The Life of Jesus Critically Examined / (4th ed.)

by David Friedrich Strauss

THE MODERN DISCUSSIONS ON THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE DISCOURSES IN THE GOSPEL OF JOHN. RESULT.

The foregoing examination of the discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel, has sufficiently prepared us to form a judgment on the controversy of which they have recently been the subject. Modern criticism views these discourses with suspicion, partly on account of their internal contexture, which is at variance with certain generally received rules of historical probability, and partly on account of their external relation to other discourses and narratives. On the other hand, this gospel has had numerous defenders.

With respect to the internal contexture of the above discourses, there arises a twofold question: Does it correspond to the laws, first of verisimilitude, and secondly, of memory?

It is alleged by the friends of the fourth gospel that its discourses are distinguished by a peculiar stamp of truth and credibility; that the conversations which it represents Jesus as holding with men of the most diverse disposition and capacity, are faithful delineations of character, satisfying the strictest demands of psychological criticism.[43] In opposition to this, it is maintained to be in the highest degree improbable, that Jesus should have adopted precisely the same style of teaching to persons differing widely in their degrees of cultivation; that he should have spoken to the Galileans in the synagogue at Capernaum not more intelligibly than to a master of Israel; that the matter of his discourses should have turned almost entirely on one doctrine—the dignity of his person; and that their form should have been such as to seem selected with a view to perplex and repel his hearers. Neither, it is further urged, do the interlocutors express themselves in conformity with their position and character. The most educated Pharisee has no advantage in intelligence over a Samaritan woman of the lowest grade; the one, as well as the other, can only put a carnal interpretation on the discourse which Jesus intends spiritually; their misconstructions, too, are frequently so glaring, as to transcend all belief, and so uniform that they seem to belong to a standing set of features with which the author of the fourth gospel has chosen, for the sake of contrast, to depict those whom he brings into conversation with Jesus.[44] Hence, I confess, I understand not what is the meaning of verisimilitude in the mind of those who ascribe it to the discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John.

As to the second point, regarding the powers of memory, it is pretty generally agreed that discourses of the kind peculiar to John’s gospel,—in contradistinction to the apophthegms and parables, either isolated or strung together, in the synoptical gospels,—namely, series of dependent propositions, [[382]]or prolonged dialogues, are among the most difficult to retain and reproduce with accuracy.[45] Unless such discourses were reduced to writing at the moment of their delivery, all hope of their faithful reproduction must be abandoned. Hence Dr. Paulus once actually entertained the idea, that in the judgment-halls of the temple or the synagogues at Jerusalem, there were stationed a sort of shorthand writers, whose office it was to draw up verbal processes, and that from their records the Christians, after the death of Christ, made transcripts.[46] In like manner, Bertholdt was of opinion, that our Evangelist, during the lifetime of Jesus, took down most of the discourses of Jesus in the Aramæan language, and made these notes the foundation of his gospel, composed at a much later period.[47] These modern hypotheses are clearly unhistorical;[48] nevertheless, their propounders were able to adduce many reasons in their support. The prophetic declarations of Jesus relative to his death and resurrection, said Bertholdt, are more indefinite in John than in the synoptical gospels, a sure sign that they were recorded before their fulfilment, for otherwise the writer’s experience of the event would have reflected more clearness on the predictions. To this we may add the kindred argument, by which Henke thought it possible to establish the genuineness of the discourses in John: namely, that the fourth Evangelist not seldom appends explanatory remarks, often indeed erroneous, to the obscure expressions of Jesus, thus proving that he was scrupulously conscientious in reporting the discourses, for otherwise he would have mingled his comments with their original matter.[49] But it is with justice objected, that the obscurity of the predictions in the fourth gospel is in perfect harmony with the mystical spirit that pervades the work, and as, besides, the author, together with his fondness for the obscure and enigmatical, indisputably possessed taste, he must have been conscious that a prophecy would only be the more piquant and genuine-looking, the more darkly it was delivered: hence, though he put those predictions into the mouth of Jesus long after the events to which they refer, he might yet choose to give them an indefinite form. This observation helps to explain why the Evangelist, when elucidating some obscure expressions of Jesus, adds that his disciples did not understand them until after his resurrection, or after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit ([ii. 22], [vii. 39]); for the opposition of the darkness in which the disciples at one time groped, to the light which ultimately arose on them, belongs to that order of contrasts with which this gospel abounds. Another argument, adopted by Bertholdt and approved by Tholuck, is, that in the discourses of the fourth gospel there sometimes occur observations, which, having no precise meaning in themselves, nor any connexion with the rest of the discourse, must have been occasioned by some external circumstance, and can only be accounted for on the supposition of prompt, nay, of immediate reduction to writing; and among their examples the passage, Arise, let us go hence ([xiv. 31]), is one of the most important.[50] But the origin of such digressive remarks has been above explained in a manner that renders the hypothesis of instantaneous notetaking superfluous.

Thus commentators had to excogitate some other means of certifying the [[383]]genuineness of the discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel. The general argument, so often adduced, founded on what a good memory might achieve, especially among men of simple lives, unused to writing, lies in the region of abstract possibility, where, as Lücke remarks,[51] there may always be nearly as much said against as for a theory. It has been thought more effectual to adopt an argument resting on a narrower basis, and to appeal to the individual distinctions of the Apostle John,—to his intimate and peculiar relation to Jesus as the favourite disciple,—to his enthusiasm for his master, which must surely have strengthened his memory, and have enabled him to preserve in the most lively recollection all that came from the lips of his divine friend.[52] Although this peculiar relation of John to Jesus rests on the authority of John’s gospel alone, we might, without reasoning in a circle, draw from it conclusions as to the credibility of the discourses communicated by him, were the faults of which his gospel is accused only such as proceed from the inevitable fading of the memory; because the positive notices of that relation could never flow from this negative cause. As, however, the suspicion which has arisen to the prejudice of the fourth Evangelist has gone far beyond those limits, even to the extent of taxing him with free invention, no fact resting on the word of John can be used in support of the discourses which he communicates. But neither the above relation, if admitted, nor the remark that John apparently attached himself to Jesus in early youth, when impressions sink deepest, and from the time of his master’s death lived in a circle where the memory of his words and deeds was cherished,[53] suffices to render it probable that John could retain in his mind long series of ideas, and complicated dialogues, until the period in which the composition of his gospel must be placed. For critics are agreed that the tendency of the fourth gospel, its evident aim to spiritualize the common faith of Christians into the Gnosis, and thus to crush many errors which had sprung up, is a decisive attestation that it was composed at a period when the church had attained a degree of maturity, and consequently in the extreme old age of the apostle.[54]

Hence the champions of the discourses in question are fain to bring forward, as a forlorn hope, the supernatural assistance of the Paraclete, which was promised to the disciples, and which was to restore all that Jesus had said to their remembrance. This is done by Tholuck with great confidence,[55] by Lücke with some diffidence,[56] which Tholuck’s Anzeiger severely censures, but which we consider laudable, because it implies a latent consciousness of the circle that is made, in attempting to prove the truthfulness of the discourses in John, by a promise which appears nowhere but in those discourses;[57] and of the inadequacy of an appeal, in a scientific inquiry, to a popular notion, such as that of the aid of the Holy Spirit. The consciousness of this inadequacy shows itself indirectly in Tholuck, for he ekes out the assistance of the Paraclete by early notes; and in Lücke also, for he renounces the verbal authenticity of the discourses in John, and only contends for their substantial veracity on grounds chiefly connected with the relation which they bear to other discourses. [[384]]

The external relation of the discourses of Jesus in John’s gospel is also twofold; for they may be compared both with those discourses which the synoptists put into the mouth of Jesus, and with the manner in which the author of the fourth gospel expresses himself when he is avowedly the speaker.

As a result of the former comparison, critics have pointed out the important difference that exists between the respective discourses in their matter, as well as in their form. In the first three gospels, Jesus closely adapts his teaching to the necessities of his shepherdless people, contrasting, at one time, the corrupt institutions of the Pharisees with the moral and religious precepts of the Mosaic law; at another, the carnal messianic hopes of the age with the purely spiritual nature of his kingdom, and the conditions of entrance therein. In the fourth gospel, on the contrary, he is perpetually dilating, and often in a barren, speculative manner, on the doctrine of his person and higher nature: so that in opposition to the diversified doctrinal and practical materials of the synoptical discourses, we have in John a one-sided dogmatism.[58] That this opposition does not hold invariably, and that in the discourses of the synoptical gospels there are passages which have more affinity with those of John, and vice versâ, must be granted to judicious critics;[59] but the important preponderance of the dogmatical element on the one side, and of the practical on the other, is a difficulty that demands a thorough explanation. In answer to this requisition, it is common to adduce the end which John is supposed to have had in view in the composition of his gospel: namely, to furnish a supplement to the first three gospels, and to supply their omissions. But if Jesus taught first in one style, then in another, how was it that the synoptists selected almost exclusively the practical and popular, John, nearly without exception, the dogmatic and speculative portions of his discourse? This is accounted for in a manner intrinsically probable. In the oral tradition, it is observed, on which the first three gospels were founded, the simple and popular, the concise and sententious discourses of Jesus, being the most easy of retention, would alone be propagated, while his more profound, subtle and diffuse discourses would be lost.[60] But according to the above supposition, the fourth Evangelist came as a gleaner after the synoptists: now it is certain that all the discourses of Jesus having a practical tendency had not been preserved by them; hence, that the former has almost invariably avoided giving any relic of such discourses, can only be explained by his preference for the dogmatic and speculative vein: a preference which must have had both an objective and a subjective source, the necessities of his time and circumstances, and the bent of his own mind. This is admitted even by critics who are favourable to the authenticity of the fourth gospel,[61] with the reservation, that the preference betrays itself only negatively, by omission, not positively, by addition.

There is a further difference between the synoptical gospels and the fourth, as to the form of teaching adopted by Jesus; in the one, it is aphoristic and parabolic, in the other, dialectic.[62] We have seen that the parable is altogether wanting in the fourth gospel, and it is natural to ask why, since Luke, as well as Matthew, has many admirable parables peculiar to himself, John has not been able to make a rich gleaning, even after those two predecessors? It is true that isolated apothegms and sentences, similar to the synoptical ones, are not entirely absent from the fourth gospel: but, on the other hand, [[385]]it must be admitted that the prevailing aphoristic and parabolic form of instruction, ascribed to Jesus by the synoptists, is more suited to the character of a popular teacher of Palestine, than the dialectic form which he is made to adopt by John.[63]