Clemens waited patiently for me to resume our conversation. Soon it occurred to me that I had been unreasonable in my expectations if the circumstances were as he had described them. Suppose this new gospel to have originated from the reminiscences of John the son of Zebedee, a fisherman of Galilee, and the aged author of such a book as the Apocalypse. How could such traditions, if set down exactly as they came from the old man’s lips, fail to abound in Jewish phrases and thoughts such as I had met with in the apocalyptic work? But these would have made the gospel very unsuitable for Greeks and Romans and indeed for almost all except Jews. It was therefore natural, and indeed almost necessary, that the old man’s recollections, after being imparted to his friends, who would probably be the elders of Ephesus, should be freely interpreted, or perhaps paraphrased, in a form fit for all readers. Such interpreters, or such an interpreter, might not always be perfectly successful.

It was foolish of me not to have foreseen this. But still I was disappointed. “This,” said I, “adds a new element of uncertainty, if John has sometimes preserved traditions of Christ’s words translated from the Jewish tongue.” “It does,” said Clemens, “and so does another fact that applies both to Greek and to Hebrew or Aramaic. You know that, in Greek, ‘he said’ or ‘used to say,’ or ‘it says,’ often signifies ‘he meant’ or ‘it means.’ The same is true in Hebrew. Hence if an evangelist or scribe, after giving Christ’s actual words, for[313] example, ‘Do righteousness,’ were to add ‘But he meant, Do alms’—because, in Hebrew, ‘righteousness’ often means ‘alms’—it would be possible to misinterpret the addition as meaning ‘But he [also] said (or, used to say) Do alms,’ thus erroneously creating a second precept. For these and other reasons I cannot feel sure that the saying ‘I thirst,’ about which we were just now conversing, may not be a paraphrase of the Lord’s words about being ‘forsaken.’ John the son of Zebedee may have known that the latter words were misunderstood from the first by the soldiers, and also that they were misinterpreted by some Christians. Hence I think the aged apostle may have prayed for a revelation as to the true meaning of the words, and it may have been revealed to him, ‘The Lord said—that is, He really said, His real meaning was—that He “thirsted”.’ This indeed would be a surprise or paradox compared with what the gospel says elsewhere. But the scriptures are full of such paradoxes.”

“But how ‘elsewhere’?” said I. “Do you mean that here Christ feels thirst whereas ‘elsewhere’ He quenches thirst? I do not remember that.” “I forgot,” replied Clemens, “that you had not read the new gospel. That gospel represents Christ as saying to a sinful woman, ‘Give me to drink,’ and afterwards, to the same woman, ‘He that believeth on me shall never thirst,’ and, after that, to the Jews, ‘If any one be athirst, let him come unto me and drink.’ This same gospel says that the ‘food’ of the Son is to do the will of the Father. This, then, may be described as His meat and drink. If, therefore, He ‘thirsts,’ He is athirst to do the Father’s will, so that He hungers and thirsts for righteousness in the souls of sinful men and women, thirsting to free them from thirst by giving them the water of life. All through His life He has not thirsted because the living water has been passing freely from the Father to Him and from Him to others. But now, on the point of death, the Giver of the water of life is Himself caused to thirst for it! The Father, in His infinite love, causes the Son Himself to thirst for that love! Instead of helping others, the Son is constrained to ask as it were to be helped—in order that He may help others better. This is perhaps the[314] deepest and most wonderful of all the Lord’s deep sayings—‘I thirst for the righteousness and love of God, that I and mine may be in the Father, and that the Father may be in me and mine.’ In the end, this will be one of the Lord’s words that ‘will never pass away.’ But what was its effect at the time? When Socrates uttered his last wishes, Crito was at hand to say, ‘This shall be done.’ But when Christ cried ‘I thirst,’ no friend was at hand to satisfy that thirst, and the cry was taken by the soldiers as meaning, ‘I thirst for a little of your sour wine’!”

“It seems to me,” said I, “that you regard this gospel, not exactly as history, but as history mingled with poetry or with vision?” “Not quite so,” said Clemens. “I should prefer to say, ‘as history interpreted through spiritual insight or poetic vision.’ I take the historical fact to be that there came into the world, as man, a divine Being, endowed with a power of drawing man and God into one, by drawing the hearts of men towards Himself, and, through Himself, to the Father. Making men one with Himself, He also made them one with each other in Himself. This is the great historical fact, the fact of facts, foreordained before the foundation of the world. This, then, is the fact that needs to be brought out clearly in the history of Christ—not the facts (though they are facts) that the Pharisees often washed their hands and that the daughter of Herodias danced before John the Baptist was beheaded. Well, then, put yourself in the position of—whoever it was that wrote this fourth gospel, say, ‘the Elder.’ Imagine him returning fresh from an interview with the old man John, the son of Zebedee, who will not allow himself to be called a ‘son of thunder’?.”

“But why,” said I, “should he not have allowed himself to be called John the son of Zebedee? And why should he object to be called one of the sons of thunder, if Jesus called him so?” “As to the latter name,” replied Clemens, “I very much doubt whether Mark has translated the term correctly; I will tell you why, another time: but assuredly he was not a noisy ‘son of thunder’ as we should understand the phrase in the west.

“As to the former name, you will find in this gospel that[315] ‘Simon son of John’ is thrice mentioned as Peter’s name, in a passage where Peter is rebuked for having denied his Master. It is, so to speak, his name after the flesh, his unregenerate name. ‘Peter,’ or ‘stone,’ is his regenerate name. So, ‘John son of Zebedee’ would be this disciple’s unregenerate name. The fourth gospel never uses that name except once, in the phrase ‘the sons of Zebedee,’ on the same occasion on which Peter is rebuked as ‘Simon son of John.’ For the most part John the son of Zebedee is described (in this gospel) as ‘the other disciple’—that is, the one as yet unheard, the one whose testimony is still to be given. Or else, the name is connected with Christ’s love—‘the disciple that Jesus loved.’ He feels that he owes all that he has, his very being, to the fact that Jesus loved him, that Jesus made him what he now is. Moreover Jesus gave him, by perpetual visions after His death, an insight into the meanings of His words uttered before death. Hence he might feel that Christ’s words, once dark sayings, have now become clear. From being old, they have become quite new, so as to require an altogether new record.”

“I am not sure,” said I, “that I understand your meaning. Do you hold that the fourth gospel differs from the three because of the special character of John the son of Zebedee, or because of the special interpretation of ‘the Elder’?” “Because of both,” said Clemens. “Then,” said I, “you think that John the son of Zebedee, far from being a ‘son of thunder’ in the sense in which Pericles might be so called by Aristophanes, was a man of a retiring and vision-seeing nature, who merged himself in Christ; and that his namesake, the Elder, believed that the aged apostle was as it were a mirror, in whom, and in whose traditions, it was possible to discern more of Christ’s real expression than in the ancient document of Mark.”

“That comes near the truth, I think,” replied Clemens. “And yet I should be very far from denying that Mark, and the other early gospels, are right in several features apparently omitted by John—for example, Christ’s love of ‘the little ones,’ and His anxiety lest they should be caused to stumble, and His insistence on the necessity of receiving the Kingdom of God as[316] little children. But it seems to me that some of these precepts about ‘little ones’ may have been misunderstood so that the brethren needed Paul’s warning, ‘Be not little children in your minds,’ and again, ‘In malice be babes, but in understanding be men.’ The root of all these precepts was the divine feeling of ‘littleness,’ or ‘childhood,’ or ‘sonship.’ This is realised in the Son of God doing the will of the Father. In order to do that will on earth, He must be always keeping His eyes on the Father in heaven. The earlier gospels represent Christ with His eyes fixed on the ‘little ones’ on earth, the sick, the sorrowful, the ignorant, the sinful. That also is true. The new gospel appears to me to attempt to shew how the two truths are combined.”

“But you surely do not mean to say,” I exclaimed, “that Jesus, in the new gospel, never makes mention of the ‘little ones’ or the ‘little children,’ so frequently mentioned by the earlier evangelists!” “I do indeed,” replied Clemens. “He does not make mention of either term once, except that, after the resurrection, seeing the disciples engaged in labour that has lasted through the night and effected nothing, He calls to them and says ‘Little children!’ But yet, although He does not elsewhere use the word ‘children,’ He has the thought constantly before Him. At the beginning of the gospel, He teaches that men must be ‘born from above,’ that is, become little children in the eyes of God. Towards the end, He uses a mother’s word to them (‘teknia,’ ‘darlings’). He also says, ‘I will not leave you orphans,’ and declares that His disciples are to be in Himself, the Son. Now to be in the Son, means to be made ‘a little child’ in the perfect sense of Christ’s meaning.”

“Perhaps,” said I, “this explains why Paul seldom mentions the word ‘little children’.” “‘Seldom’,” said Clemens, “is not the right word. Paul never mentions it, except in the warning I mentioned above. Moreover John, in his epistle, says, ‘I have written unto you little children, because ye have known the Father.’ That word ‘known’ goes to the root of the matter. The essence of ‘little childhood,’ in Christ’s sense, is not ignorance, but knowledge—‘knowing the Father.’ And ‘knowing the Father’ implies loving the Father, or desiring the Father.[317] There are cases where ‘desire’ may perhaps be well substit............