3. The Authorship of the Fourth Gospel
It has come to pass that one has to defend the use of the Fourth Gospel on a par with the Synoptic Gospels. The Johannine problem is an old one and a difficult one. It cannot be said that modern scholarship has come to a clear result here, as is true of the Synoptic Gospels. As a matter of fact, the battle still rages vigorously. There are powerful arguments on both sides. A mere sketch of the real situation is all that can be attempted here.
The Gospel and the Epistles are in the same style and can be confidently affirmed to be by the same author. The Apocalypse has some striking peculiarities of its own. There are likenesses in vocabulary and idiom beyond a doubt of a subtle nature, but the grammatical irregularities in the Book of Revelation have long been a puzzle to those who hold to the Johannine authorship. A full discussion of these grammatical details can be found in the leading commentaries on the Apocalypse. A brief survey is given in my Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research. The facts are undisputed and have a most interesting parallel in the papyri fragments of some of the less educated writers of the Koiné as one can see for himself in Milligan's Greek Papyri or in any other collection.
There are two solutions of the problem with two alternatives in each instance. There are those who roundly assert that the same man could not have written both the Gospel and the Apocalypse. Some of these affirm that the Apostle John wrote the Apocalypse but not the Gospel. Certainly a "John" wrote the Revelation or claimed it at any rate. Others of this group hold that an inferential Presbyter John (not "the elder" in 2 and 3 John) supposed to be meant by Papias wrote the Apocalypse while some one else wrote the Gospel whether the Apostle John or not.
But a considerable body of scholars still hold that the same man wrote both the Gospel and the Apocalypse, but a different explanation is offered by two groups. One class of writers affirm that John wrote the Apocalypse first before he had come to be at home in the Greek idiom as we see it in the Gospel and the Epistles. We know that John and Peter were fishermen and were not considered men of literary training by the Sanhedrin (Acts 4:14). This explanation is sufficient but for the further fact that the early date of the Apocalypse (about 70 A.D.) is not now so generally held to be true. The later or Domitianic date as given by Irenæus seems pretty clearly to be correct. So the other group suggest that the books may belong substantially to the same period (the Domitianic date) and that the explanation of the grammatical infelicities in the Apocalypse may be due to the fact that John being on the Isle of Patmos when he wrote did not have the benefit of friends in Ephesus who apparently read the Gospel ([John 21:24-25]). Besides, the excited state of John's mind because of the visions may have added to the number of the solecisms in the Apocalypse. This view I personally hold as probable. The unity of both Gospel and Apocalypse is denied by some.
So the matter stands as between the Gospel and the Apocalypse. But the Fourth Gospel has difficulties of its own. These relate in part to the book in itself. It is true there is a great similarity in language and style between the narrative parts of the book and the discourses of Jesus. It is affirmed that the writer has colored the speeches of Jesus with his own style or even made up the dialogues so that they are without historical value or at least on a much lower plane than the Synoptic Gospels as objective history. There is something in this point, but one must remember that the Synoptic Gospels vary in their manner of reporting the speeches of Jesus and aim to give the substance rather than the precise words of the Master in all instances. It is at most a matter of degree. There is a Johannine type of thought and phrase beyond a doubt, but curiously enough we have a paragraph in [Matthew 11:24-31] and [Luke 10:21-23] that is precisely like the Johannine specimens, written long before the Fourth Gospel. One must remember the versatility of Jesus, who could not be retained in any one style or mold. But there are those who admit the Johannine authorship of the Gospel and yet who refuse to put it on the same plane as the Synoptic Gospels. Every one must decide for himself on this point. For myself I see too much of Christ in the Fourth Gospel in the most realistic and dramatic form to be mere invention. We can enlarge our conception of Christ to make room for the Fourth Gospel.
But even so it is urged that the Beloved Disciple cannot be the Apostle John. If not, then the Fourth Gospel ignores the Apostle John,—a very curious situation. It is a long story for which one must go to the able books in defense of the Johannine authorship by Ezra Abbott, James Drummond, W. Sanday, Luthardt, Watkins and many others. The ablest modern attacks are made by Bacon and Wendt and Schmiedel. My own view is given in my The Divinity of Christ in the Gospel of John.
4. The Jesus of History
It is not long since the cry of "Back to Christ" was raised and away from Paul and John. Soon this cry was changed to an appeal to the Jesus of History in opposition to the Christ of Theology. So we had the "Jesus or Christ" controversy (see the Hibbert Journal Supplement for 1909). It was gravely affirmed by some that Paul had created the Christ of Christianity and had permanently altered the simple program of Jesus for a social Kingdom and had turned it into a great ecclesiastical system with speculative Christological interpretations quite beyond the range of the vision of the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels. It was admitted that the Fourth Gospel, the Apocalypse, and the Epistles all gave the Pauline view.