with the woman at the well concerning the spiritual, universal character of the new religion; and cure of the ruler’s son, the reward of faith in the simple word of Jesus. (f) Manifestation of Jesus as the vivifying Life-Logos and its contradiction in Judea, v.: the paralytic’s cure. (g) Manifestation of Jesus as the heaven-descended living Bread and its contradiction in Galilee, vi.: multiplication of the loaves; walking on the waters; and His discourse on the holy Eucharist.
(iii.) Acute conflict between the New Light and the old darkness (vii.–xii). (h) Self-manifestation of the Logos-Light in the Temple (vii. 1–x. 39). Journey to the feast of tabernacles; invitation to the soul athirst to come to Him (the fountain of Life) and drink, and proclamation of Himself as the Light of the world; cure of the man born blind; allegory of the good shepherd. The allegory continued at the feast of the dedication. They strive to stone or to take Him. (i) The Logos-Life brings Lazarus to life; effects of the act (x. 40–xii. 50). Jesus withdraws beyond Jordan, and then comes to Bethany, His friend Lazarus being buried three days; proclaims Himself the Resurrection and the Life; and calls Lazarus back to life. Some who saw it report the act to the Pharisees; the Sanhedrim meets, Caiaphas declares that one man must die for the people, and henceforward they ceaselessly plan His death. Jesus withdraws to the Judaean desert, but soon returns, six days before Passover, to Bethany; Mary anoints Him, a crowd comes to see Him and Lazarus, and the hierarchs then plan the killing of Lazarus also. Next morning He rides into Jerusalem on an ass’s colt. Certain Greeks desire to see Him: He declares the hour of His glorification to have come: “Now My soul is troubled. . . . Father, save Me from this hour. But for this have I come unto this hour: Father, glorify Thy Name.” A voice answers, “I have glorified it and will glorify it again”: some think that an angel spoke; but Jesus explains that this voice was not for His sake but for theirs. When lifted up from earth, He will draw all men to Himself; they are to believe in Him, the Light. The writer’s concluding reflection: the small success of Jesus’ activity among the Jews. Once again He cries: “I am come a Light into the world, that whoso believeth in Me should not abide in darkness.”
2. The Logos-Christ’s manifestation of His life and love to His disciples, during the last supper, the passion, the risen life (xiii.–xx.).
(iv.) The Last Supper (xiii.–xvii.) (j) Solemn washing of the disciples’ feet; the beloved disciple; designates the traitor; Judas goes forth, it is night (xiii. 1–30). (k) Last discourses, first series (xiii. 31–xiv. 31): the new commandment, the other helper; “Arise, let us go hence.” Second series (xv. 1–xvi. 33): allegory of the true vine; “Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down his life for his friend”; the world’s hatred; the spirit of truth shall lead them into all truth; “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world, again I leave the world and go to the Father”; “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” (l) The high-priestly prayer (xvii). “Father, glorify Thy Son . . . with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was . . . that to as many as Thou hast given Him, He should give eternal life.” “I pray for them, I pray not for the world. I pray also for them that shall believe in Me through their word, that they may be all one, as Thou Father art in Me, and I in Thee.”
(v.) The Passion (xviii.–xix.). (m) In the garden: the Roman soldiers come to apprehend Him, fall back upon the ground at His declaration “I am He.” Peter and Malchus. (n) Before Annas at night and Caiaphas at dawn; Peter’s denials (xviii. 12–27). (o) Before Pilate (xviii. 28–40). Jesus declares, “My kingdom is not of this world. I have come into the world that I may bear witness to the truth: everyone that is of the truth, heareth My voice”; Pilate asks sceptically “What is truth?” and the crowd prefers Barabbas. (p) The true king presented to the people as a mock-king; His rejection by the Jews and abandonment to them (xix. 1–16). (q) Jesus carries His cross to Golgotha, and is crucified there between two others; the cross’s title and Pilate’s refusal to alter it (xix. 17–22). (r) The soldiers cast lots upon His garments and seamless tunic; His mother with two faithful women and the beloved disciple at the cross’s foot; His commendation of His mother and the disciple to each other; His last two sayings in deliberate accomplishment of scripture “I thirst,” “It is accomplished.” He gives up the spirit; His bones remain unbroken; and from His spear-lanced side blood and water issue (xix. 23–37). (s) The two nobles, Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus, bind the dead body in a winding sheet with one hundred pounds of precious spices, and place it in a new monument in a near garden, since the sabbath is at hand.
(vi.) The risen Jesus, Lord and God (xx.). (t) At early dawn on the first day of the week, Mary Magdalen, finding the stone rolled away from the monument, runs to tell Peter and the beloved disciple that the Lord’s body has been removed. Peter and the other disciple run to the grave; the latter, arriving first, enters only after Peter has gone in and noted the empty grave-clothes—enters and believes. After their departure, Mary sees two angels where His body had lain and turning away beholds Jesus standing, yet recognizes Him only when He addresses her. He bids her “Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended”; but to tell His brethren “I ascend to My Father and to your Father, to My God and to your God.” And she does so. (u) Second apparition (xx. 19–23). Later on the same day, the doors being shut, Jesus appears amongst His disciples, shows them His (pierced) hands and side, and solemnly commissions and endows them for the apostolate by the words, “As the Father hath sent Me, so I send you,” and by breathing upon them saying “Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins ye remit, they are remitted to them; whose sins ye retain, they are retained.” (v) Third apparition and culminating saying; conclusion of entire book (xx. 24–31). Thomas, who had been absent, doubts the resurrection; Jesus comes and submits to the doubter’s tests. Thomas exclaims, “My Lord and my God”; but Jesus declares “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.” “Now Jesus,” concludes the writer, “did many other signs, . . . but these are written, that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life in His name.”
The above analysis is rough, since even distantly placed sections, indeed the two parts themselves, are interrelated by delicate complex references on and back. And it omits the account of the adulteress (vii. 53–viii. 11): (a valuable report of an actual occurrence which probably belonged to some primitive document otherwise incorporated by the Synoptists), because it is quite un-Johannine in vocabulary, style and character, intercepts the Gospel’s thread wherever placed, and is absent from its best MSS. It also omits xxi. This chapter’s first two stages contain an important early historical document of Synoptic type: Jesus’ apparition to seven disciples by the Lake of Galilee and the miraculous draught of fishes; and Peter’s threefold confession and Jesus’ threefold commission to him. And its third stage, Jesus’ prophecies to Peter and to the beloved disciple concerning their future, and the declaration “This is the disciple who testifies to these things and who has written them, and we know that his testimony is true,” is doubtless written by the redactor of the previous two stages. This writer imitates, but is different from, the great author of the first twenty chapters.
Comparison with the Synoptists.—The following are the most obvious differences between the original book and the Synoptists. John has a metaphysical prologue; Matthew and Luke have historical prologues; and Mark is without any prologue. The earthly scene is here Judea, indeed Jerusalem, with but five breaks (vi. 1–vii. 10) is the only long one; whilst over two-thirds of each Synoptist deal with Galilee or Samaria. The ministry here lasts about three and a half years (it begins some months before the first Passover, ii. 13; the feast of v. 1 is probably a second; the third occurs vi. 4; and on the fourth, xi. 55, He dies): whilst the Synoptists have but the one Passover of His death, after barely a year of ministry. Here Jesus’ teaching contains no parables and but three allegories, the Synoptists present it as parabolic through and through. Here not one exorcism occurs; in the Synoptists the exorcisms are as prominent as the cures and the preaching, John has, besides the passion, seven accounts in common with the Synoptists: the Baptist and Jesus, (i. 19–34); cleansing of the Temple (ii. 13–16); cure of the centurion’s (ruler’s) servant (son) (iv. 46–54); multiplication of the loaves (vi. 1–13); walking upon the water (vi. 16-21); anointing at Bethany, (xii. 1–8); entry into Jerusalem (xii. 12–16): all unique occurrences. In the first, John describes how the Baptist, on Jesus’ approach, cries “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world”; and how he says “I saw the spirit descending upon Him, and I bore witness that this is the Son of God.” But the Synoptists, especially Mark, give the slow steps in even the apostles’ realization of Jesus’ Messianic character; only at Caesarea Philippi Simon alone, for the first time, clearly discerns it, Jesus declaring that His Father has revealed it to Him, and yet Simon is still scandalized at the thought of a suffering Messiah (Mark viii. 28–34). Only some two weeks before the end is He proclaimed Messiah at Jericho (x. 46–48); then in Jerusalem, five days before dying for this upon the cross (xi. 1–10, xv. 37). As to the Baptist, in all three Synoptists, he baptizes Jesus, and in Mark i. 10, 11 it is Jesus who sees the Spirit descending upon Himself on His emerging from beneath the water, and it is to Himself that God’s voice is addressed; in John, Jesus’ baptism is ignored, only the Spirit remains hovering above Him, as a sign for the Baptist’s instruction. And in Matt. xi. 2–6, the Baptist, several months after the Jordan scene, sends from his prison to ascertain if Jesus is indeed the Messiah; in John, the Baptist remains at large so as again (iii. 22–36) to proclaim Jesus’ heavenly provenance. The cleansing of the Temple occurs in the Synoptists four days before His death, and instantly determines the hierarchs to seek His destruction (Mark xi. 15–18); John puts it three years back, as an appropriate frontispiece to His complete claims and work.
The passion-narratives reveal the following main differences. John omits, at the last supper, its central point, the great historic act of the holy eucharist, carefully given by the Synoptists and St Paul, having provided a highly doctrinal equivalent in the discourse on the living bread, here spoken by Jesus in Capernaum over a year before the passion (vi. 4), the day after the multiplication of the loaves. This transference is doubtless connected with the change in the relations between the time of the Passover meal and that of His death: in the Synoptists, the Thursday evening’s supper is a true Passover meal, the lamb had been slain that afternoon and Jesus dies some twenty-four hours later; in John, the supper is not a Passover-meal, the Passover is celebrated on Friday, and Jesus, proclaimed here from the first, the Lamb of God, dies whilst the paschal lambs, His prototypes, are being slain. The scene in the garden is without the agony of Gethsemane; a faint echo of this historic anguish appears in the scene with the Greeks four days earlier, and even that peaceful
