In iii. 24. 4 o yoi)v llaSXos ktX. is the principal example of the small
amount which the Apostles wrote, for Paul was the most eloquent
and capable of them. In iii. 24. 9 iiera yoCx Tijy Tea-a-apaKOVTarniepov
vijareiav introduces the proofs from each of the Synoptists that they
all express in words that they relate our Lord's ministry only from
the imprisonment of John. In iii. 30. 2 tfiairi yovv (in a citation from
Clement) has no context in Eusebius, but in Strom, vii. 63 'at all
events' would make nonsense. I have therefore not found a passage
of Eusebius in which yovv is restrictive, though no doubt there are
such (I have just noticed one by chance in reading Plato) ; but it will
be the sense of the sentence and not the power of the particle which
causes the restriction. In many of the above cases the example
introduced by yoiv is really the principal proof of the preceding pro
position, and we might imagine that ydp could as well have been used.
But yovv properly gives only one example out of several. In the

30 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §6
ally '. He does not say ' he shows ', but ' he says '. This
could surely not be a reasonable way of expressing the
mere fact that ' he often refers to them by name as his
authorities '. For Eusebius has just quoted Papias's
own statement, that ' whenever any one came from the
Presb5^ers ' he was only too glad to inquire at second
hand 'what Aristion and John are saying'. We must
attribute great denseness to the acute historian, if we
suppose that he considered the citation by Papias of
many traditions of these two 'disciples of the Lord'
as equivalent to a statement that Papias had heard
these words from their own lips,, and not from- the
visitors to Hierapolis. It seems clear that Eusebius
only intends to confirm a distinct statement of Papias,
by showing that his frequent use of their traditions
indicates that his boast of acquaintance with them was
no idle exaggeration. We should render: 'But of
Aristion and John the Presbyter he says he was a per
sonal hearer, — in fact he seems to show that he really
knew them well by the frequency with which he
mentions them by name and sets down their traditions
in his book.' If Eusebius did not mean this, at least
this and nothing else is the natural translation of the
Greek, and this and nothing else makes his statement
logical and reasonable.
2. When Papias tells us that he used to inquire of
passage of Papias the difference is obvious : ovo/iaorl ydp would imply
that Eusebius is giving his only (or his chief) justification for the
previous statement; ovopaaTi •yoCv introduces an example to confirm
the statement. [I do not dogmatize as to the use of yoCv in classical
Greek, for I have not sufficiently investigated the point whether it
is more commonly restrictive or not. In later Greek, as Blass points
out, it may be equal to ovv.'\

§6 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 31
visitors to Hierapolis ' the words of the Presbyters . . .
and what Aristion and John are saying', he is describing
his secondary sources of information. He had pre
viously mentioned as his primary and principal source
the Presbyters themselves : oaa wore irapci toj' irpea^v-
repwv KaXws e/iaOov Kal KaXws e/ivrjfi6vevaa. The visitors
only afforded additional and accidental fragments of intel
ligence : el Si irov Kal iraprjKoXovOrjKws ns rots irpea^vripois
eXOoi, ' and further if by chance there should also come
some follower of the Presbyters'. Therefore Papias
knew the Presbyters personally, and yet he inquired
their traditions at second hand; hence there is no
improbability in his having acted in the same way with
regard to the two ' disciples of the Lord '. They were
still alive, for he uses the present Xeyovaiv. Unless they
lived at an extraordinary distance, it would be inexplic
able that he should not have taken the trouble to make
their personal acquaintance. It appears that John lived
at Ephesus, Aristion at Smyrna, great cities to which
Hierapolis was linked by an important road. But he
could not hear all their interesting sayings with his own
ears, so that in great part he trusted to report. As,
however, they are carefully distinguished as 'disciples
of the Lord' from the general run of anonymous
Presbyters, we shall further be inclined to expect a dis
tinct statement on the subject. Such a statement Euse
bius expressly declares that he found in Papias's work.
3. Irenaeus seems to have found the same declaration
in the book. Eusebius says categorically avrrjKoov
iavrov ((>rjai yeviaQai ; Irenaeus calls Papias 'Iwdvvov
dKovarijs.^ It is clear that Eusebius is not citing Ire-
' V. 33. 3 and ap. Euseb. H.E. iii. 39. i ; Eusebius in his Chronicle

32 JOHN THE PRESBYTER § 6
naeus, who does not say that Papias made any statement.
But the likeness of avrrJKoov to dKovarrjs suggests that
both are echoing the same assertion of Papias, who will
not have spoken of ' knowing ' or ' seeing ' or ' resorting
to ' or ' meeting ', but of ' hearing ' the last survivors of
the Lord's disciples.
It does not appear from Eusebius that Papias gave
any Sirjyfjaeis or irapaSoaeis of other Apostles or disciples
of the Lord (for any such would certainly have been
mentioned by the historian), but only stories about them.
This of itself confirms the inference from Papias's words
that John and Aristion were his contemporaries. Their
importance above the Presbyters is suggested by his
frequent citation of them 'by name'. The Presbyters as
a whole seem to have been quoted by him anonymously.^
They had no more importance in themselves than had
their disciples who visited Hierapolis. They were
merely links in the chain of tradition ; they were but the
cord of the telephone which connected Papias with
the Apostles and disciples of the Lord.
It was perhaps unnecessary to linger so long over
a point which is amply conceded by Mommsen and
Harnack. But later on we shall find it important to be
able to use without hesitation the fact that John and
Aristion were known to Papias.
(Trajan I, ap. Syncellum) calls Papias a hearer of John, but is
evidently dependent on Irenaeus here.
^ If at all. There is good reason to believe that when Irenaeuis
refers to ' the Presbyters who had seen John ', and so on, he is
using a roundabout expression to mean Papias simply. Papias
very likely thought it sufficient to refer to his knowledge (both
at first and at second hand) of the Presbyters in his preface;
possibly he may never have mentioned them again as warrant
for particular statements.

§7
Eusebius on John the Presbyter.
It is certain that Eusebius was the first to discover
two Johns in Papias, and he is proud of his discovery.
Dionysius the Great had distinguished the Apostle who
wrote the Gospel from John the author of the Apoca
lypse, and his acute reasonings are reproduced at length
by Eusebius, H. E. vii. 25. St. Dionysius confirms the
results of internal evidence by mentioning that there
were said to be two tombs of John in Ephesus: S-Oo
<f>aalv ev 'Eipiaw yeviaQai fivq/iara Kal eKdrepov 'Iwdvvov
XiyeaOai. No Other writer informs us of this fact, and
we cannot tell whether the rumour was true, and whether
there were rival tombs claiming the devotion of the
faithful.^ But Eusebius was pleased with the apparent
confirmation of his discovery, and appeals to it when
commenting on the two Johns of Papias : ' So that by
this also their story is proved to be true who say that
there were two of the same name in Asia, and that there
^ The second tomb is nowhere else mentioned, neither by Poly
crates, nor in the Acta Joannis, nor by Eusebius himself (77teo/A.
syr. iv. 7, ed. Gressmann, p. 175*), nor by Augustine in the well-
known passage at the end of his Commentary on St. John, nor by
later writers. See also Zahn, Forsch. vi. 120. If Eusebius had
found any confirmation in the ancients, or from travellers in his
own time, he would not have failed to mention it. Mgr. Duchesne
says categorically : ' L'histoire des deux tombeaux, mise en avant,
comme un on-dit, par Denys d'Alexandrie {Eus. vii. 25), n'est pas
confirmee par la tradition monumentale d'fiphese; a ^phese on
n'a jamais parle que d'un seul sanctuaire et d'un seul Jean ' {Hist.
anc. de figlise, i, p. 143, note).
1334 C

34 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §7
are two tombs in Ephesus, and that each of them is even
now called the tomb of John.' Eusebius has no other
warrant for this than the statement of Dionysius.
The opinion of Eusebius that two Johns were dis
tinguished by Papias is repeated by St. Jerome {De
Viris ill. i8), but his account is of no interest, except as
testifying to the text of Eusebius, for he was personally
unacquainted with the work of Papias.
Philippus of Side (ap. De Boor) also quotes the view
of Eusebius ; but he again, as may easily be shown, had
no independent acquaintance with Papias's book (see
P- 95)-
Thus we have to regret that we possess no judgement
later than Eusebius on the subject by any one who knew
what Papias had said in other parts of his ' Interpreta
tions of the Scriptures '. We are driven to examine
carefully the arguments of Eusebius himself, after which
we must gather what other evidence we can.
Eusebius begins by quoting St. Irenaeus, who calls
Papias a hearer of John. To show that he was not
a direct hearer of the Apostles, the historian quotes the
passage from the prologue, and continues :
Here we may observe that he twice counts the name
of John; the former he enumerates with Peter and
James and Matthew and the rest of the Apostles, clearly
pointing him out as the Evangelist ; but the other John,
postponing the mention of him, he classes with others
outside the number of the Apostles, and places Aristion
before him ; and he plainly calls him a presbyter.^
* Eusebius may have had this as an afterthought when publishing
, the final edition of his work, for just before its completion he had
written in his Chronicle; 'ladwr^v tov \6eoXoyov Kai[ dirdtrroXov Eipi;i>aior
KOI oXXoi loropoOo't irapapelvai r^ Sia cur r&v ;(pdi'a»' Tpotavou * fieff hv
Hairias lepairoXlTrjs Ka\ HoXvKapiros i/ivpvtjs eiriiTKOiros OKOviTTai avrov eyva-
pi'fovTo. (The Greek is preserved by Syncellus. Jerome and the

§7 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 35
The remainder of Eusebius's remarks have been
already dealt with.
I. Now he is wrong in saying that the second John
is in a class outside the number of the Apostles, for we
have seen that the clause which enumerates the Apostles
is not co-ordinate with that in which Aristion and the
Presbyter John are named. It is true that he is classed
with Aristion, who is not an Apostle ; but Aristion is
distinguished from the presbyters, as being a disciple
of the Lord. There can be nothing astonishing in an
Apostle and a disciple of the Lord being classed together
in contradistinction to Presbyters of another generation.
2. Let us suppose that there was only one John — ^we
shall see that the two-fold mention is not in the least
unnatural. ' I used to inquire,' says Papias, ' what the
Presbyters related about the sayings of (the Apostles),
Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John, Matthew,
and the others.' The Presbyters were still alive, but
presumably all the Apostles were dead except John ex
hypothesi. The Presbyters related their recollections
of the sayings of the twelve in old days. It would be
strange if the name of John, the most prominent of all
the Apostles after Peter, was not set down. St. Paul
is of course omitted, for he had no recollections of Christ
to relate.
But ex hypothesi one Apostle survived, and also one
other disciple of the Lord, who probably lived at
Smyrna. Papias used therefore to inquire further
'what Aristion and John are saying'. He naturally
Armenian omit BeoX&yov Kai, which is Syncellus's addition.) We see
that here Eusebius simply followed Irenaeus, and said nothing of
Papias having known no Apostle but only the Presbyter.
C 2

36 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §7
wished to know all that the Presbyters had gathered
from John in past days, when they had been with all
the Apostles together in Palestine, and also what those
who happened still to have the companionship of John
and Aristion at Ephesus could gather from these in
their old age, to add to the other traditions. We do not
know the names of ' the Presbyters '. Polycarp appears
to have been one of them, but he was young (21-31) at
this time, if we are dealing with years before the death
of John, c. 90-100, as the date of Papias's inquiries.
Papias may then have been at least 25-35.^ Men who
were 40 or 50 at the time of the deaths of St. Peter and
St. Paul, c. 67, would be 68-78 in 95. The ' Presbyters '
were not all in one city, perhaps, and the recollections
they related did not refer to what John and Aristion
(who were still alive) were now saying, but to what
John and i the other Apostles used to say in the days
when they had been their disciples, thirty, forty, or fifty
years earlier. But if any visitor came to Hierapolis
from Ephesus, where John lived, and from the city
(Smyrna, according to the tradition in Const. Apost.
vii. 47) where Aristion lived, then Papias inquired for
any recent sayings of these disciples of the Lord.
Thus the two-fold mention of John is perfectly natural
on the assumption that the Apostle alone is in question.
3. But Eusebius has two further objections. The
> If Polycarp was martyred in 155, after being 86 years in the
Lord, he was born at latest in 69. Now it does not seem that
Papias lived till so late a date as Polycarp. St. Irenaeus evidently
never knew him, and calls him dpxator dvr]p, a man of old time.
He was evidently an old man when he wrote his recollections.
We can hardly be wrong in supposing him to have been born
before Polycarp, c. 65. But 60 is more likely, I think.

§7 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 37
second John is mentioned after Aristion, as his inferior^
and he is distinctly called a presbyter, not an Apostle.
Now. where only two are mentioned together— for
these two are not in line with the previously mentioned
Apostles— it does not follow that the last place is not
the more honourable. The only remaining point in
Eusebius's favour is therefore the word irpea^vrepos.
The argument is very strong. Both Johns are ' disciples
of the Lord '. The former is declared to be the son of
Zebedee, by being named among Apostles and next
before Matthew, his fellow-evangelist. The other is
carefully distinguished as 'the Presbyter'.
A complete reply is, however, possible.
What is the meaning of the word 'Presbyter' as
applied to John ? Why is Aristion distinguished by
its omission ? We have seen that John and Aristion
are co-ordinated with ' elders ', as informants of Papias's
visitors, and are roughly included in the word (p. 25) ;
but that they are distinguished from these elders, as
telling their own traditions, not those of the Apostles,
and as disciples of the Lord. Aristion is something
more than a Presbyter, therefore, and does not receive
the title. To John it is not so much a general epithet
as a singular title or surname, given evidently in a
peculiar sense — he is pre-eminently ' The Presbyter '.
This might be puzzling if we had no parallel evidence.
But we possess two Epistles, invariably associated in
MSS. and tradition — including second century tradition,
Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and the Muratorian
Canon— with the name of John.^ They commence :
' Irenaeus, Clement, and the Muratorianum each associate one
of them at least with the name of John.

38 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §7
6 npea^vrepos eKXeKrfj Kvpia Kal roTs riKVOis avrrjs, and
again : 6 Ilpea^vrepos Taiw rw dyairrjrw.
This title Ilpea^vrepos would apply to many people in
the sense of ' elderly man ', to many in the technical
sense of ' Elder who had known Apostles, or Apostolic
men, or their disciples ', to many more in the ecclesi
astical sense of ' Priest' or ' Bishop '. Yet the author of
2 and 3 John describes himself as 6 irpea^vrepos, ' the
presbyter,' as if there was no other.
This writer, by his tone of authority, shows that he
has a high position. He teaches with confidence. He
intends to come to the city of Gaius and rebuke Dio
trephes, a leading man in the Church there, ' who loveth
to have the pre-eminence.' He writes to a Church, ' the
elect lady,' words of warning and counsel. He has no
doubt that his dignity is recognized, though he com
plains of the rebellion of Diotrephes. His tide of
Presbyter is well understood, and no further explana
tion is necessary. What is more, his insignificant notes
are preserved with care, and one of them (at least) is
canonized by the middle of the second century.
John 'the Presbyter", who wrote these epistles, is
therefore the same personage as John whom Papias
distinguishes from Aristion as 'the Presbyter' par
excellence.^ The title was given to him in a singular
> Julicher {Introd. to the N. T. Eng. tr. 1903, p. 254) says very
well : ' But how can the vague title of " Presbjrter " be coupled in
the nominative with the dative " to Gaius " ? This would only be
possible if the person intended was known to every one in the
Christian world as the Presbyter Kar e^oxriv, and perhaps better
known by this title than by his own name. It is said that there was
such an "Elder" of the name of John in the second century.
Either this man is the writer of our Epistles or some unknown

§7 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 39
sense; and 'the Presbyter' meant John, just as 'the
Grand Old Man ' meant Mr. Gladstone. It bad become
a surname.^
But if this is so, and Presbyter is a kind of surname
of honour, it is added to the name John by Papias as
an epitheton ornans, and its presence is quite to be
expected; therefore it need not be intended to dis
tinguish the second John from the first, though it might
be so intended. Consequently, the last argument of
Eusebius falls to the ground, and the separate existence
of John the Presbyter disappears. The proof of his
separate existence was simply said to be the clear
statement of Papias. If Papias's words can easily be
understood otherwise, we are bound so to interpret
them as to make them agree with our other authorities,
and the second John vanishes into space.
Now let us read the passage of Papias once more,
assuming that there is only one John (since, according
to the 'razor of Occam', entia non sunt multiplicanda
person has appropriated his name in order to secure an adequate
authority for his disciplinary instructions.'
* I have suggested in the Journal of Theol. Studies (April, 1904,
p. 361) that irpea-^vrepos was the official title assumed by St. John as
superintendent of the Churches of Asia. He could not be called
patriarch, metropolitan, archbishop, for such names were not yet
invented. To the Asiatics ' the Apostle ' would mean St. Paul, at
least when St. John first arrived. 'The ancient' was not an
unnatural title to receive or to assume, under the circumstances, and
it suits the modesty which is conspicuous in the Gospel of St. John.
So in the books of Mr. W. W. Jacobs the skipper is called by his
crew ' the old man ', as a title, for he might be really young. So
in Germany sons call their father, or pupils their teacher 'Der
Alte,' though in these cases it is not exactly an honourable epithet.
I should not so much compare x Peter v. 2 irpea-^vrepovs olv ev i/uv
irapaKoXao iTwirpea-^irepos, as Philemon 9 (if the reading is admitted)
roiovTOf iiv at IlavXof irpea-^vrr]:, wv\ Se koi Se<rfUos, where age is a title
to honour.

40 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §7
praeter necessitatem), viz. the Apostle, commonly called
in Asia 'the Presbyter'. The repetition of the name
will be seen to have been inevitable, unless John,
the beloved disciple, was actually to be omitted in the
enumeration of the chief Apostles :
But if it chanced that any came who had been a
follower of the Presbyters, I used to inquire the words
of the Presbyters, (what they related Andrew or Peter
to have said, or Philip or Thomas or James or John or
Matthew, or any other of the disciples of the Lord), and
the things which Aristion and the ' Patriarch ' John,
disciples of the Lord, were saying.
Thus John's words are wanted at third hand together
with those of the other Apostles, but his latest sayings
at second hand also, together with those of Aristion.
Nothing surely could be simpler or more natural than
the sense and the grammar. The group of Apostles are
called ' disciples of the Lord ' as being able to testify to
His teaching and life at first hand. The same epithet
is applied to Aristion and John the aged, for the same
reason. It follows that the traditions of Aristion and
John are the most impbrtant, yet they are kept till the
last place ; it would seem that the place of John last of
all is in consequence the place of honour. He alone has
a special title added, a mark of honour meaning 'the
aged' being especially suitable in this context. This
surname must either distinguish or identify the two
Johns mentioned, according as the readers for whom
Papias wrote knew that the Apostle John was or was
not the same person as 'John the ancient'.
So far we have simply discovered that there is no
need to distinguish. Now we come to the positive
grounds of identification, which can at length be allowed
their full value.

St. Irenaeus on John the Presbyter
St. Irenaeus not only was acquainted with the work
of Papias, but looked upon it as a fountain-head of
apostolical tradition and of theological wisdom. He
was certainly more familiar with it than was Eusebius,
who despised it. His evidence is, therefore, from this
point of view alone, at least equally important with that
of Eusebius. Eusebius went to Papias with the idea in
his head that John the author of the Apocalypse could
not possibly be John the author of the Gospel. He
evidently found in Papias only one passage which
seemed to favour his view, or he would have quoted
more. This is a point of first-rate importance ; for since
this single passage does not prove his point, his argu
ment is extremely weak. Irenaeus, on the other hand,
had no reason to incline him to misunderstand Papias,
if Papias in reality clearly referred to two Johns.
I. As a fact, it is certain that St. Irenaeus understood
John the Presbyter to be the same as John the Apostle.
He never uses the expression 'John the Presbyter', but
he calls Papias 'the hearer of John',^ meaning the
Apostle. Eusebius assures us that the work of Papias
showed that he had been a hearer of John the Presbyter,
^ 'ladvvov oKovoT^r, v. 33. 4. In /. T. S., Oct., 1907, pp. 56 foil.,
I showed that Papias is quoted in ii. 22. 5 oi Kara rqv 'haiav 'ladwji
ra TOV Kvpiov itaBtjT^ trvfiSe^XriKOTes.

42 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §8
but of no Apostle. Nor does St. Irenaeus say that Papias
knew any other Apostle than John,^ as we shall see.
2. But it is also noticeable that St. Irenaeus regularly
calls St. John 'the disciple of the Lord' rather than
'the Apostle ',2 and it is to 'John, the Lord's disciple'
that he attributes the Apocalypse (iv, 20. 11), the Gospel
(v. 18. 2; ii. 22. 3; iii. I. I ; iii. 10. 6; iii. 16. 4, &c.), the
first Epistle (iii. 16. 4), and the second Epistle (i. 16.3 and
iii. 16. 8). (In the last case by an oversight St. Irenaeus
quotes ' praedicta epistola', which necessarily refers back
to iii. 16. 4, where it was i John which was quoted.)
Thus St. Irenaeus identifies the author of the Gospel,
'he who lay upon the Lord's breast' (iii. i. i), with the
author of the Apocalypse and with ' the Presbyter ' of
the second Epistle, as also with the John of whom
Papias was the hearer. He means the Apostle, the
son of Zebedee, yet he usually calls him ' the disciple
of the Lord'.*
' ' Senior apostolorum discipulus,' iv. 32. i, must not be pressed,
if Papias be meant and not Polycarp.
" e. g. i. 8. 4 ; i. 16. 3 ; ii. 22. 3 and 5 ; iii. i. i ; iii. 3. 4 ; iii. 10. 6 ;
iii. II. 13 ; iii. 16. 4 and 7 ; iv. 20. ii ; v. 18. 2 ; v. 33. 2.
' See Gutjahr, Die Glaubwurdigkeit des Irenaischen Zeugnisses,
(Graz, 1904), p. 3. An admirable table of references by St. Irenaeus
to the fourth Gospel is given by Dr. F. G. Lewis, of Chicago, in his
brochure, The Irenaeus Testimony to the Fourth Gospel — its extent,
meaning, and value (Chicago Univ. Press, 1908), pp. 10-12. It
appears that Irenaeus cites it as ' the Gospel according to John '
twice ; as ' the Gospel ' twice ; as ' John ' simply, eleven times ; as
'John, the disciple of the Lord ' seventeen times ; as ' the disciple
of the Lord ' twice ; as ' the Apostle ' once (iii. 5. i), as ' John the
Apostle' twice (i. 9. 2 and iii. 11. 9). The last passage is absolute
proof that he regarded the writer of the text, 'The Word was
made flesh,' as John, the Apostle, the disciple of the Lord. Dr. Lewis
points out that iii. 3. 4 is hardly less decisive : ' At the close of
iii. 3. 4 Irenaeus wrote: "The Church in Ephesus, founded
by Paul, and having John remaining among them permanently

§8 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 43
3. We have seen in the preceding chapter that Papias
gave to John the Presbyter this title, 'the disciple of
the Lord,' and we may guess that Irenaeus borrowed
the habit from Papias, unless the reader prefers to
imagine that he himself brought the phrase from Asia
to Gaul, which comes to the same thing. We may
compare the ' loannes ex discipulis ' of the Muratorian
fragment, which contrasts so strangely with the ' An
dreas ex Apostolis' which closely follows it. The
witness of St. Irenaeus is thus complete as to the
meaning assigned by himself to the words of Papias :
Apiariwv Kal 6 irpea^irepos 'Iwdvvrjs, rov Kvpiov /ladrjrai.
Irenaeus certainly studied Papias deeply, and quoted
him frequently, but he never found out that Papias
knew of two distinct Johns.
4. But St. Irenaeus supplies us with further wit
ness of another kind. He had apparently not knowrt
until the times of Trajan, is a true witness of the traditions of the
Apostles." The obvious meaning of this statement is that, for
Irenaeus, the John of Asia was an Apostle. Taken with the point
which has been made above — that Irenaeus recognized only one
John of apostolic days other than John the Baptist and John Mark
— the statement means that the writer of the Gospel was an Apostle.
The passage in ii. 22. 5 c contains similar language and gives the
same conclusion ' (p. 18). Dr. Lewis refers to six other passages,
and concludes: 'This cumulation of evidence places Irenaeus's
opinion beyond doubt. The author of the fourth Gospel was as
certainly an apostle for him as though he had taken a page to state,
argue, and prove the point. He would have been astonished if he
could have known that any reader would ever think otherwise.
One can hardly believe that those who have been in doubt about
the matter have read Irenaeus' (p. 19). The last sentence ex
presses my own feeling. Yet Dr. Lewis cites the hesitation of
Mr. H. L. Jackson, Mr. C. A. Scott, and of Dr. Swete. I admire
Dr. Swete so much that I am astonished that his habitual caution
should have for once been exaggerated into incautiousness. Com
pare also Sanday, Crii. of the Fourth Gospel, p. 105.

44 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §»
St. Papias, but he well remembered St. Polycarp. He
had seen Florinus in company with Polycarp when ' he
was a boy ', iraTs &v en {Ep. ad Flor.), but this was not
the latest period of his acquaintance with Polycarp, for
he speaks elsewhere of having seen him 'in my first
age', bv ¦^fieis iwpdKajiev ev rfj irpwrrj rjXiKia (iii. 3. 4).
In J. T. S., Oct., 1907, pp. 54-5 and 61, I discussed
St. Irenaeus, ii. 22. 5 : ' triginta annorum aetas prima est
iuvenis et extenditur usque ad quadragesimum annum.
Here 'prima aetas' is evidently a translation of irpwrrj
TjXiKia, and is identified with iuventus, which was shown
in the diagram, ibid., p. 56, to extend precisely from 30-40.
Even if St. Irenaeus is trying to exaggerate the age at
which he knew Polycarp, we can hardly suppose him to
have been less than 25 or thereabouts. He means to
say : ' I was able to know him as late as my early man
hood,' eiriiroXii ydp ejieive. The conversation of Polycarp
was about his familiarity with John and other Apostles.
Three times St. Irenaeus mentions John as known
to Polycarp without giving the names of the 'other
Apostles ' :
Ep. ad Vict. &re fierd 'Iwdvvov rod jiaQrjrov rov
Kvpiov rjjiwv, Kal Xoiirwv diroaroXwv oJs avvSiirpiyfrev, del
rerrjprjKora. Ep. ad Flor. t^v fierk 'Iwdvvov avvavaarpo^fjv &s
dirrjyyeXXe, Kal r^v /lerd rwv ¦ Xoiirwv twv ewpaKorwv rov
Kvpiov, Kal ms direfivrjfioveve rods Xoyovs avrwv Kal irepl
TOV Kvpiov riva ^v & irepl rrjs SiSaaKaXias, a>y napd rwv
avrowrwv rrjs (wrjs roC Aoyov (l John i. l) irapeiXrj^s'
ktX. Haer. iii. 3. 4 Kai UoXiiKaprros Se ov fiovov iiro 'Airo-
aroXwv fiaOrjrevOeis, Kal aw avaar panels iroXXois rots rov
Xpiarbv iwpaKSaiv, dXXd Kal irrb 'AvoaroXwv KaraaraBels
eis r^v 'Aaiav ev rfj ev Sfiiipvrj eKKXrjaia eiriaKoiros, hv Kal
fjfieTs iwpdKajiev ev rfj irpwrfj fjjiwv fjXiKia, eiriiroXi> yap
e/ieive.

§ 8 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 45
From the last passage we may possibly have a right
to gather that St. Polycarp was not originally a Smyr
naean nor an Asiatic, .but was sent to Smyrna as
bishop by Apostles. Eis rfjv 'Aaiav in a post-classical
writer need not mean more than ev rfj 'Aaia ; but yet
the whole form of the sentence and the mention of Asia
suggests the translation, which in an earlier writer
would be unavoidable : ' was sent into Asia by Apostles,
as bishop of the Church of Sm3n-na.'
If this suggestion be accepted, it is easier to account
for Polycarp's acquaintance with other Apostles besides
John. It does not appear that Papias could remember
Philip the Apostle, who died at Hierapolis, though he
knew his daughters. The mention of Andrew the
Apostle in Asia by the Muratorian fragment seems to
rest upon apocryphal testimony. It does not seem that
any Apostle besides John survived in Asia at the close
of the first century. But Polycarp may have known
Apostles elsewhere in quite early youth. His recollec
tions, however, were principally of St. John, and it
is noticeable that St. Irenaeus does not mention his
reporting discourses of any other Apostle. If he had
known other Apostles in his childhood only,^ this was
a natural consequence. The iirb diroaroXwv /ladrjrevOeis
of Irenaeus can hardly mean 'was converted by
Apostles ', as Zahn would have it. Zahn is obliged to
suppose Polycarp to have been converted at 13 (!), and
after being '86 years in the Lord' {Mart. Polyc. 9), to
' If he died in 155 his baptism took place in 69, and his birth in
that year or not much earlier. He may have had instructions from
Apostles in childhood, c. 80, and from Apostolic men later still.
Still I think it quite possible that ' Apostles ' may refer to John
and Aristion only, where Polycarp's ordination is in question.

46 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §8
have been able to run behind a cart before his martyrdom
at the age of loo years (ibid.), not to speak of his under
taking a journey to Rome the year before. Such im
probabilities induce us to suppose that he received
baptism as an infant, and received his first Christian
instruction (a possible meaning of fiaOrjrevOeis) from
Apostles in Palestine or elsewhere. He is said to have
been made bishop ' by Apostles ', and sent to Sm3a-na
by them. It cannot be shown, I think, that Polycarp
had known any Apostle besides John in Asia in his
mature years.
The witness of Irenaeus about Polycarp, therefore,
corresponds to the witness of both Irenaeus and Euse
bius about Papias. Neither Polycarp nor Papias had
known any Apostle in Asia but John, so far as we can
see. Irenaeus is quite clear that Papias meant the
Apostle, and only the Apostle. He remembers the
words of Polycarp better than recent events, and he
has no doubt that Polycarp also spoke of the Apostle.
5. But Irenaeus is also witness to the tradition of Asia
Minor in general. We know that he lived there in his
youth for some years, since he saw Florinus there with
Polycarp, Trary wv en, i. e. at the age of perhaps 10-15
years, and, could remember Polycarp much later, if he is
not exaggerating, when he was between 30 and 40. If
Polycarp died in 155 Irenaeus can hardly have been born
later than 125, and Harnack's date, a little before 142, is
absurd. Further, it seems that Irenaeus last saw Poly
carp some time before his death, for the Moscow MS.
of the Martyrdom says that when Polycarp died,
Irenaeus was teaching in Rome (see Harnack, Chronol.
i. 331-2 against this). Certainly 120 is a more likely

§8 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 47
date than 125. But we have the statement, v. 30. 3 that
the Apocalypse was seen almost in his own generation,
ovSe yap vpb iroXXov xpovov iwpdOrj, dXXd axeSov eirl rrjs
rjfieripas yeveds irpos rw reXei rrjs Ao/ienavov dpxfjs.
Now Harnack thinks the length of a yeved is given in
this passage by the distance from rw vvv Kaipw (just
above) back to the last days of Domitian, viz. about 90
years ; in fact he makes the words equivalent to ' almost
within the memory of persons still living'. Thus fjjieri-
pas would refer to Irenaeus and his readers. But as a
fact St. Irenaeus always speaks of himself as ij/^ery, and
never (I think) of himself and his readers as rjfieh.
Especially where he is speaking of Asiatic events of
past times, it is to his own recollections that he refers,
for he assumes that his readers are either younger, or
have not personally received the Asiatic traditions which
he prized so highly. He is writing for Gaul, and
secondarily, perhaps, for Italy, not for Asia. I think,
therefore, that Irenaeus probably means : ' It is not long
ago that it was revealed, but almost in my own time, for
I come from that part of the world.' But this is not
.certain, I admit. On the other hand, it is quite certain
that ' within our own generation ' does not mean ' within
the lifetime of people who are now ninety ', but ' within
the lifetime of people of our time of life '. You cannot
imagine a young man speaking to his great-grandfather
of ' in our generation ' ! If Irenaeus was (as Harnack
thinks) 45 when he wrote about 185, then ' almost within
our own generation ' will not carry us back more than 50-
60 years, or 70, if he is greatly exaggerating, i. e. to 125-35
or 115 ; whereas Domitian was killed in 96 ! For example :
a man now 45 was born in 1865. The first railway was

48 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §8
in 1825, but railways were hardly general until 1842,
23 years before his birth. Yet I cannot imagine him
saying to-day that 'railways came into use within our
own generation '. Still less would he say that the battle
of Waterloo, fifty years before his birth, took place
' almost within our own generation '. I must apologize
for returning to this point (on which I said something in
/. T. S., Oct., 1897, p. 61), because it seemed necessary to
add a word in answer to Harnack's curious interpretation
of a very simple phrase, which seems to me to imply that
Irenaeus was born about 115 (so Zahn). I am inclined
to look upon 125 as the very latest date that is open.
But he seems to have remembered Hadrian's visit to
Asia in 129.
Now his recollections would presumably cover the
period 125-150, or at least 135-50, in Asia. Let us for
the sake of argument say 140-55. Even so he must
have been in a position to know plenty of people whose
recollections went back to the first century.
Secondly, there was a close commerce between the
Church of Lyons and the Church of Sm3ma. Pothinus,
Bishop of Lyons, who was over 90 when he was
martyred, c. 177, was possibly an Asiatic (born c. 87), and
he may be the ' disciple of the disciples of the Apostles '
whose sermon St. Irenaeus quotes at length (iv. 27 foil.).
Thus any mistake which might (inconceivably) occur
in St. Irenaeus's recollections about the identity of John
of Ephesus, would immediately be checked by others of
his contemporaries and friends. He was not isolated, as
Harnack conceives him.^
* So Dr. Drummond had pointed out : ' Critics speak of Irenaeus
as though he had fallen out of the moon,' p. 348.

l9 ,
Early witnesses to the identity of the Presbyter
and the Apostle.
I. There seems to.-be no doubt that Papias was much
read by the early Church, though it is very difficult to
trace his influence. His chiliastic views, however, had
a wide echo in East and West, and many of the state
ments about the Gospels made by early writers can be
traded back to him, or have been influenced by his
traditions. He was probably used by St. Justin Martyr,
more certainly by Clement of Alexandria, possibly by
TertuUian, Cyprian, Victorinus, Commodian, Lactantius,
and even Tichonius. He must have been much read by
those numerous writers of the second century whose
works were still preserved in the time of Eusebius, and
through them he must have influenced a host of other
writers. A scholar of great reputation lately repeated
to me with approval the remark of another first-rate
authority, that when we find the works of Papias, we
shall recognize that we knew a great part of theni
already, as was the case with Aristides.
Yet in none of the ancient literature which has come
down to us is there any vestige of the existence of more
than one John at Ephesus, apart from the conjectures of
Dionysius and Eusebius, which have occasionally been
quoted by later writers.
2. The witness of St. Justin Martyr is of extraordinary
1234 D

50 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §9
weight. He represents his dialogue as taking place at
Ephesus itself about the years 130-5. His knowledge of
Ephesian matters dates from that time, though he wrote
later (155-60). He states {Dial 81) that the Apocalypse
was the prophecy of a Christian of the name of John,
one of the Apostles of Christ : koi eireira Kal nap' rjjiiv
(' amongst us ' Christians, as opposed to the Old Testa
ment prophecies just cited) dvfjp ns, S ovojia 'Iwdvvrjs, els
rwv diroaroXwv Xpiarov, ev diroKoXv^ei yevofiivrj avrw . . .
Trpoefrjrevae. Now the Apocalypse is addressed to the
seven Churches of Asia, of which Ephesus was the first,
by a John who was in exile for the faith in Patmos. So
Justin's testimony amounts to a statement that John the
Apostle was at one time head of the Churches of Asia
Minor, and was at some date or other exiled to Patmos.
This entirely harmonizes with the distinct and incon
trovertible testimony of St. Irenaeus that St John the
Apostle wrote the Apocalypse, and that he lived at
Ephesus until the reign of Trajan. It may also incline
us to accept St. Irenaeus's further witness that the date
of the Apocalypse and of St. John's exile to Patmos was
under Domitian, which, in fact, is almost universally
accepted to-day.^
' This was true in 1903 (see Moffatt, The Historical N. T., p. 461,
for a list of authorities ; to these Dr. Swete must be added). But
there has been a recrudescence of the Neronian theory since then.
In 1907 Dr. Sanday uttered a mild protest against the first symptoms
(/. T. S., July, 1907, pp. 486 foil.). But in his preface to Hort's
posthumous lectures on the Apocalpyse he was inclined to hedge.
Dean Armitage Robinson replied in favour of tradition (/. T. S.,
Oct., 1908, pp. 6 foil.). The question does not matter in the least
to my present argument. But on one point I have a word to say.
Bishop Chase (/. T. S., April, 1907, p. 431) has revived the idea that
St. Irenaeus (v. 30. 3) does not state that ' the Apocalypse was seen
not long ago, but almost in our own generation, towards the end of

§9 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 51
It also entirely harmonizes with the fact that Papias of
Hierapolis was personally acquainted with St. John the
Apostle. Nay, I wish to say most emphatically that
Justin's witness, joined to that of Irenaeus, makes it a
^nbn impossible that Papias should not have known the
Apostle. 3. Polycrates, Bishop of Ephesus in the last years of
the second century, writes to Pope Victor^ of the great
personages buried in Asia : Philip, one of the twelve
Apostles, and one of his daughters at Hierapolis, the
the reign of Domitian ', but that he means ' the author of the Apoca
lypse was seen '. Bishop Chase is starting firom a suggestion by
Dr. Hort, and Dr. Hort was half approving the argument of a Swiss
writer, J. Bovon, whose words have been reprinted in Hort's
Apocalypse (1908), p. 41. Now Dr. Hort and Dr. Chase are great
authorities, but in spite of them I venture to think the suggested
translation impossible, and their advocacy of it a misfortune.
For twice St. Irenaeus elsewhere appeals to the witness of
St. John's last days ; once, when speaking of the Presbjrters :
rrapejieive yap avrois fiexpi tSiv Tpa'iavov xpdvav (ii. 22. 5, ap. Eus. H. E.
iii. 25), and again of the Church of Ephesus : 'imdwov Se irapajieivavTos
avTois p.exp'i rav Tpa'iavov xpdvav (iii. 3. 4, ap. EuS. iii. 23). In both
places the point is St. John's witness continued until his death. It
is therefore inconceivable that in v. 30. 3 the same writer should
have Hmited the time when St. John ' was seen ' (even if we follow
Dr. Chase in explaining ' was seen about ', as though he was after
that too old to leave his room) to the end of the reign of Domitian !
I do not at all understand how any one could put forward such a
translation of St. Irenaeus. On the other hand, we have the iapddr]
taking up the eapaxdros which had just preceded, and the last years
of Domitian give us precisely (it cannot be a mere coincidence) the
time of persecution, followed (as Victorinus and Jerome point out)
by the reversal of Domitian's decrees by the senate, and the return
of the Apostle to Ephesus (Clem. AL, Origen, Victorinus, Eusebius,
Jerome, &c.). There are so many real difficulties in interpreting
our ancient authorities that I hope this confusing and annoying
mistranslation will not appear any. more. I notice, by the way,
that Canon J. J. Scott, in some popular lectures in Manchester
Cathedral (Murray, 1909), prefers the Neronian date.
1 Euseb. H. E. iii. 31. 3, and v. 24. 2-3.
D 2

52 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §9
other at Ephesus; 'John, who lay upon the Lord's breast,
who was 'a Priest wearing the " petalon ", and martyr
and doctor, he sleeps in Ephesus ' ; Polycarp, Thraseas,
Sagaris, Papirius, and Melito. Polycrates in 195 or
thereabouts, was 65 years old, so that he was born
' about 130. He says that he was the eighth bishop in
Asia of his family, so that the witness of his family
carries us much further back, possibly as much as
a hundred years. He cannot have made any mistake
about the identity of John, who lived until the age of
Trajan, and scarcely even about that of Philip, who died
much earlier (since he is mentioned first, and also since
he was apparently unknown personally to Papias). Now
Polycrates makes the famous John of Ephesus the
author of the Gospel, for he lay on Jesus's breast ; he
certainly therefore assumes that he is the Apostle, since
in 195 it was common to all Churches that the Apostle
wrote the Gospel. Again, he makes him the author of
the Apocalypse, for he calls him jidprvs, which must be
a reference to his exile to Patmos— the verification of
the prophecy that he should drink the Lord's chalice.
As writer of the Apocalypse John would be the Supe
rior of the seven Churches of Asia, and it is in this
capacity, perhaps, that it is said of him kyevrjOrj lepeds rb
iriraXov ire(j>opeKws, but this is somewhat mysterious.
The addition Kal SiSdaKoXos apparently claims him as the
author of the Paschal traditions of Ephesus.
So we have from Ephesus a tradition which is as
authentic as that of Lyons, and it is absolutely the same
in its testimony. There is entire harmony between
Justin at Rome, Irenaeus in Gaul, and Polycrates in
Asia.

§9 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 53
4. The spurious Acts of John were composed in Asia
by Leucius about 160-70. They embroider the tradi
tional data with many legendary additions. But it is
difficult to suppose that Leucius ventured to contradict
any facts that were well known when he wrote, seventy
years or so after the accession of Trajan. There might
Still be aged men living who could remember to have
seen the John who lived at Ephesus until Trajan. His
identity, his writings, and his tomb cannot have been
doubtful matters, and, in fact, Leucius is entirely in har
mony with Polycarp and Papias, Justin and Irenaeus
and Polycrates. The tomb at Ephesus is for him that of
the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, who is the author of
the Gospel and of the Apocalypse. He visits the seven
Churches in the order in which the letters occur in the
Apocalypse. He lays himself down in his tomb. The
evidence is very full in the fragments (Zahn, Forsch. vi,
pp. 14-18, 194-200).
5. The adverse witness of Gaius and the Alogi is to
be noted.^ They do not deny that John the Apostle
' Julicher admits : ' Only the Alogi of Asia Minor rejected it,
even before the end of the second century, but that was scarcely
on the ground of better or even of divergent tradition.' Introd. to
the N. 71, Eng. tr. 1903, p. 403. There is no proof whatever that they
were a sect in Asia Minor. I am inclined to think that the best
name for them is Gaius and Co. It is, anyhow, certain that Gaius
rejected the Gospel as well as the Apocalypse. The passage pub
lished by the Rev. T. H. Robinson, B.D., in the Expositor for June,
1906, p. 487, from Bar Salibi's Commentary on the Apocalypse, is
of the first importance, especially the words : ' Hippolytus of Rome
states that a man named Gaius had appeared, who said that neither
the Gospel nor yet the Revelation was John's, but that they were
the work of Cerinthus the heretic' There seems to be no reason
to doubt that the nameless heretics to whom St. Epiphanius gave
the name of Alogi (he knew them solely through Hippolytus), were
nothing else than Gaius. How Epiphanius did not discover that

54 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §9
was at Ephesus. On the contrary, they seem to assume
it, for they attribute the composition of his Gospel and
his Apocalypse to his opponent Cerinthus. This was
not because the teaching of Cerinthus was found in
those books, but the Alogi simply rejected them (out of
opposition to the Montanists as well as to the Chiliasts,
as it appears) and said they were not what John taught,
but forgeries in his name by his enemy. This^^is clear in
what Gaius says of the Apocal3^se : KrjpivOos 6 Si' diro-
KaXvyjrewv ws iirb drroaroXov (leydXov yeypajifiivwv reparo-
Xoyias rjjiiv ws Si dyyeXwv avrw SeSeiy/ievas yfrevSo/ievos
eireiadyei (Euseb. H. E. iii. 28. 2). We learn from Hip
polytus, cited by Bar Salibi, that Gaius also rejected
the Gospel. He, i. e. the Alogi of St. Epiphanius, of
course thought that Cerinthus pretended to be St. John,
the disciple who lay on the Lord's breast. It is most
natural, therefpre, to suppose that Gaius presumed Ce
rinthus to have taken the fact that the ' great Apostle '
lived in Asia and was exiled to Patmos as the basis of
his forgery. Consequently, Gaius is an adverse witness
Gaius was the person against whom Hippolytus was arguing, we
need not inquire, fot- the learned Epiphanius was capable of any
amount and quality of confusion and muddleheadedness. It is
scarcely possible that Gaius's dialogue should have been written
earlier than the third book of St. Irenaeus (if I am right in sup
posing that Gaius replied to the letter of Polycrates or to a Mon
tanist imitation of it — as I shall say further on). Consequently, we
can hardly assume that St. Irenaeus in iii. ii. 9 is referring to the
dialogue against Proclus. But he may be referring to the opinions
of Gaius all the same, for Gaius was presumably well known at
Rome as an opponent of the Montanists before he pubUshed his
dialogue. If this be so then we must read pseudoprophetas esse
nolunt for pseudoprophetae esse uolunt with Zahn (G. K. i. 244 ; cp.
his defence of this emendation, ibid. ii. 972 ; also Forschungen, v.
45). There seems, I repeat, no reason to imagine any ' Alogi ' in
Asia ; they were Romans.

§9 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 55
to the authenticity of the Johannine writings (though a
poor one !), but not to the stay of St. John the Apostle
in Ephesus or his ' martyrdom ' by exile in Patmos.
6. It is scarcely necessary to quote Clement of Alex
andria. It is sufficiently well known that he witnesses
to Gospel, Apocalypse, and two Epistles as Johannine.
His story of the robber is an additional witness. But
in general his testimony is weakened both by his
habitual use of forged Acts of Apostles and by his cita
tion of the Leucian Acts of John in particular in his
Adumbratio on i John. Still we must not forget that one
of his teachers was from Asia, and therefore he may be
regarded at least as a witness that the apocryphal legends
did not contradict the main data of Asiatic tradition.
The explicit witness of TertuUian (about 199) is more
important.^ That of Apollonius is from Asia, and a few
years earlier.^ I might argue also from smaller points,
such as the commentary on the Gospel by Heracleon,
and on the Apocalypse by Melito. I prefer to deal with
the larger matters. Origen's witness is too obvious to
be insisted on : it sums up the early tradition.
7. The adverse witness of St. Dionysius the Great is
interesting. He had heard that there were two tombs
at Ephesus, but he had not heard that there were two
Johns known there. He assumes it as certain that John
the Apostle died and was buried there. He has nothing
to go upon but Gaius, whose words he carefully tones
down. His' literary criticism is very able, but he has
' ' Sicut Smyrnaeorum ecclesia Polycarpum ab loanne colloca-
tum refert ' {Praescr. 32). Of course TertuUian means the Apostle ;
he knows no other Apostolic John.
^ Apollonius spoke of John raising the dead at Ephesus. Euse
bius understood him to mean the Apostle {H. E. v. 18. 14).,

56 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §9
no tradition behind him. He is, therefore, not really an
adverse witness.
8. St. Victorinus (martyred c. 303 ?) is a very impor
tant witness, first, because his testimony is so definite ;
secondly, because he was a great admirer and reader of
Papias ; and thirdly, because his words must go back td
some, earlier authority.^ According to St. Jerome (Ep. 71.
2, and 84. 7) Victorinus simply wrote out Origen in Latin
and called the result his own composition. He seems
to have done the same with Papias, both in De Fabrica
mundi and in the millenarian conclusion of the notes on
the Apocalypse. His authority as to St. John's history .
may have been Hippolytus.^
* When Dr. Hort delivered his recently published lectures it was
possible to doubt the authenticity of the notes of Victorinus on the
Apocalypse. Though Vallarsi rejected St. Jerome's letter to
Anatolius, describing his new edition of the commentary, no one
who knows St. Jerome's style can doubt its authenticity. We can
now, through Haussleiter's discovery of the MS. Vat. lat. 3288 a,
restore the pre-Hieronymian form of the commentary. I cite from
that codex the most important passage, adding punctuation:
' Oportet, inquit, iterum praedicare, id e&tp>rophetare, in populis Unguis
et nationibus (Apoc. x. 11), hoc est quoniam quando hoc uidit
lohannes, erat in insula Patmo* in metallo damnatus a Cesare
Domitiano. Ibi ergo uidetur lohannes apocalipsim scripsisse. Et
cum iam seniorem se putasset post passionem recipi posse, inter-
fecto Domitiano, omnia indicia eius soluta sunt, et lohannes
a metallo dimissus est, et sic postea tradidit hanc eamdem apoca
lipsim quam a domino acceperat : hoc est iterum prophetare oportet-
Et accepisse autem ilium harundinem similem uirgae ut tnetiret tem-
plum Dei et aram et adorantes in ea potestate domini (xi. i), quam
dimissus postea exhibuit ecclesiis, nam et evangelium postea con-
scripsit. Cum essent enim Valentinus et Cerinthus "et Hebion'' et
ceterae scholae sparsae per orbem ¦=, conuenerunt ad ilium de fini-
timis ciuitatibus episcopi, et compulerunt eum.'
''¦ Hippolytus is not to be passed over, for the greater part of
St. Epiphanius's disquisition on the Alogi {Haer. 51) is borrowed
^ Pactha. ^ Hesbion. <> ceteras scolas sparsas per urbem.

§9 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 57
9. No witness is more important than Eusebius him
self, for his knowledge of early literature was unique.
He could find only two authorities for attributing the
Apocalypse to any one but St. John the Apostle. The
one was Gaius, and he is afraid to use his witness, but
quotes him as though it were some unknown Apoca
lypse which he attributed to Cerinthus— or he may
possibly have really failed to understand. His other
authority, the only one which he brings forward, is the
from his defence of the fourth Gospel. Now Epiphanius tells us
(51. 2) that when Ebion and Cerinthus (cp. Victorinus) were
teaching heresy in Asia, St. John was inspired to write his Gospel
against them, and again (51. 12) : Aio varepov dvayKd^ei t6 aywv Ilvevpa
TOV laavvrjv irapavrovfievov evayyeXia-ao-dai Si' evXdfietav Kal raireivorjjpoaivrjv
firi Tj yrjpaXea avrov rjXiKia, ftera err) evevrjKOvra rr)S eavrov fo)^s, /teri rfjv
avrov ano T^r IlaT-juov iirdvoSov, rriv eirl KXavSiou yevofievi)v Kai(rapos. Kal
fiera iKava ert] tov Siarpi^jfai avrov otto t^s 'Acrias dvayKa^erai (by the
bishops ? or by the Holy Spirit ?) eKdeaOai to 'EvayyeKiov. Again, in
5'- 33) the time of the Apostles, John, and the rest, is said to have
been ninety-three years after our Lord's conception (we must read
iTvXXri^iv for dvdXriy\nv). I have shown in /. T. S., July, 1907, p. 603,
that Hippolytus (who used TertuUian's list of emperors, which
omitted Claudius in his proper place) must have inserted Claudius
next after Domitian. According to TertuUian's absurd chronology
the death of Domitian would be eighty years after the conception
or birth of Christ, and the ninety-third year would be presumably
the thirteenth year of Claudius. I suggested (1. c.) that this was
the year of the Apocalypse ; but I now think it evident that I was
mistaken, and that the end of the Apostolic age, that is, the death
of John, is intended. Epiphanius seems to presume it known
that the Apocalypse was written under Domitian, who had
exiled the Apostle, and that the latter returned after the tyrant's
death. If I am right in suggesting that Victorinus used Hippo
lytus, then Hippolytus may have spoken explicitly on the subject.
But I leave this merely as a suggestion. For Hegesippus seems
to be the earliest explicit authority for St. John's banishment to
Patmos, if Dr. Lawlor's argument in /. T. S. for April, 1907, is
right {Hegesippus and the Apocalypse, pp. 436-43), as I am at present
inchned to think. So Hegesippus might be either the ultimate or
the immediate source of Victorinus.

58 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §9
conjecture of St. Dionysius. He is delighted to find
a passage in Papias which might be so interpreted as to
make two Johns, and thus to substantiate Dionysius's
report as to the two tombs.
All this is weak enough, in all conscience. But Euse
bius was unable to bring any corroborative evidence
out of Papias or out of any other writer whatsoever.
He declares the Gospel and first Epistle to be univer
sally accepted, and he is our guarantee of the unanimity
of antiquity against his own theory of the Apocalypse
and the two Johns.^
' Later writers who used Papias are Andrew of Caesarea and
Maximus Confessor. The former refers to Papias, together with
Irenaeus, Methodius, and Hippoljrtus, as early witnesses to the
inspired character of the Apocalypse {Comm. in Apoc, Praefatio,
P. G; vol. 106). Papias was used in the lost works of Apollinarius
of Laodicea (or was it Apollinarius of Hierapohs ?), possibly also by
Anastasius of Mount Sinai, but the latter perhaps cites him at
second hand.

Apostle, Disciple, Presbyter.
The habit of saying ' John, the disciple of the Lord '
seems to have come to Irenaeus from Papias. Why
should Papias have transmitted to St. Irenaeus this
avoidance of the expression, ' John, the Apostle ' ?
The first answer which occurs to us is that in no
extant fragment of Papias does the word Apostle occur.
Andrew and Peter, Philip, Thomas and James, John
and Matthew, are enumerated as ' disciples of the Lord '.
I know of no passage cited indirectly from Papias where
the word occurs, except where Eusebius says that ' Philip
the Apostle ' lived at Hierapolis (iii. 39. 9). In the Mu
ratorian fragment we have ' loannes ex discipulis'. Of
course this does not prove that Papias never used the
word ' Apostle ', but it suggests that he did not use it
freely.^ Now this is very interesting. The word diro
aroXos is a distinctively Pauline word. It occurs thirty-
four times in St. Paul, and once in Hebrews. St. Paul's
disciple Luke uses it six times in his Gospel, and about
twenty-nine times in Acts — in all seventy times in these
Pauline documents. In three places of the Apocalypse
it occurs under (I believe) Pauline influence, for the
^ For he describes a list of Apostles as ' disciples of the Lord '.
This does not prove any positive avoidance of the word Apostle,
for it is the testimony of the Apostles which is in question, and
their discipleship proves them to have been eyewitnesses, and
apostleship could only add greater familiarity to this. We must
merely conclude that 'disciple' is the more familiar word to Papias.

6o JOHN THE PRESBYTER § lo
vocabulary of that book is curiously Pauline. Besides,
it is found in the greeting of i and 2 Peter and in
Jude 17, and also in 2 Peter iii. 2. Here, again, there
might be imitation of St. Paul. In St. Matthew the
word occurs once (x. 2), and in St. Mark once. In
St. John's Gospel and Epistles never (except once in
the Gospel, xiii. 16, in a diff'erent sense).
These are somewhat startling figures. Further,
St. Matthew has ol SwSeKa or ol evSeKa four times, and
ol SwSeKa (or evSeKo) /laOrjrai three or four times ;
St. Mark has ol SwSeKa or evSeKa ten times, St. Luke
eight times, St. John four times, Acts twice, St. Paul
once. It is evident to any student of the Gospels that
ol jiaOrjrai very commonly simply means ' the Apostles ',
though not necessarily all the Apostles or only the
Apostles. We are consequently prepared to find the
word fiaQrjrrjs less often in St. Luke, since he freely
uses the word Apostle, and most often in St. John, who
never uses Apostle, and seldom 'the twelve'. The
figures are roughly :
Mt. 75, Mc. 45, Lc. 38, Jo. 81, Acts 30.
The result wiU be clearer if we remember that
St. Matthew and St. Luke are about the same length,
while St. Mark is -6 and St. John -77 of their measure.
Reducing all to a common length we should get the
figures :
Mt. 75, Mc. 75, Lc. 38, Jo. 105.
In the whole of the rest of the New Testament the
word fiadrjr^s never occurs at all. It may be accident
that it is not in the Catholic Epistles and Apocalypse.
But that it never occurs in St. Paul's writings, which
fill more than one third of the New Testament, proves

§io JOHN THE PRESBYTER 6i
that the use of the word was as unfamiliar to him as it
was familiar to St. John.
It is evident that the habitual use of the word /laOrjrrjs
belongs to the original oral or written source of the Synop
tists. 'AiroaroXos apparently does not, though St. Luke
assures us that the word was given to the twelve by
our Lord himself (vi. 13). But our Lord used an Aramaic
word, which was at first rendered jiaOrjrrjs. The transla
tion diroaroXos became usual only later, and it seems to
have been St. Paul who gave it currency. (May we
conjecture that it came into habitual use at Antioch,
and thus into St. Paul's Christian vocabulary ? ^) The
fourth Gospel thus reflects an older usage than St. Paul's
and St. Luke's. This is easy to understand, if the
author is one of the Twelve, and his recollections, when
writing in his old age, are carrying him back to days
when men spoke of ' the disciples ', not of ' the Apostles '.^
Papias lived in Hierapolis, close to the Pauline
Churches of Colossae and Laodicea. Had he written
in the first century, c. 50-70, we should have found him
^ I need hardly point out that as p-aOriT^s covers more than the
twelve, so does 'Apostle', — e.g. Barnabas and Andronicus and
Junias. But there seems no reason to suppose that dirda-roXos
could be used, any more than pa6rjTfis rov Kvpiov, of one who had not
seen and heard the Lord. I can quite belieVe that Polycarp and
Irenaeus might speak of John, the son of Zebedee, and Aristion
together as ' Apostles '.
" I gave parallel instances of earlier usage in Mt. and Mk. in The
Brethren of the Lord {J. T. S., April, 1906, p. 423) : Thaddaeus (to
distinguish from Judas Iscariot) in Mt., Mk. = Jude (after Iscariot's
death) in Lk., Acts, Jo., Jude ; and James in Mt., Mk. always with
some mark of identification, in Lk., Acts, Paul (James, the son of
Zebedee, being dead) no identification is usually given, since only
one James (the ' little ', the Lord's brother) was left. (I showed in
that article that to deny that James, the Lord's brother, was an
Apostle is to contradict all the original evidence we have.)

62 JOHN THE PRESBYTER § lo
using the word Apostle, and not disciple. But he is
a disciple of the later head of the Asian Churches, of
St. John, not of St. Paul. He calls Peter and Andrew
and the rest ' the Lord's disciples ', as St. John would
have done, as St. Paul would never have done, as
St. Luke would only have done when citing an earlier
authority. Papias belonged to the ' Johannine circle ' ;
he uses the Johannine word ' disciple ', and uses it of
the twelve.
He also uses it of John and Aristion, and he has
handed on to Irenaeus the expression, 'John, the Lord's
disciple,' though Irenaeus habitually speaks of 'Apostles'
when he means the twelve or is referring to other
Apostles. It is clear that 'the Lord's disciples' used
of John and Aristion by Papias cannot be considered
an expression distinguishing them from Apostles, it
rather unites them in a common group with the Apostles.
2. There is a. further reason to be given for the title
' John, the disciple of the Lord ', and a reason which
accounts for the use of ' Presbyter ' also : Papias would
naturally give to his teacher the title which his teacher
habitually used.
Now assuming that ' John, the Presbyter, the Lord's
disciple ', is the author of the fourth Gospel, we notice
that this Gospel never uses the word Apostle nor (con
sequently) applies it to the author. The author declares
himself to be an eyewitness, and insists on the certainty
of his own testimony, but he never says he was one of
the twelve (though he incidentally implies it by saying
that he was at the Last Supper, Avhere only the twelve
were present, as I shall show further on). His descrip
tion of himself (he will give no name) is ' the disciple

§io JOHN THE PRESBYTER 63
whom Jesus loved' (four times), 'who leaned on his
breast ', ' that disciple ', ' that other disciple '—over and
over again. And therefore Papias calls him ' the disciple
of the Lord '.1
Similarly in his two private letters he styles himself,
not the 'Apostle of Jesus Christ' (as St. Paul and
St. Peter do), but simply ' the Presbyter ', as a title which
all must recognize as distinctive. Consequently Papias,
his disciple, gives him this title, the title by which all
knew him — John the Presbyter.
Thus Papias gives to his Master John the names by
which John described himself in his Gospel and in
his shorter Epistles ^— the disciple of the Lord, the
Presbyter. ^ This description of himself as ' disciple ' has actually been used,
in the habitually careless way of so-called critics, to show that he
was not an Apostle. They were too ignorant to know that the
word 'Apostle' is not used in the whole book. They should have
inferred similarly from ' that other disciple ' (xx. 2, 3, 4, 8) that
Peter was not an Apostle !
''¦ I need hardly say that in the first Epistle he does not name
himself at all, and that in the preface to his Epistles to the seven
Churches the writer is simply John, as if there were no other John.

I II
Philip the Apostle at Hierapolis.
Two principal objections have been urged against the
veracity of 'the Presbyters', or of Papias, or of the
Asiatic tradition in general. The one is the witness of
the Presbyters that our Lord lived till the age of fifty, and
this I have elsewhere explained to be in all probability
a mistake of Irenaeus, who has misinterpreted Papias
{Papias on the age of our Lord, J. T. S., Oct., 1907). The
other objection is the confusion between Philip the
Apostle and Philip the evangelist, one of the seven, both
of whom are stated by different authorities to have died
at Hierapolis, the town of Papias.
Eusebius, at all events, has confused the two in iii. 31,
for there he quotes first Polycrates as speaking of Philip,
' one of the twelve Apostles,' next Gaius as speaking of
Philip who had four daughters, prophetesses, and then
proceeds to substantiate both these citations by Acts
xxi. 8-9, where Philip the evangelist and his four
daughters, prophetesses, *re mentioned. Eusebius is
not the only ancient writer who has failed to make the
distinction. Which Philip died at Hierapolis ? Harnack
and Zahn agree (for once) that the evangelist is meant.
Lightfoot is in favour of the Apostle,^ and he is certainly
right. But it is worth while to set out the conclusive
arguments once more in a slightly different form.
^ Harnack, Chronol. i. 669 ; Zahn, Forschungen, vi. 158-75 ;
Lightfoot, .Colossians, p. 45, note.

§11 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 65
The matter is perfectly simple. We have two plain
witnesses from Asia for the Apostle, and one witness
(not from Asia), who convicts himself in two points of
error, for the deacon.
I. Eusebius, in his account of Papias, tells us : Tb /lev
ow Kara r^v 'lepdiroXiv ^iXiirirov rbv diroaroXov dfia rais
Qvyarpdaiv Siarpi'^ai Sid rwv npoadev SeSrjXwrar ws Se
Kara rods aiirods 6 llairias yevofievos, Sirjyrjaiv irapeiXrj^ivai
Qavfiaaiav inrb twv rov 0iXiirirov dvyaripwv fivrjjiove^ei ktX.
(iii. 39. 9).^ We should naturally gather from this that
Papias spoke of Philip as the Apostle. The text of
Eusebius is certain enough, though Zahn points out
that the Syriac version omits the word ' Apostle ', and
' The words of De Boor's fragment are declared by E. Schwartz
to be independent of Eusebius : llaTn'ar Se 6 elprjpevos Itrroprjaev as
irapaXa^av dirt) tS>v Bvyarepav <iiXiiTirov ktX. I shall shoW, p. 95, that the
excerptor (Philip of Side) has regularly used and misunderstood
Eusebius, though he hasalso got hold of some other citations from
Papias. In this sentence ' the mother of Manaimos ' is added to
Eusebius, whether from Papias in reality must be doubtful. If
this is the Manaen of Acts xiii. i he was 'foster-brother' of Herod.
Schwartz {Ueberden Tod der Sohne Zebedaei, 1904, p. 15) urges that
if Philip's daughters remembered the resurrection of Manaen's
mother, they could not have lived until Papias's time. This is
absurd. This raising of the dead is supposed to be anyhow after
the Ascension of Christ, therefore not earlier than a. d. 29, probably
many years later. But aged women who could remember even
the year 29 (as children) could easily be known to Papias, c. 90-100.
Further, it is neither certain nor probable that the daughters of
Philip were eyewitnesses of the miracle. Lastly, it is almost
inconceivable that the Manaimos of De Boor's fragment should be
the foster-brother of Herod, for the latter was born (I imagine)
about 30 B.C., and the mother of Manaen would have been very
old in Apostolic times. But 'Manaimos' may have been the
grandson of Herod's foster-brother. Schwartz's reasoning is
habitually arbitrary and over-ingenious. 'He exemplifies copfiously,'
says Dr. Sanday, ' most of the procedure specially deprecated in
these lectures.' Crit. of the Fourth Gospel, p. 32.
1334 £

66 JOHN THE PRESBYTER § ii
Rufinus has corrected it to ' evangelist ' : these Syriac
and Latin paraphrases are of little authority, and the
Greek MSS. are excellent. But it must be admitted
that it is possible that Eusebius supplied the word,
although it is most improbable that Papias should not
have given some title to Philip. It is possible that
Papias said merely ' the disciple of the Lord '.
2. But we have further evidence as to what Papias
thought of Philip, and Papias (at least) cannot have had
any confusion of mind on the subject of the identity of
the latter. In the prologue, about which we have said so
much, Papias gave a list of the disciples of the Lord whose
sayings he could report at third hand: 'Andrew or Peter,
or Philip, or Thomas or James, or John or Matthew, or
any other.' Now the Philip who is named is clearly, from
his position in the list, an Apostle. The order is plain :
(a) Andrew and Peter, two brothers, unavoidably the
first pair.
{b) Philip, alone ; then Thomas, who is also coupled
with him in Acts i. 13, and James of Jerusalem.
{c) John, whom we should have expected next after
Andrew and Peter.
{d) Matthew the evangelist, whose name is suggested
by that of John the evangelist.
The Philip mentioned here among Apostles next after
Andrew (as in St. Mark's list, iii. 18) is clearly Philip the
Apostle, the friend of Andrew.^ It is natural to suppose
that he has so early a position in Papias's list, even
* Philip is mentioned with 'Andrew and Peter' (in this unusual
order) in John i. 43. He was of their village (i. 45). He was prob
ably sfending beside Andrew in the scene vi. 5-8. He was ad
dressed together with Andrew by the Greeks in xii. 22, and went
with him to give their message to Christ,

§11 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 67
before James of Jerusalem and John of Ephesus, because
he was the nearest to Papias, who had second hand
traditions of him through his daughter at Hierapolis as
well as the third hand traditions (about an earlier date
than Philip's sojourn at Hierapolis) that he mentions here.
3. Now the fourth Gospel, whether by John the
Apostle or not, was certainly written in Asia, and it
shows a particular interest in Philip the Apostle: it
records his call by Christ and that of Nathanael by him,
and it gives some quite unimportant remarks made by
him on two occasions; the repeated mention of Na
thanael, who is otherwise unknown, seems to be due to
his being the friend of Philip. One other apostle receives
special mention in the fourth Gospel: it is Thomas,
whom Papias and St. Luke both couple with Philip.
Hence we have strong reasons for believing that
Philip of Hierapolis was really Philip of Bethsaida; as
Papias appears to have declared.
4. We have another important witness, Polycrates of
Ephesus, whose words are twice quoted by Eusebius
(iii. 31. 3 and v. 24. 2) :
Kal ydp Kara rrjv 'Aaiav [leydXa aroix^ia KeKoifirjrai'
dnva dvaarrjaerai rfj rjfiipa r^s irapovaias rov Kvpiov, ev
fj epx^rai fierd So^rjs e^ ovpavwv Kal dva^rjrrjaei irdvras
Toi>s dyiovs, ^iXiirnov rwv SwSeKa diroaroXwv , os KeKoifirjrai
ev 'lepairoXei, xal Svo Ovyarepes avrov yeyrjpuKviai irapQevoi,
Kal fj irepa avrov Ovydrrjp ev dyiw irvevjian iroXirevaa/iivrj
ev 'E<f>iaw dvairaverai, en Se Kal Iwdvvrjs, ktX.
Here, again, we have a definite statement that Philip
was one of the twelve. Lightfoot strangely finds three
daughters mentioned, wrongly supplying KeKoifirjvrai ev
'lepairoXei after Ovyaripes.^ But 17 irepa means 'one of the
' This is in itself a possible construction, but here it is impossible,
for fj irepa can only mean ' one of the two ', and if both slept in
£ 2

68 JOHN THE PRESBYTER § n
two ', and cannot possibly mean anything else : ' Philip,
of the twelve Apostles, who sleeps in Hierapolis, and
two daughters of his who lived in virginity till old age,
and one of these two daughters, after conversation in
the Holy Ghost, sleeps in Ephesus ', the city of Poly
crates. He does not state where the other was buried,
but he assumes that we shall gather that it was in
Hierapolis with her father.
So far not a word to the effect that the daughters were
prophetesses. If any one was likely to know that they
were prophetesses it was Papias, but we do not hear
Hierapolis, one of them cannot have rested at Ephesus. The
nominative Ovyarepes is in reality simply in a line with 'ladwrjs . . .
UoXvKopiros . . . Qpaaeas, all being in apposition with peyaXa (TTOixela.
The construction is interrupted by the odd accusative ^iXimrov,
which is due to attraction from the neighbouring verb dva^riTria-ei.
•It is difficult to imagine that Polycrates really wrote ^iXin-n-oi/ instead
of the obvious ^iXiniros, though the Greek MSS. are unanimous in
both places of Eusebius, and are supported by Jerome {De Viris ill.
45), and also by Rufinus since he understands that there were three
daughters. But surely it was a mistake by a scribe in the copy of
Papias used by Eusebius, as the existing anacoluthon is unnecessary
and unnatural. Dr. Gwatkin, Early Church Hist, i, p. 108 (1909),
follows Lightfoot : ' Thither came Philip of Bethsaida with his three
daughters.' Zahn also makes out three (1. c. p. 170), and translates
rj irepa as ' die andere ', i. e. ' the third ', ' so folgt dass es in Asien
eine vierte (Iberhaupt nicht gegeben hat.' This is most extraordinary.
When did erepos mean a third ? If Polycrates meant ' one of the two ',
pray what other expression had he in Greek to use except ij irepa ?
Perhaps he might have said pla, as we have unus ex duobus, els eK
tS>v Svo, in St. John i. 40 ; but will any one pretend that this is such
good Latin and Greek as alter ex duobus and 6 erepos eK tS>v Svow ?
Or will Dr. Zahn take refuge in the fact that there is no i^ avrav
(or c| airaw, which Papias would hardly use) ? But we do not need
to add ' of them ' when we say ' the one ' in English, nor is it
wanted in Greek. I am ashamed of arguing so obvious a point at
such length ; but Lightfoot is so nearly infallible, and Zahn is about
the most learned man alive, and I cannot question their accuracy
. without justifying myself.

§ II JOHN THE PRESBYTER 69
that he said so. By ev dyiw irveij/ian iroXirevaafiivrj Poly
crates means that the lady who lived in his own city
was not merely a witness to her father's views but was
herself a holy and venerable personage.
5. There is another witness, Clement of Alexandria
{Strom, iii. 52, 53 and ap. Euseb. H. E. iii. 30. i) : ' Will
they find fault with the Apostles ? For Peter and Philip
had children, and Philip gave his daughters to husbands.'
This contradicts both Acts as to Philip the deacon, and
Polycrates as to the Apostle, unless other daughters, of
the Apostle are meant than those mentioned by Poly-.
crates. Clement is, as usual, following some apocryphal
source.. Yet at least his source made Philip the Apostle
a father of daughters.. It is surely quite possible for
two men of the name of Philip to have had daughters.
Even at the present day I have known of more than
one man of the name who had daughters, and I have
not felt obliged to identify them.
We have one adverse witness, Gaius in his dialogue
against the Montanist Proclus : Merd rovrov irpo<f)rJTiSes
riaaapes al ^iXiirirov yeyevvrjvrai ev 'lepairoXei rfj Kard
rfjv 'Aaiav 0 rd^os avrwv eanv eKei Kal 6 rov irarpbs avrwv.
Gaius was not an Asiatic, but apparently a Roman ; his
witness is thereby of little value, and we are not surprised
to find him mistaken on two points. According to
Polycrates Philip had but two daughters with him ia
Asia, and one of these was buried at Ephesus. Gaius
follows Acts xxi. 9 in giving four daughters, and he
states that all four were buried at Hierapolis. Since in
these two points he is at fault, we may be sure that he is
wrong in the assumption which underlies his mistake,
and that he had no right to identify Philip of Hierapolis

70 JOHN THE PRESBYTER § n
with the Evangelist of Acts xxi and to style his daughters
prophetesses. Now we know that Montanists like Proclus justified
their female prophetesses by appealing to the example
of the four daughters of Philip spoken of in Acts xxi ;
we learn this from a fragment of Origen on i Cor. xiv.
36 (Cramer, v, p. 279) Tiaaapes, <f>aaiv, dvyaripes rj<rav
^iXiinrov rod evayye'Xiarov, Kal eirpo^revov ei Se eirpo^-
revov, ri droirov ean Kal rds rjnerepas, ws <f>aaiv eKetvoc,
iTpo(f>rjriSas irpo^rjreveiv; and similarly the Anti-Montanist
(wrote 192) in Eusebius (v. 17. 3) appeals against the
Montanists to Agabus, Judas, Silas, the daughters of
Philip (all these are in Acts), Ammia of Philadelphia, and
Quadratus.^ The last-named was perhaps the same as
the bishop of Athens mentioned by Dionysius of Corinth
(Eus. iv. 23. 3), but Eusebius mentions him in iii. 37. i
after speaking of Ignatius and Heros : rwv Se Kard rov^
rovs SiaXa/iyfrdvTwv Kal KoSpdrOs ?jv, ov d/ia rais ^iXiinrov
Ovyarpdaiv irpo<fyrjriKw x^'-P^'^t'-"'''''- ^oyos exei Siairpi^^ai.
Evidently Eusebius knows nothing more about him,*
and this much is an unjustified inference from the words
of the Anti-Montanist. Now the latter mentions the
daughters of Philip, prophetesses, together with the
other prophets mentioned in Acts — the list is a complete
one, whereas Ammia and Quadratus are additions ; but
there is nothing at all to suggest that the Anti-Montanist
* Similarly St. Jerome {Ep. 41. 2) appeals to St. Peter against the
Montanists, and supposes them to appeal to the four daughters
of Philip and to Agabus. We find the same in St. Epiphanius
Haer. 48. 8 (Peter and Agabus) and 49. 3 (the four daughters of
Philip). But there is no suggestion that anything was known of
the daughters of Philip beyond what is said in Acts.
^ He possessed a copy of his Apology presented to Hadrian.
This gave his date (iv. 3. i).

§11 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 71
regarded them as having lived at Hierapolis, or that he
knew anything of them beyond what he found in Acts xxi.
Another passage of Gaius has to be cited : 'Eyw Se rd
rpoiraia twv diroaroXwv ex(o Sei^ai. 'Edv ydp OeX-qarjs
direXdeiv eirl rbv BaaiKavbv ^ eirl rfjv oSbv rfjv 'flariav,
(iip-ijaeis rd rpdnaia rwv ravrrjv ISpvaafievwv rfjv eKKXrjaiay
(Eus. ii. 25. 7). Here he is obviously replying to the
Asiatics who pointed to the tombs of Philip and John
and the rest. Very likely it was the letter of Polycrates
that was put forward as a plea by the Montanists ; if
not, it was an imitation of it, for we are deahng with a
time possibly five or ten years later than the letter of
Polycrates. Now it is clear that Gaius found the Asiatics
appealing to the tombs of Philip and his two daughters,
amongst other tombs, to show the weight of their tradi
tions, and he also found them appealing to the four
prophetesses, daughters of another Phihp, mentioned in
Acts, to show that it was not improper for women like
Priscilla and Maximilla to prophesy. Gaius has under
stood the same daughters of the same Philip to have
been intended in the two quite separate appeals. Hence
his incorrect statement that four daughters of Philip the
evangelist were buried at Hierapolis, when in reality
one daughter of Philip the Apostle was buried there,
and she not a prophetess at all.
It seems to me that the mistake of Gaius is evident
and completely accounted for, while the contrary evidence
of Papias and Polycrates is definite and unimpeachable.
There is no ground whatever for supposing any un
certainty in Asiatic tradition about the daughters of
Philip. A Roman writer c. 200-10 made a blunder,
that is all.

§ 12
Consequences qf assuming the separate existence
qf John the Presbyter.
To my own mind the foregoing arguments are quite
conclusive against the existence of the Presbyter John
as a distinct personality. But another argument may
yet be added ; it is the reductio ad absurdum of the
hypothesis of two Johns.
A. If the two Johns were both in Asia, as Eusebius,
Lightfoot, Westcott, and many others have assumed,
and if the Gospel was written by the Apostle, as they
held, then we reach the astounding result that 'the
Presbyter ' of 2 and 3 John (who is certainly the same
person as the writer of the Gospel) is not John the
Presbyter, but John the Apostle. For it is difficult to
escape the conclusion that the three epistles are by the
same writer (or, let us admit for argument's sake, that
they claim to be by the same writer), and no sane critic
will deny that the Gospel and the first Epistle are from
the same pen.
B. Hence it becomes imperative^ to reverse the
hypothesis, and make the Presbyter the author of 2
and 3 John, and consequently of the first Epistle and
1 Of course Lightfoot and Westcott did not think it imperative.
But surely this was an illusion. I think this explains why their
authority on this question has not been greater: they reached
a half-solution, and it has never been accepted as satisfactory.

§12 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 73
of the Gospel. This is the view of Hugo Delff and it
was supported by Dr. Sanday in 1905. But this hypo
thesis must be ruled out of court, for the author of the
Gospel claims to be one of the twelve, since he shows
that he was present at the Last Supper, and he asks, as
if one of the twelve, who was to be the traitor :
Matt. xxvi. 20 : ' He sat down with his twelve dis
ciples, and whilst they were eating he said: "Amen,
I say to you, that one of you is about to betray me."
Mark xiv. 17 : ' He cometh with the twelve. And
when they were at table and eating, Jesus saith :
" Amen, I say to you, one of you that eateth with me
shall betray me." ' Luke xxii. 14 : ' He sat down and
the twelve Apostles with him' {note how Luke intro
duces the word ^Apostles'), v. 21: 'The hand of him
that betrayeth me is with me on the table.' St. John
presupposes these accounts {at least those of Eukfi and
Mark), for he begins abruptly, xiii. 2, ' and when supper
was ended,' though he had mentioned no supper. In,
v. 23 we have : 'Now there was leaning on Jesus's
bosom one of his disciples ' {this is probably equivalent
in itself to ' one of his Apostles ', as the latter word
is not in the vocabulary of this Gospel), 'whom Jesus
loved. Simon Peter therefore beckoned to him, and
said to him: "Who is it of whom he speaketh?"
He therefore that leaned on th^ breast of Jesus saith to
him: " Lord, who is it ? " '
He was not a mere boy who did not count, for he took
charge of the Mother of Jesus. He is not (as often)
correcting the Synoptists. He means himself to be
conceived of as one of the twelve. If he was not really
an Apostle, he certainly has done his best to imply that
he was one, and a particularly prominent one.
C. Hence the more attractive and ingenious hypo
thesis put forward very tentatively by Harnack in 1897
{Chronol i, p. 659 seq.) : I have no ground for supposing
that he holds it still in 1910, but it is worth discussing.

74 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §12
According to this view John the Presbyter was not a
disciple of the Lord, but he was the transmitter of the
traditions of John the Apostle,^ to whom he refers in
the Gospel as the 'beloved disciple'. He only once
speaks in the first person (xxi. 24 : ' We know that his
testimony is true '), and then in the name of the Pres
byters of Asia testifying to the Gospel as the true

* Chronol. i. 678 : ' Der vorgetragene Versuch hat sich mir bisher
am meisten bewShrt. Die Frage, ob der Zebedalde Johannes
wirklich einmal nach Asien gekommen ist, iSsst er offen ; er kann
dahin gekommen sein, wie andere Apostel auch einmal Asien
berilhrt haben ; aber er ist nicht der Apostel und " Oberbischof "
Asiens gewesen. Das war vielmehr der Presb3rter Johannes, ein
Palastinenser, ein hellenistisch gebildeter Jude und im weiteren
Sinne ein Herrnjflnger. Er hat lange Zeit, bis zu den Tagen
Trajans, in Ephesus gelebt ; er hat gegen Ende der Regierung
Domitians die Apokalypse herausgegeben und in dem Menschen-
alter zwischen c. 80 und c. no das Evangelium und die Briefe
geschrieben, jenes wahrscheinlich zunachst fiir einen kleinen
Kreis nahestehender Schiller und unter Anlehnung an Oberlie-
ferungen, die er von dem Apostel Johannes erhalten hatte, der als
JUnger, den der Herr lieb hatte, ihm im Vordergrund der Jilnger
stand, und von dem er auch miindlich erzShlt hat.' Or, to argue
this in English, the author of the Epistles is naturally identified
with the overseer of all Asia whom we find in the Apocalypse.
John the Presbyter was consequently a very important person.
He wrote letters to the seven Churches of Asia, besides three
epistles reckoned as canonical. He was exiled by Domitian to
Patmos. After his return he founded more bishoprics, and was
the hero of the beautiful story of the robber in the Quis dives,
salvetur of Clement. There will be nothing in ancient legend
which can certainly be put down to the Apostle. It will be the
Presbyter who lived until the time of Trajan, as St. Irenaeus twice
tells us of the Apostle (ap. Eus. H. E. iii. 23). The touching story
related by St. Jerome, on ancient but unknown authority, in his
commentary on Galatians, how in his old age the Apostle John
could give no other instruction but ' Little children, love one
another ', wiU belong to the Presbyter. He will be incontestably
the most interesting personage, next to St. Paul, of the first age
of Christianity, if Harnack is right.

§12 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 75
witness of John the son of Zebedee. The Gospel is
therefore, in Harnack's words : ' an eiayyiXiov 'Iwdvvov
{tov irpeafivripov) Kara 'Iwdvvrjv {rbv ZefieSaiov) ' (p. 677).
The Apostle has been expelled with a pitchfork,
tamen usque recurret! ' Der Evangehst, d. h. der Pres
byter und " Herrnjiinger " Johannes sich in seinem
Buche auf den Zebedafden Johannes in besonderer
Weise bezogen hat'. But this explanation of xxi. 24
OSros eanv 6 jiaBrjrfjs 6 fiaprvpwv irepl roi/rwv Kal ypd'<^as
ravra (or should we read 6 koi /mprvpwv irepl roirwv 6
Kal ypdffras ravra ?) is impossible, for the passage states
that the disciple mentioned (whom Harnack admits to be
the son of Zebedee) not only witnessed but also wrote.^
Further, this Presbyter John was, in Harnack's view,
not a disciple of the Lord— this is to be thought
certain — yet he is the author of i John i. i, 2 : ' 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, and do bear witness, and declare unto you the
Life eternal, which was with the Father, and hath
appeared to us : that which we have seen and have
heard, we declare unto you, that you also may have
fellowship with us,' &c.
The reiteration, the emphasis of this passage leave
nothing to be desired. Either the writer was a disciple
^ Dr. Sanday says : ' This, according to Harnack, only convicts
them of a deliberate untruth, contradicted by the verses immedi
ately preceding. If we must needs accuse the unfortunate editors
of falsification, we might at least give them credit for the sense to
take care that their falsehood was not exposed by their own words,
and almost (as it were) in the same breath.' Criticism of the Fourth
Gospel, p. 63.

76 JOHN THE PRESBYTER § la
or he was a liar (with a strong adjective attached). What
does Harnack say ?
One must not forget that a Mystic is speaking, who
on the one hand can write (John i. i8) : @ebv oiSels
ewpaKev irwirore, and on the other hand (3 John 11):
6 KaKoiroi&v oix ewpaKev rbv Qeov, and (i John iii. 6) : irds
6 dfiaprdvwv ovx iwpaKev {0ebv) oiiSe eyvwKev avrov. What
kind of a hearing, seeing, looking upon, tasting it is that
he means (compare i. 14), is seen by contrast with
the story of Thomas (John xx. 29), which closes with
the words : on ewpaKds /le ireiriarevKas ; jiaKapioi ol jifj
iSovres Kal iriarevaavres. This passage, proves that he
cannot have intended an earthly seeing, &c., in John i. i.^
The proof seems rather weak ! We are accustomed
perhaps to such statements in German, though seldom
from Harnack. But in English or French they are
rather painful. I will not suppose that Harnack still
holds to his theory.
D. Consequently it is quite certain that the writer
of I John (unless a forger) was a ' disciple of the Lord '.
^ I suppose I must answer what needs no answer : In John i. 18
it is denied that any one can see God as He is (the beatific vision),
whereas in 3 John 11 the writer speaks of a mystical friendship
with God by contemplation such as holy souls can attain in this
life ; the distinction is obvious enough, for the first passage
simply repeats the Old Testament view, while the others mean
iapaKev in the sense of 'know' (as John xiv. 9, where ovk eyvoKos
fix ; is followed by 6 iapaxas ep.e iapaKev top irarepa), the spiritual
knowledge of God obtained by knowing Jesus Christ. Again, in
John XX. 29 faith in the Resurrection without sight is praised, as
being a more perfect faith ; but it is not said that having known of
Christ in the flesh is not a great advantage, nor is it in the least
suggested that it is better not to have been a personal disciple !
In I John i. i there is not a word about faith, and the writer is
simply asseverating with all his might that he had been a personal
disciple and that his witness ig to be depended upon. If we say
' he cannot have intended an earthly seeing, &c.,' in this verse, we
must say that he could not mean an earthly seeing in John xix. 34-5 :
' and immediately there came forth blood and water, and he who
saw it hath borne witness ' (cp. i John v. 6-9).

§u JOHN THE PRESBYTER 77
This facilitates Harnack's identification of him with
John the Presbyter, whom we have proved to have
been a disciple of the Lord. But it spoils Harnack's
theory altogether, for it makes the writer of the Epistle
and Gospel relate the facts on his own authority, and
not on that of the son of Zebedee, his master. This
conclusion is corroborated, as we saw, by the claims
put forward in John xxi. 24, as well as in xix. 35. Yet
aU Harnack's grounds for combining author of Epistles,
Gospel, and Apocalypse with the Presbyter into one
eminent personage who died at Ephesus at a late date,
hold good. And we have to add to them that the author
of the Gospel claimed to be an Apostle, though the
word ' Apostle ' is not in his vocabulary. What is still
more important, all the authorities who witness to the
dwelling of John the Presbyter in Asia witness to his
being the Apostle. We have no right to accept a part
of their witness and reject the rest. Consequently
Harnack's view is bound to come round to the tradi
tional one, if it is logically carried out
E. But let us put aside all question of the authorship
of any New Testament writings. Apart from this, is it
possible to find a theory which admits of two Johns ?
First is the notion that there were two Johns in Asia,
and even at Ephesus. This was the theory of Dionysius
and Eusebius. We have already seen that it is not
really supported by Papias, that it is excluded by the
witness of Irenaeus and Polycrates, not to speak of the
witness to Papias from Victorinus and others. Further,
it is apt to involve us in the difficulty already explained
under A And Apoc. i. 4 implies one unique John in Asia.
F. Next is the now famous theory that there was but

78 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §12
one John at Ephesus, the Presbyter. The ground for
this is the statement attributed to Papias by Philip of
Side (in the De Boor fragment and in an interpolation
in the best MS. of George Hamartolus) that John the
Divine and James his brother were put to death by the
Jews (see pp. 95 foil.). Now I do not wish here to attempt
anything like a complete answer to this diffitulty, but
merely to make four points :
I. Papias cannot possibly have said this. It is
common enough to find ancient writers quoted as
saying what they never said. Irenaeus, Victorinus,
Eusebius, and all the rest who knew the work of Papias
directly or indirectly, are our witnesses ^ : Irenaeus tells
us John the Apostle lived on at Ephesus until the reign
of Trajan; Victorinus tells us that he returned from
Patmos after the death of Domitian ; Clement and
Origen say the same, though they give no name to
'the tyrant'. Eusebius says the ancients handed down
that John returned to Ephesus under Nerva. The
Leucian Acts made him go down alive into his grave.
2. The supposed confirmation of the martyrdom of
St. John from the ancient feast of St. James and John
and from the Sj^iac Martyrology and the Carthaginian
Kalendar was too unmeaning to need refutation. Never-
1
theless it has been adequately dealt with by Dean
Bernard {Irish Church Quarterly, Jan. 1908) and Dean
Armitage Robinson {Historical character of S{. John's
Gospel, igo8, Appendix). They have shown that in the
fourth century the feast was not taken to imply that
John was a martyr to blood like James.
3. But the explanation that John had sufferings equi-
* So Harnack very strongly, Chronol. i, p. 666.

§ 12 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 79
valent to martyrdom is found already in Origen, as the
solution of the difficulty caused by our Lord's promise
that he should drink His chalice. Polycrates seems
to mean the same when he calls him jidprvs. In 177
we find the Confessors of Lyons protesting that they
ought not to be called martyrs until they were dead
(Euseb. V. 2, 3), which shows that it was difficult for con
fessors to avoid the higher tide (see Dr. Abbott on this
subject in Notes on N. T. Criticism, 1907, § 2935 foil.).
This leads us to my third point, viz. that the evidence
of the prophecy ' You shall indeed be baptized with the
baptism that I am baptized with and drink the chalice
that I shall drink of (Mt. xx. 23, Mk. x. 39) cannot be
quoted in favour of St. John's violent death, because
the unbroken tradition of commentators explained it
otherwise, yet found it a difficulty. Had St. John really
died a martyr, the tradition of his martyrdom would
have been certain to adhere to these texts.
4. Lastly, John xxi. 20-3 makes it impossible that
the personage of verse 24 (who is the 'beloved disciple',
the witness of the facts and the writer of them) should
have died a violent death at an early date. He is
represented as still living, and as expected to live on
until the second coming. He is evidently at an advanced
age. The Leucian Acts carried on this idea : John was
buried, indeed, but not dead, and in St. Augustine's day
he was popularly beUeved to be alive in his tomb at
Ephesus. But the personage of. John xxi. 24 claims
(as we saw) to be the Apostle, and his name was John
(as we shall see). The Leucian Acts are of John the
Apostle. The tomb was of John the Aposde. So we
have to encounter a most hideous tangle of improba-

8o JOHN THE PRESBYTER §12
bilities if we insist that the Apostle was ' killed by the
Jews '.
G. Wellhausen's new study of the fourth Gospel
supplies us with a new theory. His exegesis of xix. 25
is strange. ' His Mother and His Mother's sister, Mary
of Cleophas and Mary Magdalen ' are commonly under
stood to be three people, if not four. Wellhausen calmly
assumes that there are only two. I translate his
comment {Das Evangelium Johannis, 1908, p. 87) :
Klopas cannot be the husband of the mother of
Jesus, for his name was Joseph ; it is equally impossible
that he should be her father or some other blood-
relation, for she could not be thus distinguished from
her sister. On the other hand her sister also cannot
be distinguished from her by her dweUing-place (' of
Magdala'), and the same name for two sisters is sur
prising. In other words the proper names Mary of
Klopas and Mary Magdalen are not a correct explanation
of the appellatives which preceded, and are therefore
probably interpolated. Whence the name of Klopas
comes, and what it refers to as a genitive, one does not
know. The last confession of ignorance is to be admired.
But the preceding conclusion is indeed wonderful. The
reason alleged for it simply shows that the exegesis is
absurd, not that anything has been interpolated. The
eminent critic goes on :
It is presupposed that the mother of Jesus is a widow
and that she has no other son. ^ The Anonymus, who
is to take the place of a son to her, takes her away at
once els rd i'Sia. He has therefore his home in Jerusalem,
and is consequently not a Galilaean and not the son of
Zebedee. ' This is a sufficiently candid and unprejudiced reply to the
theories of Mayor, Zahn, &c., that ' the brethren of the Lord ' were
sons of Joseph and Mary, for these critics are conservative, and
accept St. John's historical statements.

§12 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 8i
But els Ta iSia may easily mean 'to his temporary
home in Jerusalem ', or ' to his home in Galilee, when
he went thither'. Besides, tradition gives the son of
Zebedee a home in Jerusalem, where Mary lived and
died. Lastly, rd iSia does not express a permanent
domicile at all : it identifies ' home ' not with house, but
with possessions, which might be lands or luggage, a
camel or a tent ! ^ The evangelist did not say ' to his
own house ' and he did not mean it. If Wellhausen
had inferred that the beloved disciple had not a house
of his own, he would have been less arbitrary than
he actually is.
That Mary stayed in Jerusalem with a son who was
recommended to her by Jesus will not be a pure
invention, but must have some ground or "other. This
may be found in Acts xii. 12. According to this passage
there was in Jerusalem a widow Mary, who lived with
her son in a house which served the disciples as
a meeting-place. From a mother of the community she
inight become the mother of Jesus, and her real son might
in consequence become her adoptive son. In this case the
Anonymus would not be the son of Zebedee, yet he
would still be John, that is to say the John who bore
the surname Mark and is identical with the second
evangelist. Possibly it was already at an early date
that the anonymous young man who alone remained
with Jesus and was nearly arrested with him (Mark xiv.
51, 52) was recognized as the writer himself, John Mark,
and raised to the rank of the beloved disciple. This
' In John xvi. 32 (rKopirurBrJTe eKaaros els rd iSia, and in Acts
xxi. 6 vnearpeylfav els rd iSta, we may naturally supply the idea of
a house. But in John i. 11 els to iSia rjXdev, the idea is not of
house, but of home among oJ iSioi, and in Luke xviii. 28 d^evres
TO. 'iSia (so B, D, &c.) TiKoXov6ria-anev troi, the root-meaning of ' pos
sessions ' is uppermost. Compare Lk. ii. 49 ev rots rov irarpds fiov
with John xiv. 2 iv rfj ohia TOV irarpds pov, where the former speaks
of a home to be busy in, the latter of a home to dwell in perma
nently {fwvdi).
1224 F

82 JOHN THE PRESBYTER § 12
conjecture is the more probable in that the beloved
disciple here appears alone beneath the cross, with the
exception, of course, of the women.
This is all most characteristic of Wellhausen. I have
italicized one delightful sentence. Altogether this laby
rinth of mistakes attributed to the end of the first
century is quite puzzling to think out. On John xxi.
20 Wellhausen says (p. 100) :
• Here by the Anonymus John the son of Zebedee is
understood (otherwise than in xix. 25-6), and the
Ephesine tradition about him is presupposed. But
how on the ground of a false tradition could a vaticinium
ex eventu arise, whose non-fulfilment causes anxiety?
It would seem that means are wanting for the satis
factory solution of this riddle. With regard to this^
point we need no longer doubt that John of Zebedee
followed his Master in death long before Peter, and
that he was condemned together with his brother James
at Jerusalem.
No evidence for this last statement is known, for
the pseudo-Papian witness does not say that John
suffered at Jerusalem, or with James. And the riddle is
gratuitous as well as insoluble,
I do not propose to refute this elaborate tangle of
supposed misunderstandings. I only remark that much
of it depends on Wellhausen's impossible theory of the
plural authorship of the fourth Gospel, which consists
in his opinion of a Grundschrift, A, which was subjected
to a series of revisions by various hands, B^, B^, &c.
Now it is true that Wellhausen has shown a number
of inconsequences in the Gospel, and especially a
number of places where the sense is obscured by
parenthetic remarks or perhaps by long interpolations.
But I think such phenomena can be paralleled in the
first Epistle. On the other hand it would be difficult

§12 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 83
to find any book in which unity of style, of diction,
of vocabulary is so marked as in the Gospel of St. John.
It is simply impossible to dissect it into layers of
JE and P; and the attempt made in so ingenious
a manner diminishes our adniiration for the wide common
sense of the operator, at the very same time that it
throws a real light on the manner in which the author
of the Gospel himself wrote and rewrote, compiled,
enlarged, added, interpolated, revised.
H. I have discussed enough combinations and hypo
theses. They may be multiplied ad infinitum, but the
elements out of which they are fashioned remain much
the same. Lastly, there is the hypothesis that there
was never any John of Ephesus at all. This does
not seem to me to be a much more violent hypothesis
than those I have already discussed. Indeed German
Biblical critics are often sufficiently ignorant of Patristic
literature in general, and of the second century in
particular, to be capable of advancing such a view as
tenable and reasonable. On the other side stands
a tradition which I hope I have shown to be consistent
and unbroken. If the critics do not bow to facts, su
much the worse for the critics.

F 2

§ 13
The witness of John the Presbyter to his own
identity.
A. One definite witness to the Presbyter John's
identity has come down- to us, in his own words, pre
served to us by Eusebius in the quotation from Papias
about St. Mark. The character of the speaker and
his position and his past history appear in the words
he uses.
I. The Presbyter speaks with authority. He judges the
Gospel of St, Mark as a superior, and as one having
more perfect knowledge. The incorrectness of the
order is stated as by one who himself remembered
the facts. He is able to criticize not merely the
writer of the Gospel, but his authority, the Apostle
St. Peter. He quotes no disciple, no Apostle, to bear
out his unhesitating declarations. His own word is
enough. 2. The impression we gather is undoubtedly that this
is not a ' Presbyter, disciple of the Apostles ', but one
who himself was a ' disciple of the Lord '. This is an
important confirmation of our decision that the words of
Papias TOV Kvpiov fiaQrjrai are genuine.
3. But cannot we go further ? The tone of authority,
the approving criticism of Peter, the patronizing defence
of Mark, make us feel that we have to do with no ordi
nary disciple, but one who really remembered the chief

§13 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 85
events related by St. Mark, and had been an actor in
them, quorum pars magna fuit.
B. The Epistles have already given their witness:
they are by one author; they are by an eyewitness
(i John i. I and v. 6-9); they are by ' the Presbyter';
they are by an overseer of Churches ; they are by the
author of the Gospel, to which i John is a kind ot
envoi. C. The Gospel claims to be by an Apostle (as I have
pointed out), an eyewitness, an especially beloved dis
ciple. But neither the Gospel nor the Epistles claim to
be written by any one with a name. The readers are
supposed to be able to supply a name, for there is no
pretence at anonymity; on the contrary, the writer
asserts his personality very vigorously, and makes much
of the acknowledged weight of his testimony.
This is surely a very important point. For in early
times every one assumed that John was meant. To
the ecclesiastical writers we can add the evidence of all
the famihes of MSS. and of all the versions. The evi
dence is absolutely unbroken and unanimous, for the
Alogi and Gaius evidently thought that the writings
were forgeries which claimed to be by the Apostle John.
But Harnack has a curious suggestion to support his
view that the Gospel was not written by John, but ' by
another man of the same name ', as the late Mr. C. L.
Dodgson used to say of Homer : ' If a reverent scholar
speaks here, whose name was also John, then all is
clear ' {Chronol., p. 677, note). I can imagine no more
confusing explanation. My name (as a monk) is also
John, yet it has never struck me that I must conse
quently use a periphrasis when I speak of my patron

86 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §13
saint. Similarly I feel no awkwardness in mentioning
Chapman's Homer.
On the other hand, the ordinary explanation that the
author avoids mentioning his own name is at once
obvious and inevitable. If the author was not the
Apostle, he was not a reverent disciple, shy of writing
his master's name because it was his own, but he was
simply a forger, who intended to be taken for the
Apostle. Dr. Salmon wrote long ago ^ :
It is plain from the work itself that whoever com
posed it intended it to be received as emanating from
the beloved disciple, and we cannot doubt that it was as
such it was received by those who did accept it. Let
me call your attention to the singular fact, that the name
of the Apostle John is never mentioned in St. John's
Gospel. If you had only that Gospel, you would never
know that there was an Apostle of the name. The other
Gospels, when they speak of the forerunner of our
Lord, always give him the title of the Baptist, so as to
prevent confusion between the two Johns. This Gospel
speaks of him simply as John, so that a reader not other
wise informed would never have it suggested to him
that there was another of the name. . . . No one dis
putes that, if the writer were not the Apostle John, he
was some one who wished to pass for him. But a forger
would be likely to have made some more distinct men
tion of the person who played the principal part of his
scheme; and he certainly could scarcely have hit on
such a note of genuineness as that, whereas almost
every one in the Church had felt the necessity of dis
tinguishing by some special name John the forerunner
from John the Apostle, there was one person who would
feel no such necessity, and who would not form this
habit — namely the Apostle himself — Introd. to the N. T.,
3rd ed., p. 62.
I cannot see any escape from this reasoning.^ I hold
^ His argument was used much earlier by Credner. See also
Lightfoot, Essays on Supernal. Rel., p. 19.
' As a type of the confidence with which paradox is advanced
in Germany, in sublime unconsciousness that it is paradox, I cite

§13 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 87
it to be entirely certain that the Gospel claims to be by
John, the beloved disciple, one of the Apostles, who
survived at Ephesus for so long a period that it was
thought he would not die at all (xxi. 23). That the
claim should be a false one is excluded by the vast
amount of external evidence, only a part of which has
been referred to above, as well as by Dr. Salmon's
reasoning.^ D. The Apocalypse is shown by its matter to proceed
from the same school as the Gospel. The writer calls
himself John. He is the superior of the Asiatic Churches.
He assumes that those Churches know no other John.
Consequently we must — entirely apart from all the
external evidence against two Asiatic Johns — be inclined
to identify him with the John of Ephesus who survived
so long.
a few words from the translation of Jfllicher's book, published
under the patronage of a popular novelist : ' It is, in fact, the one
unassailable proposition which criticism, dealing solely with the
internal evidence, can set up concerning the Fourth Gospel, that
its author was not " the disciple whom Jesus loved " '. — Introd. to
the N. T., p. 415.
^ To this invincible argument a word must be added in view of
the contention that John the son of Zebedee may have died at an
early date, so that the only two Johns of importance to the readers
of the Gospel were the Baptist and the Presbyter. To the readers,
— yes. But to the Presbyter, throwing himself in memory back
into the past, the son of Zebedee would reappear as a more impor
tant John than himself, so that the Baptist would need his title
after all. And on such a hypothesis how explain the omission of
all mention of either son of Zebedee, of James as well as John,
except in the additional chapter ? And why have we there merely
oi TOV Ze^eSaiov, the names being avoided, while it is implied that
everybody knows them ? Assuredly it is as absurd to suppose the
writer to be a third John, as to suppose that Justin, Irenaeus,
Leucius, and Polycrates could have been mistaken, Asiatics as
they were, in believing that the Apostle John lived in Asia.

88 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §13
So far there are no difficulties in the 'Johaninne
question '. All is perfectly plain sailing. But we have
reached at last the one real difficulty^ — it is a great
one— the difference of style between the Gospel and
the Apocalypse.
But the difficulty lies not merely in harmonizing the
internal evidence for difference of authorship with the
external evidence for identity of authorship ; it lies just
as much in harmonizing the evidence from difference of
style (in the widest sense) with the evidence from iden
tity of certain characteristics of doctrine. These last
are so little to be despised that they have led Harnack
to acknowledge the identity of authorship; And in
fact the enormous weight of external evidence obliges
us to accept the evidence from these characteristics, and
to explain as best we may the differences of style. And
we must remember that there are differences of manner
within the Apocalypse itself The epistles to the seven
Churches are not very like some of the descriptive or
lyrical or denunciatory portions of the same book, nor
are they in the least like the discourses in the Gospel.
' I do not, of course, count among critical difSculties the diffi
culty which is created solely by dogmatic presuppositions, and
which is well formulated in Wrede's posthumous lectures on the
Origin of the N.T. (Engl, transl., 1909, p. 87): 'The decision that
it [the fourth Gospel] cannot originate with the apostle is placed
beyond doubt by internal evidence, the nature of the Gospel itself.
On this the whole of the scientifically impartial theological world
is as good as united in opinion.' A person who imagines that the
authorship of a work can be denied, entirely apart from all ex
ternal evidence, on the ground of his own a priori notion of what
the reputed author (otherwise unknown) ought to have written,
may be a scientifically impartial theologian, for all I know, but he
is not a critic at all. I am not dealing with theologians in these
notes, but with critics.

§13 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 89
But their authoritative tone is by no means unlike the
three Epistles of St. John. Again, there is extraordi
nary dramatic power in the Gospel, and considerable
sense of humour, together with very vivid delineation
of character. The Apocalypse may be held to show
an almost equal power (sometimes lyrical as well as
dramatic) exercised on a different subject-matter, and
purposely clothed in the language of the Old Testa
ment prophets. But the antagonism to the world-power
and the rejoicings over the fall of Babylon which so
scandalize certain German critics of the Apocalypse are
not merely borrowed from Isaiah and Ezekiel, but they
are characteristic of the Son of Thunder and are strictly
parallel to the hatred of the Koajios and its Prince which
has so large a place in the theology of the Gospel and
Epistle. The dragon in the Apocalypse, the Antichrist
in the Epistle, the Prince of this world in the Gospel are
not dissimilar. The Apocalypse is in fact a commentary
on such texts as: 'The whole world heth in the evil
one', 'Now is the judgement of this world, and the
Prince of this world is judged ', ' Fear not, I have over
come the world ', ' My kingdom is not of this world '
(i John V. 19 ; John xii. 31 ; xvi. 33 ; xviii. 36). Such
remarks might be multiphed.^ But how account for the
great differences of literary style, of vocabulary, &c. ?
' An objection to the apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse is
often drawn from the mention of Apostles by the writer: an
Apostle, it is assumed, could not have spoken so. Now the ' holy
Apostles' in Apoc. xviii. 20 who are invited to rejoice over the
fall of Babylon are obviously St. Peter and St. Paul, who had been
martyred by Nero in Rome, that is in Babylon. The prophets
who are to rejoice'with them are presumably the Old Testament
prophets who had predicted the fall of Babylon. When St. Peter

90 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §13
{a) Harnack thinks the adoption of a Jewish Apoca
lypse by the Christian writer will explain the matter.
I do not see that it accounts for the difference of voca
bulary and of literary style throughout the work, and
in every verse.
{b) Lightfoot and Westcott and Hort, with the enor
mous weight of their authority, uphold the Neronian
date of the Apocalypse. It is true that thirty years might
account for the differences of style. But I cannot myself
get over the evidence for the date under Domitian.
called Rome Babylon, he thereby apphed their prophecies to
Rome. There is a real difficulty, however, at first sight in the
statement of Apoc. xxi. 14 that the twelve foundations of the new
Jerusalem are the twelve Apostles of the Lamb. But St. Paul had
said that Christians are ' built upon the foundation of the Apostles
and Prophets ' (Eph. ii. 20), yet he certainly counted himself as
both an Apostle and a Prophet (for here the N. T. prophets seem'
to be meant). I may be told that this verse tells against the
authenticity of Ephesians, and therefore I turn to the entirely
complete answer which lies to hand. The whole objection to the
unnaturalness of the expression in Apoc. xxi lies in the assump
tion that the entire subject-matter of the book is an invention of
the writer, who is throwing his teaching into the Apocal5rptic
form which was the fashion of the day. If, on the contrary, we
admit that he is writing down something that he saw — ^whether
we call it a vision or a dream — the objection vanishes, for there
is no improbability whatever in his having been shown, or in his
having conceived that he was shown, that he himself was one of the
foundations of the new Jerusalem. I myself do not hold that it was
the fashion of the day simply to write Apocalj^ses, but rather to
see Apocalypses. Much of the Apocalyptic literature of the times
may be mere forgery, but surely some of it was vision or delusion.
There are many grades of beauty, of reasonableness, of instructive
ness, and of delusion in visions, and they have been common in
various forms in every age. So fefr as my experience goes they
are common enough to-day. St. Paul tells us of prophets and
prophecy among the Christians. The Johannine Apocalypse is
more naturally to be regarded as a revelation or a delusion than
as a literary fraud.

§13 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 91
(c) We may remember that the son of Zebedee was
not an educated man. We may insist, if we will, that
his father employed hired servants on his fishing boats^-
so do most owners of fishing boats, but they are not for
that of higher rank or more learning than the men
whose wages they pay— and that he was known to the
High Priest — a friend of his servants. But St. Luke tells
us that Peter and John were untaught and uneducated
men, dypd/jijiaroi Kal iSiwrai (Acts iv. 13). St. John may
or may not have been able to read and write. He cer
tainly did not remain with his mind uncultivated. He
could be read to, if he could not read ; he could listen,
discuss, consider, as well as preach. In his long life he
saw and heard a great deal, and he thought a great
deal. Moreover, he was by nature an extraordinary
genius. But he had no literary training.
The ancients as often as not dictated when they wrote
a letter or a book. The amanuensis took down their
words in shorthand. He read the result again to them
and made corrections, and finally a fair copy. If pub
lication was to follow, this copy went to the pubhsher
to be read, aloud to a number of trained calligraphers.
It was possible to dictate to the tachygrapher at a very
considerable pace (e. g. St. Jerome translating some of
the Minor Prophets). But there was plenty of time for
second thoughts. Consequently men like Peter and
John could easily compose a letter or a book if a
disciple with some literary training assisted them. We
learn that for preaching Mark was Peter's interpreter,
so Peter was not good at Greek. The vocabulary of
I Peter is strangely Pauline ; there are not only coin
cidences with some Pauline Epistles, but the whole is

92 JOHN THE PRESBYTER § 13
a sort of imitation of Pauline style by a man who knew
Romans and Ephesians by heart, and perhaps had the
latter Epistle open before him, since he was writing to
the same Churches. But then we know that Silvanus,
who carried the letter to Asia, was the close comrade
of St. Paul, and one of the senders of the epistles to the
Thessalonians. What wonder if he assisted St. Peter
to a good Greek style, and clothed the Apostle's beautiful
thoughts (most of them not in the least Pauhne) in
Pauline phraseology ?
Now the vocabulary of the Apocalypse is seen on
analysis to be almost as Pauhne as that of i Peter. We
may suppose St. John's assistant or amanuensis at
Ephesus (that capital of the Pauhne Churches) had
St. Paul's Epistles by rote, and regarded them as the
model for Christian writings. The Old Testament,
especially Ezekiel, accounts for the style of large
portions of the work, &c.
On the other hand there is nothing Pauline in the
Gospel,, so far as I can see, except the deliberate refer
ence to St. Paul's teaching in i. 14, 16, 17, 18. The
literary assistant was evidently not formed on St. Paul's
writings, or rather he did not model his style on them.
He seems to have been anxious to preserve the short
and simple sentences of the aged Apostle in perfectly
plain and straightforward Greek, without elaborate con
struction, almost without subordinate clauses.
It may be supposed that this implies a great deal of
the assistant's work in the result, and little more than
direction from the Apostle. That is the very opposite
of my meaning. I should imagine that the writing
entailed a great deal of labour for both — reading what

§13 JOHN THE PRESBYTER 93
had been written, correcting, re-modelling, inserting new
matter, emphasizing or toning down, until the Apostle
is quite satisfied that his meaning is accurately con
veyed.^ In the Gospel one would imagine that every
discourse had needed long polishing before it reached its
present state, with wave after wave of thought develop
ing the doctrine as recalled by the Apostle. Still more
the composition of the whole Gospel must have entailed
much thought and much adjustment. The writing of
a dramatic chapter like the story of the bhnd man (ix)
would go much quicker, and so would the whole of the
Apocalypse. I am not giving here ex professo a defence of the
Johannine authorship of the Gospel nor of the Apoca
lypse ; I am only sketching the way in which I have
myself long found it simplest to account for the. differ
ences and the resemblances in the two documents,
taking into consideration the external evidence for
unity. It has seemed to me unavoidable that in treating
of the existence or non-existence of that problematical
personage, John the Presbyter, I should go thus far
afield. But I am obhged to conclude by explaining that
I do not regard these notes as doing more than remove
certain difficulties in the way of the perception of the
essential unanimity of the external evidence for the resi
dence of one John in Asia Minor. It has become quite
common to speak of many points as doubtful (especially
as to the testimony of St. Irenaeus) which I believe to
be susceptible of definite proof I daresay I have been,
as usual, inclined to be too positive here and there, but
^ Wellhausen's elaborate dissections (above referred to) are alL
in favour of this hypothesis.

94 JOHN THE PRESBYTER §13
most of my arguments represent the conviction of many
years. On the general question there is much more to
be said, and it has been said by Westcott, Drummond,
Lepin, Armitage Robinson, and others. I am only
sorry that I have been necessitated in these pages to
repeat so much that has frequently been said before.

ADDITIONAL NOTE ON DE BOOR'S
FRAGMENT OF PHILIP OF SIDE
A. On p. 34 I have said that Philip of Side ' as may
easily be shown, had no independent acquaintance with'
Papias's book'. It has been suggested to me that if
it is easy to show this, I had better do so. HenCe this
additional note.
I do not think the matter important, simply because
I hold that Papias cannot possibly have said that James
and John were killed by the Jews. The first reason
given above, p. 78, is amply sufficient to my mind.
Nevertheless the following analysis of De Boor's frag
ment, if out of place, may not be wholly unnecessary.
The passage was published from MS. Barocc. 142
(fol. 216") in 1888 by De Boor {Texte und Untersuchungen,
V. 2, pp. 182-4). After examining the MS., I am inclined
to think the excerpt is (as De Boor thought) from the
Christian history of Phihppus Sidetes. But this is un
certain, for several authors have been used by the
excerptor, who has headed his collection (fol. 212) with
the rubric :
^vvaywyfj laropiwv Sia<f)6pwv dirb rrjs Kara adpKa yev-
vqaews rod Kvpiov Kal e^fjs. rfjv dpxfjv exovaa dirb rov
irpwrov XSyov rrjs eKKXrjaiaariKrjs iaropias Evaej3iov rov
IIafi(f)iXov. [In margin, also red : dirb <pwvfjs NiKrj(j)6pov
KaXXiarov rod ^av$oirX.^
The passage about Papias begins thus :
llairias 'lepanoXews eiriaKoiros aKovarfjs rov deoXoyov
'Iwdvvov yevojievos, HoXvKdpnov Se iraipos, irivre Xoyovs

96 JOHN THE PRESBYTER
KvpiaKwv Xoyiwv eypa^yfrev. ev ols dirapid/irjaiv diroaroXwv
iroiovjievos jierd Hirpov Kal 'Iwdvvrjv, ^iXiirirov Kal ©w/idv
Kal MarOaTov eis fiaOrjrds rov Kvpiov dviypayjrev 'Apiariwva
Kal 'Iwdvvrjv erepov, ov Kal rrpea^drepov eKdXeaev.
So far all is from Eusebius, H. E. iii. 36. 2 and 39. 1-4.
Then follows a comment, suggested by Euseb. iii. 25. 3
and vii. 25 :
ws nvas oieaOai, on \rovTov'\ rov 'Iwdvvov eialv al Svo
eiriaroXal al jiiKpal Kal KadoXiKai, al e^ ovojiaros 'Iwdvvov
^epofievai, Sid rois dpxaiovs rfjv irpwrrjv jxovrjv eyKpiveiV
nves Se Kal rfjv AiroKdXvyfriv tovtov rrXavrjQivres evoju&av.
Then another statement from Euseb. H. E. iii. 39.
11-13: Kal llairias Se irepl rfjv x^^^ovraerrjpiSa ai^dXXerai, e§
ov Kal 6 Eiprjvaios.
There seems to be no doubt at all about the dependence
of the foregoing passages on Eusebius, from whom
Phihp no doubt drew almost kll the earlier part of his
history. But the next passage is not from Eusebius,
and it actually names the book of Papias from which it
quotes :
llairias ev rw Sevrepw Xoyw Xiyei, on 'Iwdvvrjs 6 OeoXoyos
Kal 'IdKw^os 6 dSeX(j>bs avrov iiirb 'lovSaiwv dvrjpedrjaav.
It was shown on p. 78 that Papias cannot have said
this. Phihp is borrowing from a common source with
George Hamartolus, who has preserved the context.
Both were clearly borrowing at second hand, from an
incorrect or corrupt authority.
The remainder is also independent of Eusebius.
There is no reason to doubt that it is also quoted at
second hand from the same source :
llairias 0 eiprjjiivos laroprjaev ws irapaXa^wv dirb rwv
Ovyarepwv ^iXiirirov, on Bapaafids 6 Kal 'lovaros SoKifia-
^ojievos iiirb ra)!/ diriarwv ibv exiSvrjs iri^v ev ovo/ian rov
Xpiarov diraOfjs Siec^vXdxOrj.

JOHN THE PRESBYTER 97
The kind of poison is not mentioned by Eusebius.
On the other hand Eusebius speaks of one wonderful
event related to Papias by the daughters of Philip, and
that was the raising of a dead person to life, though he
so closely connects the story of Barsabas with the other,
that it might easily be supposed that he referred it also
to the daughters of Philip, in spite of the nreceding
singular Sirjyrjaiv Bavjiaaiav. Philip may have misunder
stood Eusebius, and words such as ws irapaXa^wv dirb
rwv dvyaripwv 0iXiirirov were not necessarily in the
source he used. He continues :
laropei Se Kal dXXa Ba'C/iara Kal jidXiara rb Kara rfjv
firjrepa Mavatjiov rfjv eK veKpwv dvaardaav.
This is the same remarkable story (see p. 65, note)
which Eusebius tells us was learned by Papias from the
daughters of Philip ; Philip makes to Eusebius's state
ment the addition that the subject of it was the mother
of Manaimus. Lastly we have :
irepl TWV iiirb rod Xpiarov Ik veKpwv dvaardvrwv, on ews
'ASpiavov e^wv.
This is naturally to be compared with Eusebius, H. E.
iv. 3. 1-2 :
Toirw [sc. 'AS.piavw\ KoSpdros Xoyov irpoa(f)wvrjaas dva-
SiSwaiv, AiroXoyiav avvrd^as iiirep rrjs Ka6' ¦qp.ds deoaefieias
. . . 6 S' avrbs rfjv Kad' iavrov dpxaiorrjra irapa(f>aivei. Si
S)v laropei ravra iSiais (pwvaTs' ' Tov Se Swrfjp'os fjfiwv rd
epya del irapfjv, dXrjdfj ydp rjv, ol Oepairevdivres, ol dva-
ardvres eK veKpwv, 01 oiiK wipQrjaav jiovov 6epairev6/ievoi Kal
dviardfievoi, dXXd Kal del irapovres' ovSe eiriSrjfioCvTos jiovov
rov Xwrrjpos, dXXd Kal diraXXayivros rjaav eirl xpoj'oi'
Ikuvov, ware Kal eis rods fjjieripovs XP°^°'"^ rives avrwv
d<f>iKovro.' There can surely be no doubt about the dependence
of the short sentence of Philip of Side on this passage
of Eusebius. The latter says that Quadratus, in an
1224 G

98 JOHN THE PRESBYTER
Apology addressed to Hadrian, stated that some of
those healed or raised from the dead by Christ lived
until his own time. This was a credible statement.
Quadratus, writing between 117 and 138 might have
called 30 or 40 years earlier ' our own time ', i. e. 77-87
or 90-110. Some of those raised from the dead or
healed (aijd these were more numerous) would naturally
have lived till 80-90, and may well have lived longer.
But Quadratus does not say that they lived till the time
of Hadrian !
Philip, who had perhaps quoted Eusebius incorrectly
already, has evidently made another blunder, and has
put down to Papias what belonged to Quadratus. It is
indeed conceivable that Papias (though he preferred
oral tradition to the written word) might have quoted
so interesting a passage of Quadratus. But it is quite
inconceivable that he should have so misrepresented a
contemporary writer. The authority quoted by Philip
was no doubt capable of the blunder ; but it is obvious
that Philip himself is the culprit, for we have seen him
supplement his authority with citations from Eusebius
throughout the fragment; and here once more the
authority of Eusebius is ready to hand. It is quite in
character with the substitution of Papias for Quadratus,
that Phihp should speak of those raised from the dead
without adding the more numerous class of persons who
had been cured of sickness (it was indeed to these that
the words of Quadratus were presumably meant to
apply), — that he should jump to the conclusion that the
'times' of Quadratus meant the times in which Quadratus
wrote and not the times which he could remember, —
that he should speak generally as though all (!) and not

JOHN THE PRESBYTER 99
some (as Quadratus had said) survived until that improb
able date.
Philip had some fine qualities, no doubt, else he would
not have been several times so nearly made bishop of
the imperial city. But Socrates ^ and Photius^ assure
us he was a wild historian, who filled nearly a thousand
tomes (his history was of 36 books, each containing
numerous tomes) with geometry and astronomy and
geography under the name of history, and was unable
to preserve any chronological sequence. If he is really
answerable for these remarks on Papias, it is quite
evident that he has drawn upon two sources. One of
these is Eusebius, in various passages ; the other was
not the original work of Papias, otherwise Phihp would
not have made up most of his information by industri
ously yet carelessly combining passages of Eusebius.
His second authority can only have been excerpts from
Papias found by him in some other book unknown to us.
Thus I imagine I have proved what I set out to prove,
viz. that Philip could easily be shown to have had no
first-hand acquaintance with Papias's book.
This is on the assumption that the whole passage is
excerpted or epitomized from Philip. But it is conceiv
able (though unlikely, I think, when we compare the
rest of the matter in the same page of the MS.) that it
was the excerptor who combined passages from Eusebius
with other information about Papias which he found in
Philip Sidetes. But in this case again we are deahng
with an excerptor who had no first-hand acquaintance
with the work of Papias.
B. The statement about the death of James and John
' vii. 27. " Bibl. cod. 35.
G 2

loo JOHN THE PRESBYTER
is not independent of the interpolation into one MS. (the
best) of George Hamartolus :
llairias ydp 6 'lepairoXews eiriaKoiros, avroirrrjs rovrov
yevojievos (i. e. 'Iwdvvov), ev rw Sevripw Xoyw t£i/ KvpiaKwv
Xoyiwv (pdaKei, on inrb' lovSaiwv dvrjpearj' irXrjpwaas SrjXaSfj
jierd rov dSeX(pov rfjv rov Xpiarov irepl aiirwv irpopprjaiv Kal
rfjv iavrwv ojioXoyiav irepl rovrov Kal avyKardOeaiv' eiirwv
ydp 6 Kvpios irpbs avrovs' AvvaaQe wieTv rb irorrjpiov S eyco
irivw ; Kal Karavevadvrwv irpoQvjiws Kal avvde/ievwv' rb
irorrjpiov jiov, (prjaiv, irieade, Kal rb ^dirna/ia o eyw ^airri-
^ofiai PairriadrjaeaOe. Kal elKorws' dSvvarov ydp Qebv
y^evaaaOai} The ev rw Sevrepw Xoyw is the same in both, although
^ifiXiw or To/iw would be rather expected; so the
comment is presumably from the same authority (very
likely Phihp, — but this is a detail). We infer that
Papias was commenting on the prediction of Christ that
both the brothers should drink of His chalice. Simi
larly Polycrates calls John a martyr. The same kind
of comment is found in Origen and in a fragment of
Pseudo-Polycarp. As these are of early date, I give
them in a note.^ They probably represent very much
1 On the authenticity or interpolation of this passage, see Zahn,
Forschungen, vi. 148.
' El ye e^eiv X<5yov to toiovtov 8o|ai tkti, ireiraKoiri Se irorr/piov Kai to
^dirrurpa e^ajrria'drja'av ol tov ZefieSaiov vloi, eireiirep 'HptoSijr p.ev direKreivev
'idxa^ov TOV 'ladvvov p.a\aipq, 6 Se 'Paftaiav jSao'iXfvr, as ij irapdSotns
SiSda-Kei, KareSiKaa-e roi» 'ifflowiji/ fiapTvpovvTa Sid tov tijs dXriBeias Xoyov
els Udrpov tijv vrjaov. AiSd<rKet Se rd nepl tov fiapTvpiov eavrov 'ladvvrjs,
nfj Xcycoc ris avrov KareSiKaae, <j)dxTKav ev rfj ' AiroKaXv^jfei tovto* ' 'Eya)
'ladvvrjs 6 dSeXcjj^s vpav, Kai avyxoLvavos ev tjJ 6Xiyjrei Kai ^atriXeia Kal
mropovfj ev 'I))o-ov, eyevopriv ev rfj vfjo-a rfj KaXovp.evri Hdrp-a Sia tov Xoyov
ToC Oeov ' Koi rd i^rjs' (cai eoixe rf/v '\iroKdXv\jfi.v ev rfj i/ijo-o) TeBeaptjKevai.
Origen in Matt. xx. 22, Tom. xvi. 6, Lommatsch, iv, p. 18. The last
words seem to be quoted by 'Victorinus (cited above, p. 56, note) :
' Ibi ergo uidetur lohannes apocalipsim scripsisse '. The Pseudo-
Polycarp fragment runs thus : ' Item ad haec verba Christi : " Calicem
meum bibetis," etc. Matt. xx. 23.
Per huiusmodi potum significat passionem, et lacobum quidem

JOHN THE PRESBYTER loi
what Papias really said, even though they may be quite
independent of him. But Origen's expression, fj irapd-
Soais SiSdaKei, might possibly refer to a written authority.
How whatever Papias said got corrupted it is super
fluous to inquire. Zahn and Lightfoot have both made
ingenious conjectures on the subject. Anyhow we have
his words at third or fourth hand, and the statement that
John was killed by the Jews is no more to be believed
than so many other absurd quotations from authors
early and late. Let me instance the strange muddle in
the well-known short Latin Prologue to St. John, which
represents St. John as rejecting Marcion, and Papias as
his careful amanuensis. Another good example which
occurs to me is the Sth Pseudo-Justin fragment (Otto,
III. ii, p. 374, from Cowper's Syriac Miscellanies, 1861),
where Justin is called ' one of the authors who were in
the days of Augustus and Tiberius and Gaius ', and a
passage from the second part of his Dialogue is mis
quoted and embroidered, and said to be from his ' third
discourse '. But such parallels are common enough.
novissimum martyrio consummandum, fratrem vero eius loannem
transiturum absque martyrio, quamvis et afflictiones plurimas et
exsiUa toleravit, sed praeparatam martyrio mentem Christus mar-
tyrem iudicavit. Nam Apostolus Paulus "Quotidie" inquit
"morior"; dum impossibile sit quotidie mori hominem ea morte
qua semel vita haec finitur. Sed quoniam pro evangeho ad mortem
iugiter erat praeparatus, se mori quotidie sub ea significatione
testatus est. Legitur et in dolio ferventis olei pro nomine Christi
beatus loannes fuisse demersus.'
I will boldly say that I am inclined to believe that all the five
Pseudo-Polycarp fragments enshrine bits of Papias. The heading
to them as given by Feuardent was : Victor Episcopus Capuae ex
responsione capitulorum sancti Polycarpi Smymensis episcopi, discipuli
Joannis evangelistae. Either Victor himself (though he was a careful
man) or a scribe wrote Polycarp for Papias,

INDEX

Abbott, Dr. E. A., on Prologue
of Papias, 9 ; suggests emen
dation of it, 20, 23 ; on martyr
dom of John by the Jews, 79.
Acts of John, their witness to
one John at Ephesus, 53, 79.
Agabus, 70.
Alogi, their witness to St. John
at Ephesus, 53-5, 85 ; a Roman
not Asiatic party, 53.
Amanuensis or notarius, using
shorthand, 91.
Ammia, 70.
Andrew of Caesarea, 58.
Andrew, St., in Muratorian
fragment, 45.
Anti-Montanist writer, cited by
Eusebius, on daughters of
Philip the deacon, 70.
Apocalypse, date of, 47, 50-1, 57 ;
Johannine matter, 88-9, Pau
line vocabulary, 92; style
compared with fourth Gospel,
89 ; not founded on a Jewish
writing, 90 ; by Cerinthus, 54,
57-
Apocalypses, often visions or
delusions rather than literary
frauds, 90.
Apollonius, 55.
Apostles, use of the word by
Papias, 59, by St. Paul, 59, in
N. T., 60 foil. ; order of Apos
tles in Papias's Prologue,66-7 ;
mention of Apostles in Apoc.
not inconsistent with Apostolic
authorship, 89-90.
Aristion was a disciple of the

Lord, 20-27 > personally
known to Papias, 28-32;
bishop of Smyrna ace. to
Apost. Const, 36.
Augustine, St., on tomb of St.
John, 33, 79.
Bacon, Prof., suggests emenda
tion of the Prologue of Papias,
20,23.
Bardenhewer on the Presbyters
of Papias, 9.
Bar Salibi witnesses that Gaius
rejected the fourth Gospel, 53.
Bernard, Dean, on feast of SS.
James and John, 78.
Blass on use of yovv, 30.
Bodleian MS. Barocc. 142, 95.
Book, how composed in ancient
times, 91.
Bovon on date of Apoc, 51.
Carthaginian Kalendar on feast
of James and John, 78.
Chase on date of Apocalypse,
50-1-
Clement of Alexandria's use of
yovv, 29; probably read Papias,
49 ; used spurious Acts of
Apostles, 55 ; his witness to
one John at Ephesus, 55 ; on
daughters of Philip, 69; on
St. John and the Robber, 74;
on return of St. John to
Ephesus, 78.
Commodian may have used
Papias, 49.
Corssen on the grammatical con-

io6

JOHN THE PRESBYTER

Lawlor, Dr., on Hegesippus, 57.
Lepin, M. Marius, on the Pres
byters of Papias, 9 ; defence
of St. John, 94.
Leucius, Acts of John by, 53, 79.
Lewis, Dr. F. G., on St. Ire
naeus's witness to one John
of Ephesus, 42-3.
Lightfoot, Bishop J. B., on Pres
byters of Papias, 9 ; on Philip
the Apostle at Hierapolis, 64 ;
on three daughters of the
latter, 67-9 ; distinguishes be
tween John the Presbyter of
Papias and John the Pres
byter of 2 and 3 John, 72 ; on
witness of fourth Gospel to
the name John of its author,
86 ; on Neronian date of
Apocalypse, 90; on mar
tyrdom of St. John by Jews,
lOI.
Lyons, letter of the Church of,
^3: 79-
Mana'i'mos, 97 ; not the same as
Manaen, 65.
Marcus, poem against, 13-14.
Mark, St., confused with St.
John, according to 'Well
hausen, 81.
Mary Magdalen, according to
'Wellhausen interpolated in
John xix. 25, 80.
Mary of Cleophas, according to
'Wellhausen, not the correct
name for the Mother of Christ,
80.
Mayor, Prof. J. B., on brethren
of the Lord, 80.
Maximus, St., Confessor, used
the work of Papias, 58.
Melito, Commentary on Apoca
lypse, 55-

Michiels on Presbyters of Pa
pias, 9.
Moffat, on recent views of the
date of the Apocalypse, 50.
Mommsen, Dr. Theodor, on the
Johannine controversy, 7 ;
suggests emendation of Pro
logue of Papias, 21-3.
Montanists appeal to daughters
of Phihp the deacon, 69-70.
Muratorian fragment on Epis
tles of St. John, 37 ; on St.
Andrew, 45 ; on St John, 59.
Nicephorus Callisti, 21.
Occam, 'WilUam of, quoted, 39.
Origen on return of St. John to
Ephesus, 78, 100 ; witness to
one John of Ephesus, 55 ; on
daughters of Philip, 70; on
martyrdom of St. John, 79, 100.
Papias, St., his Prologue quoted,
8 ; discussed and examined,
9-40 ; perhaps called a Pres
byter by Irenaeus, 15 ; quoted
as ' the Presbyters ' by Ire
naeus, 16, 32 ; grammatical
construction of passage in
Prologue, 24 ; knew John and
Aristion personally, 28-32 ;
does not necessarily imply
two Johns, 40 ; much used in
second and third centuries, 49;
read by Andrew of Caesarea,
Maximus, Apollinarius, Anas
tasius Sinaita, 58 ; uses ' dis
ciple ' for ' Apostle ', 59-63 ;
gives Philip a prominent place
in list of Apostles, 66 ; cannot
have said St. John was killed
by the Jews, 78, 95; De Boor's
fragment and the interpolation
in George Hamartolus dis-

INDEX

107

cussed, 95 foil. ; his book not
known to Philip of Side, 95-9.
Paul, St., his use of the word
Apostle, 59; does not use 'dis
ciple', 60 ; vocabulary, 91-2.
Peter, St., appealed to as a pro
phet by Montanists, 70 ; an
uneducated man, 91 ; his liter
ary style probably due to his
notarius, 92.
Philip, St., Apostle, at Hiera
polis, 51, 64-71 ; only one
daughter buried at Hierapolis,
67-9.
Philip, St., the deacon, no tradi
tions from him in Papias,
66-7 ; his daughters appealed
to by Montanists, 65, 69-70.
Philip of Side, quotes Eusebius
on tomb of John, 34 ; the
quotations from Papias attri
buted to him analyzed, 95 foil.
Polycarp, Pseudo, on death of
St. John, loo-i.
Polycarp, St., counted as a
Presbyter by Irenaeus, 14-15 ;
StiU young at time of St. John's
death, 36; well remembered
by St. Irenaeus, 44; could
remember St. John, 44 ; sent
to Asia as bishop by Apostles,
45-
Polycrates, Gaius replies to his
letter, 54, 71; on John the
Apostle at Ephesus, 51 ; on
Philip the Apostle at Hiera
polis, 64, 67-8 ; only mentions
two daughters of Philip, 67-8 ;
caUs St John a martyr, 79, 100.
Pothinus, St., perhaps author of
sermon quoted by Irenaeus,
14 ; probably born in Asia, 48.
Proclus, Montanist, appealed to
daughters of Philip, 69-70.

Quadratus, appealed to by Mon
tanists, 70; confused with
Papias by Philip of Side, 97-9.
Renan suggests emendation of
Papias's Prologue, 20.
Robinson, Dean J. Armitage, on
date of Apocalypse, 50; on
feast of SS. James and John,
78.
Robinson, Rev. T. H., on the
Alogi, 53.
Rufinus, translation of Eusebius,
12, 21.
Salmon, Dr. G., quoted on the
internal evidence of the fourth
Gospel to the name of John
for its author, 86.
Sanday, Dr.'W., on Pothinus, 14 ;
on date of Apocalypse, 50-1 ;
criticism of Schwartz, 65 ; of
Harnack, 75.
Schwartz on Manaimos and
Manaen, 65.
Scott, Rev. C. A., 43.
Side, see Phihp of Side.
Smyrna, Aristion at, 31, 35;
bishop of, 36.
Stanton, Canon "V. H., 28.
Style of fourth Gospel compared
with that of Apocalypse,
88-90.
Supper, the last, only the Twelve
present, 73.
Swete, Dr. H. B., on Irenaeus,
43 ; on date of Apocalypse, 50.
Syncellus, see George.
Synoptists' use of words
' Apostle ' and ' disciple ', 60.
Syriac Martyrology on feast of
SS. James and Johri, 78.
Tachygraphers, 91.

104

JOHN THE 1

struction of the Prologue of
Papias, 26 ; doubts whether
Papias knew John, 28.
De Boor's fragment of Papias,
on Manaimos, 65 ; analysis
of, 95-9-
Dionysius of Corinth, 70.
Dionysius of Alexandria on the
tomb of John, 33, 55-6 ; on
two Johns, 77.
Diotrephes, 38.
Disciple used for Apostle by
Papias, 59, 62, by EvangeUsts,
60 ; the word is not in PauUne
or Catholic Epistles or Apo
calypse, 60 ; used of John and
Aristion by Papias, 62; of John
by himself in his Gospel, 62-3.
Dodgson," Rev. C. L., 85.
Domitian, decrees reversed by
Senate, 51 ; date of Apoca
lypse under, 47, 50-1, 57 ; re
turn of John to Ephesus after
death of, 51, 78.
Drummond, Dr., quoted, 48.
Duchesne on tomb of John, 33.
tipiels used by St Irenaeus of
himself, 47.
Epiphanius, St., on Alogi, 53, 57.
Epistles of St. John,their witness
to one John of Ephesus, 72,
75-6, 85.
erepos, meaning of, 67-8.
Eusebius on the Presbyters of
Papias, 17-19 ; makes John
and Aristion disciples of the
Lord, 21-3 ; says Papias was
hearer of John, 29-30 ; his use
of yoiiv, 28-30 ; in Theophania
on the tomb of John, 33 ; argu.'
ment for two Johns, 34 foil. ;
in his Chronicle does not allow

for S%. prejudiced
againsi ^^e, 41 ; con
fuses two hiiilips, 64-5 ; wit
nesses to tradition that there
was only one John at Ephesus^
57-8 ; used in De Boor's frag
ment, 96-9 ; and misunder
stood by its author, 97-8.
Gaius attributes fourth Gospel to
Cerinthus, 53 ; and Apoca
lypse, 54, 57 ; identical with
the Alogi, 53-4 ; blunders
about daughters of PhiUp, 69 ;
on tombs of SS. Peter and
Paul, 70.
yeved, meaning of, 47.
George Hamartolus.interpolated
quotation from Papias, 100.
George Syncellus, quotes Chro
nicle of Eusebius, 34.
Gospel, fourth, uses the word
'disciple' for 'Apostle', 59-63 ;
author claims to be an Apostle,
73 ; author not a boy at time
of crucifixion, 73 ; internal
evidence shows his name was
John, 86 ; no mention of
James, 87; way in which it
may have been composed, 92 ;
defenders of, 94.
yovv, meaning of, 28-30.
Gutjahr on Presbyters of Papias,
9; on Irenaeus's witness to
John the Apostle, 42.
Hamartolus, see George.
Harnack, Dr. A., on verses
against Marcus, 14 ; on attri
bution to Pothinus of sermon
in Irenaeus, 14 ; holds Philip
of Hierapolis to be the deacon,
64 ; on authorship of fourth
Gospel by both Johns, 73-7 ;

INDEX

105

his red, jical interpretation ot
I Jol»"i'i. I, 76.
Haussleiter suggests emenda
tion of the Prologue of Papias,
20 ; on 'Victorinus, 56.
Hegesippus on banishment of
St. John, 57.
Heracleon on St. John, 55.
High Priest, author of fourth
Gospel known to, 91.
Hippolytus on Alogi and Gains,
53, 56 ; witness to one John at
Ephesus, 56-7 ; follows Ter
tuUian's chronology, 57.
Hort, Dr. F. J. A., on date of
Apocalypse, 50-51 ; on 'Vic
torinus, 56.
ISia, meaning of, 81.
Ignatius of Antioch, 70.
Irenaeus, St., his use of the word
Presbyter, 13-16 ; calls John
' disciple of the Lord ', 23-4 ;
calls Papias a 'hearer of
John ', 31-2 ; uses ' Presby
ters ' as a periphrasis for
Papias, 32 ; uses two Epistles
of John, 37 ; identifies John
the Presbyter with the
Apostle, 41-8 ; makes him
author of Gospel, Epistles, and
Apocalypse, 42 ; date of birth
of Irenaeus, 46-8; witness to
the traditions of Asia Minor,
46-8 ; on date of Apocalypse,
47, 51-2 ; on death of John
under Trajan, 51, 78.
Jackson, H. L., 43.
Jacobs, 'W. W., 39.
James, the name used abso
lutely only after death of son
of Zebedee, 61 ; feast of James
and John, 78.
Jerome, St., Chronicle, 34;

letter to Anatolius prefixed to
expurgated edition of Victori
nus, 56 ; story of St. John in
old age, 74 ; swift dictation, 91.
John the Presbyter personally
known to Papias, 28-32; the
only John at Ephesus, 78;
witness to his own identity
with the Apostle, 84-93.
John, Saint, the Apostle, at
Ephesus according to Justin,
49-50, to Polycarp, 44-6, to
Leucius, 53, to Polycrates,
51-2, to Irenaeus, 41-3, to
Gaius and the Alogi, 53-5, and
others, 55-8; called a 'disciple'
by Papias, 62, and by himself,
62-3 ; returns from Ephesus
under Nerva,57, 78; an unedu
cated man, 91 ; martyred by
the Jews (?), 78, 82, 95-8.
John, Saint, the Baptist, caUed
simply ' John ' in fourth Gos
pel, 86.
John-Mark confused with the
Apostle, according to 'Well
hausen, 81.
Josephus, use of yoOv, 29.
Jude, called Thaddaeus until
death of Iscariot, 61.
Julicher on ' the Presbyter ' in 2
and 3 John, 38 ; paradox, 87.
Justin, St., probably read Papias,
49 ; makes the Apostle John
author of the Apocalypse, 50 ;
spurious fragment of, loi.
Klopas not the husband of the
Mother of Christ, in 'Well
hausen's opinion, 80.
Lactantius may have read Pa
pias, 49.
Last Supper, only the Twelve
were present, 73.

io6

JOHN THE PRESBYTEKr

Lawlor, Dr., on Hegesippus, 57.
Lepin, M. Marius, on the Pres
byters of Papias, 9 ; defence
of St. John, 94.
Leucius, Acts of John by, 53, 79.
Lewis, Dr. F. G., on St. Ire
naeus's witness to one John
of Ephesus, 42-3.
Lightfoot, Bishop J. B., on Pres
byters of Papias, 9 ; on Philip
the Apostle at Hierapolis, 64 ;
on three daughters of the
latter, 67-9 ; distinguishes be
tween John the Presbyter of
Papias and John the Pres
byter of 2 and 3 John, 72 ; on
witness of fourth Gospel to
the name John of its author,
86 ; on Neronian date of
Apocalypse, 90; on mar
tyrdom of St John by Jews,
lOI.
Lyons, letter of the Church of,
^3, 79-
Manaimos, 97 ; not the same as
Manaen, 65.
Marcus, poem against, 13-14.
Mark, St., confused with St
John, according to 'Well
hausen, 81.
Mary Magdalen, according to
'Wellhausen interpolated in
John xix. 25, 80.
Mary of Cleophas, according to
'Wellhausen, not the correct
name for the Mother of Christ,
80.
Mayor, Prof. J. B., on brethren
of the Lord, 80.
Maximus, St., Confessor, used
the work of Papias, 58.
Melito, Commentary on Apoca
lypse, 55-

V
Michiels on Presby.preof Pa
pias, 9. '-¦¦1
Moffat, on recent views of the
date of the Apocalypse, 50.
Mommsen, Dr. Theodor, on the
Johannine controversy, 7 ;
suggests emendation of Pro
logue of Papias, 21-3.
Montanists appeal to daughters
of Philip the deacon, 69-70.
Muratorian fragment on Epis
tles of St. John, 37 ; on St.
Andrew, 45 ; on St John, 59.
Nicephorus Callisti, 21.
Occam, 'William of, quoted, 39.
Origen on return of St. John to
Ephesus, 78, 100 ; witness to
one John of Ephesus, 55 ; on
daughters of Philip, 70; on
martyrdom of St. John, 79, 100.
Papias, St., his Prologue quoted,
8 ; discussed and examined,
9-40 ; perhaps called a Pres
byter by Irenaeus, 15 ; quoted
as 'the Presbyters ' by Ire
naeus, 16, 32 ; grammatical
construction of passage in
Prologue, 24 ; knew John and
Aristion personally, 28-32 ;
does not necessarily imply
two Johns, 40 ; much used in
second and third centuries, 49 ;
read by Andrew of Caesarea,
Maximus, Apollinarius, Anas
tasius Sinaita, 58 ; uses ' dis
ciple ' for ' Apostle ', 59-63 ;
gives Philip a prominent place
in list of Apostles, 66 ; cannot
have said St. John was killed
by the Jews, 78, 95; De Boor's
fragment and the interpolation
in George Hamartolus dis-

INDEX

107

cussed, 95 foil. ; his book not
known to Philip of Side, 95-9.
Paul, St., his use of the word
Apostle, 59 ; does not use 'dis
ciple', 60 ; vocabulary, 91-2.
Peter, St., appealed to as a pro
phet by Montanists, 70 ; an
uneducated man, 91 ; his liter
ary style probably due to his
notarius, 92.
PhiUp, St., Apostle, at Hiera
polis, 51, 64-71; only one
daughter buried at Hierapolis,
67-9.
Philip, St., the deacon, no tradi
tions from him in Papias,
66-7 ; his daughters appealed
to by Montanists, 65, 69-70.
Philip of Side, quotes Eusebius
on tomb of John, 34; the
quotations from Papias attri
buted to him analyzed, 95 foil.
Polycarp, Pseudo, on death of
St. John, loo-i.
Polycarp, St., counted as a
Presbyter by Irenaeus, 14-15 ;
StiU young at time of St John's
death, 36; well remembered
by St. Irenaeus, 44; could
remember St. John, 44 ; sent
to Asia as bishop by Apostles,
45-
Polycrates, Gaius replies to his
letter, 54, 71 ; on John the
Apostle at Ephesus, 51 ; on
Philip the Apostle at Hiera
polis, 64, 67-8 ; only mentions
two daughters of Philip, 67-8 ;
calls St. John a martyr, 79, 100.
Pothinus, St, perhaps author of
sermon quoted by Irenaeus,
14 ; probably born in Asia, 48.
Proclus, Montanist, appealed to
daughters of Philip, 69-70.

Quadratus, appealed to by Mon
tanists, 70; confused with
Papias by Philip of Side, 97-9.
Renan suggests emendation of
Papias's Prologue, 20.
Robinson, Dean J. Armitage, on
date of Apocalypse, 50; on
feast of SS. James and John,
78.
Robinson, Rev. T. H., on the
Alogi, 53.
Rufinus, translation of fiusebius,
12, 21.
Salmon, Dr. G., quoted on the
internal evidence of the fourth
Gospel to the name of John
for its author, 86.
Sanday, Dr.'W., on Pothinus, 14 ;
on date of Apocalypse, 50-1 ;
criticism of Schwartz, 65 ; of
Harnack, 75.
Schwartz on Manaimos and
Manaen, 65.
Scott, Rev. C. A., 43.
Side, see Philip of Side.
Smyrna, Aristion at, 31, 35;
bishop of, 36.
Stanton, Canon "V. H., 28.
Style of fourth Gospel compared
with that of Apocalypse,
88-90.
Supper, the last, only the Twelve
present, 73.
Swete, Dr. H. B., on Irenaeus,
43 ; on date of Apocalypse, 50.
Syncellus, see George.
Synoptists' use of words
' Apostle ' and ' disciple ', 60.
Syriac Martyrology on feast of
SS. James and Johri, 78.
Tachygraphers, 91.

io8

JOHN THE PRESBYTER

TertuUianon St. John atEphesus,
55; his imperial chronology
omitted Claudius, 57.
Thomas, St., coupled with St.
Philip, 66 ; mentioned parti
cularly in fourth Gospel, 67.
Thaddaeus, name for St. Jude
until death of Iscariot, 61.
Thucydides' use of yoOv, 29.
Tichonius perhaps used Papias,
49.
Tomb of John at Ephesus, 33.
Turner, C. H., 28.
Vatican MS. lat 3288 a of Vic
torinus, 56.
Victorinus, St., used Papias, 49 ;
on St. John at Ephesus, 56;
may have followed Hippoly
tus, 56-7 ; on return of John
to Ephesus, 78.
'Wellhausen on fourth Gospel,
80-3.

'Westcott, Bishop B. F., dis
tinguishes between John the
Presbyter of Papias and John
the Presbyter of 2 and 3
John, 72 ; on Neronian date ot
Apocalypse, 90; defence of
fourth Gospel, 94.
'Wrede on scientifically im
partial theology, 88.
Zahn, Dr. Theodor, commen
tary on Prologue of Papias, 7 ;
on Presbyters of Papias, 9 ;
on Pothinus, 14; on the tomb
of St John in later writers, 33 ;
on date of Polycarp's birth,
45-6 ; on that of Irenaeus, 48 ;
on Acts of John, 53 ; con
jectural emendation of Ire
naeus, 54 ; holds that Philip
the deacon died at Hierapolis,
64 ; on brethren of the Lord,
80 ; on interpolation in George
Hamartolus, loi.

Oxford : Printed at the Clarendpn Press by Horace Hart, M.A.

1206

I Hf '1. p HI»1M

^«ik> Mbiffarl %i

'if> LJ!>j,';)!'&!'<)^Jr'<2^

Irf '¦'¦*h".i'"''