understood by those who know how voluminous were his writings, and from the character of those to whom he wrote.

The Clementine Homilies, Valentinus, 138-160, Marcion, 139-142, bear testimony to the existence of the Gospel written by John. Tertullian writes to Marcion, a heretic: "If you had not carefully rejected some of the Scriptures which disprove your views and corrupted others, the Gospel of John would have confounded you in this instance."'

Now the view of Tertullian was that Marcion rejected the fourth Gospel not because it was not apostolic, but because it was by an apostle. Hence Marcion's testimony is the strongest incidental proof that John was believed to be the author.

Polycarp (flourished about 69 to 155 A. D.) and Papias (about 130) were hearers and pupils of John the apostle. Irenæus writes: "Polycarp also, who not only was taught by the apostles and lived in familiar intercourse with many that had seen Christ."2 That they made use of the first Epistle of John, and of the Gospel, are facts established by the best modern criticism.3

Dionysius of Alexandria (195-265), a pupil of Origen, opposed the idea that the Apocalypse taught a personal reign of Christ on earth, and in doing so, held that the book of Revelation was not written by the apostle John, yet he was certain that the fourth Gospel was by that apostle. He is the forerunner of much recent literary criticism, only his studies led to results exactly opposite to those of some modern critics. The latter accept the Apocalypse as written by the apostle John, but deny that he wrote the Gospel, while Dionysius affirms that John wrote the Gospel, and questions his authorship of the Apocalypse.

The Muratorian Fragment, which belongs to the beginning of the third century, testifies to the use of the fourth Gospel and gives an account of its origin.

Origen (186-253) wrote comments on the Fourth Gospel (before 231 A. D.), and writes of John the apostle as the author, as if no one then questioned the fact.

The Apostolical Constitutions which belong to the same period state : "Afterwards let a deacon or a priest read the Gospels which Matthew and John have handed down to you, and which Luke and Mark, the helpers of Paul, have left you."

Cyprian (246-258) compares the four Gospels to the four rivers of paradise.

Eusebius prepared fifty copies of the Christian Scriptures by order of Constantine (332 A. D.), and he testifies to the wide circulation of the

1 De Carne Christi, 3.

3 See Bampton Lectures, 1890, pp. 96, 97, 394, 402.

2 Adv. Haer. 3:3, 4, and 5:33-4,

4 See below.

2

four Gospels, and that the fourth was universally believed to have been written by the apostle John.' This is also the testimony of Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386), and of Athanasius (296-373), who gives a list of the canonical books of the New Testament identical with that now accepted by evangelical Christians.

4

The Ancient Versions preserved to our time, in whole or in fragments, form an independent line of external evidence for the authorship of the Fourth Gospel, cumulative and strong in character, reaching back to the first translation of the Gospels, which extends surely to the beginning of the third, and with great probability to the early part of the second century. The ancient originals, especially the great Uncials, or those written in capitals, five or more copies of them date from the fourth to the sixth centuries, while the versions can be traced to the second and third. There is stronger reason for accepting the evidence of these early copies and Versions that the Fourth Gospel is a historical work by the apostle John, than to accept the works we now accept as histories written by Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Tacitus, Livy, or Cæsar. For there is no known manuscript or copy of Herodotus or Thucydides earlier than the tenth century, nor of Xenophon earlier than the eleventh to the thirteenth centuries. Thucydides, the chief authority for the history of Greece, is not referred to in existing literature of that period for two centuries after his death. The Latin classics are no better attested. The annals of Tacitus are based on a copy not older than the ninth century, which was found in Westphalia in the sixteenth century.5

This is only a small portion of the external evidence for the origin of the Fourth Gospel, but it is sufficient to show the nature and strength of this line of testimony. Before leaving it, however, it is proper to remind the student that in the beginnings of Christian history, the doctrines must have been derived at first largely from oral teaching and from apostolic tradition. So far as we know Christ wrote no creed, nor did he leave any precepts, discourses, or commands written by his own hand. The record of his teachings and life was left to be made by the apostles and apostolic men. Nor would the followers of the apostles feel the need of an authentic record so long as the apostles themselves were making frequent circuits among the Christians formed into churches in various places. But as the Christians became more numerous and more scattered or widespread, their need of an authentic record of the life and will of Jesus Christ, the Founder, would become more urgent.

1 Eccl. Hist. passim.

3 Opp. Ed. Bened. 1777, tom. 1:765.

5 See also Rice on Matthew, p. 10.

2 Catechesis, 4:36.

4 See Introductions, Rice on Matt. and on Mark.

✪ “The fundamental principle was to ascertain what was truly the word [and will] of the Lord

Thus a sharply defined and general testimony to the Fourth Gospel is not to be expected early in the second century. Indeed, were it otherwise, such supposed testimony in that early period would itself be liable to be regarded with suspicion. The historic facts as we find them accord with what we see must have been the conditions existing in the beginning of the Christian church.

2. Modern Criticism-Negative.-The questioning and destructive theories respecting the Fourth Gospel belong chiefly to the present century. Edward Evanson, of Ipswich, Eng., having demitted the ministry, wrote a work on the "Dissonance of the Evangelists," 1792: a book of small critical merit, in which he accepted the Third Gospel (Luke's), but regarded the other three as historic fictions of the second century. He was answered by Dr. Priestley and others. Bretschneider of Leipsig issued his Probabilia in 1820, a work in which, as its title indicated, he put forth certain tentative arguments and conclusions showing not that "the Gospel of John is spurious, but only that it seems to be so," and this work contains the germ of all the later skeptical discussions on the subject. Two years later he frankly confessed that his objections had been answered, and withdrew his conclusions; a retraction which he repeated in 1824. Strauss of Tübingen attempted to relegate the entire story of Jesus into a myth, and boldly assumed that all the Gospels, especially the Fourth, were in no sense histories, or so intended, but were pure inventions of a later era.' But Baur, though of the same school as Strauss, took an opposite position: that John's Gospel comes of an "ideal tendency" to reshape the evangelic tradition to support certain theological views urged in the second century. Renan, again, dissents from Strauss, holding that the several Gospel accounts of the Life of Jesus were built upon some legend. That is, he supposes that the Fourth Gospel has a real connection with the apostle John, and that it was written towards the end of the first century. But in his mind, the discourses are mostly fictitious compositions, and the Gospel was not really written by John, though attributed to him by a disciple about the year 100. Baur had numerous followers who modified his tendencytheory, until such a free-thinker as De Wette could say that a refutation was superfluous, since the criticism was self-destructive. Another large class of literary critics held that portions of John's Gospel were authentic, while others were ideal fillings, as Paulus (1761-1851), Weisse (18011866), Tobler, Ewald (1803-1875), Hase (1800-1890), Reuss, WeizJesus. This did not necessarily imply any writing. As late as Irenæus, who thinks of the fourfold Gospel as consonant with the natural order of things, it is still possible to conceive of a church without a Bible [charta], but not of a Bible without a church." Bampton Lectures, 1890, p. 147. See also Irenæus, Adv. Haer., 3 : 4, 1.

2

1 Leben Jesu, 1835, rewritten 1864. 2 Vie de Jesus, Ed. 1863 and 1882, pp. viii. and 477.

säcker, Keim (1825-1878), H. Holtzmann, E. Abbott (in Enc. Brit.), Samuel Davidson and James Martineau. The latter is quite certain of the unity of the work, holding that it is by one writer, whoever he may be. The negative school of writers agree only that the Fourth Gospel was not written by John, but they are diametrically opposed to each other in respect to facts, arguments and reasons for supposing that John was not its author. Their theories are therefore self-destructive.

3. Modern Criticism-Positive.—If the purpose of the negative school of critics had been to bring out proofs of the historic authority of the Fourth Gospel, as one of its founders (Bretschneider) suggested in his retraction, the purpose has been accomplished.

66

Schleiermacher (1768-1834) was a profound theologian and philosophic thinker, if not an expert in Biblical criticism. He said of this negative criticism: "Nothing can well betray less appreciation of the essence of Christianity and of the person of Christ himself, and especially less historic sense and comprehension of the way in which great events come to pass and the conditions in which they must find their real basis, than the opinion which was some time ago quietly introduced, that John had mingled much of his own ideas with the discourses of Christ." In like strong language he dissents from those who risk the more destructive assertion that John did not write the Gospel. Neander (1789-1850), in his Life of Jesus, declares of this Gospel : "It could have emanated from none other than that beloved disciple, upon whose soul the image of the Saviour had left its deepest impress. So far from this Gospel having been written by a man of the second century (as some assert), we cannot even imagine a man existing in that century so little affected by the contrarieties of his times and so far exalted above them. . . In short, the more openly this criticism declares itself against the Gospel of John, the more palpably does it manifest its own wilful disregard of history.

113

De Wette (1780-1849) was in the midst of this attack on John, in Germany, and was among the foremost of independent literary scholars. Yet in 1848 he says: "A critical conclusion which denies to the apostle John all share in this Gospel, and declares the same to be of later origin, not only involves the odious but inevitable confession that the author was a forger, but is opposed by the improbability that Christian antiquity accepted a Gospel, which differed in important points from the evangelic tradition, without having found a sure and satisfactory ground in its apostolic authority." 4

1 Seat of authority in Religion, 1890, p. 189. 2 See Works Vol. I. 447 and Ed. 1879, p. 297. 8 Neander, Life of Jesus, Eng. Ed. 1857, pp. 7, 8.

4 Introduction to New Testament, Ed. 5, Eng. Ed. p. 212.

Luecke (1791-1855), whose great work was the interpretation of John's writings, and whose wide and exact scholarship and philological knowledge were generally acknowledged, after carefully examining the works and views of the "newer critics," and having tested their theories, calmly affirmed: "I am unshaken in my convictions," accepting the common opinion that John was the author of the Gospel, and that it was written at Ephesus, at what date cannot certainly be fixed, but in Luecke's view certainly not earlier than 80 A. D.1

Bleek (1793-1859), for solidity of learning and calmness of literary judgment, was easily in the foremost rank of German Biblical scholars of his day. His review of "Ebrard's Scientific Criticism of Gospel History" was regarded as "an able, impartial and convincing defence of the authenticity of John's Gospel." 2

Ebrard of Erlangen in this strong language states his conclusion: "With the exception of some of Paul's Epistles, no book can be found throughout the whole of ancient literature, both Christian and profane, which can show such numerous and reliable proofs of its genuineness as the Gospel of St. John. . . There was a time when Strauss' mythical hypothesis appeared to shake the foundations. . . But now Teller is laughed at; at the name of Paulus men shrug their shoulders; Strauss' mythical hypothesis has been quietly laid aside as useless by the most kindred spirit to make room for the hypothesis of a pious fraud. The time will come when men will not merely laugh, but shudder at such a hypothesis as this." 3

Tholuck of Halle (1799-1877) and Hengstenberg of Berlin (18021869) were men of recognized ability and learning, who wrote important commentaries on this Gospel, and with all the weight of their scholarship defended it as a work of the apostle John.

H. A. W. Meyer (1800-1873) is recognized as foremost among German Biblical critics and exegetes of this century. He gives an able and judicious review of the negative criticism during the half century of his active critical studies, in which he imagines himself about to assent to those who ascribe the Gospel to some Gnostic author of the second century or to a disciple of Justin, as does Volkmar. Yet shrinking "from so preposterous a view," he may prefer to follow "the thoughtful Keim," that the Gospel is "Johannine in spirit, but post-Johannine in origin." But he is speedily and irresistibly driven, by the living presence of Johannine disciples as shown by the work itself, whence Meyer

1 Luecke, Commentar, Ed. 3, pp. ix., 6, 160, 161, 167.

2 In the third and fourth editions, 1886, edited by Dr. Mangold, his editor is not in harmony with Bleek on this question.

Ebrard: Gospel History, Eng. Ed., pp. 598, 600.