with him and with each other, the duty and the privilege of love, these are the principal themes of John's teaching; and to these many of the matters of fact related by him and peculiar to his Gospel correspond; the condescending, seeking love of Jesus, the tender human relation in which he stood to John; his severe and at the same time forbearing treatment of the betrayer, his superhuman knowledge, his majesty amidst his sufferings, the stubborn disbelief of the world are set before us. The peculiar character of John's mind which is clearly imprinted on his language has given to these contents a form which in the highest degree speaks to the feelings. The noble simplicity of his style on the one hand, on the other its indistinctness and mysterious obscurity, the tone of sadness and of ardent desire with the feeling of love everywhere apparent, impart to the Gospel a charm and an original individuality to which out of the writings of John we can find no parallel. To this we must add the plastic power of conception which is shown in the narrative; it points out with great exactness the locality, i. 28, iv. 5, v. 2, vi. 59, x. 23; the time, iv. 6, v. 9, vi. 4, vii. 2; personal circumstances, xi. 5, xii. 29, xviii. 10, vii. 25; manners, ii. 6, iv. 9, xviii. 39, xix. 31; behaviour and feelings, xviii. 6, 8, xi. 35, 38. Further the circumstance that more of the discourses of Christ are communicated than of his external actions, and that the disciple not only has the history of the Lord before his mind, but (as it were) takes his position in it and during its transaction, and that, as is the nature of every work of art, he reproduces it from a noble subjectivity, and accompanies it with his own remarks (ii. 21, iii. 16, 31, vi. 64, vii. 39, x. 6, xii. 33, 35-50, xix. 35-xx. 30, 31),-all this contributes to give to his representation an extremely animated and animating character beyond that of the other Evangelists. The impression made by the first mentioned peculiarities is expressed in a very striking manner by Claudius: I read St. John with the greatest delight; in him there is something so completely wonderful-twilight and night, and through them the quick flashing lightning! a soft evening cloud and behind the cloud the large full moon in reality! -something so sorrowful, so sublime, so full of presentiment, that one cannot be satiated with it. It is to me always in reading John as though I saw him before me at the last supper lying on the breast of his Master, as though his angel were holding the light to me, and at certain passages would fall on my neck and say something in my ear. I am far from understanding all that I read, but yet it is often as though what John meant were floating before me in the distance, and even when I look into a passage

• Wandsbecker Bote, pt. i. p. 9.

which

which is altogether dark, I have yet the impression that there is in it a grand noble sense which one day I shall understand, and therefore I seize so eagerly on every new exposition of the Gospel of John. True, the greater part of them only curl the evening cloud, and the moon behind it is left at rest. What Hamann says of him who from the tender gentle disciple of love himself learned thus to describe him, is equally descriptive of the Gospel of the disciple of love,- A light ethereal essence which floats in the air even when the strings have ceased to vibrate, and which fills the heart with gentle sadness, rests upon thy harp!'

Precisely these peculiarities of the Gospel, both in substance and form thus celebrated by the most exalted minds of all ages, have nevertheless in recent times afforded the principal point of attack on its genuineness and credibility. In proportion as the fourth Gospel deviates from the type of the first three, as its histories and discourses are different both in form and substance, might doubts the more easily arise, first, as to its credibility and then as to its genuineness. Even though the latter is left undisputed, the former may be put in peril. If we reflect, for instance, in the first place, on the subjectivity which is so strongly imprinted on this narrative of the life of Christ, both as regards the composition of the work and the arrangement of the matter in general, and in particular as regards the manner of relating the discourses-if we consider the late period at which it was committed to writingmore than forty years after the events-if we remember that this John, when Paul met him in Jerusalem (Gal. ii. 9) stood forth as a Judaist, whilst the Gospel takes a thoroughly free stand-pointif we take into consideration the close affinity as to diction between the Epistles of John and the discourses of Christ as given in the Gospel-that there is even an appearance of John's having put his own words into the mouth of the Baptist (ch. i. 16; iii. 31), may not the thought occur that, if John is to be regarded as the author, his Gospel is in great part a free product of imagination drawn from a later period of life, when the recollection of events that had happened, and discourses that had been heard more than forty years before, had faded away; and instead there had arisen in the mind of the disciple a freer and more ideal manner of viewing the subject, in consequence of his intercourse with Asia Minor, where Hellenistic and Gnostic influences prevailed? Recently, Schweizer has instituted an examination into those events of which we may suppose the Apostle to have been an eye and ear witness, and those at which he could not have been present, but must have received his information through the medium of others;

↑ Das Ev. Joh. nach seinem innern Werthe und nach seiner Bedeutung kritisch untersucht, p. 239, sq.

c 2

such

such as the discourse with Nicodemus and that with the Samaritan woman, the scene in the Sanhedrim, the examination before Pilate, &c., and this examination leads also to relative uncertainty as to the details. What may still remain as historical after all these deductions is the amount to which, in consequence of the attacks of Strauss and Weisse, the authentic part of the Gospel is reduced according to De Wette's view. And even this remainder is brought into question by those who think that they are justified in rejecting the authenticity of the book; indeed, the enthusiastic decision of former centuries on the contents and form regarded as a matter of taste has turned to the opposite side. The period of enlightenment at the beginning of this century has given the following judgment :8-- Our Gospel is adapted to the infirmities of those on whom the philosophical spirit had not been poured out. It is of little use to the Christians of our time!' Bretschneider has sought to show in his Probabilia the inferiority of the discourses of Christ in the fourth Gospel as compared with those in the other three. In this treatise complaint is made of the loquacity' with which Christ speaks respecting the dignity of his own person; of the obscurity of the words and artificial ambiguity;' of the 'constant repetition of the same things;' of a kind of sublimity foreign to the feelings of men and frigid, repelling rather than attracting the mind; and, on the other hand, great praise is awarded to the practical richness and nervousness of expression of the first evangelists. The latest criticism since the time of Strauss has adopted this judgment—it has even been carried so far, that in some articles in the Literary Journal of Halle the representation of Christ given by John is charged with being that of an unworthy, boastful Thaumaturgus, which can furnish no moral ideal. It is asserted that there is one and the same manner according to which the histories and dialogues of Jesus are constructed by John, one and the same tone pervading the whole, want of understanding on the part of the hearers, the statement of sublime truths which lie beyond the circle of vision of the parties speaking, the long and tautological spinning out of single thoughts, altogether furnishing a proof of the unhistorical character of the events as well as of the discourses. We shall speak first of the events, then of the dis

courses.

When such dialogues as that with Nicodemus and that with the Samaritan woman have been pointed out as wanting the internal

8 Vogel, Joh. und seine Ausleger vor dem jüngsten Gericht, Pt. 1, p. 26.

h Probabilia, ch. i. § 8.- loquacitas-obscuritas verborum et artificiosa ambiguitas, multa earundem rerum repetitio,-sublimitas ista a humanis sensibus aliena et frigida, animumque magis abigens quam alliciens.'

i Hallischen Litteraturzeitung, 1841, Nos. 15, 16.

marks

marks of truth, it has, in the first place, arisen from exegetical views which cannot be conceded, as though it were to be insisted on-in particular this is the case with Bauer and Schwegler-that according to the representation of John, Nicodemus really understood the words of Jesus respecting the new birth in a physical and proper sense- and the same in the other case. The true interpretation of such sections will evince that they contain the internal marks of historical credibility. It is true John was not present at these transactions, but did not Nicodemus after his conversion join himself to the Apostles? And as to the discourse with the woman of Samaria, did not she herself, according to ch. iv. 39, tell to her own countrymen what Jesus had said to her? Jesus also with his disciples remained two days at that place, so that even if Jesus did not himself make any communication to his disciples as to this discourse, there was sufficient opportunity of becoming acquainted with it. That there is no ground for the assertion that a definite manner runs through all the dialogues given by John has been shown by Schweizer. That it was possible for the matter to be imprinted on the memory no proof is necessary as regards the events; one cannot doubt that it would be so, according to the ordinary course of things. In proof that they would in fact be retained with great fidelity, we may appeal to the great conceptivity of our Evangelist. It cannot indeed be denied that what Gibbon said of the Athanasian creed, that it was rhetoric construed into logic,' holds good of innumerable apologies for Christianity. It is, however, on the other hand, no more than a rhetorical artifice on the part of Strauss to attempt to meet Heydenreich's assertion that the individualization of the Gospel history sufficiently proves its unmythical character, by saying that in the same writer a couple of pages further on we stumble on an argument contradicting this, namely, that in feigned legends everything is more detailed and more ornate. Certainly both assertions are quite true; and it is clear that his opponent sets these two truths to drive each other mutually out of the field only because he did not feel himself strong enough to enter into conflict with them. In the myth formed unconsciously and involuntarily from tradition, we shall not as a general rule find individualization, whilst, on the contrary, in proportion as reflection works upon tradition designedly, individualization will be found, though in a manner premeditated, and therefore untrue. Has it not, on the one hand, been attempted to prove the mythic character of the feeding of the six thousand as well as of Jesus walking on the sea from this, that the conceptivity of matter of fact is wanting?

Ubi supra, p. 30,

sq.

m Leben Jesu, pt. i. p. 60, 1st edit. And

And who knows not, on the other hand, that the legends of the Apocryphal Gospels have a character of intentional individualization? Has it not, on the one hand, been brought forward as an argument against the Pauline origin of the Epistle to the Hebrews that it wants individual references, and, on the other, has not the individual reference in 2 Pet. i. 17, 18, been brought forward as an argument against the genuineness of this Epistle on account of its being evidently intentional?' It may certainly be required that we should give the marks by which such intentional individualizing may be distinguished from that which is natural and really historical. This demand we shall be in a condition to satisfy up to a certain point; but even supposing that we could not, this would embarrass us just as little as it would a painter, who, without being able to give definite rules for his judgment, nevertheless distinguishes with certain tact which is a portrait, which a study, and which an ideal picture. And we confidently dare to assert that the student of history will acknowledge in John not an ideal seized by the fancy, but a portrait drawn from the original.

The difficulties as to the discourses are greater. It is certainly true that the discourses of the Redeemer as given by John have a kind of indefiniteness and indistinctness, and therefore are less easy to be retained in the memory, so that if it would have been in itself a difficult thing to imprint these discourses verbally on the memory, this difficulty amounts almost to impossibility when one thinks of the long intervening period. To this there is added the difference in substance of the discourses in the other Gospels-the diversity in form, inasmuch as here thoughts connected together, and uttered in an indistinct manner are presented to us, there parables and pointed sentences-further the similarity between the thoughts and language of John in his Epistles and the discourses of Jesus in his Gospel, and particularly the circumstance that, as is asserted, the Evangelist even makes the Baptist speak in his own manner. All this seems to endanger the certainty of these discourses in the highest degree. Let us nevertheless weigh these different charges separately.

6

The last mentioned circumstance Strauss himself has declared to be of the highest moment in the matter' (3rd edit. i. p. 713). There are three passages where the Evangelist has apparently attributed his own words either to the Baptist or to Jesus, ch. i. 16, seq.; iii. 16, seq.; iii. 31, seq.

We begin with ch. i. 16, seq. I think it will be admitted that if the author of the fourth Gospel had with design falsely attributed these words to the Baptist, he could not truly be considered a man of talent, which yet his opponents consider him. The expression, of his fulness have we all received,' points out too plainly a member