the very real and important presbyter is completely unknown to
Irenaeus, and his conclusion as to the book’s authorship resulted
apparently from a comparison of its contents with Polycarp’s
teaching. If the presbyter wrote Revelation and was Polycarp’s
master, such a mistake could easily arise. Certainly Polycrates,
bishop of Ephesus, made a precisely similar mistake when about
190 he described the Philip “who rests in Hierapolis” as “one
of the twelve apostles,” since Eusebius rightly identifies this
Philip with the deacon of Acts xxi. A positive testimony for
the critical conclusion is derived from the existence of a group
of Asia Minor Christians who about 165 rejected the Gospel as
not by John but by Cerinthus. The attribution is doubtless
mistaken. But could Christians sufficiently numerous to
deserve a long discussion by St Epiphanius in 374–377, who
upheld the Synoptists, stoutly opposed the Gnostics and Montanists,
and had escaped every special designation till the
bishop nicknamed them the “Alogoi” (irrational rejectors of
the Logos-Gospel), dare, in such a time and country, to hold
such views, had the apostolic origin been incontestable? Surely
not. The Alexandrian Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius,
Jerome and Augustine only tell of the Zebedean what is traceable
to stories told by Papias of others, to passages of Revelation
and the Gospel, or to the assured fact of the long-lived Asian
presbyter.
As to the internal evidence, if the Gospel typifies various imperfect or sinful attitudes in Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman and Thomas; if even the mother appears to symbolize faithful Israel: then, profoundly spiritual and forward-looking as it is, a type of the perfect disciple, not all unlike Clement’s perfect “Gnostic,” could hardly be omitted by it; and the precise details of this figure may well be only ideally, mystically true. The original work nowhere identifies this disciple with any particular historic figure. “He who saw” the lance-thrust “hath borne witness, and his witness is true,” is asserted (xix. 35) of the disciple. Yet “to see” is said also of intuitive faith, “whoso hath seen Me, hath seen the Father” (xiv. 9); and “true” appears also in “the true Light,” “the true Bread from heaven,” as characterizing the realities of the upper, alone fully true world, and equals “heavenly” (iii. 12); thus a “true witness” testifies to some heavenly reality, and appeals to the reader’s “pneumatic,” i.e. allegorical, understanding.
Only in the appendix do we find any deliberate identification with a particular historic person: “this is the disciple who witnessed to and who wrote these things” (24) refers doubtless to the whole previous work and to “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” identified here with an unnamed historic personage whose recent death had created a shock, evidently because he was the last of that apostolic generation which had so keenly expected the second coming (18–23). This man was so great that the writer strives to win his authority for this Gospel; and yet this man was not John the Zebedean, else why, now he is dead and gone, not proclaim the fact? If the dead man was John the presbyter—if this John had in youth just seen Jesus and the Zebedean, and in extreme old age had still seen and approved the Gospel—to attribute this Gospel to him, as is done here, would not violate the literary ethics of those times. Thus the heathen philosopher Iamblichus (d. c. 330) declares: “this was admirable” amongst the Neo-Pythagoreans “that they ascribed everything to Pythagoras; but few of them acknowledge their own works as their own” (de Pythag. vita, 198). And as to Christians, Tertullian about 210 tells how the presbyter who, in proconsular Asia, had “composed the Acts of Paul and Thecla” was convicted and deposed, for how could it be credible that Paul should confer upon women the power to “teach and baptize” as these Acts averred? The attribution as such, then, was not condemned.
The facts of the problem would all appear covered by the hypothesis that John the presbyter, the eleven being all dead, wrote the book of Revelation (its more ancient Christian portions) say in 69, and died at Ephesus say in 100; that the author of the Gospel wrote the first draft, here, say in 97; that this book, expanded by him, first circulated within a select Ephesian Christian circle; and that the Ephesian church officials added to it the appendix and published it in 110–120. But however different or more complicated may have been the actual origins, three points remain certain. The real situation that confronts us is not an unbroken tradition of apostolic eye-witnesses, incapable of re-statement with any hope of ecclesiastical acceptance, except by another apostolic eye-witness. On one side indeed there was the record, underlying the Synoptists, of at least two eye-witnesses, and the necessity of its preservation and transmission; but on the other side a profound double change had come over the Christian outlook and requirements. St Paul’s heroic labours (30–64) had gradually gained full recognition and separate organization for the universalist strain in our Lord’s teaching; and he who had never seen the earthly Jesus, but only the heavenly Christ, could even declare that Christ “though from the Jewish fathers according to the flesh” had died, “so that henceforth, even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, now we no further know Him thus,” “the Lord is the Spirit,” and “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” And the Jewish church, within which Christianity had first lived and moved, ceased to have a visible centre. Thus a super-spatial and super-temporal interpretation of that first markedly Jewish setting and apprehension of the Christian truth became as necessary as the attachment to the original contingencies. The Fourth Gospel, inexplicable without St Paul and the fall of Jerusalem, is fully understandable with them. The attribution of the book to an eye-witness nowhere resolves, it everywhere increases, the real difficulties; and by insisting upon having history in the same degree and way in John as in the Synoptists, we cease to get it sufficiently anywhere at all. And the Fourth Gospel’s true greatness lies well within the range of this its special character. In character it is profoundly “pneumatic”; Paul’s super-earthly Spirit-Christ here breathes and speaks, and invites a corresponding spiritual comprehension. And its greatness appears in its inexhaustibly deep teachings concerning Christ’s sheep and fold; the Father’s drawing of souls to Christ; the dependence of knowledge as to Christ’s doctrine upon the doing of God’s will; the fulfilling of the commandment of love, as the test of true discipleship; eternal life, begun even here and now; and God a Spirit, to be served in spirit and in truth.
Bibliography.—See also the independent discussion, under Revelation, Book of, of the authorship of that work. Among the immense literature of the subject, the following books will be found especially instructive by the classically trained reader: Origen’s commentary, finished (only to John xiii. 33) in 235–237 (best ed. by Preuschen, 1903). St Augustine’s Tractatus in Joannis Ev. et Ep., about 416. The Spanish Jesuit Juan Maldonatus’ Latin commentary, published 1596 (critical reprint, edited by Raich, 1874), a pathfinder on many obscure points, is still a model for tenacious penetration of Johannine ideas. Bretschneider’s short Probabilia de Evangelii . . . Joannis Apostoli indole et origine (1820), the first systematic assault on the traditional attribution, remains unrefuted in its main contention. The best summing up and ripest fruit of the critical labour since then are Professor H. J. Holtzmann’s Handkommentar (2nd ed., 1893) and the respective sections in his Einleitung in d. N. T. (3rd ed., 1892) and his Lehrbuch der N. T. Theologie (1897), vol. 2. Professor C. E. Luthardt’s St John, Author of the Fourth Gospel (Eng. trans., with admirable bibliography by C. R. Gregory, 1875), still remains the best conservative statement. Among the few critically satisfactory French books, Abbé Loisy’s Le Quatrième évangile (1903) stands pre-eminent for delicate psychological analysis and continuous sense of the book’s closely knit unity; whilst Père Th. Calmes’ Évangile selon S. Jean (1904) indicates how numerous are the admissions as to the book’s character and the evidences for its authorship, made by intelligent Roman Catholic apologists with Rome’s explicit approbation. In England a considerably less docile conservatism has been predominant. Bp Lightfoot’s Essays on . . . Supernatural Religion (1874–1877; collected 1889) are often masterly conservative interpretations of the external evidence; but they leave this evidence still inconclusive, and the formidable contrary internal evidence remains practically untouched. Much the same applies to Bp Westcott’s Gospel according to St John (1882), devotionally so attractive, and in textual criticism excellent. Dr James Drummond’s Inquiry into the Character and Authorship of the Fourth Gospel (1903) does not, by its valuable survey of the external evidence, succeed in giving credibility to the eyewitness origin of such a book as this is admitted to be. Professor W. Sanday’s slighter Criticism of the Fourth Gospel (1905) is in a similar position. Professor P. W. Schmiedel’s
