Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/843

Rh hesis rship ision. AUTHORSHIR] Fourth Gospel should have been written by the same author would be, we will not say impossible, but one of the most marvellous literary phenomena ever authenticated. The change in Shakespeare’s style, or in the style of Burke, cannot be compared with this; for those changes can be in part explained by the transition from youth to maturity or old age. Here we have to explain how a writer could completely change language, style, and thought, after the age of sixty or sixty-seven years. It is possible, but a priori highly improbable. It has indeed been suggested that this change of language may be explained by the lapse of more than thirty years, during which the author was living in the midst of a Gentile population. This assumes that the Apocalypse was written in G8 A.D., before John had resided in Ephesus, and that he wrote the Gospel at the age of ninety-eight. But (1) the minute knowledge of the Seven Churches (Rev. i. ii. iii.) makes it probable that the writer had resided for some time in their neighbourhood; (2) the composition of such a work as the Fourth Gospel at the age of ninety-eight is in itself unlikely ; (3) it is by no means certain that the Apocalypse was written in 68 A.D., and not rather in 7 8 A.D., simultaneously with the fourth Sibylline Book (and the later the date of the Apocalypse the shorter the interval between it and the Fourth Gospel, and the more improbable becomes the theory of the change of style). An hypothesis based upon three hypotheses, themselves not proved or improbable, requires much evidence before it can be accepted. There is yet another difficulty in the way of believing that John the apostle is the author : the words of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (1) differ altogether in style and rhythm from the synoptic tradition of the words of the Lord, and (2) do not differ at'all from the author’s own remarks and observations. So great is the similarity between the words of the writer and the words which are assigned by him either to our Lord or to John the Baptist that Dr Vest- cott, commenting on J 0. iii. 10-21, 27-36, says (I9zt-roduc- tion to the Gospels, p. 292), “It is impossible not to feel that the evangelist is in fact commenting on and explain- ing the testimony which he records. The comments seem to begin respectively at verses 16 and 31.” The words italicized (not by Dr VVestcott) require little comment. It is obvious that a biographer, who so mixes the words of his characters with observations of his own that a most careful and scholarlike commentator is unable to feel sure where the words of the characters end and the observations of the author “seem to begin,” cannot be supposed to be exactly recording, scarcely even to be attempting to record with exactness, the words of the characters themselves. Yet it seems impossible that the “disciple whom Jesus loved” should either remember his Master’s words so ill, or else deliberately transmute them into entirely different language of his own. A work of this kind, notwithstanding the presence of historical elements, seems rather to deserve to be called a poem, or a drama, than a biography ; and accordingly the same careful commentator who is quoted above declares that “ the spirit of parallelism, the instinctive perception of symmetry in thought and expression, which is the essential and informing spirit of Hebrew poetry, r11ns through the whole record ” (I ntrocl. to the Gospel of St John). Such a work does not seem likely to have proceeded from one of the sons of Zebedee, a ﬁsherman of the lake district of Galilee, not indeed a poor man, but still not a man of letters nor of any great literary culture. “The earliest account of the origins of the Gospel is already legendary ” (Westcott, Int-rocluction to the Gospels, 1). 255), as given in the fragment of Muratori (A.D. 170). It is there said that, being requested by his fellow—disciples and bishops to write, John desired them to fast for three GOSPELS 819 days, and then to relate to one another what revelation each had received either for or against the project. The same night it was revealed to Andrew, one of the apostles, that “while all called (the past) to mind (or while all re- vised,—‘ cunctis recognoscentibus ’), John should write everything in his own name." Legendary though this account may be, it curiously agrees with a passage in the Gospel itself which implies that others besides the author were “ revising,” or otherwise assisting in, the work : “This is the disciple which testiﬁeth of these things and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true” (xxi. 24). Yet immediately afterwards—in a sentence which, though omitted by Tischendorf, is supported by the MSS. almost without exception—the singular number is resumed: “ I suppose that the world could not contain the books that should be written.” This passage certainly seems to indicate some kind of joint authorship or revision, or at all events a desire to convey the impression of joint authorship or revision, such as the Muratorian fragment describes. The theory of joint authorship or revision is conﬁrmed by evidence derivable from the 1st Epistle of John, which is justly regarded (Lightfoot, Contemp. Itea, 1875) as a kind of postscript to the Gospel. It begins (like the Gospel, and unlike the Apocalypse, as also unlike the 2d and 3d Epistles of John) without men- tion of the author’s name, and in the plural number: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us.” Yet at the conclusion of the ﬁrst chapter, as though it were to be understood that the whole was written “in the name of John ” (“ suo nomine,” as the Muratorian fragment has it), the singular number is used, “these things write I unto you” (1 Jo. ii. 1, 7, 12, 13, 14, 21; v. 16).‘ So far therefore as we have gone, the evidence is very decidedly against the supposition that John the apostle was the sole author of the Fourth Gospel. He may have written it (1) through an amanuensis or disciple, who translated his language (and possibly his thoughts also) in the process of expressing them (just as Paul is said by some to have written the Epistle to the Hebrews in Hebrew, and to have had it freely rendered by one of his followers) ;2 or (2) it may have been an attempt on the part of a leading teacher of the J ohannine school at Ephesus to reproduce the spirit of their 1naster’s teaching after he had been taken from them by death, an attempt of one of the Ephesian elders to reproduce John once again in their church, surrounded by Andrew and Philip and Aristion and the rest of the disciples of the Lord, the former proclaiming and all the rest assenting to “ that which they had heard, that which they had seen with their eyes. ”3 If during the latter years of his life John was inﬁrm and bedridden, obliged to preach and teach by deputy,4 it is obvious that the “ teach- ing of John ” during the last eight years of his life, when the old man was now past ninety years of age, might be 1 Of course the “we,” whereby the writer identiﬁes himself with his readers (ii. 3 and ptwsim-), is quite different from the “we " men- tioned above. 2 The statement that Papias “wrote out the Gospel at the dicta- tion of John,” quoted by VVestcott (Canon, p. 76) from an argument preﬁxed to an MS. of the 9th century, is probably worthless, except as indicating an opinion much earlier than the M S., that John did not himself write the Gospel. 3 That a similar attempt was made to reproduce, as it were, the authority of Peter by a writer in the 2d century, we have seen above (p. 814) in the account of the Second Epistle of Peter. But the cir- cumstances and prolonged infirmities of the apostle John might make such an attempt far more successful and a far more accurate repre- sentation of spiritual truth., 4 Jerome, Comm. in E1). ad Gal. , vi. 10, quoted in Westcotts Introd. to St John.