vi. The Messianic Expectation.
We have already more than once come across allusions to the Messianic expectation as it existed in the time of Christ. But there are a few examples of this to which it is well that we should direct special attention.
The first is the series of questions put to the Baptist by the deputation which came to test the nature of his mission. They ask him who he is, and he expressly denies that he is the Christ. Is he then Elijah? He replies that he is not. He is once more asked if he is the expected prophet like unto Moses; and to this too he answers, No. His questioners draw the natural inference, and call upon him to explain what is his authority for administering this new rite of baptism, if he had none of these credentials. Thereupon he discriminates between his own mission and that of his greater successor.
It may be contended that this passage was suggested by two parallel groups in the Synoptics, the speculations of Herod Antipas as to our Lord—that He is the Baptist risen from the dead, or Elijah, or a prophet (Mark vi. 14-16; Matt. xiv. 1, 2; Luke ix. 7, 8), and the preliminary of St. Peter’s confession, when the disciples are asked by their Master as to the common opinion about Him and they reply that some supposed Him to be the Baptist and others Elijah, and others again, one of the prophets (Mark viii. 27, 28; Matt. xvi. 13, 14; Luke ix. 18, 19).
There are doubtless the two possibilities: the questions attributed to the deputation in St. John, if we suppose that the author was really remote from the events, would be suggested by passages like these; if he was an eye-witness, it would be more probable that they were taken directly from the life, or at least from the personal knowledge of the writer that such ideas were commonly entertained at the time. There are several reasons for thinking that this latter hypothesis is the easier and less artificial. To suppose that the scene was a literary invention would involve the adaptation to the Baptist of what was originally said of Christ. It is also against the supposition that the questions are borrowed from the Synoptists, that in one important point they run directly counter to the Synoptic tradition. When the Baptist is asked if he is Elijah, he says that he is not, whereas the Synoptists persistently identify him with Elijah, and that upon the authority of Christ Himself (Matt. xi. 14; xvii. 10-13; Mark ix. 11-13). There is another noticeable divergence. In St. John the question relates to ‘the prophet,’ with direct reference to Deut. xviii. 15, 18; in the Synoptists the phrase used is ‘a prophet, as one of the prophets,’ or ‘one of the prophets.’ These are the forms of the phrase in St. Mark, which is fundamental. On the second occasion St. Matthew substitutes ‘Jeremiah or one of the prophets’; on both occasions St. Luke has ‘one of the old prophets is (was) risen again.’ The difference between the two versions is rather marked, though no doubt the Synoptic idea ultimately goes back to Deut. xviii, like the other. For these reasons the hypothesis that St. John is drawing from the life seems distinctly preferable.
Allusion has already been made to some of the popular ideas and to the meeting of the Sanhedrin in chap. vii. That chapter is especially important from our present point of view, that of the Messianic expectation. We see there reproduced with wonderful vividness just such an undercurrent of criticism as we may be sure was constantly going on, particularly in Jerusalem.
‘Some therefore of them of Jerusalem said, Is not this he whom they seek to kill? And lo, he speaketh openly, and they say nothing unto him. Can it be that the rulers indeed know that this is the Christ? Howbeit we know this man whence he is: but when the Christ cometh, no one knoweth whence he is.’
‘But of the multitude many believed on him; and they said, When the Christ shall come, will he do more signs than those which this man hath done?’
‘Some of the multitude therefore, when they heard these words, said, This is of a truth the prophet. Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, What, doth the Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the Scripture said that the Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was? So there arose a division in the multitude because of him. And some of them would have taken him; but no man laid hands on him.’
‘They answered and said unto him, Art thou also of Galilee? Search, and see that out of Galilee ariseth no prophet’ (vers. 25-7, 31, 40-4, 52).
It is to be observed that several of the points in the expectation thus depicted are of a somewhat recondite character. ‘We know this man whence he is: but when the Christ cometh, no one knoweth whence he is.’ This point can be verified, at least approximately. There is a Jewish saying that ‘three things come wholly unexpected, Messiah, a god-send, and a scorpion[[52]].’ And Justin Martyr alludes to another tradition, that the Messiah would not even know his own mission until he was anointed by Elijah[[53]]—the idea of this was perhaps suggested by the anointing of David.
Again we note that the writer assumes the point of view of the crowd, according to which Christ was regarded as coming from Nazareth in Galilee, though in any case he had before him the First and Third Gospels which placed His birth in Bethlehem. Not a hint escapes the Evangelist of his knowledge of this, although the point is brought as an objection to our Lord’s Messianic claims. In other words, the Gospel reflects the real state of things in A.D. 28, not the Christian beliefs of A.D. 90. We have to say the same of the test applied by the Sanhedrin, that a prophet was not to be looked for from Galilee.
All these points agree beautifully with the time when Jesus was moving about with His disciples among His countrymen, a time of which the genuine recollection must have been long lost to all those Christians who had not themselves actually lived in it. The same comment would have to be made upon the language in which the Evangelist more than once refers to Christ’s mission, or rather the popular conception of it. In vi. 15, the people are represented as coming to take Him by force and make Him king; and at the entry into Jerusalem He is greeted as the King of Israel, and the prophecy of Zechariah is applied to Him, ‘Behold thy King cometh, &c.’ In all this there are evident traces of the unreformed Messianic idea, as associated with political domination. By the year 90 all such ideas must have entirely vanished, and it must have required an effort of mind to recover them which one who had not been himself connected with the events would have had no incentive to make.
I am greatly mistaken if the mass of particulars collected in this lecture does not come home to the mind with great, and even overwhelming, force. In me at least it inspires, and has always inspired ever since I took up the study of the Gospel, a strong conviction that it could only be the work of one who had really lived through the events that he describes. Perhaps there is a little exaggeration in the phrase that it ‘could only be’ such a one. It is the kind of rough approximate phrase that one is apt to use for practical common-sense purposes. Strictly speaking, there is the other alternative, of which we ought not wholly to lose sight, that the author was a second-century Christian, perhaps of Jewish descent and with some Jewish training, who by a tour de force threw himself back into the circumstances of the time and had a wonderful success in reproducing them. Dr. Drummond reminds us that there is this alternative.
‘It is sometimes said that to produce an untrue narrative possessing such verisimilitude as the Gospel would have been quite beyond the capacity of any writer of the second century: such an author would be without example; such a work would be a literary miracle. In making this allegation people seem to forget that the book is in any case unique. Whether it be true history, or the offspring of spiritual imagination, or a mixture of both, no one, so far as we know, could have written it in the second or any other century, except the man who did write it; and to assert that an unexampled, unknown, and unmeasured literary genius could not have done this or that appears to me extremely hazardous’ (p. 378 f.).
Perfectly true; there doubtless is the possibility that ‘an unexampled, unknown, and unmeasured literary genius’ could have done what we find. But as a rule, where facts can be explained easily and naturally without having recourse to any such extraordinary assumption, the world is content so to explain them. The practical question is a balance of probabilities. And even now, as in the days of Bishop Butler, probability is the very guide of life.
LECTURE V
THE CHARACTER OF THE NARRATIVE
The last lecture called attention to a multitude of little points that seem to lead to a definite conclusion. They almost all belonged to the framework, or setting of the narrative, and not to its salient features. I was conscious, not seldom, of stopping short just where we seemed to be coming to something of more importance, and to which exception would be more likely to be taken. I stopped short deliberately and of set purpose, because I am myself of opinion that from the point of view of critical method, it is just these small incidental details that are most significant. They are the sort of details that an author throws in when he is off his guard. From them, far more than from his laboured arguments, we may tell what is his real standpoint and attitude. In regard to the abundant details which we have examined, the Evangelist had plentiful opportunities of tripping; but in no single instance is he really convicted of doing so, whereas in a vast number his record has been verified.
Taking this ample verification of details with the direct claim considered in the last lecture but one, we have reached a point at which the authentic character of the Gospel, its claim to come from an eye-witness if not from an Apostle, seems to be really well assured. But the question that now meets us is, how far this assurance is neutralized by the arguments brought against the Gospel from a comparison of it with the Synoptics and from certain points of general probability. It is true that there are differences, which may amount to discrepancies, between the Fourth Gospel and its predecessors.
There is, however, this preliminary remark to be made, before we discuss the differences in detail, that whatever we may think in regard to them, in any case the result must in one respect be favourable, and not adverse, to the Gospel; it must be favourable at least to its independence and authority. For there are two things to be noticed in regard to these differences.
i. The Evangelist had the Synoptic Gospels before him; and, where he differs from them, he does so deliberately. Either his intention is to correct them, or at least he deliberately goes his own way.
It follows that he was a person who was conscious of writing with authority. If he had not been, and if he was only desirous of insinuating his own views under cover of a great name, we may be pretty sure that he would have kept closely to the lines already marked out by works that had a considerable vogue and a considerable reputation.
ii. And we are confirmed in this opinion by the further observation that the points on which he differs from his predecessors are for the most part and to all appearance indifferent for any particular purpose that he seems to have had in writing. He has certainly not gone out of his way to exploit or insist upon them. For anything that we can see the only reason that he had for his divergences was that to the best of his belief and knowledge the facts were really as he has stated them, and not otherwise.
I. Alleged Discrepancies with the Synoptic Narrative.
i. The Scene of the Ministry.
One of the most obvious differences between the Synoptic and the Johannean narrative is that the scene of so much of the latter is laid in Judaea and Jerusalem.
The first comment that we have to make upon this is that the difference is not really so great or so significant as it seems. From both sides it is subject to some discounting, from the side of St. John as well as from that of the Synoptics.
I have already alluded to the fundamental mistake that is so often made of judging the Gospel as though it were not a Gospel, but a biography. If the author had been writing a biography like (e. g.) Mr. Morley’s Life of Gladstone, he would have felt himself bound to cover the whole of the ground. He would have had to sketch the whole of his hero’s career. He would have had to observe a due proportion between its different parts. If the hero had spent part of his life in England, and part of it in the Colonies, each of these should have had justice done to it. But the author of the Gospel was under no such obligation. His object was not to write a complete and connected history. The Gospel is not a history, but a series of scenes, chosen with a view to a particular purpose of which I shall have to speak later. For that purpose geography did not matter: it was quite indifferent whether the scene was laid in Judaea or in Galilee. But there was a sub-current in the author’s mind which led him to supplement the work of his predecessors, and to notice some things which they had omitted. Perhaps this was one of the reasons that led him to single out by preference Judaean scenes. And perhaps those scenes really lent themselves better to the object that he had in view. The simple peasants of Galilee needed moral teaching; whereas the theologically minded inhabitants of Judaea called out more of a theology. If the writer of the Gospel had his home (or a home) at Jerusalem, it would be only natural that he would give prominence to scenes enacted there. But in any case it is to be observed that the Gospel by no means excludes a Galilean ministry, but rather presupposes it.
We are expressly told (in iv. 44) of the reason which caused Jesus to retire from Judaea to Galilee, and it is rather implied that the stay there would be of considerable duration. (‘After the two days he went forth from thence into Galilee. For Jesus himself testified, that a prophet hath no honour in his own country.’) Again, in vii. 4, the brethren of Jesus taunt Him with avoiding the head quarters of Judaism. Their words imply that His work had been done in the obscurity of a province (‘No man doeth anything in secret, and himself seeketh to be known openly’). He had not as yet manifested Himself to the world.
On the other hand, when we come to examine the evidence of the Synoptics we find that it too is by no means so clear as it might seem at first sight. From the critical point of view what we have to deal with is not our Gospels as we have them, but the original documents out of which they are composed. Thus their evidence is really reduced to that of the main document, which is common to all three and is practically identical with our present Gospel of St. Mark. The second leading document, commonly known as the Logia, was a collection (in the main) of sayings with very few exact notes of place or time; and one or two allusions in this would perhaps be better satisfied by a Judaean ministry. In any case that would be true of the special source, or sources, of St. Luke. For instance, the story of Mary and Martha (Luke x. 38-42) points to Bethany; and parables like those of the Good Samaritan and the Pharisee and the Publican would have more local colour if delivered in or near Jerusalem.
Going back to the ground-document, we must remember that that too does not profess to be a biography: it is in the strictest sense a Gospel, the main object of which is to produce belief. If we may accept the well-attested tradition as to its origin—that it was put together from material supplied by the occasional preaching of St. Peter—completeness and consecutiveness are not what we should look for. There can be little doubt that this Gospel was really full of gaps, into which there is nothing to prevent us from inserting such southward excursions as we find described in the Fourth Gospel. It is true that there is something rather strange in the fact that our Second Gospel should be so predominantly taken up with Galilee. Nothing that we know quite serves to explain this. But, however that may be, the unsolved problem has more to do with St. Mark than with St. John.
The antecedent probabilities of the case are really in favour of St. John’s narrative and not against it. It is not likely that a pious Jew would neglect the command to appear before the Lord in Jerusalem. Neither is it likely that a religious reformer would be content to work and teach only in a province. ‘It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem’ (Luke xiii. 33) is a Synoptic saying; and it would be strange if the prophet only went to Jerusalem to die. It may be true that some of the traces of acquaintance with inhabitants of Judaea, such as the owners of the ass requisitioned for the public entry into Jerusalem and of the upper room in which the last Passover was eaten, might be accounted for by visits paid to the south before the active ministry of Jesus began. But this would not hold so well of cases like those of Judas Iscariot and Joseph of Arimathaea, whose relation to Jesus is associated with His religious work. Of course the proof is not decisive; but both these and many other indications would be better satisfied if the ministry had really been carried on in Judaea as well as Galilee. In that case we should better understand why the Pharisees sent emissaries to the north to watch what was going on (Mark iii. 22, vii. 1), and also how events gradually led up to the final crisis; how the populace was worked up to the enthusiasm which greeted the public entry, and how the hostility of the rulers was deepened until it could be satisfied with nothing short of death. If the Synoptic narrative had stood alone, the catastrophe would be too sudden and abrupt.