All our discussions have for their object, not the production of rounded and symmetrical theories but the ascertainment of truth. We must take the data as we find them. If they do not as they stand sustain a clear conclusion, we cannot make them do so. And it seems to me far better frankly to confess the fact than to strain the evidence one way or the other. We may state the case with such indications of leaning as we please, but always with the reservation that a slight change in the evidence, the discovery or recovery of a single new fact, might turn the scale.
This is, I think, the position of things in regard to some of the outlying parts of the problem of the Fourth Gospel. One broad conclusion seems to stand out from the evidence, internal as well as external. The author was an eye-witness, an Apostolic man—either in the wider sense of the word ‘Apostle’ or in the narrower. So much seems to me to be assured; but round that broad conclusion there arises a cluster of questions to which I cannot give a simple and categorical answer.
I will come back to these questions in a moment. But I ought perhaps first to remind you of the point to which the previous argument has brought us, and of the grounds on which the main proposition is based.
I take it to be a fundamental element in the question that in several places (especially xix. 35, xxi. 24; cf. i. 14, 1 John i. 1-3), the Gospel itself lays claim to first-hand authority. This is a different matter from ordinary pseudonymous writing. The direct and strong assertions that the Gospel makes are either true or they are a deliberate untruth. Between these alternatives I have no hesitation in choosing. I do not think that we should have the right to make so grave an imputation as that implied in the second on anything but the clearest necessity. But the first alternative appeared to me to be confirmed by a multitude of particulars: first, by a number of places in which the author of the Gospel seems to write from a standpoint within the Apostolic circle, or in which he gives expression to experiences like those of an Apostle; and secondly by the very marked extent to which the narrative of the Gospel corresponds in its details to the real conditions of the time and place in which its scene is laid, conditions which rapidly changed and passed away.
This constitutes the internal argument for the authentic character of the Gospel. It is met and, as I conceive, strongly corroborated by the nature of the external evidence.
II. The External Evidence.
1. The Position at the end of the Second Century.
In regard to this I would not spend time in refinements upon some of the scanty details furnished by the scanty literature of the first half of the second century. I would rather take my stand on the state of things revealed to us on the lifting of the curtain for that scene of the Church’s history which extends roughly from about the year 170 to 200. I would invite attention to the distribution of the evidence in this period: Irenaeus and the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, Heracleon in Italy, Tertullian at Carthage, Polycrates at Ephesus, Theophilus at Antioch, Tatian at Rome and in Syria, Clement at Alexandria. The strategical positions are occupied, one might say, all over the Empire. In the great majority of cases there is not a hint of dissent. On the contrary the four-fold Gospel is regarded for the most part as one and indivisible. Just in one small coterie at Rome objections are raised to the Fourth Gospel, not on the ground of any special and verifiable tradition, but from dislike of some who appeal to the Gospel and from internal criticism of which we can take the measure. Just at this period of which I am speaking these dissentients appear and disappear, leaving so little trace that (as we have seen) Eusebius, who is really a careful and candid person, and has ancients like Origen and Clement behind him, can describe the Gospel as unquestioned both by his own generation and by preceding generations (p. [65] supra).
Let us for the moment treat these great outstanding testimonies as we should treat the reading of a group of MSS. The common archetype of authorities so wide apart and so independent of each other must go back very far indeed. If we were to construct a stemma, and draw lines from each of the authorities to a point x, representing the archetype, the lines would be long and their meeting point would be near the date at which according to the tradition the Gospel must have been composed. A tradition of this kind, so wide-spread and so deep-rooted, could not have arisen if it had not had a very substantial ground. Suppose we allow for a moment that it is something in itself a little short of absolutely decisive, there comes in to reinforce it what we have just been speaking of as the result of internal criticism, that the Gospel is the work of an eye-witness, a member of the circle which immediately surrounded our Lord. That is also a position which seems to me very strong.
I submit that this is a much fairer statement of the case than that (e. g.) which we find in Schmiedel (Enc. Bibl. ii. 2550):