(d) There is the fact that the evidence for St. John having lived in Ephesus is better than the evidence for a renowned presbyter of the same name having lived in Ephesus. This has been wisely pointed out by Jülicher, even though he himself denies that the apostle wrote St. John's Gospel. And the justice of this argument proves that it is sheer paradox to maintain, as some now maintain, that the only John who lived in Ephesus was the Presbyter.
It is constantly urged by the opponents of the authenticity of this Gospel that, as it was published at Ephesus at a late period, it cannot be the work of the apostle, because he never went to Ephesus, and "died early as a martyr." [2] This is a most unscrupulous use of an inexact quotation made by some later Greek writers from a lost book of Papias. It can be {85} traced to Philip of Side (5th century), and it is to the effect that "John the Divine and James his brother were killed by the Jews." Papias does not say that they died together, and his statement is compatible with the belief that St. John survived his brother very many years. We know from Gal. ii. 9 that he was alive some time after his brother's death, which was about A.D. 44. And George Hamartolus, one of the Greek writers who quote the above passage in Papias, expressly says that the Emperor Nerva (A.D. 96) recalled John from Patmos, and "dismissed him to live in Ephesus."
[Sidenote: The External Evidence.]
The external evidence for the authenticity of this Gospel is in some respects stronger than that which is to be found in the case of the other Gospels. Thus the Christian may recognize with gratitude that his Divine Master has especially added the witness of the Church to the work of His beloved disciple. All through the 2nd century we have the links of a chain of evidence, and after A.D. 200 the canon of the Gospels is known to have been so fixed that no defender of the faith is called upon to show what that canon was. The earliest traces of the phraseology of St. John are to be discovered in the Didaché, which was probably written in Eastern Palestine or Syria about A.D. 100. The prayers which are provided in this book for use at the Eucharist are plainly of a Johannine type, and are probably derived from oral teaching given by the apostle himself before he lived at Ephesus. In any case, the Didaché seems sufficient to disprove the sceptical assertion that theological language of a Johannine character was unknown in the Christian Church about A.D. 100. The letters attributed to St. Ignatius, the martyr bishop of Antioch, are now universally admitted to be genuine by competent scholars. They may most reasonably be dated about A.D. 110, and they are deeply imbued with thought of a Johannine type. It has been lately suggested that this tendency of thought does not prove an actual acquaintance with the Gospel of St. John. But when we find Christ {86} called "the Word," and the devil called "the prince of this world," and read such a phrase as "the bread of God which is the flesh of Christ," it is almost impossible to deny that the letters of Ignatius contain actual reminiscences of St. John's language. Nor is there the least reason why Ignatius should not have been acquainted with this Gospel. His younger contemporary St. Polycarp, whose letter to the Philippians was also written about A.D. 110, quotes from the First Epistle of St. John. And Papias, who probably wrote about A.D. 130, and collected his materials many years earlier, also quoted that Epistle, as we learn from Eusebius. Now, the connection between the Gospel and the Epistle is, as has been cleverly remarked, like the connection between a star and its satellite. They are obviously the work of the same author. If Polycarp, who had himself seen St. John, knew that the Epistle was genuine, he must have known that the Gospel was genuine.
The evidence which can definitely be dated between A.D. 120 and A.D. 170 is of extreme interest. It proves conclusively that a belief in the authenticity of this Gospel was so firmly engrained in the Christian mind that men holding the most opposite opinions appealed to its authority. It is true that the "irrational" Alogi rejected it, and that Marcion repudiated it, not because it was not by an apostle, but because St. Paul was the only apostle whom he admired. But it was used by the Catholics, the Gnostics, and the Montanists. St. Justin Martyr was acquainted with it, and before he wrote, Basilides, the great Gnostic of Alexandria, borrowed from it some materials for his doctrine. The equally celebrated Gnostic Valentinus used it, and his followers also revered it. About A.D. 170 Heracleon, an eminent Valentinian, wrote a commentary upon this Gospel, of which commentary some fragments still remain. The Montanists arose in Phrygia about A.D. 157. Montanus, their founder, endeavoured to revive the power of prophecy, and his followers maintained that "the Paraclete said more things in Montanus than Christ {87} uttered in the Gospel." It can easily be proved that their teaching was an attempt to realize some of the promises of our Lord contained in St. John's Gospel. And the fact that the Montanists were strongly opposed to the Gnostics makes it all the more remarkable that both sects regarded this Gospel as so important. Somewhat before A.D. 170 St. John's Gospel was inserted by the great Syrian apologist, Tatian, in his Diatessaron, or harmony of the Gospels, and the apocryphal Acts of John composed near the same date contain unmistakable allusions to this Gospel.
The evidence of Irenaeus is the culminating proof of the genuineness of the Gospel according to St. John. He became Bishop of Lyons in A.D. 177, and remembered Polycarp, who suffered martyrdom at Smyrna in A.D. 156, at the age of eighty-six. Irenaeus, in writing to his friend Florinus, says, "I can describe the very place in which the blessed Polycarp used to sit when he discoursed, and his goings-out and his comings-in, and his manner of life, and his personal appearance, and the discourses which he held before the people, and how he would describe his intercourse with John and the rest who had seen the Lord, and how he would relate their words. And whatsoever things he had heard from them about the Lord and about His miracles, Polycarp, as having received them from eye-witnesses of the life of the Word, would relate, altogether in accordance with the Scriptures." [3]
Now, it is perfectly certain that Irenaeus, like his contemporaries
Heracleon and Tatian, accepted the fourth Gospel as the work of the
Apostle John. And can we believe that he would have thus accepted it,
if it had not been acknowledged by his teacher Polycarp, who knew St.
John, and was nearly thirty years old at the time of St. John's death?
{88}
[Sidenote: The Internal Evidence.]
The Gospel itself contains manifest tokens that it was written by a Jew of Palestine, by one who held no Gnostic heresy, and by a contemporary of our Lord.