III. The author was a contemporary and an eye-witness of the events described.
His knowledge of Jerusalem and of the temple, which we have already noticed, strongly suggests that he knew the city before its destruction in A.D. 70. So far as can be tested, his treatment of the Messianic ideas of the people is exactly accurate, and of a kind which it would have been difficult for a later writer to exhibit. This Gospel represents the people as pervaded by a nationalist notion of the Messiah as of a king who would deliver them from foreign powers (vi. 15, xi. 48; xix. 12), a notion which was dispelled in A.D. 70, and apparently did not revive until the rising of Bar Kocheba in A.D. 135, a date which is now almost universally recognized as too late for this Gospel to have been written. We also find the two contradictory ideas as to the place of the Messiah's origin then current (vii. 27, 42), and the writer distinguishes "the prophet" (i. 21, 25; vi. 14; vii. 40), who was expected to precede Christ, from Christ Himself. At a very early date the Christians identified "the prophet" with Christ, and it is in the highest degree improbable that any but a contemporary of our Lord would have been aware of this change of belief.
It is claimed that the author is an eye-witness in i. 14; xix. 35; and xxi. 24. We may add 1 John i. 1, for the author of the Epistle was obviously the author of the Gospel. Numerous details, especially the frequent notes of time, suggest the hand {92} of an eye-witness. And the delicate descriptions of the inner life of the disciples and of Christ Himself point to the same conclusion. The description of the Last Supper and the words spoken at it suggest with overwhelming force that the writer knew the peculiar manner of seating employed at this ceremony. Another Jew would have known where the celebrant sat, but he would scarcely have been able to make the actions of our Lord and Judas, St. John and St. Peter, fit their places at the table with such perfection.[4]
The Gospel claims that the disciple who "wrote these things" is the disciple "whom Jesus loved," and who reclined "in Jesus' bosom" at the Supper. It was not Peter, for Peter did not recline "in Jesus' bosom." The presumption therefore is that it was either James or John, these two being with Peter the closest friends of Jesus. It could hardly have been James, who was martyred in A.D. 44, as the whole weight of tradition and external evidence is against this. It must, then, have been John, or a forger who wished to pass for that apostle. And to suppose that an unknown forger, born two generations, or even one generation, later than the apostles, could invent such sublime doctrine, and insert it in so realistic a story, and completely deceive the whole Christian world, including the district where St. John lived and died, is to show a credulity which is without parallel in the history of civilization.[5]
Now that we have reviewed the internal evidence for the authenticity, we are able to return with renewed vigour to deal with the popular rationalistic hypothesis that the author was a Christian who had learned some genuine stories about Jesus current in the Church at Ephesus, and then wove them into a narrative of his own composing. We have observed that the marks of an eye-witness and contemporary of Jesus are {93} scattered over the whole surface of the Gospel. If the Gospel is not by St. John, only one other explanation is possible. It must be composed of three distinct elements: (a) some genuine traditions, (b) numerous fictions, (c) a conscious manipulation of the narrative contained in the Synoptists. But the internal evidence is absolutely opposed to any such theory. We can trace no manipulation of the Synoptic narrative. The writer seems to be aware of St. Mark's Gospel, and possibly the other two, but he evidently did not write with them actually before him. He plainly had a wholly independent plan and an independent source of information. And if we turn to the passages which tell us facts not recorded by the Synoptists, it is quite impossible to separate the supposed fictions from the supposed genuine traditions. Both style and matter proceed from one and the same individuality. One passage alone can be separated from the rest without interrupting the flow of the story, and that passage is absent in the best manuscripts. It is the story of the woman taken in adultery (vii. 53-viii. 11). It seems to have been originally placed after Luke xxi. 36, and was inserted into St. John's Gospel after it was completed. We cannot apply the same process to any other passage in the Gospel. It is an organic whole, as much as any play of Shakespeare or poem of Tennyson. And over the whole book we find the same morsels of history and geography. They are of a kind which tradition never hands down unimpaired, and which no Ephesian disciple of an apostle would be likely to commit to memory. In spite of all attempts to divide the Gospel into parts derived straight from an apostle and parts invented by later minds, the Gospel remains like the seamless coat which once clothed the form of the Son of man.
[Sidenote: Date.]
It is important to observe that even the most hostile criticism has tended to recede in its attempt to find a probable date for this Gospel. Baur fixed it about A.D. 160-170, Pfleiderer at 140, Hilgenfeld 130-140; Jülicher and Harnack will not date it later than 110, {94} and the latter grants that it may be as early as 80. The year 80 is as early a date as the most orthodox Christian need desire, and we can reasonably believe that it was written by the apostle at Ephesus between A.D. 80 and A.D. 90. We learn from Irenaeus that St. John survived until A.D. 98.
[Sidenote: Literary Style.]
Several points in the literary style of the apostle have been noticed in dealing with the internal evidence which they afford to the authenticity of his Gospel. But it is necessary to add something more, for there is no writer to whom we can more fitly apply the profound saying that "the style is the man." The language of St. John is the result of a long and impassioned contemplation. Whether he writes down his own words, or records the words and deeds of our Lord, his language shows the result of careful reflection.
The teaching of Jesus exhibits a development different from that in the Synoptists. We find in chs. ii., iii., and iv. that our Lord definitely taught that He was the Son of God and Messiah quite early in His ministry, while in the earlier part of Mark our Lord's teaching about His Messiahship is far less definite. And the method of teaching is also different. In the Synoptists we find picturesque parables and pointed proverbs, while in John we find long discourses and arguments. In the Synoptists the teaching is generally practical, in John it is much more openly theological. This difference between the Synoptists and St. John can be partly accounted for by the fact that St. John's Gospel contains much more of the instruction given by our Lord to His intimate friends, and that this instruction was naturally more profound than that which was given to the multitude. But there is another reason for the difference. If we attend to such passages as xiv. 15-21, 25-26; xv. 26-27, we see that our Lord teaches that there are two manifestations of His Person, one during the time between His birth and His death, and the other after the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is not a substitute {95} for an absent Christ; His coming brings with it an inward presence of Christ within the Christian soul (xiv. 18). By the aid of the Spirit, St. John condenses and interprets the language of our Lord in a manner which can be understood by the simplest of simple souls who live the inner life. In St. John we find a writer who is writing when Jesus spoke no longer in parables and proverbs, but "plainly" (xvi. 25, 29). He records the teaching of Jesus, as it had shaped itself in his own mind, but not so much by his own mind as by perpetual communion with the ascended Christ.