If this was the state of things six or seven years ago, and if this description might be given of the general tendency of research in the decade or two preceding, the same can be said no longer. The threads that seemed to be drawing together have again sprung asunder. The sharp antitheses, that seemed in the way to be softened down and harmonized, have asserted themselves again in all their old abruptness. The alternatives are once more not so much between stricter and less strict history as between history and downright fiction, not so much between the Apostle and a disciple or younger contemporary of the Apostle as between a member of the Apostolic generation and one who was in no connexion with it.
I am speaking of the more pronounced opinions on either side. Whereas seven or eight or fifteen or twenty years ago the most prominent scholars were working towards conciliation, at the present time, and in the near past, the most strongly expressed opinions have been the most extreme. The old authorities, happily for the most part, still remain upon the scene, and they have not withdrawn the views which they had expressed; but other, younger writers have come to the front, and they have not shown the same disposition for compromise. They know their own minds, and they are ready enough to proclaim them without hesitation and without reserve.
The consequence is that the situation, as we look out upon it, presents more variety than it did. There are many shades of opinion, some of them strongly opposed to each other. It is no longer possible to strike an average, or to speak of a general tendency. The only thing to be done is for each of us to state his view of the case as he sees it, and to appeal to the public, to the jury of plain men, and to the rising generation, to decide between the competing theories.
1. Conservative Opinion.
It must not be thought that conservative scholars have shown any weakening of confidence in their cause. Quite the contrary. The latest period, which has seen so much recrudescence of opposition, has also seen not only the old positions maintained by those who had maintained them before, but an important accession to the literature on the Fourth Gospel—from the hand of a veteran indeed, but a veteran who had not before treated the subject quite directly. I refer to Zahn’s monumental Introduction to the New Testament, 2 vols., published in 1899, with which may be taken vol. vi of the same writer’s Forschungen z. Gesch. d. neutest. Kanons published in 1900. It is no disparagement to other workers in the field of Early Christian Literature to say that Dr. Zahn is the most learned of them all. We could indeed count upon our fingers several who know all that really needs to be known; but Dr. Zahn has a singular command of the whole of this material in its remotest recesses. He keeps a keen eye not only on theological literature proper, but on everything that appears in the world of scholarship that might have any bearing upon the questions at issue. An indefatigable industry he shares with more than one of his colleagues; but he is surpassed by none in the vigour and energy of mind with which he works up his knowledge.
And yet, with all his masterly erudition, and imposing as is the monument which he has erected of it, I am afraid that I should have to call it in some ways a rather isolated monument. There is something in Dr. Zahn’s work and in his position that is rather solitary. He has indeed his fidus Achates in Professor Haussleiter of Greifswald, and I do not doubt that his influence is widely felt among theologians of the Right. It is an encouragement to all who are like-minded to know that this strong tower of learning and character is with them. But it is hardly to be expected that Dr. Zahn’s writings, especially his greater writings, should ever be popular. Those closely packed pages, with long unbroken paragraphs and few helps to the eye and to readiness of apprehension, are a severe exercise for the most determined student: to any one else they must be forbidding. And when such a student has made his way into them, he is apt to find in them every quality but one. The views expressed on all points, larger and smaller, testify unfailingly to the powers of mind that lie behind them, but the one thing that they do often fail to do is to convince. There has fallen upon the shoulders of Dr. Zahn too much of the mantle of von Hofmann: if he were a little less original, he would carry the reader with him more.
Another veteran scholar, who has continued his laborious and unresting work upon the Fourth Gospel during this period, Dr. Bernhard Weiss[[2]], suffers less from this cause. Not that the writings of Dr. Weiss are much easier (they are a little easier) or more attractive in outward form. But one has a feeling that the Berlin Professor is more in the main stream—that he is more in touch with other opinion on the right hand and on the left. For this reason one finds him, on the whole, more helpful. Every question, as it arises, is thoughtfully weighed, and a strong judgement is brought to bear upon it. Each edition of Dr. Weiss’ books is conscientiously revised and brought, so far as can be reasonably expected, up to date. This untiring worker, as he enters upon the decline of a long life, has the satisfaction of looking back upon a series of volumes, always sound and always sober, which have contributed as much as any in this generation to train up in good and wholesome ways those who are to follow. Dr. Weiss’ work upon the Fourth Gospel is distinguished at once by his steady maintenance of the Apostolic authorship and by his steady insistence on the necessity of allowing for a certain freedom of handling. This freedom in the treatment, more particularly of the discourses, Dr. Weiss was practically the first writer to assert on the conservative side. He has sometimes stated it in a way that I cannot but think rather exaggerated.
Along with Bernhard Weiss it is natural to name Dr. Willibald Beyschlag, of whose dignified conduct of the proceedings at the Halle Tercentenary reports reached us in England, followed—as it seemed, too soon—by the news of his death on Nov. 25, 1900. Beyschlag was a good average representative of the liberal wing of the defenders of the Fourth Gospel, who also combine its data with those of the Synoptics in reconstructing the Life of our Lord. His style has more rhetorical ease and flow than that of Weiss, and he states his views with confidence and vigour; but one feels that in his hands problems are apt to become less difficult than they really are. For a reasonable middle position, a compromise between extremes on both sides, we may go to Beyschlag as well as to any one; but it may be doubted whether he really sounds the depths of the Gospel[[3]].
In this respect writers like Luthardt (died Sept. 21, 1902) and Godet (died Oct. 29, 1900), who are nearer to the old-fashioned orthodoxy, are more satisfactory. Of these writers we have fairly recent editions: Luthardt’s Kurzgefasster Kommentar came out in a second edition in 1894, and a posthumous edition of Godet’s elaborate and weighty work began to appear in 1902. With such books as these we may group the reprint of the commentary by Drs. Milligan and Moulton (Edinburgh, n. d.) and the two commentaries, in The Expositor’s Bible (1891-2) and in The Expositor’s Greek Testament, 1897, by Dr. Marcus Dods.
In the same connexion may also be mentioned a little group of French writings, headed by Six Leçons sur les Évangiles (Paris, 1897), by Abbé (now Monsignor) Pierre Batiffol—slight, but with a note of real distinction both in style and matter; an Introduction by Abbé Jacquier (Histoire des Livres du N. T., Paris, 1903), and a commentary by Père Calmes (Paris and Rome, 1904)—both (as it would seem) sufficiently competent and modern but not specially remarkable.