2. Earlier Evidence.
But Dr. Schmiedel certainly understates that for the Fourth Gospel. He assumes that no trace can be found of this earlier than 140. A single item of the evidence, which he does not notice, is enough to refute this. I refer to our present conclusion of the Gospel of St. Mark. We may say 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. But I may take it for granted that the added verses imply not only the existence but up to a certain point the authority of the Fourth Gospel.
But, besides this, Dr. Schmiedel assumes the negative results of an inquiry, which he has conducted very lightly, and the scale on which he was writing compelled him to conduct lightly, into the bearings of the literature older than 140. I am not so sure as he 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. The questions raised in these cases are too complex and too delicate to be quite worth discussing from the point of view of that legal proof which for Schmiedel seems alone to have any value. But Ignatius and the Didaché are of more tangible importance. I am inclined to think that justice has rarely been done from this point of view to Ignatius. It is not so much a question of close coincidence in expression. There I should perhaps allow that Dr. Schmiedel is within his rights in denying what Dr. Drummond and Dr. Stanton affirm. The evidence of Ignatius is obscured by the fact that, unlike Polycarp[[74]], he is not given to exact quotation. Polycarp is by far the weaker man; it is natural to him to express his thoughts in the words of others. But Ignatius has a rugged strength of mind which digests and assimilates all that comes to it, and if it reproduces the thoughts of others, does so in a form of its own[[75]]. But I do not think there can be any doubt that Ignatius has digested and assimilated to an extraordinary degree the teaching that we associate with the name of St. John. If any one questions this, I would refer him to the excellent monograph, Ignatius von Antiochien als Christ und Theologe, by Freiherr von der Goltz (Texte und Untersuchungen, Band xii). It will be best to give the conclusion to which this writer comes in his own words, as I agree with it largely but not quite entirely. He says:
‘The question is whether Ignatius came to appropriate this world of thought through reading our Fourth Gospel, or whether he must be held to be an independent witness to this mode of thinking. Up to a certain point the preceding investigation has already shown that the latter is the case. Although, for instance, certain details might seem to point to borrowing from the Fourth Gospel, yet this peculiar religious Modalism, this mysticism, this combination and accentuation of the same points, this special form of faith in Christ, and, in general, this identical mode of thought and belief could not be simply transferred by means of a book to one who had not in other ways taken up the same ideas and made them his own. There is also proof from various turns given to the thought, as from his use of an independent terminology, that the author is in possession of “Johannean” ideas as his own property. So that in case we really came to the result that Ignatius was acquainted with the Fourth Gospel, we should have indeed to refer to that acquaintance the portrait that he draws of Christ and some details, but in spite of that we should have to hold fast the conclusion that in appropriating his general conception of things, Ignatius must have come under the prolonged influence of a community itself influenced by Johannean thought’ (p. 139).
It will have been observed that the reason for thinking that the affinity of thought between Ignatius and St. John is not to be explained by the use of a book, is not because of its slightness but because it is really too deep to be accounted for in that way. It is true that the affinity goes very deep. I had occasion a few years ago to study rather closely the Ignatian letters, and I was so much impressed by it as even to doubt whether there is any other instance of resemblance between a biblical and patristic book, that is really so close. Allowing for a certain crudity of expression in the later writer and remembering that he is a perfervid Syrian and not a Greek, he seems to me to reflect the Johannean teaching with extraordinary fidelity. This applies especially to his presentation of the doctrine of the Incarnation, to his conception of the Logos, and of the relation of Christ at once to the Father and to the believer. In the writers of the next generation to Ignatius e. g. in Justin—the conception of the Logos is infected by Greek philosophy, giving to it more or less the sense of reason, whereas in Ignatius the leading idea is, as we have seen it to be in St. John, that of revelation. Nowhere else have we the idea of the fullness of Godhead revealed in Christ grasped and expressed with so much vigour. What difference there is is of the nature of exaggeration. It is not wrong to say that the language of Ignatius tends towards Modalism. But it is just because he has grasped ideas, for every one of which there are parallels in the Fourth Gospel, with so much intensity.
I can quite allow that Ignatius has so absorbed the teaching that we call St. John’s as it were in succum et sanguinem that the relation cannot be adequately explained by the mere perusal of a book late on in life. There is something more in it than this. Von der Goltz would explain it by the hypothesis that Ignatius had resided for a considerable length of time in a ‘Johannean’ community like the churches of the province of Asia. There is however no hint of anything of the kind in the letters. It is I think Harnack who somewhere remarks that from the opening of the letter of Ignatius to Polycarp we should infer that the latter was a stranger to the writer.
It would be more natural to fall back on the tradition that Ignatius was an actual disciple of St. John. But this tradition appears first in the Martyrium Colbertinum; in other words there is no evidence for it before the fourth century. Indeed Zahn has sketched in a plausible manner the process by which we may conceive it to have arisen[[76]]. Still there is ample room in the dark spaces of the lives both of Ignatius and of St. John for some more or less intimate connexion between them. The alternative seems to me to be, either to suppose something of this kind, or else to think that Ignatius had really had access to the Johannean writings years before the date of his journey to Rome, and that he had devoted to them no mere cursory reading but a close and careful study which had the deepest effect upon his mind.
If the Fourth Gospel was really the work of St. John, the chronology would leave quite sufficient room for this hypothesis. But in any case the phenomena of the Ignatian letters seem to me to prove the existence, well before the end of the first century, of a compact body of teaching like that which we find in the Fourth Gospel. For even Dr. Schmiedel, I suppose, would hardly wish us to invert the relationship, and to say that the Evangelist took his ideas from Ignatius. But if the substance of the Fourth Gospel existed before the end of the first century, that is surely a considerable step towards the belief that the Gospel existed in writing, and the other reasons that we have for thinking that it had been written are so far confirmed.
A smaller item of proof tending in the same direction is supplied by the Didaché. It is well-known that the very ancient Eucharistic prayer contained in that document has the remarkable phrase ‘to make perfect in love,’—‘Remember, Lord, Thy Church to deliver it from all evil and to perfect it in Thy love,’ which it is natural to compare with 1 John iv. 17, 18; John xvii. 23. The coincidence cannot be wholly accidental, though the question must be left open whether the phrase comes directly from a writing or only circulated orally[[77]]. The problem is the same as that which has just met us in the case of Ignatius, though on a much smaller scale. As far as it goes, it helps to strengthen the conclusion that has just been drawn.
Between Ignatius and Irenaeus we have Papias, Justin, and the greater Gnostics. In view more particularly of the discussion by Schwartz, I think it may be said that Papias probably knew the Gospel and recognized it as an authority. That Justin also used it I think we may take as at the present time generally admitted; and from the extent to which he used it I do not think that any inference can be drawn. Professor Bacon complains that the suggestions which have been put forward to account for the somewhat sparing use which he makes of it are not satisfactory[[78]]. Probably they are not in the sense of carrying conviction that any one of them is right to the exclusion of others. There must always be this difficulty where we are quite in the dark, and where the whole chapter of accidents is open before us. It is no doubt a sounder method to fall back with Dr. Drummond simply upon our ignorance[[79]]. But to say that the negative side of Justin’s evidence in any sense cancels the positive seems to me untenable.
As to Basilides and Valentinus, though there remains in my own mind a slight degree of probability that they really used the Gospel, I admit that this probability is not of a kind that can be strongly asserted where it is challenged. At the same time I cannot think Schmiedel’s hypothesis at all probable that ‘the Fourth Gospel saw the light somewhere between A.D. 132 and A.D. 140[[80]], and that although it was not used by the founders of the great Gnostic schools, it was at once adopted by their disciples. This is an instance of the way in which Dr. Schmiedel and his friends, when they light upon a hypothesis that favours the negative side, content themselves with stating it, as if it must at once carry conviction; and form no mental picture of the conditions with a view to ascertain whether the hypothesis is or is not probable. We may be pretty sure that the Fourth Gospel did not come in surreptitiously in this way, like a thief over the wall, and at once obtain recognition without any examination of credentials.
I do not hesitate to say that this theory of the late origin of the Gospel is not one that will work, or bear to be consistently carried out. On the other hand, if we assume the traditional view, all the evidence falls into line; we have an adequate cause for the authority which from the first attached to the Gospel; and, allowing for the scantiness and critical drawbacks of the materials from which our evidence is drawn, we have a picture quite as satisfactory as we can expect of its gradually expanding circulation.
So far, our course has been straightforward. The salient points stand out in orderly succession, and they all rest on solid foundations. But when we come to closer quarters, and try to reconstruct for ourselves the circumstances under which the Gospel was written, and which attended the first two or three decades of its history, the case is otherwise. Many questions may be raised that cannot be categorically answered. Bricks cannot be made without straw; and positive history cannot be written on the ground of mere surmises and possibilities. All I would contend for is that no valid argument can be brought from the facts as they stand against the Gospel; it is another matter, and will require longer time and perhaps further discoveries, before we can paint on the canvas of history a picture strictly harmonious and coherent in all its parts.
III. Unsolved Problems.
1. The relation of the Gospel to the Apocalypse.
Of the questions that are still sub judice one of the most difficult is that of the relation of the Gospel to the Apocalypse. The Apocalypse is a book on which criticism is very far from having said its last word. I should like to express myself about it with great reserve. But I do not think that in any case an argument can be drawn from it against the Gospel. I will quote two very unprejudiced opinions. Harnack writes as follows:—
‘I confess my adhesion to the critical heresy which carries back the Apocalypse and the Gospel to a single author, always presupposing that the Apocalypse is the Christian working-up of a Jewish apocalypse (I should be prepared to say of several Jewish apocalypses—to me this seems beyond our power to unravel). I mark off the Christian portions very much as Vischer has done, and see in them the same spirit and the same hand which has presented us with the Gospel[[81]].‘
We remember that in Harnack’s view the author is not the Apostle but the Presbyter.
And then Bousset, who has written the commentary on the Apocalypse in Meyer’s series, though he does not go quite so far as Harnack, places the two works in close relation to each other. After a careful examination of the language of the Apocalypse he sums up thus:—
‘It is certainly right when this Johannean colouring of the language is set down to the account of the last redactor of the Apocalypse (Harnack, Spitta). But here too it may be seen that this redactor has transformed the material before him more thoroughly than is commonly supposed. The linguistic parallels adduced seem to justify the supposition that the Apocalypse also proceeds from circles which stood under the influence of John of Asia Minor[[82]].’
There are many to whom these opinions will seem paradoxical, but there is much to be said for them. I quote them, however, only to show that the two problems must be worked out independently, and that they need not necessarily clash with one another.