A rumor got abroad at the time, and has (I am informed) been since repeated, that I did not allow the lecture to be published because I was dissatisfied with it.  I was only dissatisfied in the sense which I have already explained.  It could not be otherwise that unsatisfactory to bring forward mere fragmentary evidence of an important conclusion, when there was abundant proof in the background.  The present publication of the lecture is my answer to this rumor.  I give it after eighteen years exactly in the same form in which it was originally written, with the exception of a few [132] verbal alterations.  Looking over it again after this long lapse of time, I have nothing to withdraw.  Additional study has only strengthened my conviction that this narrative of Saint John could not have been written by any one but an eye-witness.

As I have not dealt with the external evidences except for the sake of supplying a statement of the position of antagonists, the treatment suffers less than it would otherwise have done from not being brought down to date.  I have mentioned, by way of illustration, two respects in which later discoveries had falsified Baur's contentions.  The last eighteen years would supply several others.  I will single out three: (1) The antagonists of the Ignatian Epistles are again put on their defence.  The arguments which were adduced against the genuineness of these epistles will hold no longer.  Ignatius has the testimony of his friend and contemporary, Polycarp; and Polycarp has the the testimony of his own Personal disciple, Irenaeus.  The testimony of Irenaeus is denied by no one; the testimony of Polycarp is only denied because it certifies to the Ignatian letters.  Before we are prepared to snap this chain of evidence rudely, and to break with an uninterrupted tradition, we require far stronger reasons than have been hitherto adduced.  (2) Justin Martyr wrote before or about the middle of the second century.  His use of the Fourth Gospel was at one time systematically denied by the impugners of its apostolic authorship.  Now it is acknowledged almost universally, even by those who do not allow that this evangelical narrative was written by Saint John.  (3) The "Diatessaron" of Tatian was written about A.D. 170, and consisted of a "Harmony of Four Gospels."  Baur and others contended that, at all events, Saint John was not one of the four.  Indeed, how could it be? for it had not been written, or only recently written, at this time.  The "Diatessaron" itself has been discovered, and a commentary of Ephrem Syrus upon it in Armenian has likewise been unearthed with the last few years, but showing that it began with the opening words of Saint John.

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The fourth of our canonical Gospels has been ascribed by the tradition of the Church to Saint John, the son of Zebedee, the personal disiple of our Lord, and one of the twelve apostles.  Till within a century (I might almost say, till within a generation) of the present time, this has been the universal belief -- with one single and unimportant exception -- of all sects, of all individuals alike.

This unanimity is the more remarkable in the earlier ages of the Church, because the language of this Gospel has a very intimate bearing on numberless theological controversies which started up in the second, third, and fourth centuries of the Christian era; and it was therefore the direct of one party or the other to deny the apostolic authority, if they had any ground for doing so.  This happened not one or twice only, but many times.  It would be difficult to point to a single heresy promulgated before the close of the fourth century which might not find some imaginary points of coincidence or some real points of conflict -- some relations, whether of antagonism or of sympathy -- with this Gospel.  This was equally true of Montanism in the second century, and of Arianism in the fourth.  The Fourth Gospel would necessarily be among the most important authorities -- we might fairly say the most important authority -- in the settlement of the controversy, both from the claims which it made as a product of the beloved apostle himself, and from the striking representations it gives our Lord's teaching.  The defender or the impugner of this or that theological opinion would have had a direct interest in disproving its genuineness and denying its authority.  Can we question that this would have been done again and again if there had been any haze of doubt hanging over its origin, -- if the antagonist could have found even a prima facie ground for an attack?

And this brings me to speak of that one exception to the universal tradition to which I have already alluded.  Once, and once only, did the disputants in a theological controversy yield to the temptation, strong though it must have [134] been.  A small, unimportant, nameless sect, -- if indeed they were compact enough to form a sect,-- in the latter half of the second century, denied that the Gospel and the Apocalypse were written by Saint John.  These are the two canonical writings which especially attribute the title of the Word of God, the Logos, to our Lord: the one, in the opening verses, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God"; the other, in the vision of Him who rides on the white horse, whose garments are stained with blood, and whose name is given as the "Word of God."  Epiphanius calls them the Alogi, "the opponents of the Word," or (as it might be translated, for it is capable of a double meaning) "the irrational ones."  The name is avowedly his own invention.  Indeed, they would scarcely have acknowledged a title which had this double sense and could so easily have been turned against themselves.  They appear only to disappear .  Beyond one or two casual references, they are not mentioned; they have no place in history.

This is just one of those exceptions which strengthen the rule.  What these Alogi did, numberless other sectaries would doubtless have done if there had been any sufficient ground for the course.  But even those Alogi lend no countenance to the views of modern objectors.  Modern critics play off the apocalypse against the Gospel, allowing the genuineness of the former, and using it to impugn the genuineness of the latter.  Moreover, there is the greatest difference between the two.  The modern antagonist places the composition of the Fourth Gospel in the middle or the latter half of the second century; these ancient heretics ascribed it to the early heresiarch Cerinthus, who lived at the close of the first century, and was a contemporary of Saint John.  Living themselves in the latter half of the second century, they knew (as their opponents would have reminded them if they found it convenient to forget the fact) that the Gospel was not a work of yesterday, that it had already had a long history and that it went back at all events events to the latest years of the apostolic age; and in their theory [135] they were obliged to recognize this fact.   I need hardly say that the doctrine of the Person of Christ put forward in the Gospel and the Apocalypse is diametrically opposed to the teaching of Cerinthus, as every modern critic would allow.  I only allude to this fact to show that these very persons, who form the single exception to the unanimous tradition of all the churches and all the sects alike are our witnesses for the antiquity of the Gospel (though not for its authenticity) and therefore are witnesses against the modern impugners of its genuineness.

With this exception, the early testimony to the authenticity and genuineness of the Gospel is singularly varied.  It is remarkable and an important fact that the most decisive and earliest testimony comes not from Fathers of the orthodox Church, but from heretical writers.  I cannot enter upon this question at length, for I did not undertake this afternoon to speak of external evidence; and I ask you to bear in mind that any inadequate and cursory treatment necessarily does a great injustice to a subject like this, for the ultimate effect of testimony must depend on its fullness and variety.  I only call attention to the fact that within the last few years most valuable additions have been made to this external testimony, and these from the opposite extremes of the heretical scale.  At the one extreme we have Ebionism, which was the offspring of the Judaizing tendencies; at the other, Gnosticism, which took its rise in the Gentile license of speculation and practice.  Ebionism is represented by a remarkable extant work belonging to the second century, possibly to the first half of the second century, the Clementine Homilies.  The greater part of this work has long been known; but until within the last few years the printed text was taken from a MS. mutilated at the end, so that of the twenty Homilies the last half of the nineteenth and the whole of the twentieth are wanting.  These earlier Homilies contained more than one reference to gospel history which could not well be referred to any of the first three evangelists, and seemed certainly to have been taken from the fourth.  Still, the reference was not absolutely certain, and [136] the impugners of Saint John's Gospel availed themselves of this doubt to deny the reference to this Gospel.  At length, in the year 1853, Dressel published for the first time, from a Vatican MS., the missing conclusion to these Homilies; and this was found to contain a reference to the incidents attending the healing of the man born blind, related only by Saint John, and related in a way distinctly characteristic of Saint John,-- a reference so distinct that no one from that time has attempted to deny or dispute it.

So much for the testimony of Ebionism,-- of the Judaic sects of early Christianity.  But equally definite, and even more full, is the testimony which recent discovery has brought to light on the side of Gnosticism.  Many of my hearers will remember the interest which was excited a few years ago by the publication of a lost treatise on heresies, which Bunsen and others ascribed (and, as is now generally allowed, correctly ascribed) to Hippolytus, in the earlier part of the third century.  This treatise contains large and frequent extracts from previous Gnostic writers of diverse schools,-- Ophites, Basilidians, Valentinians; among them, from a work which Hippolytus quotes as the production of Basilides himself, who flourished A.D. 130-140.  And in these extracts are abundant quotations from the Gospel of Saint John.

I have put these two recent accessions to the external testimony in favor of the Fourth Gospel side by side, because, emanating from the most diverse quarters, they have a peculiar value as showing the extensive circulation and wide reception of this Gospel at a very early date; and because also, having been brought to light soon after its genuineness was for the first time seriously impugned, they seem providentially designed to furnish an answer to the objections of recent criticism.

If we ask ourselves why we attribute this or that ancient writing to the author whose name it bears,-- why, for instance, we accept this tragedy as a play of Sophocles, or that speech as an oration of Demosthenes,-- our answer will be that it bears the name of the author, and (so far as we know) [137] has always been ascribed to him.  In very many cases we know nothing, or next to nothing, about the history of the writing in question.  In a few instances we are fortunate enough to find a reference for it, or a quotations from it, in some author who live a century or two later.  The cases are exceptionally rare when there is an indisputable allusion in a contemporary, or nearly contemporary, writer.  For the most part, we accept the fact of the authorship because it comes to us on the authority of an MS. or MSS. written several centuries after the presumed author lived, supported in some cases by quotations in a late lexicographer or grammarian or collection of extracts.

The external evidence in favor of Saint John's Gospel reaches back much nearer to the writer's own time and is far more extensive than can be produced in the case of most classical writings of the same antiquity.  From the character of the work, also, this testimony gains additional value; for where the contents of the book intimately affect the cherished beliefs and the practical conduct of all who receive it, the universality of its reception, amidst jarring creeds and conflicting tendencies, is far more significant that if its contents are indifferent, making no appeal to the religious convictions and claiming no influence over the life.  We may be disposed to complain that the external testimony is not so absolutely and finally conclusive in itself that no door is superfluous and vain.  But this we have no right to demand.  If it as great, and more than as great as would satisfy us in any other case, this should suffice us.  In all the most important matters which affect our interests in this world and our hopes hereafter, God has left some place for diversity of opinion, because He would not remove all opportunity of self-discipline.

If, then, the genuineness of this Gospel is supported by greater evidence than in ordinary cases we consider conclusive, we approach the investigation of its internal character with a very strong presumption in its favor.  The onus probandi [138] rests with those who would impugn its genuineness, and nothing short of the fullest and most decisive marks of spuriousness can fairly be considered sufficient to counterbalance this evidence.

As I proceed, I hope to make it clear that, allowing their full weight to all the difficulties (and it would be foolish to deny the existence of difficulties) in this Gospel, still the internal marks of authenticity and genuineness are so minute, so varies, so circumstantial, and so unsuspicious as to create an overwhelming body of evidence in its favor.

But, before entering upon this investigation, it may be worth while to inquire whether the hypotheses suggested by those who deny the genuineness of this Gospel are themselves free from all difficulties.  For, if it be a fact (as I believe it is) that any alternative which has been proposed introduces greater perplexities that those which it is intended to remove, we are bound (irrespectively of any positive arguments in its favor) to fall backup upon the account which is exposed to fewest objections, and which at the same time is supported by a continuous and universal tradition.

We may take our start from Baur's theory; for he was the first to develop and systematize the attack on the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel.  According to Baur it was written about the year 170.  The external testimony, however, is alone fatal to this very late epoch; for, after all wrestling of evidence and post-dating of documents, it is impossible to deny that at this time the Gospel was not only in existence, but also received far and wide as a genuine document ; that it was not only quoted occasionally, but had even been commented upon as the actual work of Saint John.  Consequently, the tendency of later impugners has been to push the date further back, and to receded from the extreme position of this, its most determined and ablest antagonist.  Hilgenfeld, who may be regarded as the successor of Baur, and the present representative of the Tu[FIXME need an umlaut]bingen school (though it has no longer its headquarters at Tubingen), and would place its composition about the year 150; and Tayler, who a few years ago (1867) reproduced the argument of [139] Baur and others in England, is disposed to assign it to about the same date.  With a strange inconsistency he suggests, towards the close of his book, that its true author may have been John the presbyter, though John the presbyter is stated by Papias (who had conversed with this John, and from whom all the information we possess respecting him is derived) to have been a personal disciple of our Lord, and therefore could hardly have outlived John the apostle, and certainly could not have been living towards the middle of the second century.

This tendency to receded nearer and nearer to the evangelist's own age shows that the pressure of facts has begun to tell on the theories of antagonistic criticism, and we may look forward to the time when it will be held discreditable to the reputation of any critic for sobriety and judgment to assign to this Gospel any later date than the end of the first century, or the very beginning of the second.

But, meanwhile, let us tackle the earliest of these dates (A.D. 140) as less encumbered with difficulties and therefore more favorable to the opponents of its genuineness, and ask whether a gospel written at such a time would probably have presented the phenomena which we actually find in the fourth canonical Gospel.  We may interrogate alike its missions and its contents.  On this hypothesis, how are we to account for what it has left unsaid, and for what it has said?

Certainly, it must be regarded as a remarkable phenomenon that on many ecclesiastical questions which then agitated the minds of Christians it is wholly silent, while to others it gives no distinct and authoritative answer.  Our Lord's teaching has indeed its bearing on the controversies of the second century, as on those of the fourth, or of the twelfth, or of the sixteenth, or of the nineteenth ; but, as in these latter instances, its lessons are inferential rather than direct, they are elicited by painful investigation, they are contained implicitly in our Lord's life and person, they do not lie on the surface, nor do they offer definite solutions of definite difficulties.

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Take, for instance, the dispute concerning the episcopate.  Contrast the absolute silence of this Gospel respecting this issue with the declarations in the Epistles of Ignatius.  A modern defender of the episcopate will appeal to the commission given to the apostles (John XX. 22,23).  I need not stop here to inquire to what extent it favors his views.  But, obviously, it is quite insufficient by itself.  It would serve almost equally well for an apostolically ordained ministry of any kind, for a presbyterial as for an episcopal succession.  Is it possible that a writer, composing a gospel at the very time when the the authority of this office had been called into question, would have resisted the temptation of inserting something which would convey a sanction, if an opponent, something which would convey a disparagement of this office, in our Lord's own name?

Or, again, take the Gnostic theories of emanations.  Anyone who has studied the history of the second century will know how large a place they occupy in the theological disputes of the day ; what grotesque and varied forms they assume in the speculations of different heretical teachers ; what diverse arguments, some valid, some fanciful, are urged against them by orthodox writers.  Would a forger have hesitated for a moment to slay this many-headed hydra by one well-aimed blow?  What can we suppose to have been the object of such a forger, except to advance certain theological views?  And why should he have let slip the very opportunity, which (we must suppose) he was making for himself, of condemning the worst forms of heresy from our Lord's own lips?  It is true that you and I think we see (and doubtless think rightly) that the doctrine of God the Word taught in Saint John's Gospel is the real answer to the theological questionings which gave rise to all these theories about aeons or emanations, and involves implicitly and indirectly the refutation of all such theories.  But it is only by more or less abs[t]ruse reasoning that we arrive at this conclusion/  The early Gnostics did not see it so : they used Saint John's Gospel, and retained their theories notwithstanding.  [140]  A forger would have taken care to provide a direct refutation which it was impossible to misunderstand.

Or, again, about the middle of the second century the great controversy respecting the time of celebrating Easter was beginning to lift up its head.  For the latter half of disturbing the peace of the Church again and again, until it was finally set at rest in the fourth century at the Council of Nicaea.  Was the festival of the Lord's resurrection to be celebrated always on the same day of the week, the Sunday?  or was it to be guided by the time of the Jewish Passover, and thus take place on the same day of the month, irrespective of the day of the week?  Each community, each individual, took a side in this controversy.

Unimportant in itself, it seriously endangered the existence of the Church.  The daring adventurer who did not hesitate to forge a whole gospel would certainly not be deterred by any scruple from setting the matter at rest by a few strokes of the pen.  His narrative furnished more than one favorable opportunity for interposing half a dozen decisive words in our Lord's name ; and yet he abstained.

Thus we might take in succession the distinctive ecclesiastical controversies of the second century, and show how the writer of the Fourth Gospel holds aloof from them all,-- certainly, a strange and almost incredible fact, if this writer lived about the middle or even in the latter half of the century, and, as a romancer, was not restrained by those obligations of fact which fetter the truthful historian who is himself a contemporary of the events recorded.

But, if the omissions of the writer are strange and unaccountable on the assumption of the latter date of the Gospel, the actual contents present still greater difficulties on the same hypothesis.  In the interval between the age when the events are recorded to have taken place and the age in which the writer is supposed to have lived, a vast change had come over the civilized world.  In no period had the dislocation of Jewish history been so complete.  Two successive hurricanes had swept over the land and nation.  The [142] devastation of Titus had been succeeded by the devastation of Hadrian.  What the locust of the first siege had left the canker-worm of the second had devoured.  National polity, religious worship, social institutions, all were gone.  The city had been razed, the land laid desolate, the law and the ordinances proscribed, the people swept into captivity or scattered over the face of the earth.  "Old things had passed away : all things had become new."

Now let us place ourselves in the position of one who wrote about the middle of the second century, after the later Roman invasion had swept off the scanty gleanings of the past which had been spared from the earlier.  Let us ask how a romancer so situated is to make himself acquainted with the incidents, the localities, the buildings, the institutions, the modes of thought and feeling, which belonged to this past age and (as we may almost say) this bygone people.  Let it be granted that here and there he might stumble upon a historical fact, that in one or two particulars he might reproduce a national characteristic.  More than this would be beyond his reach.  For it will be borne in mind, he would be placed at a great disadvantage, compared with a modern writer ; he would have to reconstruct history without those various appliances, maps and plates, chronological tables, books of travel, by which the author of the historical novel is so largely assisted in the present day.

And, even if he had been furnished with all these aids, would he have known how to use them?  The uncritical character of the apostolic age is a favorite commonplace with those who impugn the genuineness of the canonical Scriptures or the trustworthiness of the evangelical narratives.  I do not deny that the age (compared with our own) was uncritical, though very exaggerated language is often used on the subject.  But, obviously, this argument lies across the very through of recent negative criticism.  For it requires a much higher flight of critical genius to invent an extremely delicate fiction that to detect it when invented.  The age [143] which could not expose a course forgery was incapable of constructing a subtle historical romance.  This one thing I hope to make clear in the short time that is allowed me this afternoon/  The Fourth Gospel, if a forgery, shows the most consummate skill on the part of the forger ; it is (as we should say in modern phrase) thoroughly in keeping.  It is replete with historical and geographical details ; it is interpenetrated with the Judaic spirit of the time ; its delineations of character are remarkably subtle ; it is perfectly natural in the progress of the events ; the allusions to incidents or localities or modes of thought are introduced in an artless and unconscious way, being closely interwoven with the texture of the narrative ; while throughout the author has exercised a silence and a self-restraint about his assumed personality which is without a parallel in ancient forgeries, and which deprives his work of the only motive that, on the supposition of its spuriousness, would account for his undertaking at all.

In all these respects it forms a direct contrast to the known forgeries of the apostolic or succeeding ages.  I will only ask my hearers who are acquainted with early apocryphal literature to compare Saint John's Gospel with two very different and yet equally characteristic products of the first and second centuries of the Christian era,-- with the Protevanglium, or Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus, on the one hand, and with the Clementine Homilies, on the other: the former, a vulgar daub dashed in by a course hand in bright and startling colors; the other, a subtle philosophical romance, elaborately drawn by an able and skillful artist.  But both the one and the other are obviously artificial in all their traits and utterly alien to the tone of genuine history.

Such productions as these show what we might expect to find in a gospel written in the middle or after the middle of the second century.

If, then, my description of the Fourth Gospel is not overcharged (and I will endeavor to substantiate it immediately), the supposition that this Gospel was written at this late [144] epoch by a resident at Alexandria or at Ephesus will appear in the highest degree incredible ; and, whatever difficulties the traditional belief may involve, they are small indeed, compared with the improbabilities created by the only alternative hypothesis.

I have already proved that the absence of certain topics in this Gospel seems fatal to its late authorship.  I shall now proceed to investigate those phenomena of its actual content which force us to the conclusion that it was written by a Jew contemporary and cognizant of the facts which he relates, and more especially those indications which fix the authorship on the Apostle Saint John.  It is necessary, however, to premise, by way of caution, that exhaustive treatment is impossible in a single lecture, and that I can only hope to indicate a line of investigation which any one may follow out for himself.

First of all, then, the writer was a Jew.  This might be inferred from a very high degree of probability from his Greek style alone.  It is not ungrammatical Greek, but it is distinctly Greek of one long accustomed to think and speak through the medium of another language.  The Greek language is singularly high in its capabilities of syntactic construction, and it is also well furnished with various connecting particles.  The two languages with which a Jew of Palestine would be most familiar -- the Hebrew, which was the language of the sacred Scriptures, and the Aramaic, which was the medium of communication in daily life -- being closely allied to each other, stand in direct contrast to the Greek in this respect.  There is comparative poverty of inflections, and there is an extreme paucity of connecting and relative particles.  Hence in Hebrew and Aramaic. there is little or no syntax, properly so called.

Tested by his style, then, the writer was a Jew.  Of all the New Testament writings the Fourth Gospel is the most distinctly Hebraic in this respect.  The Hebrew simplicity of diction will at once strike the reader.  There is an entire absence of periods, for which the Greek language affords such facility.  The sentences are coordinated, not subordinated.  [145] The classes are strung together, like beads on a string.  The very monotony of the arrangement, though singularly impressive, is wholly unlike the Greek style of the age.

More especially does the influence of the Hebrew appear in the connecting particles.  In this language the single connecting particle [Hebrew deleted] is used equally, whether co-ordination or opposition is implied ; in other words, it  represents "but" as well as "and."  The Authorized Version does not adequately represent this fact, for our translators have exercised considerable license in varying the renderings : "then," "moreover," "and," "but," etc.  Now it is a noticeable fact that in Saint John's Gospel the capabilities of the Greek language in this respect are most commonly neglected ; the writers falls back on the simple "and" of Hebrew diction, using it even where we should expect to find an adversative particle.  Thus v. 39, 40, "Ye search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life : and they are they which testify of Me : and ye will not come to me" ; vii. 19, "Did not Moses give give you the law, and none of you keepeth the law ?" where are English version has instead an adversative particle to assist the sense, "and yet"; vii. 30, "Then they sough to take Him : and no man laid hands on Him," where the English version substitutes "but no man" ; vii. 33, "Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and I go to Him that sent Me," where again our translator attempts to improve the sense by reading "and then."  And instances might be multiplied.

The Hebrew character of the diction, moreover, shows itself in other ways,-- by the parallelism of the sentences, by the repetition of the same words in different clauses, by the order of the words, by the syntactical constructions, and by individual expressions.  Indeed, so completely is this character maintained through that there is hardly a sentence which might not be translated literally into Hebrew or Aramaic without any violence to the language or to the sense.

I might point also to the interpretations of the Aramaic words, as Cephas, Gabatha, Golgotha, Messias, Rabboni, Siloam, [146] Thomas, as indicating knowledge of the language.  On such isolated phenomena, however, no great stress can fairly be laid, because such interpretations do not necessarily require an extensive acquaintance with the language ; and, when the whole cast and coloring of the diction can be put in evidence, an individual word her and there is valueless in comparison.

There are, however, two examples of proper names in this Gospel on which it may be worth while to remark, because the original is obscured in our English Bibles by a false reading in the Greek text used by our translators, and because they afford incidentally somewhat strong testimony to the writer's knowledge of the language and of contemporary facts.

The first of these is Iscariot.  In the other three Gospels this name is attributed to the traitor apostle Judas alone.  In Saint John's Gospel also, as represented in the received text and in our English version, this is the case.  But if the more correct reading be substituted, on the authority of the ancient copies, we find it sometimes applied to Judas himself (xii. 4, xiii. 2, xiv. 22), and sometimes to Judas's father Simon (e.g., vi. 71, "He spake of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot"; xiii. 26, "He giveth to Judas the son of Simon Iscariot").  Now this shows that the evangelist knew this not to be a proper name, strictly so called, but to describe the native place of the person, "the man of Kerioth," and hence to be applicable to the father and the son alike.

The other instance which I shall give, at first sight presents a difficulty ; but when further investigated, it only adds fresh testimony to the exact knowledge of the Fourth Evangelist.  In Saint Matthew, Simon Peter is called Bar-Jona (Matt. xvi. 17); i.e. son of Jona (or Jonan or Jonas).  Accordingly, in the received text of Saint John also he appears in not less than four passages (i. 42, xxi. 15-17) as Simon son of Jona (or Jonan or Jonas).  But there can be no reasonable doubt that the correct reading in all these four passages is "Simon son of Joannes" -- the Hebrew and Aramaic Johanan, the English John -- and that later transcribers [147] have altered it to make it accord with the form adopted by Saint Matthew.  Here there is an apparent discrepancy, which, however, disappears on examination ; for we find that Jona or Jonan or Jonas is more than once used in the LXX version of the Old Testament as a contracted form of the name Johanan, Johannes, or John.  Thus the statements of the two evangelists are reconciled ; and we owe it to the special knowledge derived from the Fourth Gospel that the full and correct form is preserved.  For, when we have once got this key to the fact, we can no longer question that John was the real name of Peter's father, since it throw great light on our Lord's words in Saint Matthew.  The ordinary name Jonah, which was borne by the prophet, and which is generally supposed to be the name of Simon's father, signifies "a dove" ; but the name Johanan or John is "the grace of God."  Hence the baptist is called, not Zacharias, as his relatives thought natural, but John, in accordance with the heavenly message (Luke i. 13), because he was specially given to his parents by God's grace.  So, too, the call of Saint Peter (John i. 42) becomes full of meaning: "Thou art Simon, the son of the God's grace, lovest thou Me?" for without this interpretation the studied repetition of this patronymic seems somewhat meaningless.  Bearing this fact in mind, we turn to the passage of Saint Matthew (xvi. 17): "Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art though, Simon Bar-Jona (son of the grace of God): for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven.  A I say unto thee, That thou are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church."  His name and his surname alike are symbols and foreshadowings of God's special favor to him in his call and commission.  This is only one of many instances which the authenticity of the statements of the Fourth Gospel is confirmed by the fact that they incidentally explain what is otherwise unexplained in the narrative of the Synoptic evangelists.

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Another evidence that the writer was acquainted with the Hebrew language is furnished by the quotations from the Old Testament.  This evangelist, like Saint Paul, sometimes cites from the current Greek version of the Seventy, and sometimes translates directly from the Hebrew.  When a writer, as is the case with the Epistle of the Hebrews, quotes largely and quotes uniformly from the LXX. version, this is at least an indication that he was not acquainted with the original; and hence we infer that the epistle just mentioned was not written by Saint Paul, a Hebrew of Hebrews, but by some disciple, a Hellenistic Jew, thoroughly interprenetrated with the apostle's mind and teaching, but ignorant of the language of his forefathers.  If on any occasion the quotations of a writer accord with the original Hebrew againsty the LXX. version, we have a right to infer that he was acquainted with the sacred language,-- was, in fact, a Hebrew or Aramaic-speaking Jew.  Several decisive examples might be produced, but one must suffice.  In xix. 37 is a quotation from Zechariah xii. 10, which in the original is, "They shall look upon Me whom they pierced."  Accordingly, it is given in Saint John, "They shall look upon him whom they pierced" ([transliterated. as I have no greek font]: opsontai eis on echekentesan).  But the LXX. rendering is, "They shall gaze upon Me, because they insulted" (epiblepsontai pros me, anth hon katorchesaunto), where the LXX. translators had a different reading, (TODO: TRANSCRIBE HEBREW), and where the Greek rendering has not a single wordf in common with Saint John's text.

In xii. 40, again, the evangelist quotes Isaiah vi. 10, "Because that Esaias said again, He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart ; that they should not see with their eyes," etc.  Now this quotation is far from being verbally exac ; for in the Hebrew the sentence is imperative, "Make fat the heart of this people, and make heavy their ears, and close their eyes, that they should not see with their eyes." etc.  Yet, on the other hand, it does not contain any of the characteristic renderings of the LXX.; and this is one distinct proof that, however loosely quoted, it was derived, not from the LXX., but from the original.  For the LXX [149] translators, taking offence, as it would seem, at ascribing the hardening of the heart to God's own agency, haver thrown the sentence into a passive form : "The heart of this people was made fat, and with their ears they heard heavily, and their eyes they close," etc. so as to remove the difficult.  If, therefore, teh evangelist had derived the passage from the LXX., it is inconceivable that he would have reintroduced the active form, thus wantonly reviving a difficulty, unless he had the original before him.

I will only add one other example.  In xiii. 18 occurs a quotation from Psalm xli. 9.  Here the expression which in the original signifies literally "made great" or "made high" his heel is correctly translated "lifted up his heel" (eperen ton pternan autou), as in the A.V. of the Psalms.  The LXX. version, however, gives emegalunen ptermismon, "He multiplied [or increased] tripping up with the heel," or "treacher," which has given rise to the paraphrastic rendering in our Prayer-book version, "laid great wait for me."  Here, again, it is obvious that the evangelist's quotation could not have been derived from the LXX., but must have been rendered eitehr directly from the Hebrew or (what for my purpose ie equally decisive) indirectly through some Chaldee targum.

If, therefore, we had no other evidence that the language, we might with confidence affirm that this Gospel was not written either by a Gentile or by a Hellenistic Christian, but by a Hebrew accustomed to speak the language of his fathers.  This fact alone negatives more than one hypothesis which has been broached of late years respecting its authorship; for it is wholly inconsistent with the strictly Gentile origin which most recent theories assign to it.  but, though irreconcilable with Gentile authorship, it is not wholly inconsisten with the later date; for we cannot pronounce it quite impossible that there should be living in Asia Minor or in Egypt, in the middle of the second century, a Judaic Christian familiar with the Hebrew or Aramaic language, however rare such instances may have been.

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Having thus established the fact that the writer was neither a Gentile nor a Hellenist, but a Hebrew of the Hebrews, we will proceed to inquire further whether he evinces an acquaintance with the manners and feelings, and also with the geography and history (more especially the contemporary history) of Palestine, whic, so far as our knowledge goes (and in dealing with such questions we must not advance one step beyond our knowledge), would be morally impossible with even a Hebrew Christian at the supposed date, long after the political existence of the nation had been obliterated, and when the disorganization of Jewish society was complete.

As I am obliged to compress my remarks within the space of a single lecture, I cannot place the evidence fully before you ; but my hope is that I may indicate the lines of investigation which will enable you to answer it more completely for yourselves.  I will only say that we obtain from the Fourth Gospel details at one fuller and more minute on these points than from the other three.  Whether we turn to the Messianic hopes of the chosen people, with all the attendant circumstances with which imagination had invested this expected event, or to the mutual relations of Samaritans, Jews, Galilaeans, Romans, and the repsective feelings, prejudices, beliefsm customs of each, or to the topography s well of the city and the temple as of the rural districts -- the Lake of Gennesaret, and the corn-fiels and mountain ridges of Shechem -- or to the contemporary history of the Jewish hierarchy and the Herodian sovereignty, we are alike struck at every turn with subtle and unsuspicious traves, betokening the familiarity with which the writer moves amidst the ever-shifting scenes of his wonderful narrative.

This minuteness of detail in the Fourth Evangelist is very commonly overlooked, because our gaze is arrest by still more important and unique feature in this Gospel.  The striking character of our Lord's discourses as recorded in Saint John -- their length and sequence, their simplicity of language, their fulness [sic] and epth of meaning -- dazzles the [151] eye of teh critic and blinds him to the historical aspects of teh narrative.  Only by concentrating our view on these latter shall we realize the truth that the evangelist is not floating in the clouds of airy theological speculation, that, though with his eyes he peers into the mysteries of the unseen, his foot is planted on the solid ground of external fact; that, in short, the incidents are not invented as a framework for the doctrine, but that the doctrine arises naturally out of, and derives its meaning from, the incidents.

The narrative and discourses alike are thouroughly saturated with the Messianic ideas of the time.  The Christ, as expected by the Jews, is the one central figure round which all the facts are grouped, the one main topic on which all the conversations hinge.  This is the more remarkable because the leading conception in the writer's own mind is not the Messiah, but the Word, the Logos,--not the deliverance of Israel, but the manifestation of God in sht flesh.  This main purpose is flung out at the opening of the Gospel, and it is kept steadily in view in the selection of materials through teh work.  But it does not once enter into the mind of the Jews, who are wholly absorbed in the Messianic idea.  Nay, the word "Logos" does not once occur even on our Lord's own lips, though the obvious motive of his teaching is to enforce this higher aspect of his person, to which they were strangers.  And I cannot but think that this distinct separation is a remarkable testimony to the credibility of the writer, who, however strongly impressed with his mission as the te4ach of a great theological conception, nevertheless keeps it free from his narrative of facts, though obviously there would be a very strong temptation to introduce [152] it,-- temptation which to a mere forger would be irresistible.

The messianic idea, for instance, is turned about on all sides and presented in ever aspect.  On this point we learn very much more of contemporary Jewish opinion from the Fourth Gospel than from the other three.  At the commencement and at the close of that narrative -- in the preaching of the Baptist and in the incidents of the passion -- it is equally prominent.  In Galilee (i. 41, 46, 49, vi. 15, 28, 30 sq.), in Samaria (iv. 25, 29, 42), in Judaea (v. 39, 45, sq., vii. 26 sq., 40-43, viii. 30 sq. X. 24), it is the one standard theme of conversation.  Among friends, among foes, among neutrals alike, it is mooted and discussed.  The person and character of Jesus are tried by this standard.  He is accepted or he is rejected as he fulfils or contradicts the received ideal of the Messiah.

The accessories also of the Messiah's coming, as conceived by the Jews, are brought out with a completeness beyond the other Gospels.  I will only ask you, as an illustration of this, to consider the discourse on the manna in the sixth chapter.  The key to the meaning of the conversation is the fact that Jews expected a miracle similar to the gift of the manna in the wilderness, as an accompaniement of the appearance of the great Deliverer.  This expectation throws a flood of light on the whole discourse.  But teh fact is not communicated in the passage itself.  There is only a bald, isolated statement, which apparently is suggest by nothing, and itself fails to suggest anything: "Our fathers did eat manna in the wilderness."  Then comes an aposiopesis.  The inference is unexpressed.  The expectation, which explains all, is left to be inferred, because it would be mentally supplied by men brought up amont the ideas of the time.  We oursleves have to get it by the aid of criticism and research from rabbinical authorities.  But, when we have grapsed it, we can unlock the meaning of teh whole chapter.

Connected with the Messiah's coming are other conceptions on which it may be worth while to dwell for a moment.  [153]  One of these is the appearance of a mysterious person called "the prophet."  These expectations arose out of the announcement in Deut. xviii. 15, "The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst of thee, like unto me."  To this anticipation we have allusions in not less than four places in Saint John (i. 21, 25, vi. 14, vii. 40), in all of which "the prophet" is mentioned, though in the first three the distinctness of the expectation is blurred in the English version by the rendering "that prophet."  In all these passages, the mention of "the prophet" without any explanation is most natural on the lips of contemporary Jews, whose minds were filled with Messianic conceptions of the times; while such language is extremely unlikely to have been invented for them more than a century after the date of the supposed occurences.  But the point especially to be observed is that the form which th conception takes is strictly Jewish, and not Christian.  Christian teachers identified the prophet foretold by Moses with our Lord himself, and tehrefore with teh Christ.  This application of the prophecy is made directly in Saint Peter's speech (Acts iii. 22), and inferentially in Saint Stephen's (Acts vii. 37); and late Christian teachers followed in their steps.  But these Jews in Saint John's Gospel conceive of "the Christ" and "the prophet" (i. 21, 25); if not the prophet, then teh Christ (vii. 40).  It is hardly conceivable to my mind that a Christian writer living in or after the middle of the second century, calling on his imagination for facts, should have divested himself so absolutely of the Christian idea and fallen back on the Jewish.

But before I have done with "the prophet" there is yet one more point worthy of notice.  After the miracle of feeding the five thousand, we are told that "those men who had seen the miracle that Jesus did said, This is of a truth the prophet that should come into the world" (vi. 14).  The connection is not obvious, and the writer has not explained himself.  Here, again, the missing link is supplied [154]  by the Messianic conception of the age.  The prophet foretold was to be like Moses himself.  Hence it was inferred that there must be a parallel in the works of the two.  Hence a repetition of the gift of the manna -- the bread from heaven -- might be expected.  Was not this miracle, then, the very fulfilment of their expectation?  Hence, we read that on the day following (after several incidents have intervened, but with the miracle still fresh on their minds) they seek him out, and still try to elicit a definite answer from him: "What sign showest thou, then?  Our fathers did eat manna in the desert."  Thus a casual and indistinct refernce in one part of the chapter is explained by an eqally casual and indistinct reference in another, and light emerges from darkness.