Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 13.djvu/741

APOSTLE.] JOHN 707 women who contributed to the maintenance of Jesus ; he himself was perhaps related to Annas the high priest (John xviii. 15, 16). It seems to have been when attending as a disciple the preaching of John the Baptist at Bethany beyond Jordan that he first became personally acquainted with our Lord (John i. 35 sq.) ; his "call" to follow Him occurred simultaneously with that addressed to his brother and to Andrew and Peter (Mark i. 19, 20). He speedily took his place among the twelve apostles, sharing with James the title of Boanerges (" sons of thunder "), became a member of that inner circle to which, in addition to his brother, Peter alone belonged, and ultimately was recognized as the disciple par excellence whom Jesus loved, a distinction usually attributed to his amiability and gentle ness of character, but much less probably due to any special sweetness of temperament (see Luke ix. 54; Mark iii. 17, ix. 38) than to a quickness and depth of insight which enabled him to enter more fully than his companions into the larger and wider-reaching views of his Master. After the departure of Jesus John remained at Jerusalem, where he was one of the most prominent among those who bore personal testimony to the fact of the resurrection ; we find him for a short time in Samaria (Acts viii. 14, 25) after the martyrdom of Stephen, but on Paul s second visit to the Jewish capital (Gal. ii. 9) John was again there. His subsequent movements are obscure, but he can hardly have been in Jerusalem at the time of Paul s last visit there in 58 A.D. At this point tlie history of the apostle is taken up by ecclesiasti cal tradition. Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, 106 A.D. (in Euseb., H.E., iii. 31; v. 24), attests that John "who lay on the bosom of the Lord" died at Ephesus; and, though this evidence is weakened by the legendary trait that he " was a priest wearing the TreroAoc " or gold plate that distinguished the high-priestly mitre, it is fail- to infer that the grave of the apostle was already shown (comp. //. E., iii. 39). Iremeus in various passages of his works confirms this tradition. He says that John lived up to the time of Trajan, and published his Gospel in Ephesus. Irenseus also identifies the apostle with John the disciple of the Lord, who wrote the Apocalypse under Domitian, whom his teacher Polycarp had known person ally, and of whom Polycarp had much to tell. These traditions are accepted and enlarged by later authors, Tertullian adding that John was banished to Patmos after he had miraculously survived the punishment of immersion in boiling oil. As it is evident that legend was busy with John as early as the time of Polycrates, while Irenseus s view that the Apocalypse was written under Domitian is inconsistent with the internal evidence offered by that book, the real worth of these traditions requires to be tested by examination of their ultimate source. This inquiry has been pressed upon scholars since the apostolic authorship of the Apocalypse or of the Fourth Gospel or of both these works has been disputed. See GOSPELS and REVELATION . The question is not strictly one between advanced and conservative criticism, for the Tiibingen school recog nized the Apocalypse as apostolic, and found in it a confirmation of John s residence in Ephesus. On the other hand, Liitzelberger(1840), Keim (Jcsu v. Naz., vol i., 1867), Holtzmann (in Bibcl-Lcx., s.v.), Scholten (Thcol. Tijdsch., 1871), and other recent writers wholly reject the tradition, while it has able defenders in Steitz (Stud. u. KriL, 1868), Hilgenfeld (Einl, 1S75, p. 394 sq.; Z.f. W. T. 1872, 1877), and Lightfoot (Contcmp. JRcv., 1875, 1876). The opponents of the tradition lay weight on the absence of posi tive evidence before the latter part of the 2d century, especially in Papias, and in the epistles of Ignatius and of Irenteus s authority Polycarp. But they also find it necessary to assume that Ircnanis mistook Polycarp, and that John "the disciple of the Lord," who was known to the latter, was not the apostle but a certain pres byter John of whom we hear from Papias. This view would be at once refuted if we could hold with some scholars that the pres byter is but another name for the apostle. This identification had already supporters in the time of Jerome (Vir. III., 9 ; comp. ! Usener, Ada S. Timothci, Bonn, 1877), but seems inconsistent with a fair reading of the words of Papias. It is therefore very possible that some things which Irenseus in his later years supposed Polycarp to have related of the apostle really belong to the other John (see GOSPELS, x. 820) ; but it is a much stronger thing to assume that he was mistaken in supposing that Polycarp had conversed with the apostle at all. An altogether independent and apparently inconsistent tradition that John was killed by the Jews is given on the authority of Papias by Georgius Hamartolus in the 9th century. JOHN, EPISTLES OF. Of the three Epistles which are ascribed to the apostle John, the First is by far the most important, both from the space which it occupies in the canon and from the weightiness of its teaching. FIRST EPISTLE. Title. Some exception has been taken to the title "epistle" as applied to this document, seeing that it bears the name neither of sender nor of recipient, and carries with it no definiteness of message to a special correspondent. But, though it may be admitted that with regard to its literary form it would more properly be described as a homily or discourse, the frequently recurring terms "I wrote," "I have written," imply that the message was written, not orally delivered. Genuineness. The external evidence for the genuineness of this epistle is weighty. Polycarp, a disciple of John, writes with evident reference to 1 John iv. 3 : Tras yap os av fjir] ofjioXoyf) I^crovv XprTOV tv (rapKi IXrjXvQlvcu avn^pLd- TOS ICTTLV (Ad Phil., vii.). Eusebius, writing of Papias (//. E., iii. 39), says : Ke^p^rcu 8 6 atro? /zapTupiats O/TTO r^s Iwdvvov Trpore pas e/rto-roA^s KOL O.TTO T>}S IlerpoD 6/Wws. 1 The epistle was frequently cited by Irenseus, a disciple of Polycarp, as we learn both from the statement of Eusebius (//. E., v. 8) and from his extant work against heretics (Adv. Hxret., iii. 16, v. and viii.). The two epistles of St John mentioned in the canon of Muratori are probably the Second and Third, but the absence of reference to the First in that particular connexion implies its acknowledged canonicity ; moreover, the same canon contains a citation of 1 John i. 1, 4. The early fragment called the letter to Diognetus lias unmistakable allusions to the Johannine epistles. The Peshito contains the epistle, and there is an undoubted reference to it in the letter from the churches of Vienne and Lyons. All those authorities belong to the first two centuries. In the succeeding centuries the volume of evidence grows. Eusebius reckons the epistle among the Homoloyoiimena or writings of acknowledged authority, and the testimony of Tertullian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, and Cyprian, in addition to the evidence already adduced, indicates its reception in all the churches. 2 To those who accept the Fourth Gospel as John s, the strength of the internal evidence for the Johannine author ship of the epistle lies in the similarity of words, of teaching, and of style between the two writings. This similarity is so marked that it requires no argumentative proof. It is a similarity not only of diction, or of parallel expressions and peculiarities of style, but one which is penetrated by the more subtle correspondence of tinder-currents of thought and of implied knowledge. See on this part of the subject Westcott, Introduction to the Gospel of St John, p. Ixi. sq., in the Speaker s Commentary; and Davidson s Introduction to the Stiidy of the New Testament, ii. 293 sq. On the other hand, the very closeness of the connexion between the epistles and the gospel has necessarily involved the former in the assaults of recent criticism upon the genuine ness of the latter. 3 Some critics, however, while admitting the similarity of style, contend that there are differences of doctrine between the gospel and epistle which preclude identity of authorship. The main points advanced in behalf of this statement are the supposed differences in eschatological views, the application of the term " Para clete " to the w r ork of the Holy Spirit in the gospel and to the office of Christ alone in the epistle, the introduction into the epistle of such terms as iAacr/u.os and ^pioy-ia, which are not found in the gospel, and, lastly, the polemical and 1 See, however, for exceptions that may be taken to these testi monies, GOSPELS, vol. x. pp. 820, 822. 2 The epistle was not included in the Marcionite canon, and the Alogi, an obscure sect so named by Epiphainus (User., i. 1-3), seem to have rejected this, together with the other writings of St John. 3 See GOSPELS, vol. x. p. 828.