Samuel Johnson, excellent person as he was, is not the only critic who has had the misfortune to be born (metaphorically, if not physically) with a ‘great foot’ and a heavy hand.
The Gospel closes with a scene in which the writer refers in his usual oblique way to himself. I cannot think that there is any real reason for the assumption, which is so often and so confidently made, that the last chapter is an appendix written after the author was dead. On this point, again, I entirely agree with Dr. Drummond, ‘It is surely conceivable that the aged disciple, feeling death stealing upon him, might point out that no words of Jesus justified the expectation which had arisen among some of his devoted friends[[36]].’ The complete identity of thought and style, and the way in which this last chapter is dovetailed into the preceding (‘This is now the third time that Jesus was manifested to the disciples’; compare at the beginning of the Gospel the counting up of the first Galilean miracles, ii. 11, iv. 54), seem to prove that the last chapter is by the same hand as the rest of the Gospel[[37]].
But at the very end another hand does take up the pen; and this time the writer speaks in the name of a plurality; ‘This is the disciple which beareth witness of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his witness is true’ (xxi. 24). The critics who assert that the Gospel is not the work of an eye-witness, and even those who say that the last chapter was not written by the author of the whole, wantonly accuse these last words of untruth. That is another of the methods of modern criticism that seem to me sorely in need of reforming. I hope that a time may come when it will be considered as wrong to libel the dead as it is to libel the living.
I accept, then, this last verse as weighty testimony to the autoptic character of the Gospel. It is easy to see that the two concluding verses are added on the occasion of its publication by those who published it. They, as it were, endorse the witness which it had borne to itself.
ii. Passages in which the impression conveyed is indirect.
We have been through the few salient passages which, in spite of the criticism to which they have been exposed, still proclaim in no uncertain terms the first-hand character of the work to which they belong. I now go on to collect a number of passages which are more indirect in their evidence, and just because of this indirectness have a special value, because the evidence which they afford is unconscious and undesigned. For the present I shall speak only of two groups: first, a series of passages in which the author seems to write as though from the inner circle of the disciples and companions of Jesus; and, secondly, another series in which he refers to the way in which impressions received at the time were corrected or interpreted by subsequent experience and reflection.
The Gospel has not long opened before we begin to receive that subtle impression which is given when one who has himself taken part in a scene reproduces it as history. I know that this kind of effect may be produced by imagination; and I will not assume as yet that it may not be so produced in this instance; I content myself for the present with pointing out that it exists.
When we take the last two paragraphs of the first chapter of the Gospel (i. 35-51), I think we shall feel as though we were being introduced to a little circle of neighbours and acquaintances. Two friends, one of whom is called Andrew, and the other is unnamed, are interested in what they have seen of Jesus and in what the Baptist had said about Him, and they ask leave to join Him. They remain for some hours in His company; and it is clear that their interest is not diminished. Andrew finds his brother Simon, and he too is brought up and introduced. Jesus Himself takes the initiative in inviting a fourth, Philip. We are told expressly that Philip was from the same city as the two before named; and he in turn finds and introduces his friend Nathanael. There is just one of the five whose name is not given. He is the silent spectator in the background. What if it were he to whom we owe the story? In any case there is this little group, all apparently from the same locality, who naturally enough find themselves together, drawn at first by the preacher of repentance, but leaving him to join one greater than he.
We pass over to the next chapter; but that will give us more to say under the next head. There are many points upon which we might pause, but I will pass on to the middle of chap. iii (vers. 22-6). There we have the description of what have now become two groups, the disciples of Jesus and the disciples of John, in near proximity to each other, and with easy intercourse between them. The narrative seems to be written from the standpoint of the disciples. The two principals are in the background, but we follow the events of the day among their entourage. There is a little discussion between some of John’s disciples and a stranger (R. V.) about a question naturally connected with baptism. Such a discussion might have interested at the time one who was near at hand and in friendly relation with those who took part in it. But it would be hard to find any other motive that could suggest it to a Christian at the end of the first century.
It is indeed quite possible and perhaps probable that Baldensperger (Der Prolog des vierten Evangeliums, Freiburg i. B., 1898) is right in supposing that among the motives present to the mind of the Evangelist was that of marking the subordinate position of the Baptist as compared with the Messiah, to whom he bore witness. We can quite believe that at Ephesus, at the time when the Gospel was written, there still remained some who had only been baptized into the baptism of John, like the disciples mentioned in Acts xix. 1-7. There may be a certain amount of polemical or apologetic reference to such a sect as this. The latter part of chap. iii (‘he must increase, but I must decrease’) may be of this character; but the purely historical statements in vers. 22-6 have in them nothing polemical; they have far more the appearance of personal reminiscences, introduced only because they came back to the memory of the writer. It is a curious fact that the Gospel contains several references to ‘purifying’: e. g. ii. 6 (the waterpots at Cana ‘set there after the Jews’ manner of purifying’), the present passage, iii. 22; the description, in xi. 55, of the Jews going up to purify themselves before the Passover, and the statement (xviii. 28) that the accusers of our Lord did not enter the praetorium ‘that they might not be defiled, but might eat the Passover.’ Nothing is made of these allusions; no argument is based upon them; but they would be very natural if the Evangelist began life as a disciple of the Baptist and had been early interested in such questions.