I do not wish to prejudge the question. But those who are familiar with its intricacies will, I think, agree with me that it would be a real gain to have only one claimant to the Ephesian tradition[[84]].
5. John of Ephesus and his Gospel.
We must in any case think of John of Ephesus as ‘the aged disciple,’ for to our modern ears some such double name as that expresses most adequately the feeling that surrounded him. He called himself by preference ὁ πρεσβύτερος, but we have unfortunately no sufficient rendering for this in English. ‘Elder’ and ‘Presbyter’ have both contracted the associations of office, and of a rather formal kind of office that has lost too much of its original meaning, for the natural authority of age was at first always conveyed in it. I suppose that the Apostle thought of himself most of all as a memory—the last and strongest link with those wonderful years. It was this especially that gave him his sense at once of dignity and of responsibility. When his disciples spoke of ὁ πρεσβύτερος, I imagine that they meant, as we might say, ‘the Venerable’; they looked up to him with a feeling of awe tempered with affection.
It was at Ephesus, the capital of Proconsular Asia, that he whom we too may call ‘the Venerable’ held his modest court, and from thence that he went on circuit, organizing and visiting the little congregations formed in the cities and greater towns of the province. We have a glimpse of these activities in the famous story of the Robber Chief. We are more concerned with the contemplative side of his life, with that inward retrospect which occupied his mind. I do not doubt that it is true that the other Gospels, as they came into circulation among the churches, were brought to him, and that he expressed his approval of them. The story makes him speak with unique authority, which has about it however nothing artificial, but is just the natural deference for one who of all men living was in the best position to know the things of which he spoke. His approval of the other Gospels was calm and objective, but critical. I believe that the precious statements that Papias has preserved for us about the compositions of St. Mark and St. Matthew are really fragments of his criticism. I accept also as literally true the story that it was partly because he felt that there was something wanting in the older records, and partly because of the urgency of those around him, that the old man at last was himself impelled to write. Browning’s ‘Death in the Desert’ presents him at a later stage—at the last stage of all—but as an imaginative reproduction of the circumstances and frame of mind in which the Gospel was written, it is the best that I know.
At Ephesus in Asia the embers of the apostolic age glowed longer than elsewhere; and we cannot wonder that here the torch should be lit which was to be handed on to later times. If the devotion of disciples had to do with the writing of the Gospel, we may be sure that it also had to do with the commending and spreading of the Gospel when written. It is possible enough that they were the first to give it the name of ‘the spiritual Gospel.’ As such it passed from hand to hand; and again it is not surprising that those who prided themselves on superior spirituality and insight, like the Gnostics, showed a special fondness for this Gospel, as we are told they did[[85]]. Neither is it any more surprising that in an opposite quarter, where a spirit like that of our own Hanoverian Bishops looked with jealousy upon every outbreak of enthusiasm, there should be a movement of reaction against the Gospel which seemed to encourage such manifestations (the Alogi). The catholic Church went calmly on its way, and these partialities and inequalities soon found their level. By the time of Irenaeus there is a stable equilibrium; no one of the four Gospels is either before or after another. And this is really the lesson taught by the Muratorian Fragment, though the writer has to speak a little more apologetically—there are, it is true, differences, but all are inspired by the self-same Spirit.
The last trace in ancient times of the preference which from its birth had been given to the Fourth Gospel appears, as we might expect, in Origen. After describing in detail the different purposes which dominated the other Gospels, Origen explains that Providence reserved for him who had leaned upon the breast of Jesus the greater and more mature discourse about Him, for none of the others had set forth His deity so unreservedly as John.
‘So then we make bold to say that of all the Scriptures the Gospels are the firstfruits, and the firstfruits of the Gospels is that according to John the meaning whereof none can apprehend who has not leaned upon the breast of Jesus, or received at the hands of Jesus Mary to be his mother too[[86]].’
This is the kind of history that the extant materials and tradition sketch for us of the origin and early fortunes of the Fourth Gospel. From the moment that we leave behind the shade of obscurity which does just linger over the person of the author, everything seems to me quite consistent and coherent and natural and probable. Can we say as much of the opposition to the Gospel, especially in its extremer form, as represented by Schmiedel or Jean Réville or Loisy? We certainly cannot give the epithets just used to the theory of these writers, because there is really nothing to apply to them; the Gospel is for them a great ignotum, and nothing more. Is not this in itself a rather serious objection? As an ignotum the Gospel is really too great to plant down in the middle of the history of the second century without creating a disturbance of all the surrounding conditions which we may be sure would have lasted for years. Imagine this solid mass suddenly thrust into the course of events, as Schmiedel would say, somewhere about the year 140, between Basilides and Valentinus and their disciples, as it were under the very eyes of Polycarp and Anicetus and Justin and Tatian, without making so much as a ripple upon the surface. Of course nothing can be simpler than to say that the author of the Gospel is unknown; but the moment we come to close quarters with the statement, and realize what it means, we perceive its difficulty.
Epilogue on the Principles of Criticism.
And now that we have come to the end of this brief sketch of the history of the Gospel for the first hundred years or so of its existence, I may perhaps turn in conclusion to the other object which has been present to my mind throughout this course of lectures, and attempt to collect and state, also in the most summary form, some of the underlying principles of criticism which have from time to time found expression in the lectures and which I desire to submit for your consideration, more especially where they differ from much current practice. I consider them to be self-evident; but their obviousness has at least not prevented them from being too often disregarded. The main points would, I think, be as follows:—