THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL  
I. Summary of the Internal Evidence.
 
All our discussions have for their object, not the production of rounded and symmetrical theories but the ascertainment of truth. We must take the data as we find them. If they do not as they stand sustain a clear conclusion, we cannot make them do so. And it seems to me far better frankly to confess the fact than to strain the evidence one way or the other. We may state the case with such indications of leaning as we please, but always with the reservation that a slight change in the evidence, the discovery or recovery of a single new fact, might turn the scale.
This is, I think, the position of things in regard to some of the outlying parts of the problem of the Fourth Gospel. One broad conclusion seems to stand out from the evidence, internal as well as external. The author was an eye-witness, an Apostolic man—either in the wider sense of the word ‘Apostle’ or in the narrower. So much seems to me to be assured; but round that broad conclusion there arises a cluster of questions to which I cannot give a simple and categorical answer.
237I will come back to these questions in a moment. But I ought perhaps first to remind you of the point to which the previous argument has brought us, and of the grounds on which the main proposition is based.
I take it to be a fundamental element in the question that in several places (especially xix. 35, xxi. 24; cf. i. 14, 1 John i. 1-3), the Gospel itself lays claim to first-hand authority. This is a different matter from ordinary pseudonymous writing. The direct and strong assertions that the Gospel makes are either true or they are a deliberate untruth. Between these alternatives I have no hesitation in choosing. I do not think that we should have the right to make so grave an imputation as that implied in the second on anything but the clearest necessity. But the first alternative appeared to me to be confirmed by a multitude of particulars: first, by a number of places in which the author of the Gospel seems to write from a standpoint within the Apostolic circle, or in which he gives expression to experiences like those of an Apostle; and secondly by the very marked extent to which the narrative of the Gospel corresponds in its details to the real conditions of the time and place in which its scene is laid, conditions which rapidly changed and passed away.
This constitutes the internal argument for the authentic character of the Gospel. It is met and, as I conceive, strongly corroborated by the nature of the external evidence.
238
II. The External Evidence.
 
1. The Position at the end of the Second Century.
 
In regard to this I would not spend time in refinements upon some of the scanty details furnished by the scanty literature of the first half of the second century. I would rather take my stand on the state of things revealed to us on the lifting of the curtain for that scene of the Church’s history which extends roughly from about the year 170 to 200. I would invite attention to the distribution of the evidence in this period: Irenaeus and the Letter of the Churches of Vienne and Lyons in Gaul, Heracleon in Italy, Tertullian at Carthage, Polycrates at Ephesus, Theophilus at Antioch, Tatian at Rome and in Syria, Clement at Alexandria. The strategical positions are occupied, one might say, all over the Empire. In the great majority of cases there is not a hint of dissent. On the contrary the four-fold Gospel is regarded for the most part as one and indivisible. Just in one small coterie at Rome objections are raised to the Fourth Gospel, not on the ground of any special and verifiable tradition, but from dislike of some who appeal to the Gospel and from internal criticism of which we can take the measure. Just at this period of which I am speaking these dissentients appear and disappear, leaving so little trace that (as we have seen) Eusebius, who is really a careful and candid person, and has ancients like Origen and 239Clement behind him, can describe the Gospel as unquestioned both by his own generation and by preceding generations (p. 65 supra).
Let us for the moment treat these great outstanding testimonies as we should treat the reading of a group of MSS. The common archetype of authorities so wide apart and so independent of each other must go back very far indeed. If we were to construct a stemma, and draw lines from each of the authorities to a point x, representing the archetype, the lines would be long and their meeting point would be near the date at which according to the tradition the Gospel must have been composed. A tradition of this kind, so wide-spread and so deep-rooted, could not have arisen if it had not had a very substantial ground. Suppose we allow for a moment that it is something in itself a little short of absolutely decisive, there comes in to reinforce it what we have just been speaking of as the result of internal criticism, that the Gospel is the work of an eye-witness, a member of the circle which immediately surrounded our Lord. That is also a position which seems to me very strong.
I submit that this is a much fairer statement of the case than that (e. g.) which we find in Schmiedel (Enc. Bibl. ii. 2550):
‘Instead of the constantly repeated formula that an ancient writing is “attested” as early as by (let us say) Irenaeus, Tertullian, or Clement of Alexandria, there will have to be substituted the much more modest statement that its existence (not genuineness) 240is attested only as late as by the writers named, and even this only if the quotations are undeniable or the title expressly mentioned.’
This is a characteristic example of the spirit in which the author writes—much more that of the lawyer speaking to his brief for the prosecution than of the scholar or historian. The criticism is couched in general terms: as far as it applies in particular to the Gospel of St. John the caveat is superfluous, because all the three writers named, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Clement of Alexandria bear witness expressly to the genuineness of the Gospel, and not only to its existence. The witness of Heracleon is still more important. To recognize a writing is one thing; to recognize it as sacred is another; to comment upon it as so sacred and authoritative that its contents can be interpreted allegorically is a third: and all this is so early as c. 170. But apart from this the whole form of the statement is unjust. It leaves entirely out of account the extreme scantiness of the material from which evidence could be drawn in the period before the year 180. To me the wonder is that the evidence borne to the New Testament writings in the extant literature prior to this date should be as much as it is and not as little.
2. Earlier Evidence.
 
But Dr. Schmiedel certainly understates that for the Fourth Gospel. He assumes that no trace can be found of this earlier than 140. A single 241item of the evidence, which he does not notice, is enough to refute this. I refer to our present conclusion of the Gospel of St. Mark. We may say with confidence that its date is earlier than the year 140—whether we argue from the chronology of Aristion, its presumable author, or from its presence in the archetype of almost all extant MSS., or from the traces of it in writers so early as Justin and Irenaeus. But I may take it for granted that the added verses imply not only the existence but up to a certain point the authority of the Fourth Gospel.
But, besides this, Dr. Schmiedel assumes the negative results of an inquiry, which he has conducted very lightly, and the scale on which he was writing compelled him to conduct lightly, into the bearings of the literature older than 140. I am not so sure as he is that there is no allusion to the Gospel in Barnabas or Hermas, where it is found (e. g.) by Keim, or in the Elders of Papias, where it is found (e. g.) by Harnack. The questions raised in these cases are too complex and too delicate to be quite worth discussing from the point of view of that legal proof which for Schmiedel seems alone to have any value. But Ignatius and the Didaché are of more tangible importance. I am inclined to think that justice has rarely been done from this point of view to Ignatius. It is not so much a question of close coincidence in expression. There I should perhaps allow that Dr. Schmiedel is within his rights in denying what Dr. Drummond and Dr. Stanton affirm. The evidence of Ignatius is obscured by the fact that, unlike 242Polycarp[74], he is not given to exact quotation. Polycarp is by far the weaker man; it is natural to him to express his thoughts in the words of others. But Ignatius has a rugged strength of mind which digests and assimilates all that comes to it, and if it reproduces the thoughts of others, does so in a form of its own[75]. But I do not think there can be any doubt that Ignatius has digested and assimilated to an extraordinary degree the teaching that we associate with the name of St. John. If any one questions this, I would refer him to the excellent monograph, Ignatius von Antiochien als Christ und Theologe, by Freiherr von der Goltz (Texte und Untersuchungen, Band xii). It will be best to give the conclusion to which this writer comes in his own words, as I agree with it largely but not quite entirely. He says:
‘The question is whether Ignatius came to appropriate this world of thought through reading our Fourth Gospel, or whether he must be held to be an independent witness to this mode of thinking. Up to a certain point the preceding investigation has already shown that the latter is the case. Although, for instance, certain details might seem to point to borrowing from the Fourth Gospel, yet this peculiar religious Modalism, this mysticism, this combination and accentuation of the same points, this special form of faith in Christ, and, in general, this identical mode of thought and belief could not be simply transferred by 243means of a book to one who had not in other ways taken up the same ideas and made them his own. There is also proof from various turns given to the thought, as from his use of an independent terminology, that the author is in possession of “Johannean” ideas as his own property. So that in case we really came to the result that Ignatius was acquainted with the Fourth Gospel, we should have indeed to refer to that acquaintance the portrait that he draws of Christ and some details, but in spite of that we should have to hold fast the conclusion that in appropriating his general conception of things, Ignatius must have come under the prolonged influence of a community itself influenced by Johannean thought’ (p. 139).
It will have been observed that the reason for thinking that the affinity of thought between Ignatius and St. John is not to be explained by the use of a book, is not because of its slightness but because it is really too deep to be accounted for in that way. It is true that the affinity goes very deep. I had occasion a few years ago to study rather closely the Ignatian letters, and I was so much impressed by it as even to doubt whether there is any other instance of resemblance between a biblical and patristic book, that is really so close. Allowing for a certain crudity of expression in the later writer and remembering that he is a perfervid Syrian and not a Greek, he seems to me to reflect the Johannean teaching with extraordinary fidelity. This applies especially to his presentation of the doctrine of the Incarnation, to his conception of the Logos, and of the relation of Christ at once to the Father and to the believer. In the writers of the next generation to Ignatius 244e. g. in Justin—the conception of the Logos is infected by Greek philosophy, giving to it more or less the sense of reason, whereas in Ignatius the leading idea is, as we have seen it to be in St. John, that of revelation. Nowhere else have we the idea of the fullness of Godhead revealed in Christ grasped and expressed with so much vigour. What difference there is is of the nature of exaggeration. It is not wrong to say that the language of Ignatius tends towards Modalism. But it is just because he has grasped ideas, for every one of which there are parallels in the Fourth Gospel, with so much intensity.
I can quite allow that Ignatius has so absorbed the teaching that we call St. John’s as it were in succum et sanguinem that the relation cannot be adequately explained by the mere perusal of a book late on in life. There is something more in it than this. Von der Goltz would explain it by the hypothesis that Ignatius had resided for a considerable length of time in a ‘Johannean’ community like the churches of the province of Asia. There is however no hint of anything of the kind in the letters. It is I think Harnack who somewhere remarks that from the opening of the letter of Ignatius to Polycarp we should infer that the latter was a stranger to the writer.
It would be more natural to fall back on the tradition that Ignatius was an actual disciple of St. John. But this tradition appears first in the Martyrium Colbertinum; in other words there is no evidence for it before the fourth century. Indeed 245Zahn has sketched in a plausible manner the process by which we may conceive it to have arisen[76]. Still there is ample room in the dark spaces of the lives both of Ignatius and of St. John for some more or less intimate connexion between them. The alternative seems to me to be, either to suppose something of this kind, or else to think that Ignatius had really had access to the Johannean writings years before the date of his journey to Rome, and that he had devoted to them no mere cursory reading but a close and careful study which had the deepest effect upon his mind.
If the Fourth Gospel was really the work of St. John, the chronology would leave quite sufficient room for this hypothesis. But in any case the phenomena of the Ignatian letters seem to me to prove the existence, well before the end of the first century, of a compact body of teaching like that which we find in the Fourth Gospel. For even Dr. Schmiedel, I suppose, would hardly wish us to invert the relationship, and to say that the Evangelist took his ideas from Ignatius. But if the substance of the Fourth Gospel existed before the end of the first century, that is surely a considerable step towards the belief that the Gospel existed in writing, and the other reasons that we have for thinking that it had been written are so far confirmed.
A smaller item of proof tending in the same direction is supplied by the Didaché. It is well-known that the very ancient Eucharistic prayer contained 246in that document has the remarkable phrase ‘to make perfect in love,’—‘Remember, Lord, Thy Church to deliver it from all evil and to perfect it in Thy love,’ which it is natural to compare with 1 John iv. 17, 18; John xvii. 23. The coincidence cannot be wholly accidental, though the question must be left open whether the phrase comes directly from a writing or only circulated orally[77]. The problem is the same as that which has just met us in the case of Ignatius, though on a much smaller scale. As far as it goes, it helps to strengthen the con............