as an unintelligible and fallacious book. We venture to conjecture that the tradition that John should not die until the second coming of Jesus may have originated with the Apocalypse, where that event is announced to John as immediately to take place, xxii. 7, 10, 12, and the words with which the book ends are of this nature, and express the expectation of the writer, 20: "He which testifieth these things saith: Surely I come quickly. Amen. Come, Lord Jesus." It was not in the spirit of the age to hesitate about such anticipations, and so long as the Apostle lived, such a tradition would scarcely have required or received contradiction from any one, the belief being universal that the coming of Jesus might take place any day, and assuredly would not be long delayed. When the Apostle was dead, however, and the tradition that it had been foretold that he should live until the coming of the Lord exercised men's minds, and doubt and disappointment at the non-fulfilment of what may have been regarded as prophecy produced a prejudicial effect upon Christendom, it seemed to the writer of this Gospel a desirable thing to point out that too much stress had been laid upon the tradition, and that the words which had been relied upon in the first instance did not justify the expectations which had been formed from them. This also contradicts the hypothesis that the Apostle John was the author of the Gospel.
Such a passage as xix. 35, received in any natural sense, or interpreted in any way which can be supported by evidence, shows that the writer of the Gospel was not an eye-witness of the events recorded, but appeals to the testimony of others. It is generally admitted that the expressions in ch. i. 14 are of universal application, and capable of being adopted by all Christians, and,
consequently, that they do not imply any direct claim on the part of the writer to personal knowledge of Jesus. We must now examine whether the Gospel itself bears special marks of having been written by an eye-witness, and how far in this respect it bears out the assertion that it was written by the Apostle John. It is constantly asserted that the minuteness of the details in the fourth Gospel indicates that it must have been written by one who was present at the scenes he records. With regard to this point we need only generally remark, that in the works of imagination of which the world is full, and the singular realism of many of which is recognized by all, we have the most minute and natural details of scenes which never occurred, and of conversations which never took place, the actors in which never actually existed. Ewald admits that it is undeniable that the fourth Gospel was written with a fixed purpose, and with artistic design and, indeed, he goes further and recognizes that the Apostle could not possibly so long have recollected the discourses of Jesus and verbally reproduced them, so that, in fact, we have only, at best, a substantial report of the matter of those discourses coloured by the mind of the author himself.(1) Details of scenes at which we were not present may be admirably supplied by imagination, and as we cannot compare what is here described as taking place with what actually took place, the argument that the author must have been an eyewitness because he gives such details is without validity. Moreover, the details of the fourth Gospel in many cases do not agree with those of the three Synoptics, and it is an undoubted fact that the author of the fourth Gospel gives the details of scenes at which the Apostle John was not
present, and reports the discourses and conversations on such occasions, with the very same minuteness as those at which he is said to have been present; as, for instance, the interview between Jesus and the woman of Samaria. It is perfectly undeniable that the writer had other Gospels before him when he composed his work, and that he made use of other materials than his own.(1)
It is by no means difficult, however, to point out very clear indications that the author was not an eye-witness, but constructed his scenes and discourses artistically and for effect. We shall not, at present, dwell upon the almost uniform artifice adopted in most of the dialogues, in which the listeners either misunderstand altogether the words of Jesus, or interpret them in a foolish and material way, and thus afford him an opportunity of enlarging upon the theme. For instance, Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews, misunderstands the expression of Jesus, that in order to see the kingdom of God a man must be born from above, and asks: "How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter a second time into his mothers womb and be born?"(2) Now, as it is well known, and as we have already shown, the common expression used in regard to a proselyte to Judaism was that of being born again, with which every Jew, and more especially every "ruler of the Jews," must have been well acquainted. The stupidity which he displays
in his conversation with Jesus, and with which the author endowed all who came in contact with him, in order, by the contrast, to mark more strongly the superiority of the Master, even draws from Jesus the remark: "Art thou the teacher of Israel and understandest not these things?"(l) There can be no doubt that the scene was ideal, and it is scarcely possible that a Jew could have written it. In the Synoptics, Jesus is reported as quoting against the people of his own city, Nazareth, who rejected him, the proverb: "A prophet has no honour in his own country."(2) The appropriateness of the remark here is obvious. The author of the fourth Gospel, however, shows clearly that he was neither an eye-witness nor acquainted with the subject or country when he introduces this proverb in a different place. Jesus is represented as staying two days at Sychar after his conversation with the Samaritan woman. "Now after the two days he departed thence into Galilee. For [———] Jesus himself testified that a prophet hath no honour in his own country. When, therefore [———], he came into Galilee, the Galilaeans received him, having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem, at the feast—for they also went unto the feast."(3) Now it is manifest that the quotation here is quite out of place, and none of the ingenious but untenable explanations of apologists can make it appropriate. He is made to go into Galilee, which was his country, because a prophet has no honour in his country, and the Galilaeans are represented as receiving him, which is a contradiction of the proverb. The writer evidently misunderstood the facts of the case or
