It is somewhat singular that from Rénan, who so utterly rejects the miraculous, we should have such a decided opinion that it is appropriately entitled the Gospel according to John. After saying, "I dare not be sure that the Fourth Gospel has been entirely written by a Galilean fisherman," he writes in his introduction to the "Life of Jesus": "No one doubts that towards the year 150, the Fourth Gospel did exist, and was attributed to John. Explicit texts from Justin, Athenagoras, Tatian, Theophilus of Antioch, and Irenæus, show that from thenceforth this Gospel mixed in every controversy, and served as corner-stone for the development of the faith. Irenæus is explicit. Now he came from the school of John, and between him and the apostle there was only Polycarp. The part played by this Gospel in Gnosticism, and especially in the system of Valentinus, in Montanism, and in the quarrel of the Quartodecimans, is not less decisive. The school of John was the most influential in the second century, and it is only by regarding the origin of the Gospel as coincident with the rise of the school, that the existence of the latter can be understood at all."
"The First Epistle, attributed to John, is certainly by the same author as the Fourth Gospel. Now this Epistle is recognised as from John by Polycarp, Papias, and Irenæus. But it is, above all, the perusal of the Fourth Gospel itself which is calculated to give the impression that John must have written it. The author always speaks as an eye-witness. He wishes to pass for the Apostle John. If, then, this work is not really by the apostle, we must admit a fraud of which the author convicts himself. Now, although the ideas of the time respecting literary honesty differed essentially from ours, there is no example in the apostolic world of a falsehood of this kind. Besides, not only does the author wish to pass for the apostle, but we see clearly that he writes in the interest of this apostle."
As to the difference in language and style between it and the Apocalypse, it is not altogether unusual for an author to produce works which differ greatly from each other. An instance is mentioned by the Rev. Kentish Bache, in his letter to Dr. Davidson. "William Penn, within one and the same year (1668) wrote two different works, entitled 'The Sandy Foundation Shaken,' and 'Innocency with her Open Face.' The former pamphlet is circulated by the Unitarians as a tract demolishing the doctrine of the Trinity, while the latter is an earnest defence of that very doctrine; and yet Penn protests that his belief had undergone no change" (p. 35).
One of the difficulties in the way of the reception of the Fourth Gospel is the raising of Lazarus from the dead, which the Synoptics do not record. A probable explanation is suggested by Grotius, who says, as Lazarus was living when the Synoptics were written, and as "the chief priests consulted that they might put him to death, because that by reason of him many of the Jews went away and believed on Jesus,"[62] the publication of the miracle would have exposed Lazarus to more intense hostility, and endangered his life.
Our author makes the strange assertion that "the Fourth Gospel, by whomsoever written—even if it could be traced to the Apostle John—has no real historical value, being at best the glorified recollections of an old man, written down half a century after the events recorded" (p. 467). This bold assertion ignores the fact that the impressions of early life are, as a rule, indelibly fixed on the memory. Of no historical value, though written by John! Our author knows perfectly well that such an event as the raising of Lazarus from the dead could never fade from the memory of those who witnessed it. Does he overlook, or suppress, the consideration that John's recollection would be daily refreshed by the teaching of the principles of a gospel which consisted of these events and discourses? We can as well conceive of the Duke of Wellington having forgotten, when he was eighty years old, the campaigns of the Peninsula and the battle of Waterloo, as John forgetting the memorable transactions in the life of his Master with which he was so closely identified. Besides, we do not know that the materials for John's book had not long before been noted down. It is not probable that he who wrote the Apocalypse in the year 68 would put nothing into writing of the memoirs until close upon the time when the book was published. Such is not the mode of authorship now, and was not then. Supposing the apostle to have died, leaving behind him unarranged materials, including notes and memoranda made at various times, and that these were, with fidelity, but with more scholarship than John possessed, transcribed, edited, and made a book of, entitled "The Gospel according to John," we have an explanation of the linguistic difficulty which does not overstep the limits of reasonable probability.
Well may Dr. Davidson acknowledge "it is not easy to account for the early belief of its Johannine origin;" and that "if a disciple of John wrote it, he had learned more than his master." It would have been "strange if such an author had continued unknown." If we reject the Johannine origin, we have to believe that during the fifty years between John's death and the time of the book's general acceptance as his there lived some one capable of writing it, of whom history and tradition are silent. This is certainly a large matter for sceptical credulity to swallow. How much easier to believe that the refinement and beauty of composition, whose charm has captivated the world, is the work of a Grecian disciple, who wrote under the superintendence, if not dictation, of the apostle who only could have furnished the materials at the time when it was written. At the close of the first century all the other apostles were dead, and for its authorship we cannot look beyond the circle which surrounded Jesus at the instituting of that ever-abiding memorial of Him, "The Lord's Supper."
Among the anomalies of our author's hypothesis we have to think of the apostles living in the first century, and attaining their reputation as writers during the second. In the first century men appear, but without their writings. In the second century the writings come to light, but without the men. How unnatural, says Dr. Christlieb, is this! Who can fail to see that the hypothesis is incredible?
"We invariably find that an age which is fertile in literary productions is followed by a conservative period, in which the productions of the foregoing period are collected and digested—first the classical, then the post-classical. Does the second century, in other respects, bear the impress of a productive classical period in literature? On the contrary, its undoubted products breathe a spirit which bears the same relation to the New Testament writings as does the tenour of a post-classical age bear to that of the age preceding it. Did these writings, especially the Fourth Gospel, belong to 'unknown' authors, they would be perfectly inexplicable phenomena as compared with all the other products of that period. It has been well said that it were no less absurd to ascribe the most inspiriting writings of Luther to the spiritless period of the Thirty Years' War, than to transfer the Gospel of John to the middle of the second century."[63]
"Notwithstanding their warm Christian life, the writings of the second century evince such a remarkable dearth of new ideas that one plainly sees how, after the spiritual flood-tides of the first century, the ebb had set in."[64]
"Compare, for instance, the clear and sober-minded spirit of the New Testament epistles, or the quiet sublimity of the Gospel of John, with the epistles of Ignatius, the enthusiasm of which degenerates into a well-nigh fanatic desire for martyrdom; or with the Pastor of Hermas, and the value ascribed by him to ascetic rigour; or with the epistles by Clement of Rome, which tell the fable of the phœnix as a fact; or, again, with the Epistle of Barnabas, which delights in insipid allegories, and gives the most absurd typical interpretations of the Old Testament, justifying Neander's remark, that here we encounter quite another spirit than that of an apostolic man."[65]