ment.

which lead us to hold that the critical hypothesis cannot be carried through can, of course, be indicated here only in the briefest way. (1) The standpoint of the fourth evangelist is not, as it ought to be according to that hypothesis, a faith n mere ideas, but a faith in facts; salvation, in his view, depends upon definite historical facts. The faith of this evangelist was produced by miraculous facts, and its object is not only the facts essential to salvation, but also the most trivial circumstances of the life of Jesus, all of which he regards as ordained by God and predicted in the Old TestaWith such a point of view, it was impossible for him to set about reconstructing the tradition of Jesus at his own will, or to regard the theological ideas as alone essential, and the narrative as a sort of unsubstantial drapery. (2) The fourth evangelist, in spite of any strangeness in form, unmistakably possesses historical knowledge superior to the Synoptists. This superior knowledge appears in the outline he gives of the public life of Jesus, which, though departing from the tradition of the Synoptists, is unconsciously supported by them, and also in the history of His suffering and resurrection. It is shown also in a whole series of small points on which no stress is laid. Features like these cannot possibly be referred to a purpose to support certain views, but can only be understood as coming from the remembrance of an eye-witness. (3) The external evidence for the existence and use of the Gospel have been gradually completed, so that the late date in which Baur would place its origin has to be given up. It has been found necessary to place it near the age of Trajan, into the beginning of which, according to the testimony of Eusebius, the Apostle John lived. And in that period, when Gnosticism was alarming the Church, the recognition of a Gospel deviating so widely from the Synoptics' presentation, and apparently making such advances towards Gnosis, would be inconceivable, unless an undeniable apostolic authority had compelled that recognition. (4) The twentyfirst chapter, which presents itself as an appendix added to the completed Gospel in the name of a number of persons (ver. 24), can only be understood from the need of the Christian community to set at rest a scruple attaching to the death of the Apostle John. This scruple, and this method of setting it

at rest, have meaning only immediately after the death of the apostle, not more than fifty years after; and therefore the genuineness of the Gospel is attested in chap. xxi. 24, at the open grave of the apostle, by his nearest friends. (5) The First Epistle of John, which shows the inimitable Johannine style, and can only be the work of the same author as the Gospel, is a monument whose genuineness there is absolutely neither cause nor reason for calling in question. Neither writing bears any name, and can therefore only proceed from an author who was well known to the first circle of readers, without any mention of his name. To manufacture a book to suit a name and not to name the name, is a thing unheard of and absurd. (6) Finally, the Gospel is unaffected by any of the anxieties and questions which moved the Church in the second century. Neither the question of apostolic tradition, nor that of church order, nor that of asceticism, neither the Gnostic nor the Montanist controversy, has any echo in it, and therefore it cannot have been produced amid the conflicts and developments of the second century; and we do not need to dwell on the difficulty of discovering in the second century a Christian thinker, so immensely superior to all his contemporaries, who has yet left no mark of himself in history. These are reasons which the anti-Johannine critics may indeed ignore but cannot invalidate, and which for that reason they do not like to discuss.1

§ 3. DIFFICULTY OF THE DISCOURSES OF JESUS

Nevertheless, if we assume the genuineness of the Gospel, the discourses of Jesus which it contains undeniably present great difficulties. It may be asked whether these are really speculative in character, Alexandrian or semi-Gnostic, as has been maintained. But there is no question that between them and the synoptic sayings of Jesus there is an immense difference, and that the synoptic reports make a stronger impression of originality and faithfulness to history. The form of Jesus' teaching in the Synoptics is the short pictorial popular saying, of which the few longer doctrinal and con

1 Cf. my monograph on the Johannine question, reprinted from the Studien und Kritiken, 1876.

troversial discourses are made up, or the symbolical narrative the parable. In John, such maxims, for the most part, appear only in the longer doctrinal and controversial discourses, which return again and again with a certain mystic monotony to the same enigmatic words, and in their stream images which might have taken form as parables melt away like ripples. Scarcely once do we hear an echo of the old synoptic doctrine of God's kingdom of righteousness. Instead of that we hear the more of the eternal life which is even now to be attained, and of the judgment which is even now being completed. But we hear, above all, of the Son of God to whom is committed the bestowing of life and the dispensing of judgment, and to believe on whom is therefore the most essential work of God. The rich colours of the epic eschatology, the fantastic pictures of the coming again to judge the world, vanish also before the monotonously repeated promise of the Spirit, the Paraclete. All these discourses, whether addressed to the people, to His enemies, or to the disciples, show little of the influences of that age which are everywhere manifest in the Synoptics, the influences of law and prophets, of Pharisaic ordinances and popular expectations. They move rather amongst the mysteries of the Christian faith, whose meaning the hearers had not yet discovered. And therefore misunderstanding is the most usual motive for their prolongation; but that misunderstanding is not generally removed, but increased, and the object of discourse seems not to be the enlightening and winning of opponents so much as the confusing and embittering of them. There can be no doubt that Jesus did not deliver these discourses in this form; the form of them must be attributed to the evangelist. For all that, they may have been constructed from the most genuine material, from real ideas and sayings of Jesus. And several noteworthy indications show that this is the case-quite apart from the general consideration that we can just as little attribute to an apostle a free invention of words of Jesus, as a free invention of a history of Jesus. In the first place, it is perfectly true what de Wette, in balancing the pros and cons of the Johannine question, has declared. "Many of these sayings shine with a more than earthly brilliance"; out of the mystic monotonous stream of discourse there shine out

inimitably strong and sweet words of Jesus which no man of the second century, which no man indeed but one, could have spoken. And, in fact, it is clear that our evangelist has not quite correctly understood many of the words of Jesus which he communicates. He has misread the destroying of the temple (ii. 19-22), the lifting up of the Son of Man (xii. 32, 33), and the like, by interpreting them as he does the Old Testament. Such misunderstanding and misconstruction of the simple original sense is impossible in a writer who is inventing what he records. And, finally, it is by no means proved, as hostile critics affirm, that the discourses of Jesus in the Gospel are nothing but the unfolding of the ideas expressed in the prologue. In these discourses we nowhere meet with the claim, eyó eiui ó λóyos, and they do not presuppose, as we shall see, such a relation of God and world, or such a selfconsciousness in Jesus, as the Logos idea would lead us to expect; for example, they do not assume that God is only present in the world through the Logos (ver. 17), or that the Son of God has original rights of possession over men (cf. xvii. 6 with i. 4, ix. 11). But if the views of these discourses are not derived from the theology of the evangelist, but deviate from it, they must have been received by him from some other source, and at most recast in form. And the motives to such a recasting are not far to seek in the case of an apostle, especially such a one as John.

§ 4. SUGGESTED SOLUTION

First of all, the whole material of the Gospel, and especially of the discourses, has passed through the mind of a man of very definite individuality, strong and onesided, in order to assume the form in which it is presented to us. This individuality is most clearly expressed in the First Epistle of John, and there is nothing to oppose the ascription of it to John, the son of Zebedee, the youngest of the three intimate friends of Jesus. Here we recognise the peculiarity of the mystic among the apostles; the man, passionate both in his love and his anger, who in his intense spirituality cares only for the things of the inner life, pays little heed to the historical circumstances, and to what is national and temporary in the

teaching of Jesus. The author repeatedly tells us that this disposition was confirmed in him after the resurrection of Jesus by a mental process in which his recollections of Jesus came to have a new meaning (cf. ii. 22, xii. 16). The life of Jesus in its issue had contradicted their original ideas and expectations, and compelled the apostles, according to their mental characteristics, to reconsider their impressions and recollections, and so, under the guidance of the Spirit (John xiv. 26), they attained a new understanding of what they had experienced, and were able to speak of it in a new and spiritual fashion. Little wonder, then, if, in the apostle's long life, the original text, and the meaning of it which the Spirit had taught him, were involuntarily joined so closely that in old age, when he sought to write down what he had seen and heard, objective and subjective could no longer be separated. Besides, in that century much had been learned; the great mission to the Gentiles, and contact with Paul, its champion, had widened the horizon of the primitive apostles. The obduracy of Israel and the fall of Jerusalem completely stripped away any merely Jewish reference from the gospel. they had to preach. The hoary apostle found himself in Ephesus, in presence of a second and third generation of Hellenic Christians (the veavíoкоι and Taтéρes of his Epistle, all of whom he yet calls TeKvía). It was natural that when he wished to make over to them the treasures of his reminiscences, he should make Christ speak in the way in which he (John) had come to understand Him, and not as the scribes in those long-vanished days, but as the Christians in his own. time could understand Him. Such were the historical conditions in which this wonderful Gospel and its discourses arose, in which the text of Jesus and the exposition of John, the genuine material and the subjective construction, have so grown together that one often does not know whether Jesus is speaking or the evangelist has taken up the word about Him (cf. iii. 16 f., xii. 44 f.); sometimes the evangelist makes Jesus speak of Himself by name and in the third person (xvii. 3), or makes Him speak in the past tense of events which had happened in the days of John, but were still in the future when Jesus lived (cf. iii. 19, iv. 38). But because the whole of the apostle's individuality and experience mirrored the