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THE FOURTH GOSPEL IN" RESEARCH AND DEBATE
THE FOURTH GOSPEL IN RESEARCH AND DEBATE
A SERIES OF ESSAYS ON PROBLEMS CON- CERNING THE ORIGIN AND VALUE OF THE ANONYMOUS WRITINGS ATTRIB- UTED TO THE APOSTLE JOHN
BY
BENJAMIN WISNER BACON, D.D., LL.D.
Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and Exegesis in Yale University
Author of "An Introduction to New Testament Literature," " The Story
of St. Paul," " Beginnings of Gospel Story," etc
NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
MDCCCCXVIII
COPYRIGHT, 1910, BY MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1918, BY YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
First published^ February, igio. Second edition, August, jgi8.
TO THE MEMORY
OF
MY GRANDFATHER
LEONARD BACON
A STATESMAN
OF
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
PREFACE
The present volume has grown out of certain articles con- tributed by the author from time to time during the last ten years to technical and semi-technical journals on the vexed problem of the origin of the Fourth GospeL It owes its semi-popular, semi-technical character to this fact.
The controversial element implied in its title is also a re- flection of the conditions of the time equally manifest in the articles which preceded it. A group of four appeared in the Hihhert Journal in the issues of April, 1903 (I, 3), January, 1904 (II, 2), January, 1905 (III, 2) and October, 1907 (VI, i). In these the effort of the writer was to bring before the intelligent lay pubhc the merits of the great critical de- bate, the cause of the opponents of the traditional author- ship being frankly espoused. At intervals before and dur- ing this period contributions were made also to The Expositor (1907), the Journal of Biblical Literature (1894, 1908), and the American Journal of Theology (1900) in the interest of research pure and simple into questions involved in the prob- lem. The volume begun as nothing more than a reproduc- tion of these two groups of articles, somewhat revised and supplemented, naturally reflects, even in its present greatly developed and altered form, the two aspects of current dis- cussion which called forth the material of its substratum.
Knowledge of the fact just stated may be of service to the reader, but the fact itself needs no apology. Whether for- tunately or unfortunately — and the effects are not all un- favorable— bibHcal criticism is forced to build with one hand on shield and spear, the other on the trowel. Before
vii
viii PREFACE
its results are tested on their merits it is required to justify its own existence. The assailant of the traditional author- ship of the Fourth Gospel has no real success unless he can obtain a hearing from men profoundly interested in the cause of revealed religion, above all in the religion which has Jesus Christ as both teacher and Lord. The first step of those who resist his conclusions is to assure the pubHc to which he appeals that his motives are inimical to its dearest and most sacred ideals. How, then, can criticism obtain a hearing without the weapons of controversy?
On the other hand, what examples not only of consecrated scholarship, but of dignified and noble Christian courtesy, are evoked in such names as Lightfoot, Sanday, James Drum- mond! Only the conviction that his cause is just can lead a comparative novice into the lists against such as these. If one venture, it can only be in the full reaUzation of relatively imperfect scholarship, less extensive learning, less accurate knowledge on many important facts. And yet in such a field as this, where new facts are grains of gold hidden under moun- tains of thrice sifted waste, the more vital requisite is the perspective of great and well-known things in their true pro- portion and relation, rather than extent or minuteness in the knowledge of particulars. New perspectives may be given to a younger generation, and when seen they demand to be made known. Such is the reason for this book. Errors will doubtless reveal their presence in it. Its tone toward older and greater authorities of opposing view may be criticized as showing too little of that respect professed by the author, and professed not in insincerity, nor as conventionally due, but out of deep and well-founded conviction. We hope the criticism will not seem justified. Many things might have been better said, some perhaps might have been better left unsaid. And yet withal the faith remains that our book will be of service. May the reader gain from it new insights into
PREFACE ix
the beginnings of our faith. May the Church of Christ be stimulated by it to a larger and freer apprehension of his Spirit.
Benj. W. Bacon. New Haven, Oct. 26, 1909.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction: The Issues Involved
PAGE
iii
I
PART I
The External Evidence
Chapter
1^
I.
|
Chapter |
II. |
|
Chapter |
III. |
|
Chapter |
IV. |
|
Chapter |
V. |
The Modern Form of the Ques- tion 17
Echoes and Influences ... 43
Papias, Eusebius, and the Ar- gument FROM Silence ... 73
The Tradition as to the Elders AND Its Transformations . loi
John in Asia and the Martyr Apostles 127
PART II
Chapter Chapter
t'
i
The Direct Internal Evidence
VI. VII.
Chapter VIII.
The John of Revelation . . 157 Epistles and Appendix — Their Relation to One Another AND TO the Gospel . . . . 184 The Appendix a Product of Revision at Rome . . . . 210 xi
xii CONTENTS
PAGE
Chapter IX. The Battle for Recognition
OF Asian Tradition at Rome 226
Chapter X. Irenaeus the Mediator and
THE Fourfold Gospel . . . 247
PART III
The Indirect Internal Evidence
Chapter XI. The Evangelist's Task . . . 273 Chapter XII. The Disciple Whom Jesus
Loved, and His Relation to
THE Author 301
Chapter XIII. Johannine Pragmatism . . . 332 Chapter XIV. Johannine Treatment of Syn- optic Material 356
Chapter XV. Johannine Topography and
Chronology 385
Chapter XVI. Johannine Quartodecimanism . 412
PART IV
Latest Phases of Debate and Research
Chapter XVII. The "Defense" of the Gospel 443 Chapter XVIII. The Analytical School of
Criticism 472
Chapter XIX. Dislocations of Material and
Tatian's Order 497
Chapter XX. Conclusion 528
Index 539
THE FOURTH GOSPEL
INTRODUCTION
THE ISSUES INVOLVED
The greatest English scholar of his generation, acknowl- edged leader of the self-styled "defenders" of the Fourth Gospel, in beginning his discussion of the problem made the following statement of his conviction regarding the issues in- volved :
"The genuineness of St. John's Gospel is the center of the position of those who uphold the historical truth oF the recofS. of oirrLord- Jesus Christ given us in' theNew T-estamenf : ' Hence* the attacks of th^ opponents of revealed religion are concentrated upoii it. So long however as it holds its ground, these assaults must inevitably prove inetiectiveT^ The assailants are of two klhcls: (i) those who'deny the miraculous element in Christianity — Ra- tionaiistSj^^sytHose who deny_the distinctive character of Christian ^octrme — Unitarians The Gospel confronts both. It relates the most stupendous miracle in the history of our Lord (short of the Incarnation and the Resurrection), the raising of Lazarus. Again, it enunciates~m the most express terms the Divinity, the Deity,' of our Lord. And yet at the same time it professes to have been written by the one man, of all 'others^ who had the greatest oppor- tanlties of knowing" ttre'truth. The testimony of St. Paul might conceivably be set aside, as of one who was not an eye-witness. But here we hsive^^not an eicTpcotia} not a personal disciple mer^, noTpne^oTthe twelve only, but the one of the twelve — the Apostle who leaned on his Master's bosom",' ~who~stood by his Master's cross, who enTefed'TiTs'Master's empty grave. If therefore the
Tl Cor. 15:8. '
2 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
claim of this Gospel to be the work of John the son of Zebedee be true, if in Qther words the Fourth Gospel be genuine, th^mnst formidable, not to say an insuperable, obstacle stands in the way of both classes of antagonists. Hence the persistence and the ingenuity of the attacks; and hence also the necessity of a thorough- ness in the defence." ^ .
It is possible that Bishop Lightfoot, were he living to-day, might modify somewhat the terms by which he characterizes his opponents. Those who antagonize — not ''the claim of this Gospel to be the work of John the son of Zebedee"; for, Bishop Lightfoot to the contrary notwithstanding, the Gospel does not "profess to have been written" by him — but the theory traceable to about 170 A. D. imputing its authorship to "the beloved disciple," are still accustomed to being de- scribed as rationalists and Unitarians, and by no means anticipate that the "defenders of the Gospel" will altogether refrain from the imputation of evil motives of which the example has been so conspicuously set. In this no im- mediate change is to be expected. But inasmuch as on the one side a considerable and increasing number of scholars of Bishop Lightfoot's own evangehcal type of belief are to-day joining the ranks of his opponents on the Johannine ques- tion, while on the other one of the most eminent and con- spicuous defenders of the "genuineness" is both a Unitarian and a denier of that " most stupendous miracle . . . the raising of Lazarus," it is possible his phraseology might be altered.
Whether the epithets, and the imputations of motive be fair and reasonable or not, as applied to scholars of to-day, all such will thoroughly agree with Bishop Lightfoot as to the vital character of the issues involved. We see many an emi- nent scholar whose views on this moot point of historical and
1 Lightfoot, Biblical Essays, Macmillan, 1893, p. 47.
INTRODUCTION 3
literary criticism are diametrically opposed to Bishop Light- foot's, who is an ardent supporter both of "revealed religion" and of ''the divinity of our Lord." But such scholars have no disposition to deny, they vehemently affirm, that their in- terpretation of those much debated terms *' revelation," '' di- vinity of Christ," varies widely from that which would be forced upon the Church by some advocates of the Johannine authorship. It does indeed make a tremendous difference whether the particular doctrine of "the Divinity, the Deity of our Lord" which this admittedly late writer presents as re- flecting Jesus' teaching as to Sonship is, or is not, to be en- forced as the main feature of his message, conveyed on the authority of "the one man, of all others, who had the greatest opportunities of knowing the truth." On this question we are driven unavoidably to the alternative: Either Synoptics, or John. Either the former are right in their complete silence regarding preexistence and incarnation, and their subordina- tion of the doctrine of Jesus' person, in presenting his work and teaching as concerned with the kingdom of God, with repentance and a filial disposition and life, as the requirement made by the common Father for that inheritance; or else John is right in making Jesus' work and message supremely a manifestation of his own glory as the incarnate Logos, effecting an atonement for the world which has otherwise no access to God. Both views cannot be true, and to a very large extent it is the science of literary and historical criticism which must decide between them. We agree, then, with Bishop Lightfoot that the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel is the question of questions in all the domain of biblical science. The criticism which has effected a trans- formation in our conception of Hebrew religious history by making the so-called Priestly Document the latest and his- torically speaking least reliable source of the Pentateuch, in- stead of the earliest and most fundamental, will accomplish
4 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
a still more revolutionary change in our conception of New Testament beginnings, if its deductions are accepted re- garding the Fourth Gospel.
Since the period of the Greek fathers and the Ecumenical councils all approaches toward a historical view of the origins of Christianity have been dominated by that metaphysical conception of the person of Christ which begins with Paul and culminates in the Confession of Nicaea. The Hellenistic conception of incarnation visibly enters the domain of Jewish messianism in the Epistles of Paul; in that which we may designate the Johannine Canon, a group of Epistles, Gospel and Apocalypse appearing at Ephesus, the most important centre of the Pauline mission field, at the very close of the first century, this conception has become a full fledged Logos doctrine. In this group of writings Jesus is formally and distinctly identified with the Logos principle of Herac- litus, the Ephesian philosopher of about 500 b. c. There cannot be in the whole domain of biblical science a question more absolutely vital and fundamental than this : Is the con- ception of the life of Jesus as an incarnation of the divine Logos a development of Pauline speculation about Christ; or is it Jesus' own teaching regarding himself ? The ques- tion depends in large measure upon the ulterior one : Is the Fourth Gospel, which presents this view — and presents it in complete contrast to the earlier three, known as Synoptic — is the Fourth Gospel our sole surviving record from the hand of one of the twelve — one of the most intimate of these companions of Jesus in Galilee ? Or is this Gospel not only late, but altogether secondary and dependent; serviceable for the light thrown upon the development of Pauline into patristic Christology, but of little or no service to supplement historically the Synoptic picture of the teaching and career of Jesus?
Paul, like his great contemporary Philo, the interpreter of
INTRODUCTION 5
Judaism in terms of Greek philosophy, rests largely upon the Alexandrian book of Hellenistic stoicism, the Wisdom of Solomon (ca. 30 b. c). In this book the redemptive as well as the creative principle in the divine nature is the ele- ment of "wisdom." This "effulgence " of the divine glory, which was in the beginning the "artificer" of creation, which "fills all things," interpenetrates all things, and "holds all things together," enters also "into holy souls and makes men to be prophets and friends of God." Philo, the Erasmus of the Jewish church in the period of its great crisis, in- terpreted this "wisdom" doctrine on its scholastic and in- tellectual side. He naturally makes a shorter course in his identification of it with the creative and revelative prin- ciple of Heraclitus, as subsequently developed in current stoic cosmology. For Philo, the step would be easy from the divine "wisdom," his "second God," which is not another, but only God manifest and operative in the world, to the Logos of the Ionic school of cosmological speculation. Paul, the Luther of the age of the Hellenization of Judaism, has not yet taken this step. With him there are other elements in the divine "wisdom" which are not covered by the more coldly intellectual Greek term. The "wisdom of God" is to Paul preeminently that redeeming agency which goes out "to seek and to save that which was lost." This is char- acteristic of the Palestinian "wisdom" doctrine, as against the Hellenistic. We see it for example in what the Eoistle of James says of the gift of "wisdom" (Jas. 1:5, 17, ^8, 21; 3:13-18; 4:5. 6).
Paul is not at heart a Greek, however deeply affected by stoic dualism. Fundamentally he is a Pharisean messian- ist. Cosmological speculation with him is secondary. Eth- ics and eschatology are primary. He is interested in ques- tions of conduct, he is schooled in the extravagant di^ams of apocalypse. Nay, he is an apocalyptist himself, rapt
6 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
away in ecstasy to the third heaven. When Paul became a Christian, Jesus became to him the solution of his ethical and his eschatological ideal in one. Ethically Christ became to Paul ''the end of the law unto righteousness" by a teach- ing and life which put ethics upon a wholly new plane. Eschatologically he became the Lord from heaven, Heir of the Creation, predestined Head of a redeemed universe of conscious beings, by the fact that he had been "manifested as the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead." Messianism, and especially apocalyptic messianism with its copious importations from Persian and pre-Persian mythology, had almost no effect on Philo. It was the breath of life to Paul. No wonder, therefore, that Paul is in no haste to identify that redemptive agency of God which he found incarnate in Jesus, and that apocalyptic Second Adam whom he had seen in the person of the risen Christ, with the cosmological principle of Heraclitus "the obscure."
And yet the cosmological ideas half unveiled in Paul's let- ters to Corinth and Rome, founded as they unmistakably are upon the Hebraized stoicism of the Wisdom of Solomon, have as their unavoidable issue just such an identification of this phase of the divine "wisdom" as Philo makes. As has been well said, "All of the Logos doctrine but the name is already present in the Pauline Epistles."
But it is not the Logos doctrine of Philo to which Paul's thought is leading up. Even in the Johannine literature; wherein the name Logos itself is naturalized, thenceforth to be used in the Greek fathers of the second century in- terchangeably with the Jewish term Wisdom, it only appears upon the threshold and does not invade the sanctuary. The prologue of the Fourth Gospel makes the formal identifica- tion, presenting the evangelist's cosmology; but it is not in- troduced into the utterances of Jesus himself. Indeed it is one of the main objects of this writer to fill the term with
INTRODUCTION 7
that ethical and sociological, if not eschatological, import which it could never have obtained by the short cut of Philo's scholasticism.
The roots of the Johannine Logos doctrine are only to a slight and subordinate degree in Philo. They run back by way of Hebrews and more especially by way of the great Pauline Eipistles of the second period, Colossians and Ephe- sians, through purely Christian soil to the common ances- tor, the Wisdom of Solomon. We have said, ''All of the Logos doctrine but the name is already present in the Paul- ine Epistles." We might say with almost equal truth. The whole Christology of "John" — a vastly greater matter than the mere cosmological concept of the Logos — is a straight- forward development of the incarnation doctrine of Paul.
Hebrew speculative thought, once it had reached the stage of the Wisdom of Solomon, was sure to issue in some sort of Logos doctrine. Even the Synagogue developed its hy- postases of a Memra and a Metatron. In Alexandria the step could be taken easily, logically, through a Philo. In Palestine and the Christian world it had to undergo a period of postponement and of immeasurable enrichment by all that is implied in the story of Jesus and of Paul.
Philosophers of the period of Justin Martyr and Irenaeus confessed that there was no practical difference between their own mode of thinking and that of Christian theologians save on the one point of the incarnation of the Logos. The doc- trine of the Fourth Gospel would be acceptable to them if they might be permitted to cancel the one clause "the Logos became flesh." Gnostics and Docetics would go further still, asking only to substitute "dwelt in" for "became." But one must have failed to grasp even the elements of Johan- nine thought not to realize that this verse is absolutely central to the system. Incarnation is its keynote. The Johannine Christ comes not by water only, like the aeon
8 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
Christ of Cerinthus, who at the baptism made the man Jesus a "receptaculum" for his presence until the passion. It is one that comes by water and by blood. Its Jesus was not di- vine from the baptism only, nor from the birth only, but from all eternity and to all eternity. The fourth evangelist is de- termined to hold that very man whose voice the Church had heard, whose form it had seen, and their hands had handled, in eternal, inseparable union with that very Word and Wis- dom of God, "who being in the form of God had not counted it (like the first Adam) a prize to be grasped by rob- bery to be equal with God, but had humbled himself and taken on him the form of a servant, and become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; " having also for this very self-humiUation been highly exalted by God, and given "the name, which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, and that every tongue of men and of angels should confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
The Logos doctrine of Paul is also a creation doctrine. "We believe in one God the Father of whom are all things, and in one Lord Jesus Christ through whom are all things." It is also a wisdom doctrine, as postulating a mind sub- stance which forms the common term between the human reason, the intelligible cosmos, and the Absolute.
" ' Things which eye saw not.
And ear heard not.
And which entered not into the heart of man.' (Even the things which God hath prepared for them that love him); he hath revealed them unto us by the Spirit; for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea the deep things of God."
As a man's spirit gives him consciousness of his purposes and intentions, so we in having the mind of Christ are made participant in the consciousness of the Creator. Such is Paul's conception of the X0709 evhidOero^i. But beyond and
INTRODUCTION 9
above these merely philosophical aspects, Paul's Logos doc- trine is an avatar of the redemptive energy of the divine na- ture. The legalistic and apocalyptic thought of Pharisaism give it substance. The life of Jesus on earth as proclaimer and exponent of the gospel of sonship by faith, Paul's vision of him as the risen Lord of glory — these give it definite form. Such is Paul's doctrine of the X0709 7r/30(^optAco9. Is it a matter of righteousness and the law and the knowledge and fulfilment of the divine will? — "Say not in thine heart. Who shall ascend into heaven (that is, to bring Christ down); or. Who shall descend into the abyss (that is, to bring Christ up again from the dead). The word is nigh thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart (that is, the word of faith which we preach)." Is it a matter of the coming kingdom, the new heaven and new earth of religious aspiration? Then the scripture is applicable.
" ' When he ascended on high
He led captivity captive
And gave gifts unto men.' For this 'He ascended,' what is it but that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth. He that descended is the same also that ascended far above all the heavens that he might fill all things."
How is it possible in face of the genius, the ardor, the en- thusiastic conviction of a Paul, that anything should survive to us of that simpler Christology which roots itself in the Galilean tradition of Jesus' own life and teaching? Not a fragment remains of the reputed Aramaic compilation by the Apostle Matthew of the Sayings of the Lord. If we can restore them it is only in Greek translation, as elements taken from the substance of later Greek gospels. The narrative of Jesus' life which tradition tells us comes ultimately from the lips of Peter, and which at all events has practically taken the place of all other tradition from times as remote as
lo THE FOURTH GOSPEL
the origin of our first and third Gospels, — even this narrative of Mark also comes to us as a Greek product, from the Pauline church of Rome, framed in the interest of Pauline doctrine, saturated with Pauline phrases and ideas. And yet the older, simpler Christology has survived. Neither the teach- ings as restored from the non-Markan material common to Matthew and Luke, nor the Markan narrative, nor our canonical first or third evangelist has introduced anywhere one trace of the PauUne doctrine of the preexistence of Christ or of incarnation. Both the fundamental Synoptic sources, Matthaean sayings and Markan narrative as well, exhibit a consistent historical situation true to conditions as we know them at the time. We see legaHsm dominant in the Synagogue, the masses religiously destitute, disinherited from the now transcendentahzed messianic hope. Jesus comes forward taking up simply and loyally the prophetic and humanitarian reform of John the Baptist. He becomes the champion of the pubUcans and sinners, offers an ''easy yoke" of simple God-hkeness, and an assurance that the relation of fatherhood and sonship is open to all. It is the Father's good pleasure to give the kingdom even to the little flock now gathered around him. Sayings, incidents, parables are all consistent with this Gahlean environment, this ethico-religious impulse. Jesus speaks to "babes" in the wisdom that is revealed to "babes," like a plain man to plain men, albeit with the power of a prophet and of more than a prophet. Even his miracles are not as in the Fourth Gospel "manifestations of the glory" of the incarnate Logos. "He went about doing good, healing all that were oppressed of the Devil." Like the "sons of the Pharisees" he exorcised. Like his disciples, and even some that followed not with them, he "did mighty works," mainly of healing, "because God was with him." There was colli- sion with the scribes and synagogue authorities — Jesus was driven out of Galilee. He went to Jerusalem and challenged
INTRODUCTION ii
the priestly hierocracy itself in the stronghold of their power, demanding in the name of ''the people" that the temple be no longer a den of robbers but a house of prayer, and refer- ring those who called for his authority to the example of the Baptist. Priestly conspirators seized him, delivered him to the Roman governor as aspiring to be the Christ, and secured his crucifixion on this ground. His followers, scattered at first, soon rallied to Jerusalem, convinced by appearances to Peter and others that God had raised him from the dead and exalted him to heaven, whence he would indeed soon appear as the Christ, the Son of man, the Redeemer of Israel.
Such is the Synoptic story of Jesus. Its keynote is not incarnation but apotheosis. Jesus is the Servant whom God according to promise had "raised up from among his breth- ren" "to bless them in turning away every one of them from his iniquities." Him "the heavens must now receive until the time of the restoration of all things." Meantime re- pentance and forgiveness in his name must be preached to Israel and "to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call." All the factors, all the essential ele- ments of this story fall within the known historical environ- ment. The ideas in debate are those current in Judaism as it then was. John the Baptist, the Pharisees, the scribes, the publicans and sinners, the mutual relations of these and their conflicting hopes and ideals, are all intelligible. The whole drama is a drama of real life. It demands the divine factor behind it just as all hfe does, just as the life of our own time does; because without this not even the simplest thing is intelligible. But for all the essential factors of the story divine intervention is not required in any other sense. We say "essential factors" for it can scarcely be required that we regard this tradition as miraculously exempted from the tendencies to exaggeration and legendary accretion to which all others are exposed.
12 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
The representation of the Fourth Gospel inverts all this. Divine intention and operation are not interpreted by his- torical fact, but historical fact by divine intention and op- eration. What an incarnation of deity must say and do in order to make clear the redemptive plan, this is what is said and done. The selection of seven ''signs" is avowedly made for the purpose of producing faith in this sense. The Synop- tic sayings give way to dialogues on Christological doctrine, the parables to seven allegorical "I am's." There is neither order nor connection, nor do events entail their consequences. John the Baptist already proclaims Jesus as " the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; " Jesus' earliest disciples regard him as ''the Son of God, the King of Israel;" the very opening of his ministry introduces the culminating act of resistance to priestly control in the temple.
The contrast in point of view between the Synoptic and Johannine conception is not a matter of dispute to-day among intelligent people. The facts above stated are veri- fiable. The general contrast is admitted. We have even from the most unexpected quarters admissions of the un- historical character of this representation, its allegorical, mystical and metaphysical nature. It is admitted that the dialogues, which maintain throughout, for all speakers, the same style, and that style the marked and characteristic style of the Epistles of John, are the evangeHst's own com- position. It is even conceded by at least one prominent ad- vocate of Johannine authorship that the incidents themselves may be — and that in some of the most vital cases — fictitious. Yet if these concessions seem to be made in one quarter they are immediately repudiated, or withdrawn, in another. Such an attitude is untenable. There must be consistency one way or the other. The life of Jesus was either divine only in so far as it realized all the divinity of which humanity is capable; or else it was not human save in so far as deity
INTRODUCTION 13
can take upon itself "the form of a servant," while still re- taining the attributes and consciousness of deity. Which of these two modes of conceiving the life of Jesus contains a real gospel for a world of lost and disinherited sons of God, is a question for the Church to determine. Hitherto, it has placed all its emphasis upon the metaphysical. Which of them represents the real Jesus, is for historical criticism to determine ; and the heart of the problem is the Gospel at- tributed to John, with its reversal of the Synoptic conception. Both conceptions cannot represent the apostolic story. Har- monization overreaches itself when it attempts to bridge this chasm. Manifestly an apostolic eye-witness and intimate of Jesus who should so abuse his unique position as to offer speculative fiction and allegory instead of the rich store of personal recollections of the Master he was competent to give, would be worse than no witness at all. His high claims to present ''the truth," regarded as the reality of tangible experience, would be mockery.
No; the issue is far deeper than a mere matter of words and names, and it calls aloud for decision. If the Fourth Gospel is that which tradition maintains, then the whole history of our religion, the whole conception of its Founder is radically involved. We cannot reasonably treat Synoptic story as of equal value with this subsequent, completely different, representation, by one immeasurably better quali- fied to set forth the truth. If, on the other hand, it is within the competence of historical and literary criticism to deter- mine from what sources, in what period, with what authority, this Johannine representation has been produced, then our lives of Christ and our interpretations of Christianity must be written, or rewritten, accordingly.
Such lives of Christ, such interpretations of Christianity, and of the Fourth Gospel itself, are fortunately not wanting. But as long as the issue hangs undecided, Christian teaching
14 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
as a whole will follow the beaten track of tradition. It will even be treated as heresy and disloyalty to Christ to question the authorship long imputed to these writings. Such con- siderations will not greatly weigh with those accustomed to believe that the scientifically trustworthy is apt to prove also the practically edifying to faith. If in addition the Ephesian Canon is found to be the exponent of Christian life and faith in just that obscure period which marks the transition from Paul to the post-apostolic age, genuine and true because reflecting the very heart's faith of a great church in a great age, there will be compensations for the loss of a supposedly apostolic record. Its author, like Paul, will have known no ''Christ after the flesh"; but deeply and truly the eternal Christ after the Spirit. The faith will not be vain in which he has written to the end that by believing we also ''might have life in his name."
PART I THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
PART I
THE EXTERNAL EVIDENCE
CHAPTER I
THE MODERN FORM OF THE QUESTION
A singular difference of opinion seems to exist, even among the strongest upholders of the Johannine Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, as to the relative value of what is called the "External Evidence," that is, the traces of its influence, di- rect or indirect, which the book has left upon subsequent writers. Principal Drummond, the most recent, and one of the most distinguished defenders of the traditional view, after a review of the contents in which he feels compelled to ** attribute a lower historical value to the Fourth Gospel than to the Synoptics," so that "it is to be accepted more in the spirit than in the letter," is yet so impressed with the evi- dences of its early reception in the Church that he
"cannot but think that the external evidence of Johannine author- ship possesses great weight, and, if it stood alone, would entitle the traditional view to our acceptance."
His ultimate conclusion is
"The external evidence ... is all on one side, and for my part I cannot easily repel its force. A considerable mass of the internal evidence is in harmony with the external. A number of the difficulties (in the internal evidence) . . . melt away on nearer examination, and those which remain are not sufficient to weigh down the balance." ^
1 Drummond, Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, Scribner, 1904, pp. 64, 351, 514.
Fourth Gospel — 2 17
i8 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
Over against this clear admission of the decisive influence of the external evidence in the formation of Principal Drum- mond's opinion let us set that of Professor Sanday, who welcomes the appearance of this volume from his distin- guished Oxford colleague, with extraordinary enthusiasm.^ So long ago as 1872, Sanday had written
"The subject of the external evidence has been pretty well fought out. The opposing parties are probably as near to an agree- ment as they ever will be. It will hardly be an unfair statement of the case for those who reject the Johannean authorship of the Gospel, to say, that the external evidence is compatible with that supposition. And on the other hand, we may equally say for those who accept the Johannean authorship, that the external evidence would not be sufficient alone to prove it." '
Since that early utterance three great English treatises have been devoted, exclusively or mainly, to this aspect of the problem. Ezra Abbott in 1880 redeemed American scholarship from the reproach of sterility by his famous essay The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel: External Evi- dences.^ This was in reahty a supplement to Lightfoot's brilUant Essays in reply to the author. of Supernatural Re- ligion ^ and became a classic for all subsequent ''defenders." '* The work of Principal Drummond already referred to, which appeared in 1904, was but a development and enlargement of work in which he had already engaged as an ally of San-
1 The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel, Scribner, 1905, p, 32,
2 Authorship and Historical Character of the Fourth Gospel considered in reference to the contents of the Gospel itself, Macmillan, 1872, p. 3.
3 Unitarian Review for Febniarj', March, June, 1880; reprinted by Scribner, The Fourth Gospel, etc.; Essays by Ezra Abbott, Andrew Peabody, and Bishop Lightfoot, 1891.
4 We should mention particularly Lightfoot's own discussion, "External Evidence for the Authenticity and Genuineness of St. John's Gospel," re- printed from lecture notes in the volume of his Biblical Essays, Macmillan, 1893.
THE MODERN QUESTION 19
day so early as 1875.^ Finally, but a few weeks before Prin- cipal Drummond's book, there had also appeared the most thorough and judicial of all recent arguments for the Johan- nine Authorship from the external evidence from the pen of Professor V. H. Stanton of Cambridge.^ But not even these three consecutive great and able treatises seem to have ma- terially altered Professor Sanday's original conviction. In his recent work entitled Criticism of the Fourth Gospel ^ the treatment of "the External Evidence" is still relegated to less than a dozen pages in the last of the eight lectures. Dr. Drummond seems to him "to overstate a little — but only a little — the external evidence for the Gospel," ^ and we are left to infer that he abides by the conviction in which he had concurred some fourteen years before ^ with his great an- tagonist Schiirer, that the decisive arguments must fall within the field of the internal evidence.
If we ask how this singular difference in valuation of the external evidence arises, the answer is not far to seek. For Lightfoot and Ezra Abbott the great antagonist had been the author of Supernatural Religion together with the now obsolete school of Baur, who for reasons connected with his own theory of the early history of the Church placed the origin of the Fourth Gospel at the extremely late date of
1 Three articles on Justin Martyr and the Fourth Gospel originally printed in the Theological Review for October, 1875, and April and July, 1877, are reproduced in Chapter II of the volume above referred to, including pp. 84 to 162. Chapter X on "Basilides" appeared first in the Journal of Bibl. Lit. for 1892. It had been prepared at a considerably earlier date.
2 The Gospels as Historical Documents; Part I. The Early Use of the GoS' pels, Cambridge University Press, 1903.
3 Scribner, 1905, pp. 238-248.
4 P. 36.
5 See the article by Emil Schiirer in the Contemporary Review, Septem- ber, 1891, with Sanday's reply, ibid., October, 1891. This reply was more fully elaborated by Sanday in a series of articles in the Expositor for 1891 and 1892.
20 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
170 A. D., denying even its existence prior to the times of Justin Martyr (150-^160) and Tatian (160-180). The battle of critics began, therefore, as a question of dating, and the great victories of Drummond, Lightfoot, and Abbott were won by the use of the external evidence to disprove this un- tenably late date. Principal Drummond does not need to be told that Baur's theory of the origin of the Johannine writings is as obsolete as the Ptolemaic geography. And yet, as we shall see, his own treatment of the external evidence is but nominally adapted to modem conditions and to the new alignment of the opposing critical forces. He himself de- scribes the change of critical opinion as follows:
"The appearance of the first volume of Keim's Geschichte Jesu, in 1867, may be taken as marking the beginning of a new period. In this work Keim proved himself one of the most strenu- ous assailants of the genuineness of the Gospel, but at the same time he made a very long retreat from the positions of Baur. He conceded that the Gospel was used by Justin Martyr, and brought back its date to the days of Trajan, 100-117 a. d.^ He thought it probable that the author was a Jew and not a Gentile, and dismissed as without weight some of the arguments which had been considered adverse to this view. Thus the opponents were brought much nearer to one another, and those who were not under Tubingen influence began to feel the force of the arguments which were pressed against the apostolic authorship; and many who still defended the genuineness conceded that the author's point of view and purpose in his composition were not primarily historical. Thus, in Germany at least, the general result of the controversy has been to extend the area of doubt respecting the authorship, or, if not the authorship, the historical accuracy of • the Gospel, and on the other hand to bring the opponents of its genuineness much nearer to the traditional view,"
It is hard for an old soldier to forsake ground won in
1 Principal Drummond omits to state that Keim subsequently relapsed to the date 130 a. d.
THE MODERN QUESTION 21
battle, even when it has lost strategic importance. In point of fact the Modem Form of the Johannine Question scarcely concerns itself with the question of date. It is a question not of date, but of authorship and historicity. Therefore the kind of external evidence once relied upon to prove the ex- istence of the Gospel in the times of Polycarp, Ignatius, Papias, Justin, and Tatian, is almost totally irrelevant. To-day nobody denies the kind of existence this evidence is alone competent to prove; while on the other hand, evidence competent to prove acceptance of this Gospel as authorita- tive and apostolic, or even as sharing in the respect accorded to the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and (somewhat later) Luke, is wanting until the period of Tatian and Theophilus of Antioch (170-180 A. d.).^ To critics of the present gen- eration such as Edwin Abbott, Schmiedel, and Wellhausen, it is perfectly apparent that Baur mistook the period of dis- semination for that of origin. To-day Strauss' dictum com- paring the Fourth Gospel in its indivisible oneness to the holy coat ''woven without seam" is no longer an axiom. Half a century of literary criticism has laid bare to us some- what more of th^ formative period of our gospel writings. We are obliged to admit, nowadays, whether conservatives or radicals, that mere acquaintance with ideas or phraseology which more or less resemble the Johannine is not equivalent to acquaintance with our canonical Gospel of John, inclusive of its appendix and its latest editorial supplements. The con- serv^ative Oxford committee who report on traces of Johan- nine influence in the Epistles of Ignatius,^ confess
"our ignorance how far some of the Logia (sayings) of Christ
1 On the revolution effected about 170-180 a. d. in the acceptance of the Fourth Gospel, see Keim, Jesus of Nazara (Engl, transl.), Vol. I, pp. 197- 199.
2 The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, by a Committee of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1905, p. 83.
22 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
recorded by John may have been current in Asia Minor before the publication of the Gospel. If they formed part of the Apostle's oral teaching, they must have been famihar to his disciples, and may have been collected and written down long before our Gospel was composed."
Professor Sanday too is apparently less confident to-day than in 1872 of ''a date not very far from 80-90 a. d.," ^ for the Gospel as a finished whole. He prefers to speak of the Ignatian letters as proving the existence "well before the end of the first century, of a compact body of teaching hke that which we find in the Fourth Gospel." The external evidence to his mind proves the ** existence" of "the sub- stance of the Fourth Gospel" "before the end of the first century," and this he considers "a considerable step towards the belief that the Gospel existed in writing." ^
If many leaders of the conservative school appear to-day so much more cautious in their inferences from the external evidence, the reason becomes fully apparent when we notice what inferences are drawn from it by their opponents.
The most thorough and scholarly treatment of the ex- ternal evidence accessible to the English reader, from the point of view of those who repudiate the traditional author- ship, is that of the veteran scholar Edwin A. Abbott of London, in §§83 to 107 of the article "Gospels" in the Encyclopcedia Bihlica? Abbott discusses seriatim all the alleged traces of influence of the Johannine writings upon Clement of Rome {ca. 96 A. d.), the Didache (?8o-iio), Barnabas (132), Simon Magus (?9o-ioo), Ignatius (iio- 117), Polycarp (110-117), Papias (Harnack: 145-160, Ab- bott: 120-130), Epistle to Diognetus (Lightfoot: former
1 Authorship, p. 12. For the difficulty in the way of so early a dating, see Stanton, Gospels, etc., pp. 18, 238.
2 Criticism, p, 245.
3 Macmillan, 1901, Vol. II, columns 1825 to 1839.
THE MODERN QUESTION 23
part 117-147; latter part 180-210), Hernias (114-156), Basilides (11 7-138), Marcion (125-135), and Valentinus (141-156), and compares these with the use made at first of Matthew, or Matthew and Mark, later of Luke. He reaches the following conclusion:
"Up to the middle of the second century, though there are traces of Johannine thought and tradition, and immature approxi- mations to the Johannine Logos-doctrine, yet in some writers {e. g., Barnabas and Simon) we find rather what Jn. develops, or what Jn. attacks, than anything that imitates Jn., and in others (e. g., Polycarp, Ignatius and Papias) mere war-cries of the time, or phrases of a Logos-doctrine still in flux, or apocalyptic tradi- tions of which Jn. gives a more spiritual and perhaps a truer version. There is nothing to prove, or even suggest, that 'Jn. was recognized as a gospel.' "
The relatively voluminous ^ treatises of Justin Martyr (153-160 A. D.) form a class by themselves for all students of the external evidence. The surprising non-appearance of the Fourth Gospel among his recognized authorities, at least in a degree approximating his "more than one hundred" ^ employments of the Synoptists, is one of the admitted diffi- culties of the supporters of tradition. Drummond, for ex- ample, after accumulating all possible traces of the use of John, meets the question "Why has Justin not quoted the Fourth Gospel at least as often as the other three?" with certain analogies whose vaUdity we must test hereafter. Ab- bott, on the other hand, meets the alleged traces of the Fourth Gospel in Justin by an analysis even more thorough than Drummond's, resulting in the following summary:
1 The two Apologies and the Dialogue with Trypho occupy together about six times the space of the eight Epistles of Polycarp and Ignatius combined.
2 So Schmiedel, article " John, son of Zebedee," Encycl. Bibl., Vol. II, column 2546, § 44. Drummond, Character and Authorship, p. loo, counts "somewhere about 170 citations from or references to the Gospels." Among these he probably includes what he regards as "three apparent quotations" from John. See below.
24 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
" It appears, then, that (i) when Justin seems to be alluding to Jn., he is really alluding to the Old Testament, or Barnabas, or some Christian tradition different from Jn., and often earHer than Jn.; (2) when Justin teaches what is practically the doctrine of the Fourth Gospel, he supports it, not by what can easily be found in the Fourth, but by what can hardly, with any show of reason, be found in the Three; (3) as regards Logos-doctrine, his views are alien from Jn. These three distinct lines of evidence converge to the conclusion that Justin either did not know Jn., or, as is more probable, knew it, but regarded it with suspicion, partly be- cause it contradicted Luke his favorite Gospel, partly because it was beginning to be freely used by his enemies the Valentinians. (4) It may also be fairly added that literary evidence may have weighed with him. He seldom or never quotes (as many early Christian writers do) jrom apocryphal works. The title he gives to the Gospels ('Memoirs of the Apostles') shows the value he set on what seemed to him the very words of Christ noted down by the apostles. Accepting the Apocalypse as the work of {Trypho 81) the Apostle John he may naturally have rejected the claim of the Gospel to proceed from the same author. This may account for a good many otherwise strange phenomena in Justin's writings. He could not help accepting much of the Johannine doctrine, but he expressed it, as far as possible, in non- Johannine language; and, where he could, he went back to earlier tradition for it, such as he found, for example, in the Epistle of Barnabas."
As between the inferences drawn by "defenders" and by opponents of the Johannine Authorship only a careful study of the literature itself can enable us to judge. What we are now attempting to make clear is the common ground of agreement, the fact that in our day the debate concerns not date, but authorship; because the most radical opponent can easily afford to grant the utmost claims the consen^ative scholar is able to make from the external evidence as respects the mere '^ existence well before the end of the first century of a compact body of teaching like that which we find in the
THE MODERN QUESTION 25
Fourth Gospel." An early example of this coincidence of radical and conservative in the mere matter of dating was furnished by Keim, as already shown. In our day Zahn, *'the prince of conservative scholars," is still arguing for the date 80-90 A. D., for the work in its present form/ while Wellhausen on purely internal grounds is arguing for sub- stantially the same date, with the difference that for him, it only marks the beginnings of a literary process which culmi- nated, through a series of supplementations and reconstruc- tions, not earlier than 135 a. d.,^ in our canonical Fourth Gospel. What Wellhausen thinks of the Johannine Author- ship appears from his statement that Schwartz has "proved" the death of John the son of Zebedee along with James his brother in Jerusalem in 44 a. d.^
Schmiedel, in Professor Sanday's view, "understates the (external) evidence for the Fourth Gospel" prior to the year 180; ^ but he esteems him a competent and sincere scholar, albeit "cold and severe," a "lawyer who pursues his adver- sary from point to point with relentless acumen." ^ Pro- fessor Sanday is "not so sure as he (Schmiedel) is that there is no allusion to the Gospel in Barnabas or Hermas, where it is found {e. g.) by Keim, or in the Elders of Papias, where it is found {e. g.) by Harnack." ^ But at least Schmiedel can- not be ruled out of court as unqualified to pronounce an opinion on the external evidence, and to understand what
1 Einleitung, Bd. II, § 69.
2 Evangelium Johannis, 1908. Jn. 5: 43 contains in Wellhausen's view (pp. 27, 126), a reference to Bar Kochba (132-135 A. d.). The Appendix (Chapter 21) is not considered in the effort at dating, p. 126.
3 Ibid., p. 119. See below, Chapter V.
4 Criticism, p. 240.
5 Ihid., p. 27.
6 Ihid., p. 241. Schmiedel's reasons for disagreeing with Harnack on this point are given in § 45 of his article " John, son of Zebedee," above referred to. On this point, as well as the "allusions" in Barnabas and Hermas, our own judgment is given in Chapter II.
26 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
questions are, and what are not, now regarded as within its capacity, we must hear also the opinion of Schmiedel.
After emphasizing the '' distinction between testimonies ex- pressly favorable to the apostolic authorship, and those which only vouch for the existence of the Fourth Gospel, without conveying any judgment as to its authorship" Schmiedel protests against the heaping up of alleged testimonies of the latter class as if they belonged to the former, as follows :
"Most of the early Christian writings which were held (by apologists of the last generation) to bear testimony to the Fourth Gospel — and of these precisely the oldest and therefore most im- portant— in reality do not justify the claim based upon them.
(a) They show manifold agreements with Jn., but these con- sist only of single, more or less characteristic words or formulas, or other coincidences which might equally well have passed into currency by the channel of oral tradition. The great number of such agreements does in very deed prove that the Johannine formulas and catch-words were very widely diffused, and that the Johannine ideas had been, so to speak, for decennia in the air. We should run great danger of allowing ourselves to be misled, however, if, merely because it so happens that such phrases and turns of expression first became known and familiar to ourselves through the Fourth Gospel, we were at once to conclude that the writers in question can have taken them from that source alone. The true state of the case may very easily be quite the opposite; the words and phrases circulated orally; as they circulated they received an ever more pregnant, pointed, memorable form, and the writer of the Fourth Gospel, not as the first but as the last in the series of transmitters, set them down in a form and in a con- nection which excelled that of the others, and thus his work came to appear as if it were the source of the others." ^
Examination of all these resemblances, and estimate of their bulk and importance as compared with the use made by the same early writers of the other gospels, and as com-
1 Encycl. Bihl., Vol. II, s. v. " John, son of Zebedee," § 45.
THE MODERN QUESTION 27
pared with what on the traditional theory of authorship we might have reason to expect, leads Schmiedel to the follow- ing conclusion:
"If we were dealing with a book attributed to an undistin- guished man, such as, for example, the Epistle of Jude, it could not be held to be very surprising that proofs of acquaintance with it do not emerge until some considerable time after its production. The case is very different, however, with a gospel written by an eye-witness. Papias noticed defects in the Gospel of Mark; the third evangelist noticed them in the writings of all his predecessors {cf. GOSPELS, §§ 65, 153). The writing of an eye-witness would immediately on its pubHcation have been received with the keenest interest, however violently it may have conflicted with the gospels hitherto known. It would at least by these contradictions have attracted attention and necessarily have given occasion to such remarks as that 'the gospels seem to contradict one another' of Claudius Apollinaris (o-Tao-ia^ctv hoKU to. eiJayyeAia) (§§42 and 54&). No mention of the Fourth Gospel which we can recog- nize as such carries us back further than to 140 A. d. As late as 152 (Acad., ist Feb., 1896, p. 98), Justin, who nevertheless lays so great stress upon the 'Memorabilia of the Apostles,' regards Jn. — if indeed he knows it at all — with distrust and appropriates from it but a very few sayings. Therefore, notwithstanding the fact that conservative theology still cherishes the behef that the ex- ternal evidence supplies the best possible guarantee for the genuine- ness of the Fourth Gospel, we find ourselves compelled not only to recognize the justice of the remark of Reuss that ' the incredible trouble which has been taken to collect external evidences only serves to show that there really are none of the sort which were really wanted,' but also to set it up even as a fundamental principle of criticism that the production of the Fourth Gospel must be assigned to the shortest possible date before the time at which traces of acquaintance with it begin to appear. Distinct declara- tions as to its genuineness begin certainly not earlier than about 170 A. D. (§42)."^
1 Ibid., § 49.
28 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
From the foregoing extracts summarizing the conclusions of representative scholars on both sides it will be apparent that the road to agreement does not lie along the Hne of heap- ing up more or less fanciful resemblances to Johannine thought or phraseology, from the period before the Gospel attains to its wide dissemination and authoritative stand- ing about 170 A. D. Neither does it lie along the line of ad- ding to the already abundant testimonies from the period of the half century of conflict following Tatian (170 a. d.), during which its ardent advocates were triumphantly over- powering the weak opposition offered at first to its claims at Rome. The accumulation of alleged resemblances in writers of the former period has been carried already to a point where in many cases they certainly appear to opposing critics, and may well seem to the impartial observer, to be merely fanciful; in other cases they will be held to prove no more than is matter of common consent. The many and wide- spread assertions of the Johannine Authorship of this Gospel, coupled with an employment of it with a frequency and re- gard equal to, or even beyond the other three, which begin to appear about 180 a. d., coincidently with the beginnings of the debate at Rome, will prove indeed — if proof were needed — how acceptable to the Christianity of the time was the type of doctrine of the Ephesian Church, but can throw but little light on the actual origin of the Gospel.
Whether, then, we attribute the Gospel directly, or in- directly to John, or to some wholly different writer, what we seek to-day from the external evidence is not so much the Gospel's ''date" in the old sense of the word; for on this the evidence we have is incapable of shedding more than a very limited amount of Hght. To-day we inquire for its "forma- tive period"; and the "formative period " of the Fourth Gos- pel has already been determined as closely as the data avail- able, or likely to become available, admit. It is approxi-
THE MODERN QUESTION 29
mately the close of the first century and opening decades of the second.^ Proconsular Asia ^ with the great headquarters of the Pauline mission field, Ephesus, as its metropolis, was the region in which the group of writings attributed to the Apostle John first came into circulation, in supplementation of the Epistles of Paul, and probably the Gospels of Mat- thew and Mark and the so-called First Epistle of Peter. In the threefold form of Gospel, Epistles, and Prophecy, or Apocalypse, these writings served the purpose of a canon of New Testament scripture to "the churches of Asia." The ancient tradition^ which assigns the origin of the '^Johan- nine" writings to this region and this approximate date is therefore in substance correct.'*
Since, then, the modern form of the Johannine question is but slightly, if at all, a question of date or provenance, it is a primary condition of clear thinking as regards the external evidence that we distinguish between (i) evidences which bear on "the existence of a body of teaching like that which we find in the Fourth Gospel," evidences which for the period anterior to 181 A. d. consist of mere resemblances to its doctrine or phraseology, and (2) evidences which bear upon the question of authorship; these latter being either confined to the period of dissemination beginning with Tatian and Theophilus (170-180), or consisting of inferences
1 Harnack considers {Chronologie, p. 680) "that the Gospel was not written later than circa no a. d. is an assured historical fact." Moffat (Historical New Testament, p. 495) fixes on 95-115, "nearer the latter year, in all proba- bility, than the former."
2 The designation "Asia" usually applies, in reference to this period, to the Roman province of Asia, the district immediately surrounding Ephesus.
3 Clement of Alexandria {Hypotyposes, on authority of "the early Presby- ters," quoted by Eusebius, Jf. E. VI. xiv. 7) as to the Gospel; Irenaeus {Haer, V, XXX, 3) as to Revelation.
4 On this date and provenance as matter of common consent see, e. g., Stanton, Gospels as Historical Documents, 1903, p. 19, and Schmiedel, Encycl. BibL, s. v. " John, son of Zebedee," §§ 52, 53.
30 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
to be drawn from the mode and measure of unacknowledged employment in the earlier time.
It is also vitally important to define our terminology and to use it consistently with the recognized practice of criticism, not classifying as ''quotations" mere resemblances of thought or language, more or less remote, which may or may not be due to acquaintance with the Fourth Gospel. For mere resemblances of this kind we propose to employ the term "echo," or "influence," reserving the term "quotation" for instances where appeal is directly made to a definite writing so described as to be recognizable, and attributed to a par- ticular author mentioned by name, or othenv'ise defined as the authority to whom appeal is made. The number and importance of "echoes" and "influences" will vary of course with the keenness of the critic's hearing, which in the present case has been stimulated to the utmost by the conviction that "the genuineness of St. John's Gospel is the centre of the position of those who uphold the historical truth of the record of our Lord Jesus Christ given us in the New Testa- ment." ^ The German critic who has been accused of "hearing the grass grow" has abundant opportunity in this field to retaUate upon his English opponent.^ Unfortunately for the latter the accumulation of these echoes and influences, so long as they remain manifestly inferior in mode and meas- ure of employment not only to what, as Schmiedel points out, we should have a right to expect on the theory of Johan- nine authorship, but conspicuously inferior to the employ- ments of Synoptic tradition, creates a new and serious em- barrassment; and the more the witnesses are multiplied the worse the embarrassment becomes. We refer of course to
1 Lightfoot, as quoted above, p. i.
2 A reductio ad absurdum of this type seems to be afforded in the recent work The Four Gospels in early Church History, by Thos. Nicol, D. D., 1908. See the review by W. Bauer in Th. Ltz.y 1909, 7.
THE MODERN QUESTION 31
the objection already noticed in the case of Justin Martyr, and which is commonly spoken of as if it were a phenomenon of his writings alone, viz., the singular neglect of a Gospel which of all other writings would naturally be the first re- sort for Christians in the conditions supposed. The argu- ment is wont to be confined to Justin, because with Justin we reach an age when by common consent the Fourth Gospel must have been already current, and an author, relatively voluminous, who in at least one instance gives highly prob- able evidence of acquaintance with it. But there is no reason save the more doubtful character of the alleged echoes and influences in earlier writers, and the more limited compass of the material, why these should not be included in the ar- gument. Professor Stanton, who alone of the "defenders" makes serious attempts to grapple with the objection from the neglect of John in the earliest period, considers that "the absence of any mention of the Apostle John is very strange only in the Epistles of Ignatius." ^ Others might prefer to say "in Polycarp," considering how all the Johan- nine tradition is made to hang on the alleged relation be- tween John and Polycarp.^ Still others might find the neg- lect of Papias harder to account for,^ seeing that Papias ex- plicitly acknowledges the defective and secondary character of Synoptic tradition. In reality the phenomena are the same in all the writers of the early period, and the more the number is increased by the addition of remote and dubious echoes and influences from still other writers, the more serious becomes the problem. Echoes and influences there may well be. If in mode and measure they corresponded to
1 Gospels as Historical Documents, p. 236. On the silence of Justin's predecessors, and Stanton's explanation see Chapter II.
2 On Polycarp's alleged use of the Fourth Gospel as compared with Paul and the Synoptics see below, Chapter II.
3 So, e. g., Keim, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 197.
32 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
the influential position a writing such as our Fourth Gospel, acknowledged as the work of the last surviving apostle, would necessarily hold, they might conceivably make good the absence of direct quotation or appeal. But even the echoes, instead of becoming clearer and more unmistakable as we approach their supposed origin, ''tremble away into silence" and leave us bewildered. Starting with Justin, whose one resemblance in employing Johannine phraseology to combine the deutero-Pauline doctrine of the "bath of re- generation" with the teaching of Jesus,^ makes us practi- cally certain that he was really acquainted with the Fourth Gospel, we pass backward through Valentinus, Papias, Basil- ides, Polycarp, Ignatius, Hermas, to Barnabas, the Didache and Clement of Rome. In Papias as in Justin we have true "quotation" of Revelation, and probable use of First John, with a much disputed possibihty, or probability, of employment of the Fourth Gospel." As to Basilides (133 A. D.) and Valentinus (150-160 A. d.) Sanday himself can go no further than to say, "There remains in my own mind a slight degree of probability that they used the Gospel." ^ In Polycarp there is found one "battle-cry" from First John. In Ignatius a very few much disputed echoes and a diffused
1 After describing the rite of baptism in the name of the Trinity Justin adds {Apol. I, Ixi), "For Christ also said, Unless ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. But that it is impossible for those who are once born to enter into the wombs of those who brought them forth is evident to all." The phrase {dvay^wTjais) by which he refers to the doctrine is that of Tit. 3:5 and I Pt. 1:3, 23. As to his relation to Jn. 3:3-5 Drummond (p. 87) justly says, "It cannot be denied that this passage immediately re- minds one of Jn. 3:3-5, and all critics, as far as I know, acknowledge that there is some relation which is more than accidental between the two pas- sages. As little can it be denied that it is not quoted verbally from the Fourth Gospel, but has variations both in language and meaning."
2 On this see Chapter II.
3 Criticism, p. 247. On the evidence from these two Gnostic writers see Chapter II.
THE MODERN QUESTION S3
and equally disputed influence of the Gospel. In Hermas Stanton thinks he can detect traces, and Sanday is ''not so sure" as Schmiedel that there are none.^ As to Barnabas his feeling is the same, although even the famous Oxford committee, who have certainly not erred in the direction of radicahsm, "must regard Barnabas as unacquainted with the Fourth Gospel." ^ He finds also in the eucharistic prayer of the Didache sl resemblance in the phrase, "Remem- ber, Lord, thy Church to deliver it from all evil and to per- fect it in thy love" to I Jn. 4: 17, 18; Jn. 17: 23, which again, in spite of the silence of the Oxford Society's Committee, he thinks "cannot be wholly accidental." ^ None of these really responsible "defenders" consents to follow the rash echo-chasers who wander up and down the disappointing pages of Clement of Rome.^ Now in answer to th^se phenomena of steady decrease
1 Ibid., p. 241. On Stanton's supposed traces in Hermas see Chapter II.
2 The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, Report of the Committee of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology, 1905, p. 23.
3 Criticism, p. 246. The committee report three passages {Did. ix, 2, 3 and X, 3) which "seem reminiscent of Johannine ideas and terminology." They decline, however, to class these among even probable employments. The phrase quoted by Sanday, if its pedigree must be traced, is more nearly related to Eph. 3:14; 5:32 than to the Johannine passages.
4 Stanton (Gospels, etc.) is conscious of the serious objection to a date so early as 80-90 a. d. (Zahn, Sanday) which emerges from the silence of Clement of Rome, who, as he says (p. 18), "gives no clear sign that he knew this Gospel." Stanton would account for this by a date "not earlier than the last decade of the first century" (p. 238). The only resemblance noticed by him in Clement is referred to in a footnote on p. 18. "The thought" of Clem, xlii, i seems to him to "correspond closely" to Jn. 20:21. No re- semblances are adduced in the Apology of Aristides nor in the so-called Second Epistle of Clement. These with Clement of Rome cover a space somewhat greater than the Gospel of Matthew. Stanton (p. 152, note) agrees with Harnack in dating the Epistle to Diognetus, cc, i-x, ca. 200 A. d., and cc, xi-xii still later. Lightfoot's claim of an echo of Jn. in this epistle, which Edw. Abbott endorses (see above, p. 22) may therefore be disre- garded.
Fourth Gospel — 3
34 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
in the employment and recognition of the Fourth Gospel by those who might reasonably be supposed to know it, as we approach the date and region where its currency and au- thority should be at a maximum, it is not enough to utter general disparagements of ''the argument from silence"; because the external evidence, from the moment we pass into the debated period, back of the time of express and undis- puted quotations, becomes of necessity an "argument from silence." To quarrel with that is to quarrel with the external evidence for being external; and it is by challenge of the ''de- fenders" that we have entered this field. If it were a mere idiosyncracy of Justin Martyr it might perhaps be enough to say with Sanday: "The whole chapter of accidents is open before us," and to commend it as "sounder method to fall back with Dr. Drummond simply upon our ignorance." ^ But we are dealing with a whole group of writers, many of whom could not have been ignorant of the supposed work of John and all of whom had the strongest motives for referring to it. It does not seriously affect this argument to demand an estimate of "the total bulk of the literature on which the argument is based." ^ With the authors named there might very properly be included some of the later books of the New Testament;^ yet even. without these, the "thin octavo volume" of which Professor Sanday speaks"^ which should include all second century Christian writers down to the period of real quotations, would bulk considerably larger than the New Testament itself, and is at all events sufficient to exhibit a contrast in mode and measure of employment to
1 Sanday, Criticism, p. 247.
2 Ibid., p, 47.
3 Even Stanton, who admits the validity of this inclusion, passes over un- mentioned the important epistle of First Peter (90-110 a. d, ?), Gospels, etc., p. 165.
4 Ibid., p. 39.
THE MODERN QUESTION 35
which not even the most unwilling eye can be blind, between the Synoptic Gospels and the Fourth.
To what extent, then, has Principal Drummond accom- modated himself in his momentous inferences from the ex- ternal evidence to the Modern Form of the Question? His most jubilant and indeed extravagant commender — for in the matter of commendation even Sanday can be extrava- gant— admits that Drummond's book gives the appearance of being ''written round" certain articles contributed by the author to the debates of twenty or thirty years ago, and that there is a certain inadequacy about an argument in this field which does not so much as recognize the existence of Schmiedel and JuHcher, two of the leading critics on the opposing side.^ We may add that Drummond's discussion of the citations of Justin with which we are now concerned is equally silent as to Bousset whose treatment of this sub- ject ^ would probably interest the modern reader more than those of Hilgenfeld ^ and Thoma,^ and gives only nominal at- tention even to Edwin Abbott.
But Sanday is specially filled with admiration for the "free- dom" of this author "from all dogmatic prepossessions," his "judicial habit of weighing all that is to be said on both sides," his "impartiality." ^ And this is not greatly hindered even by a recognition that
"On the whole question of the external evidence, Dr. Drum-
1 Sanday in Hihhert Journal, Vol. II (1903-04), pp. 616 ff.
2 Abbott in Enc. Bihl., s. v. "Gospels." Bousset in Evangeliencitate Jusiins des Martyrers, 1891. A note on p. 86, referring to Abbott's articles in the Modern Review for July and October, 1882, and another on p. 130, referring to Encycl. Bihl. ii, 1836, are found. For an adequate bibliography of the subject see Preuschen, Antilegomena, 1901, p. 93.
3 Kritische Untersuchungen fiber die Evangelien Justins, 1850.
4 Justins* literarisches Verhdltniss zu Paulus u. zum Johannesevangelium, in Ltz.fiir wiss. Theol., 1875.
6 Criticism^ pp. 33-36.
36 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
mond's view might almost be called optimistic. He endorses af- firmatively almost every item of evidence that has ever been alleged." ^
For ourselves we yield not even to Sanday himself in admiration of Principal Drummond's scholarship, and we are sure of his sincerity of conviction; but we cannot admit that an author, however learned and sincere, w^ho has merely "written round" the brief he presented as an advocate some thirty years ago, recasting it into the form of a judicial ver- dict, can be considered to occupy a position of superior im- partiality. In applying again his old-time arguments against modern wTiters whom he seems to regard as occupying sub- stantially the same position as his quondam antagonists, Principal Drummond is doubtless free from the embarrass- ments which beset scholars of less liberal ecclesiastical com- munions. But few temptations to a biased judgment are found in practice to be more effective with the scholar than consistency with his own opinion once published, and in this respect none could be more thoroughly committed in advance. We recognize indeed a studied reserve in the phraseology wherein Principal Drummond so summarizes his present conclusions as not to seem to make unreasonable demands. It may account for the praise accorded by Pro- fessor Sanday to his " impartiahty " and ''judicial habit." But this pertains rather to the form. That which affects the substance is the "optimism" which "endorses affirmatively almost every item of evidence which has ever been alleged," and disregards the most recent and ablest presentations of the opposing case.
As the matter is vital, and Principal Drummond's book is expressly put forward as an example of judicial impartiality, at once refuting and putting to shame the superficial and
1 See " Drummond on the Fourth Gospel," Hihhert Journal, Vol. II (1903-04), p. 615.
THE MODERN QUESTION 37
biased judgments of the opposing school, it becomes im- perative that the dissent we have just expressed from Pro- fessor Sanday's lavish praise be supported by direct citation of fact. We may use for this purpose the very passage of Drummond's book which Professor Sanday twice adduces as "perhaps the most important and the most far-reaching of all the corrections of current practice." ^ It represents the nearest approach the book affords to direct treatment of the modern form of the question.
"But why, then, it may be asked, has Justin not quoted the Fourth Gospel at least as often as the other three? I cannot tell, any more than I can tell why he has never named the supposed authors of his Memoirs, or has mentioned only one of the parables, or made no reference to the Apostle Paul, or nowhere quoted the apocalypse, though he believed it to be an apostolic and propheti- cal work. His silence may be due to pure accident, or the book may have seemed less adapted to his apologetic purposes; but considering how many things there are about which he is silent, we cannot admit that the argiimentum a silentio possesses in this case any validity. " ^
Passing over the objection that it is not the silence of Justin alone, but of all his predecessors as well, which is in question, we confine ourselves to two points of the above comparison.^ The reader is clearly intended to infer that Justin's neglect to appeal to the Gospel of John is paralleled by a failure (i) to "name the supposed authors of the Mem- oirs" and (2) to "quote from the Apocalypse." From this the conclusion would naturally be that Justin, in strange
1 Criticism, p. 33. Cf. Hibbert Journal, Vol. II, p. 614.
2 Sanday, Criticism, etc., p. 33, quoting Drummond, Character, etc., pp. 157 f.
3 On the absence of "reference to" the Apostle Paul see below, p. 93. The careful reader will note that the use of the Pauline Epistles, of which there are a number of instances in Justin, is not excluded by the term "ref- erence." Without very careful handling Principal Drummond's argument will break.
38 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
contrast to his age, cared little for apostolic authority, at least in relation to those he was addressing, and in particular might wholly neglect to avail himself of that of the Apostle John, even when it lay at his command. What now are the real facts? (i) In Justin's time, or even earlier, it was known that none of the Synoptic Gospels in their current form could be directly ascribed to apostoHc authors. "Mark" and "Luke" were not names to conjure with; "Matthew's" could be applied only indirectly to the current Greek Gospel. In later times church fathers torment the ancient tradition in various ways to evade, or at least to minimize, the un- welcome admission.^ Instead of being indifferent to the apostolic authority of his Memoirs, Justin adopts just that form of description, "Memoirs of the apostles," "Memoirs called gospels, which were written by apostles and their com- panions", which enables him to make the maximum claim of apostolic authority, without directly doing violence to the tradition. These Memoirs he uses as authoritative, quoting and employing them, according to Drummond's own count, some 1 70 times.^ Is the mode and measure of his employ- ment of these, then, really parallel to his treatment of the Fourth Gospel, which he has never referred to, and from which even Drummond can find but three "apparent quota- tions"?
(2) But we are more particularly to infer from a compar- ison of Justin's treatment of the Apocalypse with his treat- ment of the Fourth Gospel, that he did not care to invoke the authority of the Apostle John even in defense of that doctrine of the Logos and the divinity of Christ, which Drum- mond finds tinctured throughout with "influences" indic- ative of its Johannine origin. Let us see how this second analogy holds.
1 See, e. g., the quotation below, p. 84, from TertuUian, adv, Marcionem.
2 See above p. 23, note.
THE MODERN QUESTION 39
First of all we are repeatedly informed that Justin "has nowhere quoted the Apocalypse." Here, as in the other cases, the whole argument depends upon the exact choice of terms. Drummond does not deny, he rather takes pains to assert, that Justin employs Rev. 20-21. He does not deny that Justin appeals to it hy name as ''a revelation." He admits that he rejers to it as authoritative and names its author. It is the "prophecy" of "one of ourselves, John, an apostle of Christ." ^ But all this in the case of Revelation is not suffi- cient to meet the high requirements of the term "quotation." That term Principal Drummond reserves for three corre- spondences with the Fourth Gospel, one of which as an ad- mitted "echo" we have already discussed.^ It is the reference to baptism as typifying " regeneration," for Christ also said, " Unless ye be regenerated {avaryevvrjOrjTe) ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." There is here no mention of John, no appeal to his authority, no reference to so much as the existence of a writing. Some even remain doubtful whether in the passage Justin was influenced at all by this Gospel.^ Such, however, is the first of Drummond's three "quotations"; for we must remember that they are expressly distinguished as such from the mere alleged resemblances.
The second "quotation" is not even a probable echo. It is only a possible influence. In his Dialogue (ch. Ixxxviii) Justin refers to the Baptist's testimony to Christ, using the Synoptic form, but with the peculiarity of employing the first person :
"Even he himself cried, I am not the Christ, but a voice crying; for there shall come he who is stronger than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to take off."
1 Dial. Ixxxi. See Drummond's elaboration of the two supposed analogies of neglect on p. 159.
2 Above, p. 32.
3 So Bousset, whose work, however, is not referred to by Drummond.
40 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
This might be due to unconscious reminiscence of Jn. i : 20, 23; but, as Edwin Abbott had already pointed out in the very article referred to by Drummond a few pages before,^ it may equally well be due to the influence of Acts 13:25:
"And as John was fulfilling his course he said, What suppose ye that I am ? I am not he, but there cometh one after me, the shoes of whose feet I am not worthy to unloose."
Nevertheless to Drummond this is still a "quotation" of the Fourth Gospel, by the author who "has nowhere quoted the Apocalypse."
The third "quotation" is the furthest of all from deserv- ing the name. Several pages ^ are occupied with an elab- orate effort to insert a Johannine foundation under Justin's language. In his First Apology Justin maintains that there was a fulfilment of Is. 58: 2, "they now ask of me judgment" in the fact that the Jews "in mockery set him (Jesus) upon the judgment seat and said. Judge us." Such an incident is related nowhere in any of our four Gospels. But in a frag- ment found in 1892 of the Ev. Petri ^ which in the same manner as Luke transfers the story of the mockery of Jesus to the account of "the Jews," it is related that "they arrayed him in purple, and set him on a throne of judgment, say- ing, Judge justly, O King of Israel." Drummond, however, will not admit that Justin can be referring to this, although it presents both points of correspondence with the Isaianic passage, viz., that it is "the Jews" who are guilty of the mockery, and that the nature of it was that they "asked of him judgment." Drummond still clings to the contention "he had supported long before the discovery of Ev. Petri, that Justin's language can only be accounted for as a mis- understanding of the statement of Jn. 19:13 that ^^ Pilate
1 The argument for the "quotation" occurs on p. 149, the reference to Encycl. Bihl. ii, 1836, on p. 130.
2 Pp. 15&-152.
THE MODERN QUESTION 41
led Jesus forth and sat down on the judgment seat." He gives instances to prove that the word "sat down" (i/cdOiaev) could be used transitively. Whence Justin derived the statement that the Jews said "Judge us" he does not ex- plain. As regards this alleged "quotation" of the Fourth Gospel we will simply refer to another "defender" whose scholarship is warmly and justly praised by Professor San- day, but who, as Sanday seems to think, does not rise quite to Drummond's level of judicial impartiahty and lofty su- periority to dogmatic prepossession. Stanton's "defense," appearing but a few weeks before Drummond's, had given the following verdict on the alleged "quotation":
"It has in the past been thought by some ^ that Justin had come to imagine it through a misunderstanding or misremembering of Jn. 19: 13. But any appearance of probability which this explanation may once have had has now been destroyed through our finding it again in 'Peter.' " ^
Whether we follow or reject the acute, and to the present writer convincing, argument of Stanton that the true deriva- tion of the "fulfilment," both in Ev. Petri and in Justin, is the Acts oj Pilate, the judgment of Stanton on the fate of Drummond's argument is manifestly true. A comparison of Drummond's use of the word "quotation" as applied to Justin's use of the Gospel and Revelation respectively will enable the reader to form his own judgment. With it we conclude our examination of the pattern paragraph.
It is indeed important that we distinguish mere "echoes" and "influences" such as make no reference to a recogniz- able document, and mention no author; from "quotations," which describe some recognizable written source, and ap- peal to the author by name as authority. In the former case
1 A footnote reads, "First, it would seem, by Drummond, Theol. Rev. for 1877, p. 238."
2 Gospels as Historical Documents, p. 99.
42 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
it is equally important that we exercise the keenest, most impartial, most critical judgment as to the mode and measure of employment of the source. Such impartial verdicts, how- ever, are not illustrated in the statement that Justin "has nowhere quoted the Apocalypse," but has three apparent "quotations" from the Fourth Gospel. They are not at- tained by the mere "writing round" of arguments originally framed against the Tubingen School and the author of Supernatural Religion. They are not likely to be found in one who "endorses affirmatively almost every item of evi- dence which has ever been alleged." The real greatness and splendor of scholarship of the venerable Principal of Manchester College, his critical insight, his judicial poise, have been proved on many an occasion; proofs of them re- main in many parts of his really great and scholarly defense of the Johannine Authorship of the Fourth Gospel; but these qualities, or at least all of these quaHties, are not con- spicuous in his treatment of the external evidence and the argument from silence as these are presented in the Modem Form of the Question.
CHAPTER II
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES
We have seen in our consideration of the most highly lauded of recent presentations of the external evidence in favor of the Johannine authorship that a judgment on the question in its modern form requires first of all a separation of evidence which only bears upon the existence at an early period of "a compact body of teaching like that which we find in the Fourth Gospel," which at best can be no more than ''a considerable step towards the belief that the Gospel existed in writing," from evidence bearing on the question of authorship. In the nature of the case evidence bearing on the authorship must be found mainly within the compass of the Gospel itself. External evidence, however, will have something to say on this point also. If on the one hand, the employments of the Gospel in the region and period of its origin are such in mode and measure as the claims made in its behalf would lead us to expect, this may to an extent make good the admitted lack of explicit appeal to "John" as an evangelic authority. If, per contra, there is a noteworthy silence where employment was most to be expected, and that not in one church father, but in a considerable group; if in addition this silence extends not only to the Gospel, but to the very presence of John in Asia, and to the whole body of tradition regarding the connection of the Apostle John with the anonymous writings attributed to him; if the earliest traces of this tradition are found in the period marked by strenuous advocacy on the one side of "the fourfold gospel" and equally strenuous denial, on the other side of "that
43
44 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
aspect which is presented by John's Gospel," it being prin- cipally adduced by an ardent champion of the "fourfold gospel," who at the same time is anything but an accurate scholar — then the bearing of the external evidence can cer- tainly not be considered altogether favorable to these claims. The mere fact that it is an argument from silence, subject to the weakness of all negative evidence, is merely a warn- ing to rely on internal evidence for its appropriate function, and upon the external for that which is appropriate to it. Silence is all that can be expected in the case.
Our summary of the alleged ''quotations" from John in 90-155 A. D., will already have justified in some measure the remark of Reuss that "the incredible pains taken to collect external evidences only serve to show that there really are none of the sort which were really wanted." It is better, however, that we adduce on this matter of alleged "echoes" and "influences" of the "Johannine" writings, more im- partial judgments than that of Drummond, before proceed- ing to the question what may be inferred from early state- ments and early silences regarding the alleged activity of the Apostle John, in literature or otherwise, during the period in question.
Sanday, as we have seen,^ is "not so sure" as Schmiedel that there is "no allusion to the Fourth Gospel in Barnabas or Hermas, where it is found (e. g.) by Keim, or in the Elders of Papias, where it is found {e. g.) by Harnack." As regards Papias an "allusion" or two to the Fourth Gospel, or to some of its traditions would certainly be anything but sur- prising. So meagre a use — just sufficient to make it certain that besides the First Epistle he also, Hke his contemporary Justin, knew the Fourth Gospel, and appealed to Revelation — if confirmed, will only increase the marvel of his silence when dealing in his Preface with the relative reliabihty of
1 Above, p. 33.
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 45
apostolic sources of authority for evangelic tradition. This question of traditions regarding John in Asia must be treated by itself, Papias' witness being by far the most important factor.^ But we must not neglect possible echoes and em- ployments of the debated writings, for if these attain a suffi- cient volume to indicate high regard for the Fourth Gospel, the phenomenon of silence regarding its author may be in a measure counteracted. Let us, then, hear the testimony of other impartial witnesses regarding Barnabas and Hermas, and investigate the nature of Papias' possible employment of the Gospel.
It is true that the erratic and briUiant Keim, as if he would accentuate the paradox of his early dating, writes as follows regarding the influence of this Gospel upon Barnabas:
" However clearly it may be shown that the Epistle of Barnabas gives no narrative, not a single word out of this Gospel,^ is not acquainted with the idea of the Logos, makes an independent use of the watchword of the water and the blood, or of the types of Christ in the Old Testament, or, above all, of the serpent that was lifted up for believers in the wilderness; ^ yet the inner sphere of thought of this Epistle corresponds with the Gospel in so many ways, both in general features and details, that scientific criti- cism is compelled to infer a connection."
Connection there is, and influence there is in the ''inner sphere of thought." But with what? — It would have done more credit to the common sense of Keim to remember that the influences which he traces in these vague generalities
1 See Chapter IV.
2 As against twelve from the Synoptics in Chapters i-xii alone, without counting the copious use of Matthew in the "other knowledge and teaching" (the Two Ways) incorporated in Chapters xviii-xxi.
3 Justin, who borrows this type from Barnabas along with much more from the same context {Dial, xc-xcvii) remains notably unaffected by "John's" use of the same. See Abbott, 5. -y. "Gospels," Enycl. Bibl. II,
§ I02.
46 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
are quite as easily derived from the Pauline system by way of the Alexandrianism of Hebrews, an epistle of which Barnabas makes undeniable use, as by way of the Fourth Gospel with whose Logos-doctrine, as Keim himself admits, Barnabas is ''not acquainted." ^ As against Professor San- day's uncertainty as to whether he may venture to claim the alleged evidences in Barnabas we may set the judgment of his own Oxford Committee already quoted, ^ confirmed by that of Professor Stanton,^ that it ''contains no distinct traces of the two other Synoptics (besides Matthew) or of St. John."
Keim's attempt to find a literary relation between the exhortations of Hermas to "keep the commandments of Jesus " and the neo-legalism of I John ^ shows equal inat- tention to the distinction between commonplaces of the period, and distinctive features. Neo-legaHsm is just as common among church writers of this period as antinomianism among heretics. Now Hermas has direct Uterary connection with the Epistle of James, in which neo-legahsm reaches its climax; whereas if he coincides at any point of his long and tedious allegories with a phrase or idea of John, it is so utterly different in form, context, and application, as to make ac- quaintance with the Fourth Gospel altogether improbable. Again we may set against Professor Sanday's uncertainty the careful and judicial verdict of the Oxford Committee,^ who place all four of the alleged resemblances in the category of lowest probability (class d). The following is their judg- ment of that one of the four which reaches the highest de-
1 It is one of the defects of Keim's view that it attributes an undue measure of "Alexandrianism" to the Fourth Gospel. Paulinism was not confined to Ephesus for its development.
2 Above, p. 33.
3 Gospels as Historical Documents, p. 2^.
4 Op. ciL, p. 195.
5 op. cit., p. 123.
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 47
gree of plausibility [the gate {irvXrj) of the tower, Similitudes IX, xii. I, interpreted as "the Son of God," recalling "I am the door {Ovpd) of the sheep" in Jn. 10: 7]:
" The figure of a gate admitting to the tower which represents the Church is a natural one, and need not be borrowed.^ Never- theless the passage has a Johannine coloring; but whether this is sufficient to prove a literary connection may be reasonably questioned. Such sentiments must have spread among Christians apart from direct literary influence." ^
Stanton ^ finds other resemblances in Hermas in addition to the above supposed trace of Jn. 14: 6, quoting Mand. iii, i, as follows :
" Love truth and let nothing but truth proceed out of thy mouth, that the Spirit, which God made to dwell in this flesh, may be found true in the sight of all men, and thus shall the Lord who dwelleth in thee be glorified (Soiaa-drja-eTaL), for the Lord is true (aXr}0Lv6<s) in every word, and with him there is no falsehood."
Stanton rests his case on the words he has here italicized; for, as he properly notes, the phrase ''the Spirit which God made to dwell in this flesh" is not Johannine, but from Jas. 4:5. But these very italicized words are used in a sense contrary to the Johannine, since the glorification here sought is a glorification, i. e., praising, of God by men, as in I Pt. 4:11; Mt. 5:16; not as in Jn. 17:10 the raising of Jesus to his heavenly state. Similarly the word aXrjOLvo^ is applied in
1 The allegory is the common N, T. one of the Church as "a building of God." That the building (in this case a tower) should have a gate [ttiJXt;] is certainly not surprising; nor, in view of Mt. 7:13, 14, need it be surprising that a Roman Christian of 140 a. d. should thus allegorize "the Son of God."
2 The spread of this particular sentiment: Christ the gate (tti/Xt;), apart at least from the literary influence of the Fourth Gospel, is proved by its occur- rence twice in Hegesippus {ap. Euseb. H. E. II, xxiii, 8, 12) in the form rl% 7] dipa rod "Itjctoi; and once in Clem. Horn, iii, 52 f. ^Eyd iifiL rj tti/Xt? ttJs ^w/js- Mt. 7 :i3, 14, seems to be the common starting point so far as Christian literature is concerned.
3 Op. cit., pp. 43, 46 f.
48 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
Hermas to truth speaking, and not, as in Jn. 7 128; I Jn. 5 :2o; 2:27, to action and being. ^ The expressions, "the witness which he witnessed" and "the law which he received from his Father" in Sim. v. have equally little of the Johannine character. "The law" which the Son received has precisely the character of the neo-legalism of Matthew and James ^ in contrast with the Johannine. In Jn. 15:12 we have still the Pauline sense of "the law of Christ"; the new command- ment is love. In the very same context of Hermas {Sim. v. 5) it is defined to be "the commandments {evroXal) which he (God) gave to his people through his Son," and the special application, apropos of which the whole allegory is given, is the law of jasting, together with the merit or reward to be gained by doing more than the written requirement. The "witness" witnessed by God to the Servant, as we shall see, is a phrase from Hebrews, not from the Fourth Gospel. No distinctive character whatever can be claimed for the remain- ing two phrases from Sim. ix, "The seal is the water (of baptism). ... To them, therefore, was this seal preached, and they used it, in order that they might enter into the kingdom of God." ^ Indeed, Stanton himself seems to rest very little weight upon these alleged resemblances, which are similarly treated by the committee. That which he alone deems worthy of separate consideration is the phrase concerning the Servant [explained by Hermas himself to be the (angelic?) being who assumed flesh, and because of his earthly service was thereafter exalted to partnership with "the preexistent Spirit which created the whole creation"].
1 The Johannine passages compared are those adduced by Stanton.
2 Cf. Mt. 28:20; Jas. 1:25; 2:8.
3 Baptism (of the spirit) is referred to as the "seal" in Eph. 1:13, and often thereafter. In the phrase from Hermas we are supposed to be reminded of Jn. 3:5. But what other phrase than "enter into the kingdom of God" could Hermas be expected to use? Cf. Mk. 9: 47; 10:23-25, etc. Baptism is the token of admission in Mt. 28:19; Mk. 16:16 and universally.
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES , 49
In the parable, which is simply an adaptation of the Synoptic parable of the Vineyard,^ the friends (angels) re- joice at ''the witness which the Master (God) witnessed to him." This Stanton ^ designates "a characteristic Johannine thought and expression," comparing Jn. 5:32. And yet but a page or two further on he notes with interest the "signs of knowledge (in Hermas) of the Epistle to the He- brews," whidi "taken with that of Clement of Rome, shows that it must have been early held in high esteem in the Church of Rome." Had the thought and expression been called characteristic of Hebrews, or even of Clement of Rome in an adoptive sense, the remark would have been just; for it is by this phrase "God bearing witness to him" that Hebrews constantly [7:8; 10:15; 11:2, 4 (twice), 5, 39] refers to the favorable verdict of Scripture, and Clement of Rome follows suit (xvii, i, 2; xviii, i; xix, i, etc.). "Wit- ness" is indeed a favorite term of the Johannine writings; but the sense in which it is applied to Christ in Jn. 5:37 is that of Old Testament prediction, not of favorable verdict. Of the four resemblances adduced from Hermas by the Oxford Committee three are identical with the first of those already considered from Stanton. The fourth is a reference in Vis. II, ii, 8, to those who by "denying their Lord are rejected from their life." This is compared with Jn. n : 25, or 14: 6 "I am the life." But the committee themselves say:
"The only connexion is in the word ^wtJ ('life'), and it is by no means certain that it refers to Christ in Hermas; in any case the verse in Colossians (Col. 3 : 4) is sufficient to show that the ex- pression need not be borrowed from John. The sentiment of the passage is closer to the Synoptics."
Stanton's disregard of this bit of "evidence" is certainly justified.
iMt. 21:33 ff.= Mk. 12:1 ff.= Lk. 20:9 flf.
2 The committee do not refer to this resemblance.
Fourth Gospel — 4
50 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
It has not been our object in thus considering at length the alleged traces of John in Barnabas and Hermas, at the possible cost of wearying the reader, merely to justify the statement that ''the incredible pains taken to collect 'evi- dences' of this kind only serve to show that there are none of the sort which were really wanted." We must indeed anticipate such a result, at least for the Shepherd of Hermas, if nothing more than the above can be evoked^ from a work of its character and dimensions.^ But we have no mere polemic interest in view. Indeed, so far as date is concerned, Hermas might perfectly well have known the Gospel, or at least its "body of teaching." Our real interest is to show that outside of "Asia" even the meager influences attributed to this "body of teaching" are not really present.^ In regard to Clement of Rome (95-125 a. d.) and the homily known as Second Clement (140 A. d. ?) which Stanton thinks of Corinthian origin, the claim is not seriously advanced. Nor does it seem to be in the case of the Apology oj Aristides (Athens, 125-126 A. D. ?) from which Professor Stanton ad- duces only the general reference to the doctrine of the Incar- nation of the Son of God as supported by both oral and writ- ten gospel.^ Sanday's very dubious appeal to the Didache, or rather to the liturgy incorporated in the Didache, whose derivation is wholly unknown, we have already considered."* Until recently much was made of alleged employments in the fragment of the Ev. Petri, found at Akhmim in 1892. On this we need only cite the able and impartial judgment of Stanton,^ after the most careful discussion yet given to the
1 The Shepherd is somewhat longer than the four longest Pauline Epistles.
2 Cf. Harnack, Chronologic, p. 680, note 3.
3 Op. cit., p. 51. Professor Stanton does not seem to claim a reference to the Fourth Gospel, nor does such appear to be present.
4 Chapter I, p, ^^. On the Epistle to Diognetus see ibid.
5 Gospels, etc., p. 121.
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 51
question of the use of the Canonical Gospels in Ev, Petri, and of the latter by Justin :
''The dependence of 'Peter' upon St. John more particularly has been rendered very doubtful. We have seen strong reason for thinking that various points in 'Peter,' which were supposed to have been derived from the latter, were in reality taken from the Pilate-document (the Acts oj Pilate cited by Justin).
" It is, however, to be added that the question of the relation of 'Peter' to our Gospels has lost the greater part of its interest. Since Justin does not refer to the work, the earliest trace of its existence is Serapion's notice of it at the end of the century. It may have been composed circ. a. d. 170-80."
What, then, becomes of acquaintance with the Fourth Gospel outside of "Asia" in 100 to 150 a. d. ? The only writings which might still present an exception to the rule of silence are those of the Gnostic heresiarchs to which Prin- cipal Drummond has devoted some of the most important and learned chapters of his book. These we must consider; for Professor Sanday, after sympathetic perusal of Drum- mond's ardent advocacy of Johannine quotations in BasiHdes and Valentinus ^ is led to the confession: "There remains in my own mind a slight degree of probabihty that they used the Gospel." ^ On this measure of success in converting a devout believer Principal Drummond should be congratu- lated. Others will not go so far.
As regards Valentinus, who was at first a disciple of Mar- cion, and flourished in Rome "between a. d. 138 and 160" ^ it would hardly affect the case were Drummond really able to make good his contention that not the later members of the school alone, Theodotus in Antioch, Ptolemaeus and Heracleon, contemporaries of Irenaeus (186-196 a. d.) in
1 Character and Authorship, Chapters VIII and X. 3 Criticism, p. 247. 3 Drummond, p. 266.
52 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
Rome, but Valentinus himself is also referred to as using the Fourth Gospel.^ The poHcy of Valentinus in the use of evangelic writings, like that of Apelles his "fellow-disciple of Marcion and fellow-deserter," as Tertullian calls him, made radical departure from that of Marcion, who had vio- lently opposed the gospels employed by the orthodox, and introduced one of his own formed by mutilation of Luke. Valentinus and Apelles relied on interpretation, avoiding mutilation, and winning converts from the Church on the basis of its own canon.^ Valentinus himself, the founder of the new school, can hardly have departed from Marcionism much earlier than 150-160 A. d., so that his taking up the Fourth Gospel — ij a fact — belongs simply among the phe- nomena of rapid dissemination after 160 A. d. which we have later to consider.
As regards Basilides the case is different. This heresiarch is said to have flourished in the reign of Hadrian (11 7-138 A. D.) and seems to have estabhshed a school in Alexandria, subsequently led by his son and disciple Isidore. Harnack dates this event about 133 A. d. We may perhaps infer from Basilides' use of Aramaic names ^ that he came originally, like Cerdo, the Gnostic teacher of Marcion, from Antioch,
1 Stanton, Gospels, etc., pp. 64-69, will not even go so far as Sanday in thinking that "Drummond has made good his position." He agrees with Zahn about the "suspiciously modern stamp" affecting Hippolytus' extracts, giving " color to the supposition that he has a treatise by Isidore before him" and feels that the same doubt applies to the alleged references of Valentinus.
2 Tertullian contrasts Valentinus who "used the whole instrument (canon) " with Marcion the mutilator. "Marcion," he says, "used the knife, Valen- tinus the pen. Yet Valentinus took away more by his subtle addition of false meanings than Marcion with his open violence." De PrcBser. Her., p. 38.
3 Agrippa Castor, an early opponent of Basilides, said that he " named as prophets to himself Barcabbas and Barcoph, appointing also some other non-existent persons," and that he "assigned to them barbarous appellations to astonish those who stand in awe of such things." Eusebius, H. E. IV. vii.
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 53
the home of heresy in Ignatius' day (110-117). He is classed by Eusebius with Saturninus the Antiochian as a pupil of Menander the successor of Simon Magus. Hippolytus in his Refutation of all Heresies (220 A. d.) treats the school as a whole, and frequently employs the formula cfyrjcrL of individ- ual teachings which are thus in some sense attributed to the master, but he affords no proof that he knew the Alexandrian heresiarch of a century before his time otherwise than through the VN^ritings of others. Irenaeus, who also deals with the school, though not without occasional references in the sin- gular ^ displays his usual unscholarly method and seems to be borrowing his information largely from the Syntagma of Justin Martyr. It is possible to infer with Drummond that his source ''may have contained statements which were avowedly quoted from Basilides." We may say the same of Hippolytus, with the difference that Hippolytus was a scholar, Irenaeus an unscholarly plagiarist and polemic. In either case we get very little help. Clement of Alexandria, however, displays direct knowledge of the founder of the Alexandrian heresy in the heresiarch's own work; for he quotes at length from the twenty-third book of Basilides' Exegetica,^ and in some instances expressly distinguishes be- tween the teaching of the founder, and of the later disciples. In the absence of such discrimination on the part of Hip- polytus it becomes impossible to separate the two instances in which he quotes from his unnamed authority references to the Fourth Gospel with employment of the formula (prja-i,^ from the many which are taken from Isidore. Even the
1 His habitual plurals are interrupted by two instances of ait. As Drum- mond shows (p. 321) Irenaeus is positively incorrect in more than one in- stance in substituting the later teachings of the school for the earlier.
2 In the Stromata, iv, 81-88.
3 Drummond himself has shown (p. 297) that the same Hippolytus uses this formula <i>rt<Ti, to quote the general doctrine of the Naassene heretics without reference to any individual.
54 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
much desired proof that Hippolytus really means Basilides as subject of the verb "he says" would decide nothing until we were sure he had the means, as well as the intention, of making the discrimination. The case becomes the more hopeless when we observe that, as Drummond himself ad- mits, in at least one instance, and probably more, Hippoly- tus has wrongly ascribed to the earlier Basilideans "an incongruous feature derived from his knowledge of the later and degenerate school." ^
But' we must go further. As Windisch ^ has shown, in opposition to Zahn,^ the two authorities who actually do quote for us from BasiHdes' own work, Clement of Alex- andria and the Acta Archelai et Manetis, make it highly probable that BasiUdes' gospel was not our fourth, but a more or less variant form of Luke. The fragment quoted by the Acta from the thirteenth book of Basilides' Exegetica is an interpretation of the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk. 16:19-25), while those cited by Clement from the twenty-third book are concerned with the martyrdom of Jesus (Lk. 22-23), treated from the special point of view of Luke, that "the Lord suffered according to the will of the Father" "* (cj. Lk. 23:40 f.; 24:25-27,44-46). Indeed it is almost incredible that Basilides, if he really knew and ac-
1 P. 322.
2 Art. "Das Evangelium des Basilides" in Zts.f. ntl. Wiss, VII, 3 (1906), pp. 236-246.
3 Gesch. d. ntl. Kanons, I, 2, 1889, pp. 763-784.
4 These words are quoted by Clement as the subject of this twenty-third chapter (as we should call it) of Basilides' Commentary. They remind us strongly of I Pt. 3:17. The whole discussion, in fact, in all three writers, Luke, I Peter (c/. especially 2:20-24; 3:14-18; 4:1, 12-19, ^^c.) and Basil- ides, bespeaks the period of persecution in 90-117. Cf. Rev. 2:13, 14, 20 (95 A. D.) with the statement of Agrippa Castor that BasiHdes "taught also that the eating of meat offered to idols and the unguarded renunciation of the faith in times of persecution were matters of indifference." Eusebius, H. E. IV, vii, 7.
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 55
cepted the Fourth Gospel, should have laid himself open to the charge of "making the devil divine, because he regarded the sufferings of martyrdom as a punishment (though an honorable one) for sin committed in a previous life." ^ We have indeed a relation here between the doctrine of the sinlessness of Jesus and the theory that suffering may be accounted for on purely monistic principles through metem- psychosis, which can hardly be without literary connection with the Fourth Gospel, where the same two peculiar ideas are brought into a similar relation, though with opposite intent.^ Only, if a connection exists, it is certainly to Basili- des and not to the Fourth Gospel that priority must he assigned. For the attitude of Basilides is well defined by Drummond: ^
" The reality of Christ's humanity and Passion is assumed, even though it drives Basilides to a conclusion which he is reluctant to admit. He thinks that all suffering is a punishment for sin, either actual or potential, in the person suffering; and when pressed with the case of 'such a one' (6 Sctm, rightly understood by Clement to refer to Christ) that he sinned, since he suffered; he would answer, he did not sin but was like the suffering infant. But, if urged, he would say, that man, whosoever you may name, is man, and God is just." ^
Basilides, who would not admit that the sufferings of the martyrs were inflicted on them as the Church held, by the
1 Drummond, p. 324.
2 Jn. 9:1; 10:21.
3 P. 312. Principal Drummond is engaged in the context in proving the untrustworthiness of Irenaeus, who attributes to Basilides the Docetism of Cerinthus, and even puts in his mouth a representation of the passion drawn from the Acts of John by Leucius Charinus.
4 Basilides took the position of Heb. 2:9-18 as regards the suffering of Jesus being incidental to his humanity; only since he did not supplement it with the doctrine of the disciplinary intention of suffering, borrowed by Heb. 12:3-11 from the O. T. {cf. Wisd. of Sol. 11:9-26; II Mace. 6:12-16) his monistic doctrine of divine sovereignty and penal significance of all suf- fering forced him to the assumption in Jesus' case of prenatal guilt.
56 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
malignant power of Satan, because he held to one sole Su- preme Power, found but one loophole of escape from the inference that Jesus' sufferings were then a proof of sinful- ness. This was the precarious theory of prenatal guilt, by which he also explained the suffering of new-born infants. Hence Clement denounces him for having dared to call the Lord a sinful man (dvOpcoTrov dfjbapTTjriKov), and promises in due time to take up Basilides' doctrine of the devil and of metempsychosis.^
How, then, is it possible to imagine that Basilides knew and admitted as authoritative the Fourth Gospel, in which this whole ground, including the suffering of infants on ac- count of parental guilt, is so completely covered, and with such complete vindication of the sinlessncss of Jesus? We have in fact not only the incident of the man born blind, beginning, ''Rabbi, who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind" and ending with the controversy with the scribes whether Jesus was "a sinner," or no; we have reiterated efforts throughout the whole Johannine story of the Passion, to show that Jesus went voluntarily to his martyrdom, and that neither Satan nor Pilate had any power at all over him save as ''given from above." ^
With Basilides grouped where Origen has placed him, among the innumerabiles haereses quae evangelium secun- dum Lucam recipiunt,^ vanishes the last trace of early use
1 Stromata, iv, 12.
2 See Jn. 6:70, 71; 10:11, 17, 18, 39; 11:8, 9, 51, 52; 13:1, 18, 19, 26-31; 14:30; 17:1, 5 S.; 18:4-6; 19:11, etc.
3 Quoted by Windisch, op. cit., pp. 240-242. The real reason for this, in Marcion's case as well as the rest, will have been not so much the later date and greater availability of Luke as against Matthew and Mark, nor even its supposed connection with Paul, though this may have had weight with Marcion. Luke, by ancient tradition (Euseb., H. E. Ill, iv, 7), as well as by strong internal evidence, is the gospel of Antioch. But Antioch, as we have seen, was the original seat of the heresiarchs, Menander, Cerdo, Sa- turninus, and probably Basilides as well.
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 57
of the Fourth Gospel in the larger world of Christendom. It is a result of something more than controversial interest to observe that outside the little group of Asiatics, Ignatius, Polycarp, Papias, Justin, even the faint echoes and in- fluences to-day rather hesitatingly advanced as possibly showing acquaintance with the ''instrumentum Johan- neum," ^ prove on closer scrutiny to be altogether illusory. As regards .the four, on the other hand, we have positive knowledge of acquaintance with the Johannine Epistles in the case of Polycarp and Papias, and not only quotation from the Apocalypse, but explicit defense of its apostolic authority by Papias and Justin. Only Ignatius, the vis- itor from Syria, gives no decisive evidence of acquaintance with any of the five Johannine writings, but only of influence from this "type of teaching," while all the group, if they make use at all of the Gospel, use it so sparingly, and so completely without acknowledgment, that we are compelled to recognize a striking difference between their treatment of it and of Synoptic material.
In scrutinizing for ourselves this ultimate problem of the evidence from actual (not illusory) echoes and influences it will be convenient, since we have already sufliciently discussed those of Justin, to pass backward chronologically and Asia- ward geographically, asking first of Papias (Hierapohs, 145- 160 A. D.) ^ then of Ignatius (Antioch- Asia-Rome, iio- 117 A. D.), then of Polycarp (Smyrna, 110-117 A. D.) the mode and measure of their employment of the Fourth Gospel as compared with Synoptic tradition.
Sanday, we note, has greater confidence in the evidences
1 We borrow this convenient term from Tertullian to designate the corpus of five writings, Gospel, Epistles, and Revelation or "Prophecy" attributed to the Apostle John.
2 Lightfoot {Bibl. Essays, p. 64), "not before 130 to 140." The date 145-160 A. D. is Hamack's. For the reasons see below, p. 120.
58 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
of Papias' employment of the Fourth Gospel than in other alleged echoes, and in this judgment we wiUingly concur. The fact that '4n the preface" to his *^^r]yricr6t<; Papias re- ferred to commandments derived ''from the truth itself" ^ will not indeed bear much weight; nor is it indicative of any- thing more than the undisputed provenance of the Fourth Gospel, that "Andrew, Philip, Thomas" appear in Papias' list of the Apostles, of whom only the Fourth Gospel makes individual mention. That such traditions were in circula- tion in "Asia," particularly regarding PhiKp, was known independently.- There is, however, good reason to suppose that Papias knew at least the Johannine Epistles,^ if not the Gospel; and it is certain that he knew and accepted the Apocalypse as a^toirto-To^ ("trustworthy"). But Papias is said to afford evidence of "influence" from the Fourth Gospel itself, if we may take as from him that which Irenaeus reports^ as from "the Elders," an expression under which he reproduces traditions borrowed from Papias.^ In sup- port of their doctrine of a lower, middle, and upper place of reward in the Kingdom, "the Elders" ^ quoted, he says, as a "saying of the Lord," "In the region (eV roU) of my Father there are many mansions." It is true that the same
1 Adduced by Lightfoot {Bibl. Essays, p. 68) in comparison with Jn. 5:33; 8:32; 14:6. A closer parallel (especially if the reading irapayivofjievois be followed) is III Jn. 12.
2 Zahn's attempt (in his essay on Papias, Jahrh.f. deutsche TheoL, 1866) to "explain Papias' remark as to Mark's want of orderly arrangement, as based on a comparison with John, instead of with Matthew" cannot be dis- missed with Keim (op. cil., p. 191, note i) as "truly laughable," since it has seemed worthy of attention even to H. J. Holtzmann. It hardly requires refutation, however.
3 Eusebius' testimony that he used I Peter and I John is undisputed.
4 Haer. V, xxxvi, i, 2.
5 On the strong grounds for believing this an extract from Papias, see Lightfoot, Bihl. Essays, p. 67.
6 On the real location of this group of authoritative "Elders" see Chap- ter IV.
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 59
** Elders" quote other fragments of apocalyptic writings as "sayings of the Lord" which are certainly unauthentic,^ and that this particular saying is also found in the pre- Christian apocalypse of Slav. Enoch (Ixi, 2), in a form per- haps as near to ''the Elders'" citation as Jn. 14:2.^ More- over, a mere "watchword" such as this could readily appear independently in the sayings of "the Elders" and the Fourth Gospel. Indeed it is clear that ^Hhe Elders^' quote only oral tradition, and not even then in just the form of the Fourth Gospel. As regards their authority it must be con- ceded to Abbott ^ that the form of reference shows that they are "not quoting and misinterpreting John, but quoting and interpreting in accordance with, (oral) tradition a Logion (illustrating the Synoptic Parable of the Sower) of which Jn. gives a different version J^ Papias, however, in quoting "the Elders" may possibly have been influenced by Jn. 14:2. This, then, is the measure of Papias' use of the Johannine writings. He certainly used Revelation and attributed it to the Apostle John. The Epistles he probably echoed. It is barely possible that he was remotely influenced by the Fourth Gospel. With the evidence from Papias we must group the earlier witness of Ignatius and Polycarp (110-117 a. d.) presenting as a verdict whose impartiality none will question the report of the Oxford Committee:
"Ignatius' use of the Fourth Gospel is highly probable, but falls some way short of certainty. The objections to accepting it are mainly (i) our ignorance how far some of the Logia (sayings) of Christ recorded by John may have been current in Asia Minor
1 In the interest of the same chiliastic doctrine of the Kingdom they quoted as a saying of the Lord the Jewish midrash on Gen. 27:28, found in Apoc. of Baruch. xxix, 5.
2 Rendered by R. H. Charles, "In the world to come . . . there are many mansions prepared for men, good for the good, evil for the evil, many without number."
3 Encycl. Bihl. II, s. v. "Gospels," § 94.
6o THE FOURTH GOSPEL
before the publication of the Gospel. . . . (2) The paucity of phrases which recall the language of the Gospel, and the absence of direct appeals to it; phenomena which are certainly remarkable when we consider the close resemblance between the theology of Ignatius and that of the Fourth Gospel. It is difficult, for ex- ample, to think of any reason why Ignatius did not quote Jn. 20 in Smyrn. iii, 2 (the passage where he quotes the Ev. Hebr. (?) to prove that 'Jesus was in the flesh even after his resurrection ')." ^
As regards the Epistle of Poly carp the Committee find only two possible echoes. In Ep. Polyc. v, 2 we have: "even as he promised us to raise us from the dead"; and in xii, 3: "that your fruit may be manifest among all." Of the former clause they say: "The reference seems certainly to be to a Johannine (?) tradition, though it need not necessarily be to our Fourth Gospel." ^ Of the latter: "... the only point of contact with John is in the word jructus, and this might be accounted for, e. g., by Gal. 5 :2 2, ^ if so natural an expression requires any assignable source." "^
What inferences then may be drawn from the mode and
1 Compare this result with Ignatius' twenty-two echoes, references, or quotations from the Synoptic writings, and sixty-one from the Pauline Epistles. Of I Corinthians, for example, the committee say: "Ignatius must have known this Epistle almost by heart." In addressing the Ephesians Ignatius calls them "fellow-adepts in the mysteries with Paul" reminding them how frequently Paul "boasts of them in his letters." He never men- tions John whether in addressing the Ephesians, Polycarp, or others. He does, however, show the influence of "a body of teaching like that which we find in the Fourth Gospel." On this see below, p. 64.
2 The context is dealing with Mt. 19:27—20:28, and connects wi'Ji it the "faithful saying" II Tim. 2:12 {cf. I Jn. 2:25). It is difficult to see any distinctive remainder to justify the claim of " Johannine " influence.
3 We may add, by Rom. 6:22, "your fruit" in combination with I Tim, 4:15, as suggested by Abbott, Encycl. Bihl. Vol. II, col. 183 1.
4 Stanton {op. cit., p. 19) comes to a similar conclusion regarding Ignatius and Polycarp. Admitting that "here we may certainly expect to find indi- cations of its use," he adds, "and such do not seem to me to be altogether wanting, although they are not so full and clear as might have been ex- pected."
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 6i
measure of employment of the Fourth Gospel in 100-150 A. D. by those who seem really acquainted with the Johannine writings ?
We have found it a very singular fact that Justin, the advo- cate of the Ephesian Logos doctrine and of a chiliasm which he supports by the authority of Revelation, should make no acknowledged use, and next to no indirect use, of the Fourth Gospel. It is at least equally singular that Papias, who made similar use of Revelation and showed acquaintance with First John, should seem to neglect entirely the Fourth Gos- pel, when treating of the apostolic sources of evangelic tra- dition, and afford no sure proof even of acquaintance with it. Some consider more surprising still the silence of Igna- tius, who writes seven letters to the very persons but recently bereaved (according to the ''defenders ") of the presence and leadership of the last and greatest of the Apostles, a peerless champion of the doctrine Ignatius himself defends against the same opponents. But Ignatius refers only to Paul, and never to John. Perhaps the most unaccountable of all these surprising instances of neglect is reached when we read the actual letter of the man whom the tradition holds up as its one sure link of connection with the Apostle John, Polycarp ; for it was Polycarp 's supreme distinction to have been an eye- and ear- witness, yes, an intimate disciple, of the intimate dis- ciple of the Lord. Polycarp never mentions John, though re- peatedly he commends to his readers the writings and authority of Paul; and the extent of influence of the Fourth Gospel dis- covered by the Oxford Committee in his Epistle is "the word fructus" — really connected more closely with Rom. 6:22.
Stanton alone among advocates of the traditional view seems to appreciate the cumulative force of this array of silent witnesses, and endeavors to deal with it, discussing first in his chapter on "The ApostoHc Fathers and the Fourth Gospel" (pp. 18-21) "the question . . . whether in
62 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
these writings there are indications of the influence of the Fourth Gospel." ^ We may quote his summary regarding the earher writers:
"The case as regards the evidence of acquaintance with the Gospel according to John supplied by the Epistles of Ignatius and Polycarp stands thus. Taken by itself it is inconclusive. In the former writer it is somewhat indeterminate; his Johannine ex- pressions ^ might possibly have been derived from the phrase- ology of a school. In Polycarp on the other hand the evidence is partly indeterminate, partly indirect. Neither can fairly be reckoned a witness adverse to the existence at this time of the Fourth Gospel or the recognition of its Johannine authorship, and this is in itself important. On the contrary, the phenomena that we have noted point to acquaintance with it, but we cannot feel confident that they may not be due to some other cause, so long at least as we confine our attention to the Sub-apostolic Age. The decision between alternative explanations must come, if it is to come at all, from the position which the Gospel holds and the strength of the tradition in its favor, which we shall observe later."
Let us distinguish in this summary that which bears on the existence of the Fourth Gospel, a point not in dispute, from that which bears on the apostolic authorship, a propo- sition which becomes harder to defend in proportion as the other point is established. Professor Stanton adduces just one single resemblance, which to his mind suggests knowl-
1 P. 21, note.
2 The two resemblances which Stanton thinks alone worthy of considera- tion in Ignatius are quoted on the preceding page (p. 19). They are ad Rom. vii, "My lust hath been crucified, and there is no fire of material longing in me, but only water living and speaking in me, saying, Come to the Father" (c/. Jn. 4:10; 17:6; 14:6); and ad Philad. vii, "For even though certain per- sons desired to deceive me after the flesh, yet the spirit is not deceived, being from God; for it knoweth whence it cometh and whither it goeth" {cf. Jn.
3:8).
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 63
edge of the Fourth Gospel in the Epistle of Polycarp: ^ "He that raised him from the dead will raise us also; if we do his will and walk in his commandments, and love the things which he loved." This from ad Philad. ii, he compares with Jn. 7:17 (but see also Mt. 12:50); and 14:15 (but see also Mt. 19:17). The passage as a whole is a very plain echo of Rom. 8:11, "If the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also your mortal bodies." Its Johanncan (?) tinge consists only in a substitution of the characteristic (Matthaean) neo-legahsm of the period for the Pauline "If the Spirit dwelleth in you"; and even in support of this Professor Stanton cites principally from the Epistles rather than from the Gospel. All his other "evi- dences" adduced from Polycarp, including two passages supposed to resemble the one just quoted, are jrom the Epistles, and are manifestly irrelevant in a chapter in which
"the question considered is simply whether in the language of these writings (Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp) there are in- dications of the influence of the Fourth Gospel."
Why, then, are we put off with these irrelevancies, when we ask for evidences of the influence of the Gospel, insist- ing that they should be apparent in two writers like Igna- tius and Polycarp, who
"wrote after sufficient time had unquestionably elapsed for them to have become acquainted with the work, if it was by the Apos- tle John, . . . the former of them writing from, and in most of his Epistles addressing the Churches of, a region where . . . St. John lived and exercised great influence during the closing years of his life, while Polycarp had been one of his hearers " ? ^
Is it not manifestly because "there really are no evidences of the kind that are really wanted"?
1 Neglect of "the single word fructus" is an evidence of his good sense.
2 Op. cit., p. 19.
64 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
We entirely agree with Professor Stanton that neither Ignatius nor Polycarp ''can fairly be reckoned a witness ad- verse to the existence^ at this time of the Fourth. Gospel." We go further. We point to the careful comparison by Von der Goltz of the Logos-doctrine of Paul, Ignatius, ''John," and Justin,- and indorse his result that both Ig- natius and "John" stand as middle links between Paul and Justin, testifying to the existence of what Sanday designates "a compact body of teaching like that which we find in the Fourth Gospel." We indorse (for substance) his conclusion on the question immediately before us as to the relation of the two contemporary middle links, that it cannot be ac- counted for by the use by either of the work of the other. We will not dispute the inference that "Ignatius must have come under the prolonged influence of a community itself influenced by Johannean thought." ^ Inasmuch as this is conceded on both sides to he so, is the employment of the Fourth Gospel (we defer the question of appeal by name to its author) by Ignatius and Polycarp in mode and measure what we should expect on the traditional theory? To this question, the only one really in debate, Professor Stanton gives a somewhat hesitating answer: "Neither (Ignatius nor Polycarp) can fairly be reckoned a witness adverse to . . . the recognition of its Johannine authorship." But even this deprecation of the negative inferences which naturally sug- gest themselves, is left utterly unsupported. Instead of giving reasons, Stanton reverts to "signs of its use" which he admits to be "less distinct" (sic!) than of our first Gospel, and refers the reader to other indications of "the position
1 Italics ours.
^Ignatius von Antiochien ah Christ und Theologe, by Freiherr von der Goltz {Texte u. Unters. Bd. xii).
3 P. 139. The context is quoted by Sanday, Criticism, etc., p. 242. In using the word "Johannean" Von der Goltz of course has no thought of connecting this type of teaching with the son of Zebedee.
I
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 65
which the (Fourth) Gospel holds and the strength of the tradition in its favor, which we shall observe later."
The promised later consideration is given on pages 235- 238, after separate discussion of the neglect of Justin on pages 81-91, and of the absence of traces of the tradition regarding the Apostle on pages 164-17 1. Papias is con- sidered only under the latter head. As we have already considered at some length Drummond's explanation of Jus- tin's neglect, we may deal briefly with Stanton's, which adds but little. The two Apologies and the Dialogue with Trypho are indeed systematically reviewed with this question in mind; but the conclusion is only that: "The scope of Justin's argument (in the Apologies) and his method of conducting it furnish a satisfactory explanation ". . . for the meas- ure of vagueness which there is in the indications of his use of the Synoptics," and the same considerations may account, Professor Stanton thinks, for the "somewhat greater obscu- rity" resting upon Justin's attitude to the Fourth Gospel.^
We have found a more adequate explanation for Justin's "vagueness" in defining the nature of Synoptic authority in the vagueness of the tradition regarding their apostolic authorship. The Fourth Gospel should have supplied just the definiteness required. Besides, Justin does cite copiously from the Synoptists and appeals (as well as he can) to their apostolic authority. Why not cite to an at least equal ex- tent from "John"? Even when dwelling upon "the great doctrine of the relation of the Son to the Father" Justin employs only Mt. ii:27 = Lk. 10:22, and, correctly enough, employs it to prove the Jews' ignorance of the personal Logos. ^
"He might have quoted a great deal more to the same effect, especially from the Fourth Gospel," says Professor Stanton, "but it does not fall within his plan to do so. . . . The argu-
1 Gospels, etc., p. 84.
2 ApoL, I, Ixiii.
Fourth Gospel — 5
66 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
ment of Christ's witness to himself would not have been convinc- ing to those for whom Justin wrote."
Justin, it would seem, understood his age far better than the fourth evangelist, who changes the Synoptic report of the teaching of Jesus to this very form of self-witness. And yet the fourth evangelist was successjul.
In the Dialogue with Trypho similar considerations are held to explain the neglect. ''The mere name of John, apostle though he was, would not carry weight with Jewish hearers and readers." (Was the Dialogue really written to convert the Jews?) If Justin does appeal to John's au- thority as author (better ^'seer^') of the Apocalypse, that is an exception which leaves the rule intact. "In the view of Jews and heathen a vision, even though made to a Christian, would partake of the character of inspiration." Moreover, "Justin and the Christians of his age might, even while regarding the Fourth Gospel as Apostohc, be more familiar with the others." Finally:
"If — as is admitted by most critics at the present day — the evidence shows at least that he (Justin) used this Gospel, he can hardly have taken it for anything else than what it professes to be (through anonymous guarantors in the Appendix!), a faithful record of the testimony of a personal and singularly close follower of Christ regarding the words and deeds of Christ." ^
Can these considerations, after what we have seen to be the real situation, even if admitted at their full value, be really regarded as furnishing a "satisfactory" explanation? Could Justin really so treat what would be to him "a faith- ful record of the testimony of a personal and singularly close
1 See for all the extracts Gospels, etc., pp. 81-91, on "Justin's attitude to the Gospel according to John." The question of "The Apostolic Fathers (Clement, Ignatius, and Polycarp) and the Fourth Gospel" is discussed on pp. 18-21; but no explanation is offered of a neglect at least as conspicuous as Justin's.
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 67
follower of Christ" ? And if the explanations be satisfactory in the case of Justin, will they remain so when to his neglect is added that of Papias, of Ignatius, of Polycarp ? Who then were the loyal and discerning disciples who showed such superior judgment in publishing the Gospel as the "true witness" of ''the disciple whom Jesus loved," when men like Polycarp and Papias were neglectful? — Or may it per- haps be within the limits of possibiHty that the Fourth Gospel known to these men and to Justin was not yet furnished with that high imprimatur, which once accepted could not fail to procure for the work it accompanied a commanding preeminence among the Gospels? Professor Stanton infers from the appended chapter (Jn. 21) ''that the Gospel ac- cording to St. John was first given to the Church after his death by companions and disciples." ^ To what period, then, is it more reasonable to assign this attachment and publication? To the period when no one accords to the Gos- pel a treatment corresponding to this claim? Or to that of the formation of the "fourfold gospel," when on the one side are ranged its ardent advocates, on the other the strenuous deniers of Johannine authorship?
We cannot believe that Professor Stanton himself is sat- isfied with his attempts at explanation. In fact after a dis- cussion of the silence of the Sub-apostoKc Age regarding the person of John,^ which we must consider in connection with the tradition of the Apostle's supposed residence in Asia, he returns again to the question: "How the silence of the Sub- apostolic Age (as to the Johannine writings) may possibly be explained." ^ At this point, then, we expect to be favored with that evidence, which if not indeed sufficient to bear the whole weight of the argument, as Drummond considers,
1 Gospels, etc., p. 19.
2 Pp. 164-168.
3 Pp. 235-238.
68 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
is at least sufficient ''to render it highly probable that the correspondences with its thought and language in the very early writings . . . should be put to the account of its use." ^ Considering the importance of the issue we feel justified in making a considerable extract:
" In estimating the significance of the early silence we must re- member how scanty the remains of the period are. Moreover, the absence of any mention of the Apostle John is very strange only in the Epistles of Ignatius,^ and there we are forced to recog- nize that any inferences from it may be precarious, when we notice how limited and special is the use made even of the name of St. Paul. . . .
" Nevertheless, it appears to me difficult to avoid inferring from the absence of allusions to the Apostle John in writings of the beginning of the second century, that there was a difference — which it is a matter of great interest to notice — between his repu- tation and influence then and at the close of the century. At this later time (i. e., 180-200 a. d.) men were fast learning, if they had not already learned, to give him a place, as we do to-day, among the greatest Masters of the Christian Faith, distinct from, but not inferior to, that of Peter and Paul.
" This position is accorded him mainly as the evangelist of the Fourth Gospel. . . . Unquestionably peculiar reverence must have been felt for the Apostle John if he lingered on among men as the last surviving Apostle. Yet his real influence may have been confined within a narrow circle of disciples who had the mental power and the spirituality to understand his teaching in some degree.^ To the majority of Christians during his life- time, and for the first generation or two after his death, his title to honor may have not seemed essentially different from that of
1 Stanton, p. 21.
2 On this point see Chapter IV. We should have included also the First Epistle of Peter, but Stanton passes this over without mention,
3 Is Professor Stanton really thinking of the Galilean fisherman, or of the "theologian" of the Fourth Gospel, when he indulges in such conjectures as this ?
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 69
Andrew or Philip. Whether he was in the strict sense the author of the Gospel ascribed to him, or it was composed after his death by the aid of records of what he had said, or which actually pro- ceeded from his own pen, here was a legacy of which the value could only be appreciated with time."
Instead of supporting the robust claims of apostolic au- thorship with which Professor Stanton set out, the external evidence when finally reviewed seems to be rapidly carrying him toward the position of his opponents. The final para- graph, which we have not space to quote, digresses to cer- tain phenomena of the internal evidence which might ex- plain the early belief as to its authorship if ''a disciple (of John), whose own intellectual characteristics and training may have determined in greater or less degree the form of the composition, ... set himself to record therein what he had learned from the venerable Apostle." It will be interest- ing to observe, when Professor Stanton's discussion of the internal evidence appears in the promised second volume, w^hether this theory of indirect apostolic authorship is defi- nitely adopted. We are confining our own attention for the present to the external evidence, and are interested to ob- serve that even Professor Stanton's diUgent search reveals nothing whatever in support of his earlier statement that the silence of Ignatius and Polycarp could not fairly be reckoned as witness adverse to the existence at this time of the Fourth Gospel or the recognition of its Johannine authorship. The Johannine "body of teaching" was in existence, teste Igna- tius. The Johannine Epistles were in existence, teste Poly- carp and Papias. The Revelation was treated as of apostolic Johannine authority, teste Papias and Justin. The Fourth Gospel may have been known in some form. It was not ap- pealed to, nor even used like the Synoptics.
We have left to the last a single item of the external evi- dence, partly because it has a bearing upon this question of
70 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
the period to which we should assign the attachment of the Johannine epilogue, partly because neglected by most "de- fenders." It is that to which Professor Sanday seems to ac- cord the position of chief importance, as the present writer had previously done in the second of the articles to which Professor Sanday replies.^ The echo found in Mk. 16:9 is, as we then stated, "perhaps the earliest" of all known em- ployments of the Fourth Gospel. The point of difference between ourselves and Professor Sanday lies in his state- ment made "with confidence" that
" Its date is earlier than the year 140 — whether we argue from the chronology of Aristion, its presumable author, or from its presence in the archetype of almost all extant MSS., or from the traces of it in writers so early as Justin and Irenaeus." ^
In reality there is no reason whatever for connecting the editorial appendix to Mark with Aristion, whether the (prob- ably heathen) writer of Pella, or any other. As we have elsewhere shown,^ the supposed evidence to this authorship, discovered by Conybeare in his Armenian MS. of the Gospels from Edschmiadzin, is a mere worthless conjecture of the Armenian scribe John, in the year 989 A. d., resting on a comparison of the Armenian version of Eusebius "^ with a misunderstood passage from Moses of Chorene, the father of
1 See below, p. 213.
2 Criticism, p. 241.
3 Hastings, Diet, of Christ and the Gospels, s. v. "Aristion (Aristo)."
4 This version has the spelling "Aristo" and the designation "presbyter" applied not to John only but to "Aristo" also, like the gloss inserted by the scribe before Mk. 16:9. The translator of Eusebius seems to have identified the "Aristion" of H. E. Ill, xxxix, 4 with the historian "Aristo" quoted in IV, xvi, 3. The latter was probably a heathen writer, since neither Eusebius nor Jerome includes him among the Christian authors they undertake to enumerate, and may be the same as Aristo, "the cultured rhetorician" of Gerasa known to Stephen of Byzantium. He is not at all likely to have been the author of the Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus as stated by Maximus Confessor (600 a. d.).
ECHOES AND INFLUENCES 71
Armenian history. On the other hand, Celsus, the oppo- nent of Christianity in 176-180 a. d., already uses Mk. 16:9, though not, in our judgment, the Fourth Gospel. Both were also used by Tatian (172 A. d.), and Sanday may even pos- sibly be right in claiming acquaintance with the Markan appendix on the part of Justin. He properly disregards the flimsy claim that Hermas shows acquaintance with it in using the phrase "apostles and teachers who preached unto the whole world;" ^ but seems to consider Justin's expres- sion, "His apostles went forth and preached everywhere" ^ a real echo of Mk. 16:20, though the expression surely has nothing distinctive about it. Let us date the Markan Ap- pendix then ca. 150 a. d. The one thing certain is that it represents a period when the older gospels of Matthew and Mark were being adapted to circulate side by side with the more recent third (and fourth?). Now Harnack has lent the full weight of his great authority ^ to the briUiant attempt of Rohrbach,'* to show that Asia was the scene of that process of redaction whence issued our fourfold gospel. We shall not here advocate the claims of Rome as against Asia. Cer- tainly Asia contributed its full share. But it is hard to reconcile so early a date as 120-140 with the silence of Papias regarding the two newer gospels, and the fact that the use of them, first of Luke, then of John also, is otherwise traceable only with Marcion, Justin, Tatian, and Theophilusin 140-180 a. d. The real course of events would seem to us to be the use first of a twofold gospel by Papias in Asia, then of a threefold by Justin at Rome, ultimately, after prolonged
1 Sim. IX, XXV, I, 2. Disregarded also by the Oxford Committee. Cf. Clem. R. ad Cor, xlii. 3, 4.
"^ Ap. I, xlv, 01 cLirbaToXoi &vrov i^eKdSvres Travroxou iKi^pv^av. Cf. Mk. 16:20, iKeivoi 5^ i^€\66vT€S iK-^pv^ap iravraxov.
3 Chronologic, 1S97, pp. 696-700.
4 Der Schluss des Markusevangeliums, der Vier-Evangelien-Kanon und die kleinasiatischen Presbyter, Berlin, 1894.
72 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
struggles against the admission of the Instrumentum Johan- neum at Rome, the general adoption of the fourfold gospel of our canon. We shall have occasion hereafter to ask just what sort of Fourth Gospel it is to which ]Mk. 16:9-20 bears witness. For the present we note only that the summary appended to Mark finds its true date and significance in connection with this transition, effected by the Church about 150 A. D., from a twofold to a threefold, and ultimately a fourfold gospel. We note also that the epilogue is based almost exclusively upon Luke ; ^ that its aim is harmonistic ; and that the Johannine influence is confined absolutely to the single trait that the appearance of Jesus in Jerusalem to Mary Magdalen and the other Mary of Mt. 28:9, 10, has become an appearance to Mary Magdalen alone. While the contrary relation of a dependence by the author of Jn. 20:1- 18 on this adapted form of the Lukan tradition is not ex- cluded, it is reasonable to suppose that this slight change is really due to the Johannine narrative. If so, we have in this harmonistic adaptation of the Lukan story of the resur- rection, attached in most manuscripts to the mutilated Mark, our first sure employment. It coincides in its bearing with all the evidence derivable from the period of echoes and in- fluences. I. Before 150 a. d. the Fourth Gospel is unknown outside of proconsular Asia. 2. In Asia itself it is not treated by those most Ukely to have known it as a writing of this character by the Apostle John would surely be treated. 3. Its wider diffusion begins shortly after 160 a. d. from the entourage of Justin, the Ephesian convert and promulgator of the Logos doctrine, at Rome. 4. This wider diffusion and employment as apostoUc authority is met at once, as we shall see, with vehement resistance and denial of the authenticity of all the Johannine writings by eminent representatives of the Roman church.
1 According to Abbott, Justin's favorite gospel.
CHAPTER III
PAPIAS, EUSEBIUS, AND THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE ^
In his famous debate with Schiirer on the Johannine problem/ Professor Sanday expressed "surprise to see Dr. Schiirer repeat an argument which has been so often exploded as that about Papias." The explosions would seem to have first occurred in Lightfoot's able essays against the author of Supernatural Religion, entitled "The Silence of Eusebius" and "Papias of Hierapolis." ^ In point of fact Schiirer, who had fixed as the very latest date to which mod- ern critics were assigning the Fourth Gospel "^ 130 a. d., and who therefore could have had no possible motive for reject- ing indications of its employment by Papias in 145-160, was far from "repeating the argument" of the author of Super- natural Religioji. As we have seen, that author followed the lead of Baur and the extreme school of Tiibingen critics in denying the existence of the Fourth Gospel prior to 160 A. D. It may help us, however, to understand why "defend- ers" should be still engaged in writing round thirty-year old
1 Under the title: "Recent Aspects of the Johannine Problem: I. External Evidence," this chapter appeared originally as first of a series of four in the Hibhert Journal, I, 3 (Jan., 1903), II, 2 (Jan., 1904), III, 2 (Jan., 1905), VI, I (Oct., 1907). It is here reproduced with slight abbreviation and cor- rection.
2 In the Contemporary Review, September and October, 189 1. Profes- sor Sanday's reply was supplemented later by a series of six articles in the Expositor, 1 89 1- 1 89 2.
3 Republished under the title Essays on Supernatural Religion (2d ed., 1893), Chapters II and V.
4 Pfleiderer, however, adopts 135-140 a. d. in his Urchristenthum, 1887, p. 778.
73
74 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
discussions of the external evidences, if we note that even Professor Sanday understands Schiirer to be "repeating the argument" of Baur. In reahty the silences of Eusebius and Papias are still eloquent, though interpreted far differently by modern critics than by the author of Supernatural Re- ligion. They have to do with the traditions of the Apostle John as an author. Since we have already discussed the evidence from the mode and measure of early employment of the Gospel, we may now reasonably consider the signifi- cance of early silences on this further point.
We must not imagine any disposition on the part of Dr. Sanday or his associates on the conservative side to dis- credit the argument from silence,^ nor to advance the claim, as some have done, on the alleged authority of Lightfoot, that, "The silence of Eusebius and his authorities is favor- able to the apostolic authorship, as well as their utterances." That would come near to eliminating external evidence altogether. If silence and utterance aUke "give consent," then the external evidence can prove anything; which is about equivalent to saying it can prove nothing. Unless the verdict of the external evidence is always to be in the affirmative, it must be based on silence. We do not expect pre-Shaksperian writers to declare, "The Shaksperian plays do not yet exist." We expect those of Shakspere's own time and environment and the period immediately follow- ing, if dealing with the drama, and profoundly interested to maintain the credit of the author of the plays, to show directly or indirectly that they know and value them. If they are not only silent as to the authorship, but do not even show any considerable knowledge of the plays, it leads us to approach the internal evidence for the date and authorship with a degree of scepticism proportioned to the amount of reason we had for expecting utterances. Even when we meet
1 See, however, Professor Sanday 's reply to this: Criticism, etc, p. 35-
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 75
expressions and phrases in Marlowe and the pre-Shakspe- rian dramatists which remind us of features of plot or char- acter in Hamlet or Macbeth we are cautious in our inferences, because we know that Shakspere did not build his plays de novo, but recast existent plays, borrowed plots and char- acters, and even incorporated whole scenes. Those who make large claims in behalf of very dubious "Johannine echoes" as implying acquaintance with our present Fourth Gospel are more disposed to admit this principle in theory than in practice. They should also admit that the emergence, ca. 100 A. D., of a wotk, which, if regarded as apostolic would possess for Papias and Justin superlative importance, would be marked by no mere ripple on the stream of Chris- tian tradition and doctrine. What we have a right to expect from the argument e silentio will be apparent from a single illustration, purposely taken from the very center of our field of inquiry.
A Latin argumentum ^ prefixed to a Vatican ninth-century MS. of the Vulgate alleges that "one Papias by name, of Hierapolis, has related in his exoteric (a blunder for exe- getic), that is, in his last (extremis) five books," that "the Gospel of John was pubHshed and given out to the churches by John while he yet remained in the body." It goes on to declare that Papias himself "wrote down the Gospel at the dictation of John." Passing by the absurd anachronism which follows, about an encounter of John with Marcion, let us see what the argument e silentio has to say regarding this alleged utterance of Papias, by one who did not even know correctly the title of his book. Lightfoot ^ has indeed committed even his great authority, though hesitatingly, to
1 On this argumentum, and its derivation and connection, see the interest- ing Appendix ii, in Burkitt's "Two Lectures on the Gospels,'^ Macmillan, 1901.
2 Essays on Super. Rel., p. 214.
76 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
the following as "the most probable explanation of the whole passage." "We may suppose that Papias, having reported some saying of St. John on the authority of the Elders, went on somewhat as follows : ' And this accords with what we find in his own Gospel, which he gave to the churches when he was still in the body (en iv rw aco/jLari KaOearwro'i^. . . .' If St. John's authorship of the Gospel had been mentioned in this incidental way, Eusebius would not have repeated it, unless he departed jrom his usual practice.^ ^ Lightfoot even comes to the defense of the statement regarding the dicta- tion of the Gospel. "Papias may have quoted the Gospel delivered by John to the churches, which they wrote down (a7r€ypa(f)ov) from his Hps; and some later writer, mistaking the ambiguous uTreypacfyov, interpreted it '/ wrote down,' thus making Papias himself the amanuensis. . . . Eusebius would be more likely than not to omit such a statement ij it was made thus casually. ^^ Reserving our judgment of the two very large assumptions here required to be made re- garding (i) Papias' mentioning a matter of such paramount importance only "thus casually," (2) this conception of "the silence of Eusebius," what shall we say of the silence oj Irenceus, passionate advocate of the Johannine authorship against those who were denying that aspect {speciem) of the fourfold gospel? Irenajus was well acquainted with Papias through his single quite modest little work, and knew as well as did Eusebius that he must look in it, if anywhere, for the evidence which would utterly silence his opponents. Here Lightfoot is clearly minimizing the value of the argument from silence. Is it really possible to make such suppositions regarding either Eusebius or Irenaeus? We will consider the two in order of date.
Almost certainly Irenaeus was not otherwise acquainted with Papias than through his book; for in quoting from it he declares, "These things Papias, who was a hearer of John
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 77
and a companion of Polycarp, an ancient worthy, witnesseth in writing in the fourth of his books; for there are five books composed by him." Eusebius corrects the error of Ircnaeus in representing Papias to have been, like Polycarp, a hearer of the Apostle, and shows, by citing the preface ^ of Papias himself, that this author, in the "traditions of the Elder John" (rov.TTpea^vTepov 'l(odvvov irapahoaei^) which he transmits, is not referring to the Apostle as his authority, but to a con- temporary of his own, a John whom he distinguishes from the Apostle in words at once so clear and so familiar that to cite them again is almost superfluous.^ Of this error of Irenseus in confounding the John of Papias' paradoses with the John vv'hom he believed to have been associated with his revered master Polycarp,^ an error but partially corrected
1 Jerome {De Vir. IllusL, p. 18) also informs us that the passage in ques- tion was in the preface of Papias' work.
2 Since, however, so great a scholar as Zahn can still make it appear to him- self compatible with honest exegesis to say that Papias does not distinguish the two, but means one and the same person, we subjoin the passage itself, with Eusebius' comment, in the translation of Lightfoot: "And again, on any occasion when a person came in my way who had been a follower of the Elders, I would inquire about the discourses of the Elders — what was said by Andrew, or by Peter, or by Philip, or by Thomas or James, or by John or Matthew, or any other of the Lord's disciples, and what Aristion and the Elder John [the disciples of the Lord] say. For I did not think that I could get so much profit from the contents of books as from the utterances of a living and abiding voice." "Here," adds Eusebius, "it is worth while to observe that he twice enumerates the name of John. The first he mentions in con- nection with Peter and James and Matthew and the rest of the Apostles, evidently meaning the Evangelist, but the other John he mentions after an interval, and classes with others outside the number of the Apostles, placing Aristion before him, and he distinctly calls him an Elder," etc. We have also inclosed in [ ] a clause wanting in some authorities, and both textually and intrinsically doubtful. See Encycl. Bihl. s. v. "Gospels," col. 1815, and my article in Journ. Bihl. Lit., 1897. See also below, p. 112.
3 On the correctness of Irena^us' recollection of Polycarp's references to John as the Apostle, see Gwatkin "Irenaeus on the Fourth Gospel," in Contemp. Rev., 1897, i, and Fisher {op. cit., pp. 254 S.) against Reville (Le Quatrieme Evangile, 1901), Harnack {Chronologie, 1897), and M'Giffert (A post. Age, 1897). See also below, p. 254 f.
78 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
by.Eusebius/ and the fruitful source of ages of misunder- standing, we shall have more to say hereafter. Suffice it that Irenaeus, knowing him to be a (later) contemporary and near neighbor of Polycarp, assumed (were prefaces then read as carelessly as now ?) that his TrapaSoVet? 'Icodwov were of John the Apostle in Ephesus. He pronounces him accordingly 'Icodwov aKovarrj^, and the phrase thereafter constantly reappears in later references to Papias. In our argumentum it becomes, e. g., discipulus Johannis cams. But Irenseus literally ''compasses heaven and earth" to find an argument against those who denied the apostolic author- ship. Because there are four winds, four elements, four zones of the earth, four pillars of heaven, four cherubim sustaining the throne of God, the folly is manifest of "those wretched men who wish to set aside that aspect presented by John's Gospel." Is his silence under these circumstances compatible with the existence in Papias of a direct state- ment, however casual, that ''John while yet in the body published and gave out the Gospel to the churches," Papias himself or "the churches" (!) having written the Gospel at
1 Eusebius tolerates so much of the misunderstanding of Irenasus as ac- cords with his own pet theory of a second John at Ephesus, on whom might be fathered Revelation; for this is his individual improvement upon the theory of Dionysius of Alexandria, who was at a loss to fix upon another John for the (then) obnoxious book. But while Eusebius eagerly seizes on the con- fusion as proof that Papias was indeed an 6.KovaTq% 'Iwdrj'ou, though not the John imagined by Irenaeus, he is too candid a scholar not to admit that there was no evidence of it in Papias' text; for after repeating Irenaeus' phrase as applicable to the Presbyter, he qualifies the statement by adding, "At all events {yovv) he mentions them (Aristion and the Elder John) frequently by name, and besides records their traditions in his writings." In point of fact the passage quoted clearly implies that neither one of the two Johns was accessible to Papias. The Apostle had long since been dead (cTttcj'); the Presbyter, though living, was accessible to Papias only through report of travelers who "came his way." On the true habitat and date of this much- debated John, see Scholten, and Schlatter, Die Kirche Jerusalems, vom Jahre 70 bis 130, Giitersloh, 1898.
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 79
the Apostle's dictation? Careless Irenaeus doubtless was in mistaking Papias' authority for one much higher, but his carelessness did not go to this extent, nor tend in this direc- tion.
How, then, has the course of recent research and discovery altered the nature of Lightfoot's argument on "Papias of Hierapolis," and "The silence of Eusebius"?
Lightfoot was far more accurate than his opponent, more accurate than many who borrow his arguments, when he pointed out the fundamental distinction made by Eusebius between "disputed" (avriXeyo/jLeva) or "spurious" {v66a) New Testament writings, and the "acknowledged" {o/moXo- yovijieva); the four gospels belonging, of course, among the latter. He also pointed out the two passages in which Eu- sebius defines his twofold purpose. This is (i) "to indicate what church writers of various periods have made use of any of the disputed (avriXeyofievcov) books." These employ- ments (unacknowledged) are carefully identified and trust- worthy; they are termed by Lightfoot "testimonies;" and their presence or absence is the basis of Eusebius' argument for or against the avrcXeyofjieva. Of course they are not ex- tended to the 6/jLoXoyov/jLeva, though I Peter and I John, perhaps as standing on the border-line, are covered. In the second place, Eusebius undertook to tell from these same early writers (2) "what has been said by them concerning (a) the canonical and acknowledged Scriptures, and (b) any- thing that they have said concerning those which do not be- long to this class." ^ He makes still clearer what he means in this second undertaking by reiterating it at the point where he is about to give "the statements of Irenaeus in regard to the divine Scriptures," as follows:
" Since in the beginning of this work we promised to give, when 1 Eusebius, H. E., Ill, iii.
8o THE FOURTH GOSPEL
needful, the words of the ancient presbyters and writers of the Church, in which they have declared those traditions which came down to them concerning the canonical books, and since Irenaeus was one of them, we will now give his words, and, first, what he says of the sacred Gospels."
Thereupon follows Irenaeus' account of Matthew and Mark, which, although borrowed from Papias, and already once given by Eusebius from Papias directly, is now repeated, and his account of Luke and John. This latter is simply :
"And Luke, the attendant of Paul, recorded in a book the gospel which Paul had declared. Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also reclined on his bosom, published his Gospel while staying at Ephesus in Asia." ^
Here was a definite and very important fact regarding the intention of Eusebius, and so bearing directly upon the question of his '' silence," which ought never to have been disregarded; and yet it was by no means fully appreciated even by Lightfoot, who himself brought out the phenomena. Eusebius had anticipated modem criticism in its distinction between employments^ whose only bearing could be upon the existence and currency, or acceptance, of a writing; and ^^ statements relating to" the books received as canonical in his own time, particularly "the sacred Gospels." It was a definite and important part of his great historical enterprise, made practicable by his access to the library collected by his predecessors at Caesarea, to demonstrate the apostolic derivation and authority of the four received gospels, from statements regarding their origin found in "ancient pres- byters and writers of the Church."
Had Lightfoot been able to foresee the light which the closing decade of the nineteenth century would throw upon the debates of the second and third regarding the trust-
1 Eusebius, H. £., V, viii, M'Giffert's trans.
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE
8i
worthiness and authority of the gospel narrative, he would hardly have defined it as the "main object" of Eusebius in regard to the four gospels merely to "preserve any anecdotes which he may have found illustrating the circumstances un- der which they were written." ^ He would have realized that the pre-Eusebian age was almost as familiar as we with the higher criticism in both its forms, historical as well as literary. He would thus have appreciated that the "state- ments concerning" the gospels in both Irenaeus and Eusebius are only Hnks in a long chain of prologues, or argumenta, by which writers of both orthodox and heretical circles endeavored to establish the apostoUcity of their traditions of the Lord's life and teaching. Of these we have had one example in the argumentum already cited; for, so far from being a late in- vention of the scribe himself, it bears not only internal evi- dence of translation from an early Greek original,^ but Wordsworth and White, by the discovery of another version of the same in a MS. which betrays relations with the Old Latin version, have furnished evidence which, in the judg- ment of Burkitt, must carry its origin back much beyond the time of Jerome.^ The famous Muratorian Fragment, which Professor Sanday now brings down as late as 200 a. d., stands forth in its true light as one more link in this chain, its denial of any discrepancy between the Fourth Gospel and the rest being aimed, as Zahn has seen, at the same Alogi antagonized by Irenaeus and Epiphanius. On the heretical side stands another succession, into which P. Corssen has opened the way by his Monarchianische Pro- loge^ Here is a heretical account of the origin of the Fourth Gospel leading back directly to the Gnostic legends of Leu-
1 Essays on Supern. Rel., p. 46.
2 So Lightfoot, op. cit., p 213.
3 Burkitt, Two Lectures on the Gospels, igoi, p. 90.
4 Texte u. Unters., xv, i.
Fourth Gospel — 6
82 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
cius Charinus and his Acts of John. It is true that the new fragment of these Acts published by M. R. James in the Cambridge Texts and Studies (1897), and the complete edition by Bonnet,^ show Corssen to have perhaps inverted the relation of Leucius to the Gospel. The dependence may be on his side, if either.^ On the other hand, it is these Gnostic legends which furnish a possible key to '^Johan- nine" phraseology; not only the term Logos, but the desig- nation of John as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." But we are now concerned merely with the interest displayed among both orthodox and heretics in the second century (the Monarchian prologues are earher than TertulUan) to connect our Gospel with the Apostle. If we proceed in the reverse direction a similar feeling of the need for authenti- cating the records displays itself increasingly as rivals mul- tiply. The first two gospels have no prologue, but the third is introduced under the patronage of Theophilus, and with assurances of the author's better quaUfication for his task than certain rivals. The Revelation of John has both a prologue vouching for the writer, with a blessing on the
1 Acta Apost. Apocrypha, ii, i, Lipsiae, 1898.
2 The clause specially relied on by Professor James, vivaofiai X^yx****, when read in the context, is in much closer relation to the interpolated read- ing of Mt. 24:49 (BCLUrj^^ min. vss. Chrys.), which also makes the lance thrust part of the soldiers' abuse before the death of Christ {cf. Clem, v, 13 ii), than to John. There is therefore at least the possibility of derivation in all three cases from a common source. Hilgenfeld, in a masterly discussion en- titled Der gnostische und der Kanonische Johannes {Z.f. wiss. TheoL, 1900), at least succeeds in showing that the alleged evidences for Leucius' ac- quaintance with the Fourth Gospel are inconclusive. Certainly the Gnostic writer relies on Synoptic tradition for his facts, his perverted and fanciful elaboration standing for the Docetic application of the Pauline Christology to this tradition, as the Fourth Gospel stands for the anti-Docetic. It must De admitted that the Johannine writings presuppose a Docetism of the Leucian type, though probably an older form. It cannot be said that the Leucian writings necessarily presuppose the Johannine, least of all as apostolic.
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 83
devout reader, and an epilogue pronouncing a curse on spurious matter. The same purpose of authentication of the record is subserved by the appendix to the Fourth Gospel, whether v^ith Lightfoot ^ we limit the later hand to verses 24- 25, or with Zahn and the great majority of critics consider the whole chapter a later attachment. But the question of the Appendix and its relation on the one side to the Gospel, on the other to the tradition as transmitted through church fathers and argumenta, is one which must be treated by itself, falling as it does on the border-land between external and internal evidence. Here we have but two things to note: (i) Eusebius' second principal object in reporting the evidence derivable from the earlier writers on questions relating to the canon was by no means a mere antiquarian interest, still less an idle curiosity. He had the example of two cen- turies of effort to authenticate the gospel record, and both he and his predecessors give evidence of having searched their authorities with almost the diligence of a modern critic for anything that might tend to prove its close connection with the apostles. To imagine, therefore, that Eusebius would remit the search in such a work as Papias, still more to suggest that "Eusebius would be more likely than not to omit" a statement of Papias, such as Lightfoot assumes, is to betray a conception of the external evidence and what it signifies impossible to impute in our day to a scholar of Lightfoot's eminence.^
1 Biblical Essays, essay on John 21.
2 Lightfoot's reply, when his opponent in a subsequent edition presented the argument from the silence of Eusebius in a form more like the modern, was singularly weak. He replied {ibid., p. 182), "If Papias had merely said of the fourth Evangelist that 'John the disciple of the Lord wished by the publication of the Gospel to root out that error which had been disseminated among men by Cerinthus, and long before by those who are called Nico- laitans,' or language to that effect, it would be no surprise to me if Eusebius did not reproduce it; because Irenaeus uses these very words of the Fourth Gospel {Her, III xi, i) and Eusebius does not allude to the fact." As if it
84 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
This, then, is the outcome of a full generation of research on the point in question. There have been no stage denoue- ments. No single startling discovery has been made, prov- ing or disproving whole theories at a stroke. We have sim- ply come to realize by gradual increase of knowledge that criticism did not originate with our age, and to appreciate better, on a wider historical background, the salient facts already in our possession. In particular we can evaluate more justly the argument from silence.
Modern discovery forces us to look upon the silence of both Irenaeus and Eusebius as highly significant. Irenaeus was fighting with every available weapon, but chiefly the weapon of apostolic tradition in Asia, against "those wretched men who wish to set aside that aspect (of the fourfold tra- dition) which is presented by John's Gospel." Eusebius was engaged in vindicating from ancient writers the strength of the claim which TertulUan had formulated:
"That the Evangelic Instrument (the fourfold gospel) has apostles for its authors, on whom this charge of publishing the gospel was imposed by the Lord himself; that if it includes the writing of apostolic men (Mark, Luke) also, still they were not alone, but wrote with the help of Apostles, and after the teaching of Apostles." ^
Both Irenaeus and Eusebius had the little five-chaptered treatise of Papias open before them and would eagerly search every nook and corner of the work for any statement directly connecting the Gospel with the Apostle, in fact anything of the kind reported by the argumenta. Others will have done the same; for the Exegeses of Papias remained in cir- culation for centuries. Evidence of acquaintance with the
were all one to Eusebius whether he found this in Irencpus, an anti-Gnostic writer of 180-190 in Gaul, or in Papias, the fountainhead of tradition on the origin of the gospels, the friend of Polycarp in Asia, and the alleged "hearer of John!"
1 Adv. Marc, iv, 2.
\ik
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 85
Gospel in some form may very well have been found. There is not the slightest reason for doubting the statement of Euse- bius that he found evidence of acquaintance with I John and I Peter. Neither he nor others can have found any statement regarding the Johannine Authorship.
It is less easy to account for Eusebius' failure to explicitly acknowledge the use made by Papias of Revelation. For Eusebius is not lightly to be accused of a suppressio veri. Yet the testimony of two commentators on Revelation of 450-500 A. D., Andreas of Caesarea and Arethas, the former quoting a considerable passage, as he says, "word for word," is conclusive on this point. Some even infer from the ex- pression TO a^coTTtarov ("the trustworthiness"; Lightfoot, "genuineness"), employed by Andreas, that Papias, like his contemporary Justin, was not content with using Revelation, but signified his belief in its more or less direct relation to the Apostle.^ Here the silence of Eusebius is explicable — to the discredit of his impartiality. But the silence of Irenaeus and Eusebius, to say nothing of Tertullian, Hippolytus and others deeply interested in the controversy, makes it practically cer- tain that the data of the argumenta and all their tribe are not derived, and could not be derived, from Papias.
The instance of the argumentum can to-day be cited only as an illustration, because those who deny the inference as to the silence of Papias no longer claim with Lightfoot that Papias said anything so explicit, but only something oj this
1 The silence of Eusebius on this point must be subject to the discount that he was almost as strongly prejudiced against the apostolic authorship of Revelation as he was in favor of that of the Gospel. Hilgenfeld {Einl., p. 6i) goes too far in claiming that rds dTroo-roXi/cas dirj'yfiaei.s {H. E. Ill, 39, 12) refers specifically to Revelation {cf. § 11); but Rev. 20:3 is probably included in Eusebius' thought. We cannot argue from this, however, that he felt that further acknowledgment was needless; nor even that he might not disregard a direct statement of Papias. Still the very loose expressions of Andreas must be judged in the light of Eusebius' silence.
86 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
kind. That he actually paid no attention whatever to the Fourth Gospel is an admission which they probably feel would be fatal to their argument. His mention and use of it must be taken to be just "casual" enough to make the silence of both Irenaeus and Eusebius seem reasonable, though both rest on him for their accounts of the first and second gospels, and at the same time not so doubtful or so casual as to indicate either ignorance or lack of the respect which could not fail to attach to so lofty an authority.
Whence, then, do the statements emanate which attribute the Fourth Gospel to the son of Zebedee ?
It is a fact of very direct bearing upon the question, and of no small interest, that a comparative study of these state- ments, whether in the Fathers or in the argumenta, gives with a high degree of probabiHty their real derivation. Long since it was conjectured (by Zahn) that the legendary ac- count given by the Muratorian Fragment might be derived from the Leucian Acts oj John, a product of Gnostic ro- mancing and allegory of 160-170 a. d. It was almost surely a source, perhaps the source, as Corssen, James, and Bonnet have shown, of the heretical representations. Orthodox tra- dition, however, as embodied in the two forms of the argu- mentuni above cited, in the Muratorianum, and in the state- ments of Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, seems to come from a less tainted source. It is probably connected indirectly with the Gnostic legend through an orthodox re- cast known by the name of Prochorus; but it rests funda- mentally and ultimately on the Appendix to the Gospel (Jn. 21).^ In proof of this it is only needful to place their expressions side by side. The argumentum begins, "The Gospel of John was pubHshed and given forth to the churches by John while yet in the body." ^ This is to answer, of
1 See JiiHcher, Einleitung (ed. 1902), p. 320.
2 For the longer form, regarded by Burkitt as the earlier, and as repre-
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 87
course, the objection that it had appeared as a posthumous work; for who ever thought of declaring the work of a given author to have been published "while he was still alive," ex- cept in answer to such an opinion? But the opinion is clearly suggested by the Appendix, Jn. 21:23; ^^^ ^^^ ^^' swer just as clearly rests upon the following verse, probably taken in comparison with the related passage in 19:35,^ where the present ''he knoweth" (olSev) takes the place of the "we know" (oiBafjLev) of 21:24. In other words, the question of the relation of the Gospel to the Apostle, as a posthumous production or otherwise, was raised and debated 175-200 A. D. just as it is to-day, and on both sides appeal was taken to the Appendix just as to-day. Similarly, the Muratorianum also makes the same appeal as to-day to I Jn. i : 1-4 in proof of the direct Johannine Authorship. ^ The only other infor- mation which the tradition is able to impart is something held in common by the informant of Clement,^ by Irenaeus, the Muratorianum, the prologues and argumenta, and all later reporters, viz., that the Gospel was written at the close of the Apostle's life in response to the request of his "dis- ciples" {yv(opifJLoi^ Clem.), "fellow-apostles and bishops" (condiscipuli et episcopi, Mur.), "bishops of Asia" (Pro- logus Toletanus and Jerome), and that these became jointly responsible with him in various ways {Muratorianum, " recognoscentibus omnibus") for the contents. What have we here but variant interpretations of Jn. 21:20-25, and
senting the source of Jerome's extract, De Viris III. ix, see Burkitt, op. cit., and Wordsworth and White, pp. 490, 491. This form has: "Hoc igitur Evangelium post Apocalypsin scriptum manifestum et datum est ecclesiis in Asia," etc. It should be compared with Corssen's Monarchian prologues.
1 Jiilicher, loc. cit., suggests 1:14.
2 Non solum visorem, sed et auditorem, sed et scriptorem . . . [se] profitetur. Cf. Jn. 21:24. We shall have occasion hereafter to discuss the argument of Lightfoot, op. cit., pp. 186-190, on the First Epistle as **a commendatory postscript to the Gospel."
3 Clem. Alex. ap. Eus., H. E. VI, xiv.
88 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
attempts to identify those who in 21 : 24 vouch for the Gospel, with or without comparison with Papias ? Irenseus identified them with the "Elders" of Papias, whom he locates in Asia, as is manifest from the passages quoted by Eusebius from his second and third books. ^ The Muratorianum heightens the inspired authority of the writing by making its supple- mentary authors the apostles (hence in Jerusalem?), and by appending a legend of revelation after fasting. ^ All forms, so far as they are not manifestly modified by heretical or orthodox legendary traits and by the passage of Papias (Irenaeus), have complete explanation as simple inferences from the same passages relied upon by modem defenders. Jn. 21 ; 19-25 was the great proof- text then as now. It not only furnishes a perfectly adequate explanation for all that the second century could advance in the way of tradition on the authorship; its very phraseology (verse 20, "the disciple — fia67)Trj<; — whom Jesus loved, which also leaned back on his breast at the supper," verse 23, "that disciple should not die,^^ verse 24, "the disciple which testifieth — fiaprvpcov — these things," "we know that his witness is true") echoes and reechoes along the whole chain of transmission.
We think it must now be apparent that a failure to dis- tinguish between (i) mere evidence for the existefice of some- thing identifiable as "Johannine" tradition and doctrine,
1 Eusebius, H. E. Ill, xxiii.
2 " John, one of the disciples, when his fellow-disciples and bishops urged him, said, Fast with me three days, and whatever is revealed to each one, let us relate it to one another. The same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the Apostles, that John should write all in his own name, the rest indorse." There are here elements of affinity with the heretical argumenta and the orthodox. The dictante Johanne rede of the Argumentum of Thomasius seems also to be connected with the Monarchian declaration that John dictated the entire Gospel not "at a sitting" but "standing erect." See also the Prologus Quattuor Evangeliorum from Jerome's Commentary on Matthew (Preuschen's Analecta), where the legend is attributed to an ecclesiastica historia.
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 89
and (2) evidence connecting the Fourth Gospel in its present form with the son of Zebedee, denotes inabihty to appreciate the modern attitude toward the external evidence in general.
To be abreast of the times in the matter of external evi- dence to the Johannine writings, one must draw a line at about 170 A. D., and passing backward beyond it, must pur- sue his inquiry along two divergent lines: (i) What difference is there in the use made of material of the Johannine type as we recede? (2) What becomes of the tradition of John as an author?
The continued accumulation of ''Johannine" echoes must be expected. Every new find will be greeted with as much delight in one camp as the other; but it adds practically nothing on the question now in debate. To-day the argu- ment from silence is an argument from the silence of Euse- bius, the silence of Irenaeus, the silence of Justin Martyr, the silence of Polycarp and Ignatius, and, as we now venture to add, the silence of Papias. Where there seems to be a dis- position to pass over this too easily, as if all these champions of the Church had been indifferent to the great problem of authenticating the records which agitated both Church and heretical sects from Papias down, it seems to argue a certain unprogressiveness, a failure to appreciate the changed aspect of the problem since the theory of Baur and Volkmar and the author of Supernatural Religion was "exploded."
So also with the argument from utterance. To-day we are not concerned with "testimonies" later than Justin; nor with earlier ones, except with relation to a quite altered problem. Testimonies to the existence of the type of evan- gelic tradition or teaching known as "Johannine" are super- fluous unless earlier than Justin. Those which are of Justin's age or earlier never connect this type with John. Testimonies to the Johannine Authorship to be of value must be independ- ent of the Appendix.
90 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
It must, then, be admitted that a sharp line of demarca- tion is to be drawn at the point where Theophilus of Antioch for the first time distinctly declares this Gospel to be the work of ''John, one of the vessels of the Spirit," and almost simultaneously Tatian introduces it to a parity with the Synoptics, and Irenaeus and Hippolytus and the Muratorian fragment vigorously defend it against the Alogi. These appear to have been orthodox opponents of Montanism, con- servative in opposition to its excesses, ultraconservative (in the view of Irenaeus and his school) in resisting the doctrine of a fourfold gospel. In denying the apostolicity of the Johannine writings they did not deny their antiquity, but alleged, perhaps because of the favor the Gospel had begun to enjoy in Gnostic circles, that it was the work of Cerinthus, the arch-gnostic of Asia.^ The basis of their argument was its discrepancy with the Synoptics.^ But the weak resistance of the Alogi was speedily overcome. As Professor Sanday has put it:
"Direct and express ascription to the Apostle begins with Theophilus of Antioch {ca. iSi A. d.). . . . From that time it is of course rapidly taken up in a number of the most diverse quarters; it has, perhaps, already had an elaborate commentary
1 This allegation has been held up by modern critics as evidence that the Alogi ("senseless") deserved the epithet coined by Epiphanius, vihose own house, however, is a genuine crystal palace. In point of fact the evidence is quite the other way. Doubtless they were unpardonably influenced by dogmatic prejudice, but their line of proof was well chosen and consistently carried out; and, while the selection of Cerinthus as forger was doubtless a mere dictate of hatred, recent discovery has now afforded us the proof that the school of Cerinthus did engage in the copious manufacture of spurious gospels and Acts of the Apostles, in particular in the production, still in the second century, not only of the Acts of John above referred to, but of a Gnostic Gospel of John as well.
2 Cf. the Muratorianum, Et ideo licet varia singulis evangeliorum libris principia doceantur, nihil tamen differt credentium fidei. See also Jerome's version of the Prologus Toletanus at the end. Quae res et dia<pu}viav quae videtur Johannis esse cum ceteris tollit.
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 91
written upon it by the Gnostic Heracleon; ^ it has been used by the heathen philosopher Celsus {ca. 178); and it has been included in the Diatessaron of Tatian [we may now add *and the Sinaitic Syriac version of about the same date']. We have abundant proof that from the last quarter of the second century the Fourth Gospel is firmly rooted in every branch of the Christian Church, with that one exception [of the Alogi]."
This is not put too strongly, nor is it inadvertently that Professor Sanday writes that from the time of direct ascrip- tion to the Apostle **o/ course^^ it was ''rapidly taken up." But we have now to pass behind the epoch of rapid dissem- ination, and put our double question, asking first, however, since the answer is relatively easy, What becomes of the tra- dition of John as an author ? Unless we greatly mistake the evidence, all that connects him with the Fourth Gospel runs rapidly out in mere legend, either born of Gnostic fancy, or educed from the "Johannine" writings themselves. The Acts 0} John (160-170 A. D.) identify "the disciple whom Jesus loved" with the son of Zebedee, explaining the phrase by John's alleged celibacy. Valentinian Gnostics, as less bound by tradition, may well have taken up the Fourth Gospel sooner than the orthodox, though for Basilides and Marcion Luke was "the" gospel. Corssen even thinks he finds traces of opposition to it in Gnostic circles, anticipating that of the Alogi. On the orthodox side it is hard to see how the situation differs from w^hat we might expect it to be if not one of the church writers, from Clement of Rome to Justin Martyr, had ever heard of John as an author, except in so far as he is recognized as the seer of Revelation. The solitary gleam of light that we can obtain from their utterance is the fact that in his list of the apostles, Papias groups John with Matthew. Lightfoot regarded this as evidence that Papias considered him as in some sense an evangelist.
1 Disciple of Valentinus. Harnack dates his career in 145-180 a. d.
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We have only to realize what was the main object of Papias* Expositions of the (principally Matthaean) logia, and what writing principally determined his chiliastic views, to see that this explanation is not required. In fact another is more probable. Papias' *' expositions" were directed against those whom Lightfoot rightly identifies as the i^rjyijTat Ka/col T(i)v KaXa)<; elprjfievcov. He may even have had the recently published Exegetica of BasiHdes in mind. In the language of his friend and colleague Polycarp, they ''perverted the logia of the Lord . . . denying that there is either resurrection or judgment." Papias answered them by ap- plying Revelation in support of his interpretations of Matthew and Mark. In particular he adduced Rev. 12:9, probably in explanation of Mt. 12:25-29. We may also infer with great probability that it is to Papias that Irenaeus refers as the interpreter of Rev. 13:18 {Her. V, xxx, i). Irenaeus certainly took from Papias his doctrine of a physical Para- dise, which Papias based on Mt. 13:8, 23, interpreted through certain ''unwritten traditions," but also, apparently, through Rev. 20:3. To seek a further reason for Papias' grouping of Matthew and John is surely superfluous. Mat- thew was his authority for the sayings of the Lord, John — the John oj Revelation — for "the resurrection and judgment." For the rest, the silence regarding John as an author is simply more marked the nearer we draw to the time and place of origin of the Gospel.
(2) But as already noted we must also ask, What of the employments of Johannine evangelic material in the years immediately preceding the vehement advocacy of Irenaeus? Why is there so sudden and enormous a falling off in the amount, so little importance attached to the minimum that appears, so distant a resemblance to our text? Why does the Fourth Gospel sink at once from the first to the very lowest rank as an authority? Why does Justin Martyr,
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 93
eager as he is in advocacy of a Logos-doctrine difficult to distinguish from the Johannine, never appeal to its authority, though in advocacy of his millenarian doctrine he is glad to quote Rev. 20:3, and to make the most of the tradition that ''the revelation was made to a certain man with us whose name was John, one oj the apostles of Christ"? ^ Why do his quotations from the Synoptic Gospels, which he regards as ''memoirs written by Apostles and their followers"^ [i. e., Matthew, Peter, Paul (?), Mark, and Luke], run up into the hundreds and extend over whole paragraphs; while a few lines will contain all that shows even a plausible connec- tion with the Fourth Gospel, even the single brief passage generally made the chief reliance,^ showing so close affinity with I Pt. I .'3, 23, Mt. 18:3, and Clem. Horn, xi, 26, and de- parting so widely from the Johannine form as to lead Bousset and Edwin Abbott to the conclusion that the logion at least is taken from an extracanonical source ? *
Answers of a certain sort have been found for these ques- tions. "The Gospel had not yet obtained currency." "Jus- tin had no copy with him." "He was prejudiced against it by Gnostic use." "Its esoteric character made it unsuitable for general use." ^ Our own ignorance has been appealed to,
1 Dialogue with Trypho, Ixxxi.
2 Dial. ciii. A <t>y]fii. virb tujv aTroffTSXuv airou Kal rdv eKcipois irapaKO- XovdriffdpTuu a-vvT€Tdx6ai: The quotation here introduced is the inter- polation in Luke 22:43-44. In cvi, where the naming of the sons of Zebedee Boanerges is referred to, the gospel which alone contains the incident is spoken of as "his {i. e., Peter's) memoirs." The phrase "apostles and their followers," which Westcott would make to include John, cannot fairly be required to include more than the two apostles Matthew and Peter.
^ Jn. 3: 3» 5> in Justin's Apology, I, Ixi.
4 See Encycl. Bibl., s. v. "Gospels," col. 1833 f.
5 Professor Sanday, in the Expositor, 189 1, even esteemed it altogether the best reply that can be made, a reply "sufficient to invalidate Dr. Abbott's whole position," to say that "By precisely the same mode of reasoning it might be proved that Justin recognized none, or only one, of St. Paul's Epistles, at a time when his opponent, the heretic Marcion, certainly recog-
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and justly. But can it be said that these are satisfactory answers ? Is there not a startling contrast still to be accounted for between Justin and the generation after in their treat- ment of this Gospel as compared, say, with Matthew? And as regards its claims of apostolicity and those of Revelation ? Was Justin ignorant of Jn. 21:24, or did he refuse it cre- dence ?
And the phenomena which meet us so startlingly in Jus- tin simply increase in cogency as we come nearer to the very spot and date whence the Gospel has always been held to emanate. Just because Papias and Polycarp betray casually an acquaintance with I John, it is the more surprising that they indicate not a trace of acquaintance with the Apostle as an author,^ just because Ignatius is concerned to refute the same Cerinthian type of Docetism antagonized in the First Epistle, and (according to both tradition and internal evidence) in the Gospel, just because he has recourse to a L{7^(95-doctrine which is far cruder than the Johannine, and yet resembles it, and because his very language has here and there a ** Johannine" tinge, and because he is writing from the very scene of the Apostle's latest days, it is the more extraordinary that he should pass by the story of the dis- pelling of Thomas' doubts, Jn. 20: 27, and the scene of post- resurrection eating with the eleven, Jn. 21:9-14, and resort to an apocryphal gospel of unknown origin to prove to the Smyrnaeans the reality of the resurrection body against the Docetae.^
nized ten of them." But what sort of authority would Paul's Epistles have been for Justin in his endeavor to give the heathen a correct idea of the life and teaching of Jesus ? And of what use would they have been in persuading a Jew that Jesus was the Messiah and taught a Logos-doctrine similar to Justin's own?
1 The exception above noted, that Papias, like Justin, vouched for the genuineness of Revelation, should be remembered.
2 Ignatius, Ad Smyrn. iii, 2. See Lightfoot, Apost. Fathers, as to the derivation of the quotation.
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 95
That Hermas,^ and the AiBaxv, and Barnabas, and the Smyrnaeans, and Clement of Rome are silent, both as to the Apostle and anything written by him, is scarcely to the point, since nothing was perhaps to be expected. But if any are disposed to find "Johannine" echoes in the eucharistic prayers of AtBaxv, or elsewhere in these early writings, it simply increases the difficulty of accounting for the two un- accountable things, (i) the general non-employment of the Gospel, (2) the apparent universal ignorance of its claims to apostolic authorship.
As the outcome of the changed aspect given to the external evidence by modern phases of the Johannine problem, it appears thus, finally, that Lightfoot was indeed right in de- claring both the silence and the utterance of the earliest writers to be eloquent. Only, now that both our knowledge of utterances and our understanding of silences has increased, there is very much to turn the inferences once drawn in al- most the opposite direction. Eighteen years ago Drs. Schiirer and Sanday were already agreed on the conclusiveness of the external evidence regarding the early existence of the Gos- pel. They were divided in opinion as to whether the balance of this evidence inclined in favor of the Johannine author- ship. To-day the agreed point is much more emphatically determined than before; the question is now. What kind of
1 The proof of the use of the "sacred quaternion" of the Gospels by Hermas, expected by Professor Sanday in 1891 (Expositor, iv, 4, p, 419), has resolved itself into the simple fact that the four supports of the seat on which " Ecclesia sits, which IrencBus adopts as an allegorical type of the four gospels, are found in Hermas {Vis. iii, 13). Only, the application made by Hermas is not that of Irenaeus, III, xi, 8, but simply: "Whereas thou sawest her seated on a couch, the position is a firm one; for the couch has four feet and standeth firmly; for the world too is upheld by means of four elements." Dr. C. Taylor developed the promised "proof" in 1892, under the title The Witness 0/ Hermas to the Four Gospels, which Harnack very unceremoniously dismisses as "mere inepta." Stanton, Gospels., etc., p. 47, note 3, is more gentle in finding it "impossible to adopt his view."
96 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
existence had the Fourth Gospel in the first half of the second century? Did it circulate in its present form, and accom- panied by its present "letter of commendation" in the so- called Appendix? Did it circulate, as Lightfoot supposed, with both this and I John besides attached to it as a "commendatory letter"? Or does a use barely sufficient to prove its early existence, even when helped out from Gnostic sources, and by echoes so remote as to suggest something quite unHke our form of the text, accompanied by a silence on the question of authorship, more marked the further we recede from the stalwart claims of Irenaeus and the argu- menta toward the actual time and place of origin, — do these complementary fines of evidence to-day tend to show that the notion of direct apostofic authorship is a later develop- ment?
Against these debated questions we may well propound in briefest form what we regard as the real facts concerning evangelic tradition in the Sub-apostofic Age, and the au- thority attached to it in the various provinces of the ecclesi- astical world; for as Harnack has admirably set forth, ^ the circulation of a jourjold gospel is not only a phenomenon of late appearance, for which battle is still being vigorously waged by Irenaeus and the author of the Muratorianum; it is in itself a complete anomaly, whose explanation may be expected to shed a flood of light upon the obscurities of the tradition. The only normal and intelligible beginning — and of this primitive condition many traces survive — is one in which the Church embodies its whole "evangefic instru- ment" in a single gospel — as indeed it repeatedly attempted to do, and the founders of heretical churches almost invariably did. A remote period is dimly discernible when the ortho- dox Church also had but one gospel. It was written in Aramaic and hence confined in circulation to Palestine. It
1 Chronologic, p. 681.
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 97
was said to have been a compilation by the Apostle Matthew of the Sayings of the Lord. But at the earhest period to which we can trace the story, this primitive gospel had as- sumed several variant Greek forms. As the Church ex- panded this growth was inevitable. In Palestine, however, "the" gospel continued for centuries to be the Gospel ac- cording to Matthew, however varied the forms assumed. Of these forms (Papias' "translations") one was our own Greek Matthew, which may have been composed in Caesarea, or perhaps Alexandria; others, written in Aramaic, circulated in Palestine. The Greek Matthew, however, is known and accepted everywhere in the earliest times; only, as every modern student knows, canonical Matthew is already a product of fusion. It combines the ancient Matthaean Say- ings (Q) with the Roman gospel founded on Pe trine narra- tive, attributed to Paul's companion Mark. And the com- bination itself displays a Palestinian or South Syrian origin, as indeed we find these two sources (the Sayings and Mark) recognized by the (Palestinian) "Elders" of Papias. Mat- thew and Mark, the Palestinian and the Roman gospels, are the only ones of which we have traces everywhere in the earliest time. They alone circulate without "letters of com- mendation" in the form of preface or appendix. Indeed, outside of its native Rome even Mark is not treated with a respect approaching that paid to Matthew. "The" gospel for the Didache is Matthew. Quotations, whether in Asia, Syria, Egypt, or even Rome, are almost invariably from Matthew. Mark is seldom used, and an apologetic tone is assumed in speaking of its limitations.
Later there appears in Antioch ^ a new combination of the
1 Ancient tradition (Eusebius, H. E. Ill, iv, 7), early employment (Mar- cion, Basilides), and internal characteristics (settlement of the issue between Jews and Gentiles in the Church on a Petrine basis at the instance of An- tioch) combine to prove Luke-Acts an Antiochian product. Fourth Gospel — 7
98 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
Matthaean Sayings with Mark, developed with great literary skill and with the aid of ancient missionary records into a complete history of the founding of the Church. This third gospel and book of x\cts is put forth under distinguished patronage.^ It is carried to Rome and to Alexandria. In Asia it strongly influences the author of our Fourth Gospel. By Marcion and BasiUdes it is adopted as "the" gospel. It is placed at least on equal terms with Matthew and Mark by Justin, and even a new conclusion is framed to the latter gospel adapting its resurrection narrative to the Lukan form. The Gospel oj Peter effects a harmonizing combination of the three. Only in Asia is there little trace, outside the Fourth Gospel itself, of any disposition to take up the An- tiochian gospel. Papias, if he knew it, would seem to have classed it with the ''books" which to him were of less value than "the living and abiding voice." He perhaps included the Fourth Gospel in the same category. Asia, as we know, had given a welcome to the South Syrian embodiment of Matthaean tradition on the one hand, and to the Roman embodiment of Petrine tradition on the other. In this head- quarters of the Pauline Greek mission field both tendencies were thoroughly felt, intense loyalty to the independent mysti- cism of Paul, and at the same time a disposition to revert to "the word handed down from the beginning" (in Palestine) against heretical, ultra-Pauline perverters of the oracles of the Lord and deniers of the resurrection and judgment. From its whole history Asia could not be satisfied with any modern product not" fundamentally akin to its own lofty Paulinism. Its own evangeUc tradition remained long un- formulated, as we might expect would be the case from Paul's comparative indifference to the mere story of the earthly Jesus. When at last formulated it displayed that lofty eclecticism and disdain of the mere conventionalized
1 Lk, 1:3; Acts i:i, /cpdr tore QedcpiXe.
THE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE 99
Synoptic form which only a PauUne mysticism could pro- duce. For long it is the name of Paul, and only of Paul, by which the Asiatic 'type of evangeUc tradition, distin- guished especially by the Logos-doctrine, is supported. After the middle of the second century, at Rome, we find the name of "John" attached to it, which previously is as- sociated only with the book of Revelation, an Asiatic recast, as its preHminary letters to the seven Churches of Asia at- test, of a Palestinian Apocalypse. The first attempt to se- cure for the Gospel and Epistles the same apostolic authority vigorously — and it would seem successfully — asserted for the Apocalypse, is made (in a very cautious and almost am- biguous manner) in an Appendix, attached, it would seem, at Rome. The whole object of this Appendix is to adjust the claims of the Gospel to those of a regnant Petrine tra- dition. The office of chief under-shepherd of the flock of Christ is here conceded to Peter, together with the crown of martyrdom. Only for "the disciple whom Jesus loved " there is reserved the special and unique function belonging to the "abiding witness"; not indeed that once accepted in the Church "that that disciple should not die"; but in the new and vital sense that his "witness" shall remain as the "true" interpretation of the faith, the essential " mind of Christ." With this epilogue of commendation to a world-wide circle our Fourth Gospel is "given forth to the churches."
If Rome be not the place where the harmonizing Appendix was framed, certainly Rome is the scene of the great contro- versy which now breaks out, as it would seem in consequence of it. The question which now for half a century agitates the Christian world with respect to the standard of evan- gelic tradition is that of a single, double, threefold, or four- fold gospel. Rome is the inevitable battle-field. Tatian seeks to solve the problem by a reduction of the four to one com- posite gospel; and his solution is accepted in Syria, his na-
loo THE FOURTH GOSPEL
tive place. Theophilus of Antioch follows a similar plan. Gaius of Rome rejects the Asiatic gospel on account of its ** discord with the other three." Cerinthians and Docetists adopt Mark alone, Basilides Luke alone, Marcion a muti- lated form of Luke. But the method of the Catholic Church has always been inclusive, and in the matter of the canon, more especially the gospel canon, inclusion and combination had been the method established from the very start. The long established double standard had already become three- fold. The only logical step was now to make it fourfold. Against Proclus and his few Phrygian Montanists a great scholar and ecclesiastic like Gaius might for a time make head. But the weight of all Asia and the increasing spirit of catholicity was against him. It was impossible to cut off the whole province of Asia by excluding its form of gospel teaching. Irenaeus, proud to take up the cause of Polycarp and Polycarp's associates, as he esteemed it, swung his heavy battle-ax against the "wretched men" who think that in the nature of the case there can be less than four gospels. In particular he denounced those who dared to question " that aspect which is presented by John's Gospel." Hippoly- tus overwhelmed them with his learning and logic, and elaborated a chronology to remove the discrepancies between the Synoptics and John developed during the Paschal con- troversies. Such in outline is the course of history as we read it, in place of that fides semper eadem, that unbroken trans- mission of a fourfold "evangelic instrument having for its authors Apostles, on whom this charge was imposed by the Lord himself," which Catholic theory presents.
CHAPTER IV
THE TRADITION AS TO THE ELDERS AND ITS TRANSFOR- MATIONS ^
All discussion of the origin and history of the tradition of John in Asia, and as author of the Gospel, must necessarily begin with Papias. The famous fragment of his work which contains practically all we know of the beginnings of gospel composition, and forms our strongest link of connection with the apostles, is quoted by Eusebius in an endeavor to cor- rect what has been designated from its principal promulgator the "Irenaean tradition" of apostles in Asia. Eusebius did not criticize this in its whole extent, but simply in so far as it rested on the statements of Papias.^ Shortly before ^ the period of Irenaeus' work (written ca. i86 a. d.) the Roman presbyter Gaius in debate with the Montanist Proclus, had repudiated the latter's authorities, the Johannine writings, as unauthentic.^ Irenaeus (followed later by his disciple Hippolytus, whose Heads against Gaius are still extant in
1 Reprinted by permission of the editors from the Journal of Biblical Literature, XXVII, i (July, 1908).
2 The section begins: "Irenaeus makes mention of these (the five books of Exegesis) as the only works written by him (Papias)." It proceeds to cite and criticize his description of Papias' relation to the apostles and to Poly- carp, as below, p. 117.
3 Eusebius dates Gaius under Zephyrinus {H. E. II, xxv, 6), probably too late.
4 The Dialogue aimed to "curb the rashness and boldness of his oppo- nents in setting forth new Scriptures." It maintained the authority of "Peter and Paul" (attributing thirteen letters to the latter) against that of the writings attributed to "a great apostle" at Ephesus {H. E. II, xxv, 7; VI, XX, 3; III, xxviii, 2). Polycrates {H. E. Ill, xxxi, 3) inverts the argument.
lOI
I02 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
abstract ^) became their stalwart champion, especially de- fending the Fourth Gospel. For this task his early residence in Asia and direct eye and ear knowledge of Polycarp, a survivor of the apostolic age, gave him an advantage of which he makes the utmost. He depends, however, for all his specific citations of apostolic tradition upon a written source, now generally admitted to have been the work of Papias, entitled KvpLUKcov Xoyucov e^TjryrjaeL^.^ In the passage wherein his principal quotation is made he designates the worthy bishop of HierapoUs as ''a man of the earliest period, a hearer of John and companion of Polycarp." ^ Eusebius one hundred and forty years later, having the work of Papias before him, and examining it carefully for the specific pur- pose of determining this particular point, had no difficulty in showing by citation of the passages bearing upon the question that Irenaeus had misinterpreted them, attributing to Papias a much closer connection with the apostolic foun- tainhead of tradition than could be justly claimed.
On the other hand, if Irenseus was misled by his zeal to establish the unbroken continuity in proconsular Asia of that apostolic tradition whereof he counted himself a provi- dential representative, Eusebius in his turn cannot be alto- gether acquitted of similar partiahty. He also had read the Dialogue of Proclus and Gains, and on all but one point was as ardently opposed as Irenaeus himself to its anti-Johannine criticism. The Roman followers of Gaius, one of whose favorite arguments was to point to the disagreement of the Fourth Gospel with the other three, were to Eusebius as obnoxious as to Hippolytus and to the author of the Murato-
1 See J. R. Harris, Hermas in Arcadia and Other Essays, 1896.
2 Lightfoot {Bibl. Essays, pp. 64, 66, 68) varies from the reading 'E^-fiyrjcris to'E^777iJ(rcis. His apparent preference for the plural is based on the nature of the work (p. 68, note 2). The present writer was guilty of oversight, as Drummond notes (Authorship, p. 195), in neglecting the variant.
3 dpxauos i-vfip, *\(j36.vvov dKovarris, UoXvKcipirov 5^ iraipos.
THE APOSTLES AND ELDERS 103
rianum. He regarded them as "senseless" Alogi, to quote the punning epithet of Epiphanius/ men who for the sake of ridding themselves of the excesses of the "Phrygian heresy" had "emptied out the baby with the bath" by rejecting the whole Phrygo-Asiatic canon — Gospel, Epistles,^ and Apoca- lypse of John together. On one point of their contention, however, Eusebius was disposed to yield, though the argu- ments which had convinced him were not, or at least not directly, those of Gaius. Eusebius had been profoundly influenced by the reasoning of another great malleus hereti- corum, Dionysius of Alexandria, whose opponents the Chili- asts based their millenarian doctrines, not like the Phrygian champions of the prophetic Spirit on the Johannine canon as a whole, but simply on the Apocalypse. Dionysius cut the ground from under their feet by denying its apostolicity, though he maintained as cordially as ever the authenticity of the Gospel and at least of the first of the Epistles. Hence- forth Revelation, the writing which alone of the five made direct claim to Johannine authorship, with direct and ex- plicit attestation by both Papias and Justin Martyr, be- came the "disputed," and the other four, or at least the Gospel and First Epistle, the "undisputed" Johannine writ- ings. Eusebius quotes at length the argument of Dionysius against the Apocalypse, wherein the Alexandrian scholar displays the skill in literary criticism one might anticipate in a pupil of Origen, showing how completely Revelation differs in style and standpoint from the Gospel and Epistles.
1 Epiphanius in this portion of his Refutation of All Heresies merely re- flects Hippolytus, the disciple of Irenaeus, whose Heads against Gaius give us the substance of his refutation of the presbyter.
2 The rejection of the Epistles seems to be only the inference of Epipha- nius, but it was doubtless correct. The work of Hippolytus in the list of his writings on the back of the statue in the Lateran Museum is called only a Defense of the Gospel and Apocalypse of John. The Epistles were perhaps not involved in the dispute.
I04 THE FOURTH GOSPEL
Eusebius himself was anything but favorably disposed toward the Chiliasts. He even attributes the crude escha- tology he found represented by Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and other members of the Ephesian school, to the influence of Papias, "whom for this very unfair reason he contemptuously sets down as ''a very narrow-minded man." ^ We are not surprised, therefore, to find him not only quoting the theory of Dionysius with approval, but in his famous list of "ad- mitted," "disputed," and "spurious" books making special exception of Revelation, which if by the Apostle must of course be admitted as canonical; but otherwise cannot even be classed with the "disputed" books {avrtXeyofieva) which