ii. Passages in which the impression conveyed is indirect.
We have been through the few salient passages which, in spite of the criticism to which they have been exposed, still proclaim in no uncertain terms the first-hand character of the work to which they belong. I now go on to collect a number of passages which are more indirect in their evidence, and just because of this indirectness have a special value, because the evidence which they afford is unconscious and undesigned. For the present I shall speak only of two groups: first, a series of passages in which the author seems to write as though from the inner circle of the disciples and companions of Jesus; and, secondly, another series in which he refers to the way in which impressions received at the time were corrected or interpreted by subsequent experience and reflection.
The Gospel has not long opened before we begin to receive that subtle impression which is given when one who has himself taken part in a scene reproduces it as history. I know that this kind of effect may be produced by imagination; and I will not assume as yet that it may not be so produced in this instance; I content myself for the present with pointing out that it exists.
When we take the last two paragraphs of the first chapter of the Gospel (i. 35-51), I think we shall feel as though we were being introduced to a little circle of neighbours and acquaintances. Two friends, one of whom is called Andrew, and the other is unnamed, are interested in what they have seen of Jesus and in what the Baptist had said about Him, and they ask leave to join Him. They remain for some hours in His company; and it is clear that their interest is not diminished. Andrew finds his brother Simon, and he too is brought up and introduced. Jesus Himself takes the initiative in inviting a fourth, Philip. We are told expressly that Philip was from the same city as the two before named; and he in turn finds and introduces his friend Nathanael. There is just one of the five whose name is not given. He is the silent spectator in the background. What if it were he to whom we owe the story? In any case there is this little group, all apparently from the same locality, who naturally enough find themselves together, drawn at first by the preacher of repentance, but leaving him to join one greater than he.
We pass over to the next chapter; but that will give us more to say under the next head. There are many points upon which we might pause, but I will pass on to the middle of chap. iii (vers. 22-6). There we have the description of what have now become two groups, the disciples of Jesus and the disciples of John, in near proximity to each other, and with easy intercourse between them. The narrative seems to be written from the standpoint of the disciples. The two principals are in the background, but we follow the events of the day among their entourage. There is a little discussion between some of John’s disciples and a stranger (R. V.) about a question naturally connected with baptism. Such a discussion might have interested at the time one who was near at hand and in friendly relation with those who took part in it. But it would be hard to find any other motive that could suggest it to a Christian at the end of the first century.
It is indeed quite possible and perhaps probable that Baldensperger (Der Prolog des vierten Evangeliums, Freiburg i. B., 1898) is right in supposing that among the motives present to the mind of the Evangelist was that of marking the subordinate position of the Baptist as compared with the Messiah, to whom he bore witness. We can quite believe that at Ephesus, at the time when the Gospel was written, there still remained some who had only been baptized into the baptism of John, like the disciples mentioned in Acts xix. 1-7. There may be a certain amount of polemical or apologetic reference to such a sect as this. The latter part of chap. iii (‘he must increase, but I must decrease’) may be of this character; but the purely historical statements in vers. 22-6 have in them nothing polemical; they have far more the appearance of personal reminiscences, introduced only because they came back to the memory of the writer. It is a curious fact that the Gospel contains several references to ‘purifying’: e. g. ii. 6 (the waterpots at Cana ‘set there after the Jews’ manner of purifying’), the present passage, iii. 22; the description, in xi. 55, of the Jews going up to purify themselves before the Passover, and the statement (xviii. 28) that the accusers of our Lord did not enter the praetorium ‘that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.’ Nothing is made of these allusions; no argument is based upon them; but they would be very natural if the Evangelist began life as a disciple of the Baptist and had been early interested in such questions.
Turning to the discourse with the woman of Samaria we observe how it is framed as it were in the movements of the disciples: in ver. 8 they go into the city to buy provisions; in ver. 27 they return, and are surprised to find their Master engaged in conversation with a woman—contrary to the practice and maxims of the Rabbis. They are surprised, but they do not venture upon any remonstrance. They had left their Master weary and way-worn, and they find Him refreshed. They do not understand how refreshment of the mind carries with it that of the body; and they speculate as to whether food had not been brought to Him during their absence. This is another scene in which the point of view seems to be that of the disciples, and in which we, as it were, overhear their comments.
It has often been objected that there were no witnesses of the discourse with the woman, and therefore that the narrative of it must be imaginary. It is full of touches, as we shall see presently, which are so appropriate to the circumstances that I find it difficult to think of them as imaginary. But how do we know that there were no witnesses of the discourse? It would certainly be too much to assume that every allusion to the disciples in a body meant of necessity the whole number of the Twelve. We must remember by the way that the Twelve were not yet chosen; but in any case we must expect language to be rough and approximate. If we are really to think of the author of the Gospel as ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved,’ we should doubtless be right in assuming that the love was ardently returned. We may think of the Apostle as a youth, only just out of boyhood, and with something of the fidelity of a dog for his master, who does not like to be long out of his sight. ‘Sicut oculi servorum in manibus dominorum suorum, sicut oculi ancillae in manibus dominae suae‘: we may picture to ourselves this gentle youth seated a pace or two away, and not wishing to obtrude his presence, but eagerly drinking in all that passed.
In chap. v, the disciples are not prominent; but in chap. vi, before the feeding of the multitude, we have one of those little dialogues which are so characteristic of this Gospel, bringing in two of the disciples who are both mentioned by name (vi. 5-10). At the end of the chapter (vers. 60-71) we are again taken into the midst of the circle of the disciples. We see some perplexed, and some falling away, and an echo reaches us of St. Peter’s confession. At the same time we have a premonitory hint, such as we may be sure that other members of the Twelve recalled after the fact, that one of their number was a traitor.
About chap. vii I shall have occasion to speak later. I will only now point to the discussion with which it begins between Jesus and His brethren (vers. 3-8). This again—if it is not pure invention—is only likely to have been reported by one who was in the closest intimacy, not only with the disciples of Jesus but with His domestic circle. And again we have to ask, what motive there could be for invention. If the Gospel gives examples of belief, and tries to promote belief, it does not on that account suppress examples of unbelief, even among the nearest relations. This episode is St. John’s counterpart to Mark iii. 21: ‘His friends (οἱ παρ’ αὐτοῦ) ... went out to lay hold on him: for they said, He is beside himself.’
The next occasion on which we are reminded of the intimate personal side of our Lord’s ministry is the story of Lazarus. Here we have two groups, into the interior of which we are allowed some glimpses. The family at Bethany is one, the company of the Twelve is the other. Here once more we see what passed from within. The passage, vers. 7-16, is full of delicate portraiture. We have the remonstrances of the Twelve as a body; moving in a higher plane than these, we have the divine insight which sees what they cannot see, and knows what it will do; and lastly, we have the impulsive, despondent, faithful Thomas—a figure so clearly drawn in the few strokes that are allotted to it—fully recognizing and perhaps exaggerating the dangers, and yet not letting its loyalty yield to them: ‘Let us also go, that we may die with Him.’
Parallel to this description of what passed among the Twelve is the description further on of the interior of the household, the different behaviour of the two sisters and their Jewish sympathizers. If this is not a picture constructed wholly by art, it represents the recollections of one who had himself been present at the events of the day, and who had moved freely to and fro, and very probably talked them over after the day was done.
A natural sequel to this scene is the supper in the same house six days before the Passover. And, as we might expect, the attitude and standpoint of the narrator are still the same. He shows the same intimacy with the members of the household and with his own companions. He remembers the ungenerous short-sighted speech of Judas Iscariot, to whom, with natural antipathy, he attributes the worst motives.
The incident of the coming of the Greeks, with its accurate singling out of the two friends Philip and Andrew and the account of the part played by them, also reflects the standpoint of a bystander who is near the centre.
Still more does this come out in the whole narrative of the Last Supper. One or two episodes stand out as specially graphic and life-like. The first is the whole description of the Feet-washing (vers. 3-12). The other is the indication of the traitor (vers. 21-30).
Bishop Lightfoot noticed long ago the careful use of terms in this last passage. In the book by which he prepared the way for the undertaking of a Revised Version of the New Testament, happily accomplished ten years later, he called attention to the defects of the Authorized Version of John xiii. 23, 25:
‘[It] makes no distinction between the reclining position of the beloved disciple throughout the meal, described by ἀνακείμενος, and the sudden change of posture at this moment, introduced by ἀναπεσών. This distinction is further enforced in the original by a change in both the prepositions and the nouns, from ἐν to ἐπί, and from τῷ κόλπῳ to τὸ στῆθος. St. John was reclining on the bosom of his Master and he suddenly threw back his head upon his breast to ask a question.’
After referring also to xxi. 20, Dr. Lightfoot adds:—
‘This is among the most striking of those vivid descriptive traits which distinguish the narrative of the Fourth Gospel generally, and which are especially remarkable in these last scenes of Jesus’ life, where the beloved disciple was himself an eye-witness and an actor[[38]].’
It has been objected that too high a place is given to the ‘beloved disciple,’ and that the stress laid on this is a mark of egotism. But Bishop Westcott has shown (ad loc.) that this criticism rests on a mistaken view of the order of precedence. The place of honour was in the centre, and the guests reclined on the left side. Peter occupies the second place behind his Master. The beloved disciple has the third place, where his head would naturally be in his Master’s bosom. When we realize this all the details of the narrative become plain.
What we have said of the Last Supper applies also to the last discourses which followed upon it. There too we have the same distinct recollection of persons, of the questions put by each, and the replies which they received. Thomas and Philip stand out in the dialogue of xiv. 4-9. But what is perhaps still more noticeable is the careful specification of Judas (not Iscariot), a disciple otherwise obscure and of little prominence, in ver. 22. If this is art, it is art that is wonderfully like nature. We notice also the disciples’ comments, evidently spoken in an undertone, in xvi. 17.
What could be more easy or more natural than the description of Gethsemane in xviii, 1, 2, and the explanation that it was a familiar haunt of Jesus and His disciples? This is just such a reminiscence as we might expect from one who had been himself a disciple.
There is an ‘undesigned coincidence’ in the fact that the unnamed disciple is described as being ‘known to the high priest,’ and that the Gospel, of which he may be presumed to be the writer, alone gives the name of the high priest’s servant, whose ear Peter cut off, as Malchus, and alone knows that one of the servants who questioned Peter was his kinsman (xviii. 10, 15, 26). It was apparently because the unnamed disciple was a privileged person, that he was not called upon to give an account of himself as Peter was.
We need not go the whole length of the way with Delff, and may yet feel sure that it is not an accident that this same disciple, who is so much at home in the high priest’s house, should also have special knowledge of persons like Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus, both members of the Sanhedrin.
Other portions of chaps. xviii and xix will come before us in other connexions. The important passage xix. 34, 35 has already been discussed in part, and we shall have to return to it later. The whole of chap. xx is really significant for our purpose. It is a record of events that immediately followed the Resurrection, and is told throughout from the point of view of the disciples. The delicate precision of the narrative is specially noteworthy in vers. 3-10, where again we have the unnamed disciple in the company of St. Peter. The story is briefly told, but there is enough detail to let us see the different characterization of the two men. We shall not be wrong in thinking of the unnamed disciple as the younger of the two, indeed in the first flush of youth. He is fleet of foot and outstrips his companion; but he is also of a finer and more sensitive mould, and when he reaches the tomb a feeling of awe comes over him, and he pauses for a moment outside. The impetuous Peter has fewer scruples, and he hurries at once into the tomb, and makes his examination of its contents. The spell is broken, and the young disciple also enters. I shall have a word to say later of the effect on both disciples of what they see.
In the rest of the chapter the reader, with the author, is drawn a little aside and allowed to witness the events one by one; first, the appearance to Mary Magdalene, and then the two appearances to the collected disciples, when Thomas is absent and afterwards when he is present.
A like point of view appears in the next chapter. The narrator is himself never far away from the events he is recording. Towards the end of the chapter he is pushed forward into a prominence that is only faintly disguised. In the scene on the lake there comes back to him the feeling that had first passed through his own mind as well as those of his companions. They did not recognize the figure that in the grey dawn called to them from the shore. The instinct of love was the first to awake that sensitive quick perception: the old parts are again repeated; it is the unnamed disciple who speaks and Peter who acts. But the two are friends; and presently, when Peter has been rather hard pressed by his Lord’s searching inquiry and the prophetic forecast with which it ends, a sudden impulse leads him to turn the conversation to his companion. He would fain have the forecast extended to him. His interest, or curiosity, is baffled by an ambiguous reply. And here, once more, the writer steps in to prevent a wrong inference being drawn from its ambiguity.
So far we have been following a series of passages which place us at the standpoint of the disciples at the time of the events of which they were witnesses. The writer for the moment revives in himself, or seems to revive, the old impression. If it is not a spontaneous recurrence to the past, it is at least successful in giving the appearance of spontaneity.
But there is another class of passages where the procedure is rather more complex; where the writer not only throws himself back into the past, but also looks back upon the past in the light of his subsequent experience. There is no better example of this than the very first that meets us:
‘And to them that sold the doves he said, Take these things hence; make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise. His disciples remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house shall eat me up. The Jews therefore answered and said unto him, What sign shewest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews therefore said, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou raise it up in three days? But he spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he spake this; and they believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said’ (John ii. 16-22).
Here we have two allusions to the disciples as ‘remembering’ something that had happened, and combining it in their minds with an idea of interpretation. Bishop Westcott distinguishes between the two occasions. He thinks that the expulsion of the buyers and sellers recalled to the disciples at once the passage of the psalm (Ps. lxix. 9): he thinks that they applied it to the act while it was going on. On the other hand ver. 22 is explicit to the effect that the disciples did not bethink them of the saying, and see what they conceive to be the meaning, until after the Lord was risen from the dead. I am not so sure that any contrast is intended. The tense (ἐμνήσθησαν) in the first instance is indefinite, and allows us to think that the application of the psalm was an after-thought; and the attitude of mind which was on the watch for fulfilments of scripture came later. However this may be, in the second instance at least, we clearly have what professes to be a bit of autobiography—autobiography in which the writer speaks for his fellows as well as himself.
Exactly similar to this is the comment on the Triumphal Entry, and the passages of Scripture which it too recalled:
‘These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were written of him, and that they had done these things unto him’ (xii. 16).
It is an apt description of a process that we may be sure was constantly going on in the minds of the first disciples. It is a rather different kind of allusion when at the Last Supper the Lord explains to Peter in reference to the washing of the disciples’ feet, ‘What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt understand hereafter.’ This points to the interpretation which was to come, not so much from Scripture as from experience and reflection.
The last discourses contain many passages of this latter kind. Their general character is prophetic; but the writer and his companions had lived to see the prophecies fulfilled. It is very natural, and we cannot be surprised if the effect of the fulfilment is traceable in the form given to the prediction. The spirit in which the writer looks back upon the events that happened after the Resurrection is that expressed in xiv. 29, ‘And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe.’
Here is a retrospect: ‘They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God.... But these things have I spoken unto you, that when their hour is come, ye may remember them, how that I told you’ (xvi. 2, 4).
And this is another: ‘Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is come, that ye shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone’ (xvi. 32).
A later stage of the Apostles’ experience is reflected in the following: ‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice: ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come: but when she is delivered of her child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for the joy that a man is born into the world. And ye therefore now have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you’ (xvi. 20-2).
The great salient fact that stood out in the experience of the first disciples was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and its effect upon themselves. This is vividly reflected in a series of passages:
‘These things have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you. But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful’ (xiv. 25-7).
‘But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall bear witness of me: and ye also bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning’ (xv. 26, 27).
‘Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth: for he shall not speak from himself; but what things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak: and he shall declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify me: for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you’ (xvi. 13, 14).
It might be said that these passages are a summary sketch of the mental history of the Evangelist from the day of Pentecost onwards. They show him to us looking back upon the eventful time through which he had passed with ever broadening intelligence. They contain the whole secret of the way in which he came to write the ‘spiritual Gospel.’
I am aware that the probative force of the phenomena which I have been reviewing will be differently estimated. I should myself not have laid so much stress upon them if they had stood alone, or if they had occurred in a different class of literature. The novel writers and imaginative biographers of the present day make a point of keeping up the illusion of only allowing the supposed author to use the language appropriate to the exact situation in which he is placed at the time when he is conceived to be writing. But the writers of the first century A.D. were not so scrupulous, and what is natural to us would be very unusual with them. Still I do not deny that a writer whose habit of mind it was to throw himself back into an assumed position, might by the exercise of a special gift have been able to keep up the position so assumed. But in the case before us, we have the instances which I began by quoting where the author claims for himself or others claim for him that he is recording what he had himself heard and seen. This at once puts in our hands a far simpler and easier hypothesis, a hypothesis which really makes no demands upon our constructive powers at all. Whereas it is probable that not one ancient in a thousand, or one in ten thousand, would have written as the writer of the Fourth Gospel has done, if he had not been an eye-witness; it would have been only the natural way for him to write, if he had been an eye-witness. This latter hypothesis therefore seems much preferable to the other. It is confirmed by the really remarkable consistency with which the point of view is carried out, and by another large class of phenomena which will come before us in the next lecture.