II. The Identity of the Evangelist.
Before we pass on, however, it may be convenient at this point to consider, on the assumption that the author of the Gospel was really an eye-witness of the events, what are the indications as to his personal identity. If we confine ourselves to those contained in the Gospel itself, it would not follow with any stringency that he was the Apostle John the son of Zebedee. The portion of the Gospel that contributes most to the identification is the last chapter, the scene by the Sea of Galilee, where we are expressly told that the sons of Zebedee were present (xxi. 2). But we are also told that there were two other disciples of whom the author of the Gospel may have been one. If we begin by supposing—and the supposition is very natural—that in order to stand in the intimate relation in which he appears to have stood to Christ, the author must have been an Apostle, then by a process of elimination we should arrive at St. John; and it is no doubt an important fact that in this way internal and external evidence would converge upon the same result. But if we look at some sides of the internal evidence, and bring in only a select few of the indications from without, another hypothesis that has been actually put forward would have great claims upon our attention. It is not on the face of it certain that ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ must have been one of the Twelve. He may have been what might perhaps be called a sort of supernumerary Apostle. I mean that he may have been one who although, perhaps on account of his youth, not actually admitted to the number of the Twelve, yet had all—and even more than all—of their privileges. We have been led to think of the beloved disciple as a youth who, so far as he could help it, never left his Master’s side. We should only have to subtract a couple of years, and the young Apostle of eighteen or twenty would become a stripling—highly favoured, though not an Apostle—of sixteen to eighteen, or even fifteen to seventeen.
I am not sure that this point of the youthfulness that may be attributed to the beloved disciple was much brought out by the author of the theory. And yet it would be a real advantage. We are told that the John who wrote the Gospel lived till the time of Trajan (i. e. till 98 A.D.). In that case, if he were born about 11 or 12 A.D., he need not have been more than eighty-six or eighty-seven at the time of his death; the main body of the Gospel might quite well have been written (probably from dictation) eight or ten years earlier, and the Appendix (chap. xxi) added when the writer felt his strength beginning to fail. All these would be quite reasonable dates; whereas if the writer was a full adult in the years 27-9, that would make him rather old by the end of the century. We must keep down the dates as much as we rightly can.
But it is time that I gave a fuller account of the theory of which I am speaking, as it was put forward by its author—in some ways a rather eccentric person—the late Dr. Delff of Husum. I will try at the same time, as well as I can, to balance the arguments for and against it.
Dr. Delff is not content with distinguishing the beloved disciple from the Apostle. For him the former is no Galilean at all but a native of Jerusalem; he is not a fisherman, but a member of the higher aristocracy, not only acquainted with the high priest but himself belonging to one of the high-priestly families. It was through this connexion that Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, came to make the remarkable statement about him that he wore the frontlet or golden plate (τὸ πέταλον) of the high priest (Eus. H. E. iii. 31. 3).
It will be seen that this is a bold reconstruction; but in this case the boldness has a good deal of justification. There are a number of very tangible data which the theory works up into a coherent whole.
i. The theory might be said to take its start from John xviii. 15, ‘And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Now that disciple was known unto the high priest, and entered in with Jesus into the court of the high priest.’ It is natural to suppose that the unnamed disciple here is the same whose presence is hinted at so mysteriously throughout the Gospel. But, if that is so, the relation in which he is said to stand to the high priest explains at once a series of facts. It explains how it was that the Evangelist came to know that the name of the high priest’s servant, whose ear had been cut off, was Malchus; and also how it was that he came to recognize one of those who questioned Peter as a kinsman of this Malchus. It explains again the special information that the Evangelist seems to have about Nicodemus, a member of the Sanhedrin, who is mentioned by name in three different contexts in the Gospel. Along with this it would explain the special information which the Evangelist also seems to possess as to what went on at meetings, and even secret meetings, of the Sanhedrin. We have a graphic account of the debate at one such meeting in vii. 45-52, and again in xi. 47-53; and the Gospel has some precise details not found elsewhere as to the part played by Annas, as well as Caiaphas, in the preliminary examination of our Lord.
This whole group of facts is in any case one of which we must take notice. In any case it forms an important element in the portrait that we are to construct for ourselves of the Evangelist, even if we suppose him to be the son of Zebedee. There is no antecedent reason why Zebedee and his sons should not have had friends, and even friends in high places, in Jerusalem. It would seem that Zebedee himself was a person of substance: he has ‘hired servants’ with him in the ship, and Salome—if that is the name of his wife—was one of those who contributed to the support of Jesus and His disciples. We must also remember that the practice of a trade or handicraft was not held to be derogatory among the Jews as it was among the Greeks and Romans. There is, however, also the other possibility that the acquaintance of the Evangelist with the high priest is not to be taken too strictly, but that it meant rather acquaintance with some member of his household. The account of what happened to Peter might well seem to be told from the point of view of what we should describe as the servants’ hall.
ii. Another set of phenomena which Delff’s theory at once explains is the extent to which the Gospel is concerned with events that happened in Jerusalem and Judaea. Delff himself carries out this with a logical severity that hardly seems necessary. He cuts out all the Galilean incidents in the Gospel as later insertions. Even so he cannot be quite thorough enough, because he leaves the latter half of chap. i, which introduces to us the unnamed disciple in the company of Andrew and Peter, natives of Bethsaida. This disciple and Peter were evidently friends: they lodged together in Jerusalem (xx. 2) and go together to the tomb, and they each take an affectionate interest in the other (xxi. 20).
This last point is in agreement with the way in which Peter and John are found acting together in the other Gospels and in the Acts (Mark v. 37, &c.; Acts iii. 1, 11; iv. 13; viii. 14; cf. Gal. ii. 9). On the other hand the scene at the foot of the cross (John xix. 26, 27) would seem to be rather in favour of the Jerusalem theory, especially if we are to connect the words, ‘And from that hour the disciple took her unto his own (home),’ with the tradition that John had a house in Jerusalem.
iii. In another direction Delff’s theory fits in well with some portions of the patristic evidence. We have seen how it would account for the curious expression used by Polycrates (circa 195 A.D.). Delff thinks that the beloved disciple must have actually performed the functions of the high priest. The high priest only wore his full dress on the Day of Atonement, but on an emergency his place might be taken for him by a substitute; and it is in this capacity that John of Ephesus is supposed to have acted. That does not on the face of it appear very probable; but we can more easily conceive that in the early days, before liturgical details were settled, and when the Christian Church had not yet wholly outgrown its Jewish antecedents, one who had the blood of high priests in his veins might on some solemn occasion (e. g. at Easter) have assumed a part of his distinctive dress.
iv. Yet another alleged point in the testimony of Papias would be explained on this theory, and is not easily explained on the view which identifies the John who wrote the Gospel with the son of Zebedee. Since the publication of De Boor’s Fragment (Cod. Barocc. 142[[39]]) we have two authorities instead of one for the express statement that Papias in his second book asserted that both the sons of Zebedee were ‘slain by the Jews.’ When attention was first called to this statement, the tendency among scholars was to explain it away, to suppose that there had been some corruption of the text, or some confusion between John the Baptist and John the son of Zebedee. Of course there may have been something of the kind; and yet the statement is quite explicit as it stands, and one does not like emending away just the words that cause a difficulty. Hence there is an increasing tendency among scholars to regard the statement as having some real foundation. Schwartz, the editor of Eusebius, has lately put forth a monograph[[40]], the whole argument of which turns on the assumption that the statement is true. If it were true, the prediction of our Lord in Mark x. 38, 39, will have been literally fulfilled: both the sons of Zebedee will have suffered ‘red martyrdom,’ and not one red and one white. Wellhausen is among those who think that this was probably the case.
v. Now Schwartz assumes that if John perished by the sword like his brother James, he did so at the same time and at the hands of Herod Agrippa I, in the year 41. Of course he can only do this by throwing over the data in the Acts, which I do not think that he is warranted in doing. I have little doubt that the John who was still a pillar of the Church at the time referred to in Gal. ii. 9 was the son of Zebedee. But it is quite credible that he may have perished, if not at the same time as James the Elder, yet about the same time as James the Brother of the Lord, or in the troublous times which preceded the destruction of Jerusalem.
vi. If the younger son of Zebedee had died in this or some other way, there would be nothing to prevent us from supposing that the John who took up his abode at Ephesus was the beloved disciple. And it would really simplify the history, and make everything more compact, if we could suppose that the beloved disciple, and the John who wrote the Gospel and Epistles, and the John who appears to have called himself, and to have been called by others ‘the Presbyter,’ were one and the same person.
vii. It is a remarkable fact that some of our best authorities, while they leave no doubt as to the identification of the John who figured so conspicuously at Ephesus with the beloved disciple, abstain from expressions that would identify him with the son of Zebedee. Irenaeus most often calls him ‘the disciple of the Lord,’ which we remember is the very phrase used by Papias of the Presbyter. He also more than once describes him as having lain upon the breast of the Lord, but he nowhere (I believe) speaks of him as one of the Twelve or as the son of Zebedee. Polycrates uses the same designation, ‘John who lay upon the breast of the Lord’; and the Muratorian Fragment speaks of him as ‘one of the disciples’: but neither of these witnesses ever calls him an Apostle. Irenaeus, however, does perhaps hint at this title where he says that the Church at Ephesus, ‘having been founded by Paul, and John having resided among them until the time of Trajan, is a true witness of the tradition of the Apostles’ (Eus. H. E. iii. 23. 4). Clement of Alexandria also and Tertullian unequivocally call John an Apostle.
viii. If these expressions had stood alone, there need be no great difficulty. We may be pretty sure that the beloved disciple, even if he had not been one of the original Twelve, would be called an Apostle in the wider sense, like St. Paul and St. Barnabas and James the Brother of the Lord. And it would be only natural that he should seem to step into the place of the older John (on the hypothesis of his martyrdom), just as James the Lord’s Brother in a manner stepped into the place of the older James.
It is worth while to bear in mind that the title ‘Apostle’ was used more freely in the early days of the Church than we are in the habit of using it. It was not till about the end of the second century that (except in the case of St. Paul and St. Barnabas and one or two others) it came to be as a rule narrowed down to the Twelve. In the earliest usage of all the word had its proper meaning of ‘one who is sent on a mission.’ But this usage was gradually lost sight of, and it took the place of the primitive μαθητής.
In view of this history of the terms, it will be understood how easily one who was in the position of the beloved disciple would come to be spoken of as an Apostle, and in time to be confused with the older Apostles who bore the same name. In such a process there would be no need, as Harnack does, to bring in the hypothesis of fraud; every step in the process would be really innocent and natural. Harnack of course gets into his difficulties by minimizing the designation ‘disciple of the Lord’ as applied to John the Presbyter, who is also John of Ephesus. One who stood to the Lord in the relation of the beloved disciple would have a right to the name Apostle which the Presbyter, as Harnack conceives him, would not.
ix. So far it would seem that a really strong case can be made out for distinguishing the Evangelist from the son of Zebedee and identifying him with the beloved disciple. My wish is not to make out a case either way, but to state the facts as impartially as I can. From this point of view, there seem to be two serious difficulties in the way of Delff’s hypothesis.
The first is that it puts asunder two sets of phenomena that we feel sure ought to be combined. We have seen that the Gospel represents the beloved disciple and St. Peter as close friends. And we have also seen that the other Gospels, the Acts and, we might add, the Epistle to the Galatians, represent St. Peter and St. John as constantly acting together. It may indeed just be said that this joint action is a sort of official relation, which is a different thing from the private friendship implied in the Gospel. And yet we cannot doubt that the more natural and obvious view would be to regard the later relation as the direct continuation of the earlier, and so to identify the beloved disciple with the leading Apostle. Delff’s theory would make two pairs, who would be too much the doubles of each other.
x. And another difficulty, or set of difficulties, turns round the statement of De Boor’s Fragment. It is certainly strange that this statement appears in no other early authority, and especially that no hint of it is found in Eusebius. I am not sure that this would weigh with me so much as it would with others, because I always discount the argument from silence, even where it is apparently strong, as it is in the present instance.
But there is something more than silence. The common tradition of the church did not ascribe to St. John a violent death. And we cannot escape the inference by saying that the common tradition relates to John of Ephesus and not to the son of Zebedee; because the earliest authority for the tradition, the Apocryphal Acts of John, a second-century work, without any ambiguity identifies the two.
xi. We might perhaps sum up the whole case thus.
The Life of the Evangelist falls into three periods: first, the period covered by the Gospel in which he appears as the beloved disciple; then, at the end of his career, the period during which he appears as John of Ephesus: and, between these two, the period of some forty years which connects them together. Now we might say of Delff’s theory, that it gives a quite satisfactory account of the first period, and also in most ways of the last, and that in particular it enables us to work in the statement as to the death of the two sons of Zebedee; but that its difficulties come out chiefly in regard to the connexion between the first stage of the history and the last.
On the other hand, the common view gives what I think is really on the whole as good an account of the first period, and raises no special difficulties as to the second, but it does leave some obscurities which with our present knowledge it is difficult to clear away as to the third. And it also leaves the alleged statement of Papias an enigma for which we have no certain solution.
At the same time, although the cohesion is on either view not quite complete, it is in each case far too complete to be rejected in the interests of an agnosticism which only presents no target for objections because it has no tangible form or substance.