vi. 15, the people are represented as coming to take Him by force and
make Him king; and at the entry into Jerusalem He is greeted as the King of Israel, and the prophecy of Zechariah is applied to Him, ‘Behold thy King cometh, &c.’ In all this there are evident traces of the unreformed Messianic idea, as associated with political domination. By the year 90 all such ideas must have entirely vanished, and it must have required an effort of mind to recover them which one who had not been himself connected with the events would have had no incentive to make.
* * * * *
I am greatly mistaken if the mass of particulars collected in this lecture does not come home to the mind with great, and even overwhelming, force. In me at least it inspires, and has always inspired ever since I took up the study of the Gospel, a strong conviction that it could only be the work of one who had really lived through the events that he describes. Perhaps there is a little exaggeration in the phrase that it ‘could only be’ such a one. It is the kind of rough approximate phrase that one is apt to use for practical common-sense purposes. Strictly speaking, there is the other alternative, of which we ought not wholly to lose sight, that the author was a second-century Christian, perhaps of Jewish descent and with some Jewish training, who by a _tour de force_ threw himself back into the circumstances of the time and had a wonderful success in reproducing them. Dr. Drummond reminds us that there is this alternative.
‘It is sometimes said that to produce an untrue narrative possessing such verisimilitude as the Gospel would have been quite beyond the capacity of any writer of the second century: such an author would be without example; such a work would be a literary miracle. In making this allegation people seem to forget that the book is in any case unique. Whether it be true history, or the offspring of spiritual imagination, or a mixture of both, no one, so far as we know, could have written it in the second or any other century, except the man who did write it; and to assert that an unexampled, unknown, and unmeasured literary genius could not have done this or that appears to me extremely hazardous’ (p. 378 f.).
Perfectly true; there doubtless is the possibility that ‘an unexampled, unknown, and unmeasured literary genius’ could have done what we find. But as a rule, where facts can be explained easily and naturally without having recourse to any such extraordinary assumption, the world is content so to explain them. The practical question is a balance of probabilities. And even now, as in the days of Bishop Butler, probability is the very guide of life.
Footnote 41:
Wrede, _Charakter und Tendenz d. Johannesevangeliums_ (Tübingen and Leipzig, 1903), p. 25.
Footnote 42:
An excellent example is the treatment of the Acts of Paul and Thecla by Professor W. M. Ramsay in _The Church in the Roman Empire_, pp. 375-428.
Footnote 43:
‘Das Geographische im Evangelium nach Johannes,’ in the _Zeitschr. f. neuttest. Wiss._, 1902, pp. 257-265.
Footnote 44:
Cf. Drummond, p. 366 f.; and the writer’s _Sacred Sites of the Gospels_, p. 95.
Footnote 45:
H. J. Holtzmann, ad loc., and _Einleitung_, ed. 2, p. 469: cf. Drummond, p. 437 f.
Footnote 46:
Pp. 42-6.
Footnote 47:
It is denied by Holtzmann, but approved by Westcott.
Footnote 48:
For a discussion of the nature of this defilement see Chwolson, _Das letzte Passamahl Christi_, p. 56 ff.
Footnote 49:
Op. cit. p. 49.
Footnote 50:
It is very surprising that Freiherr Hermann von Soden, in a pamphlet published at the end of the year, _Die wichtigsten Fragen im Leben Jesu_ (Berlin, 1904), p. 9, should deny the existence of local colour in the Fourth Gospel. In proof he mentions some half-dozen points that occur in the Synoptics but not in this Gospel; which only means that it is of a different type from the other three, and does not repeat what was already found in them. And yet, even of these points, several come back in another form. It is true that the Gospel does not describe the healing of a demoniac, but it has many marked allusions to demoniacal possession (see below, p. 134). It is true that it has not the name ‘Sadducees’; it speaks of them rather as ‘chief priests’; but it is well acquainted with their character and policy (see above, p. 126 ff.). The Gospel has no ‘elders,’ but it has ‘rulers’ or members of the Sanhedrin, whose position it perfectly understands. In like manner it has no νομικοί or νομοδιδάσκαλοι, but it is fond of the title ‘Rabbi,’ and it makes pointed reference to Rabbinical training (see below, p. 132). The whole page of criticism, coming from a writer of such eminence, is most disappointing. Either the statements are very questionable as fact or they have not the slightest bearing on the authorship of the Gospel. Why should not an Apostle break off somewhat abruptly in his report of a discourse, or glide imperceptibly from narrative into comment? That is just what St. Paul does, as we shall see (p. 168, below).
The truth is that the criticism of the Fourth Gospel on the liberal side has become largely conventional; one writer after another repeats certain stereotyped formulae without testing them. It is high time that they were really tested and confronted with the facts.
Footnote 51:
On the application of this penalty in the lifetime of Christ, see above, p. 115.
Footnote 52:
_Sanhedr._ 97 a.
Footnote 53:
_Dial. c. Tryph._ §8, cf. 110.
LECTURE V THE CHARACTER OF THE NARRATIVE
The last lecture called attention to a multitude of little points that seem to lead to a definite conclusion. They almost all belonged to the framework, or setting of the narrative, and not to its salient features. I was conscious, not seldom, of stopping short just where we seemed to be coming to something of more importance, and to which exception would be more likely to be taken. I stopped short deliberately and of set purpose, because I am myself of opinion that from the point of view of critical method, it is just these small incidental details that are most significant. They are the sort of details that an author throws in when he is off his guard. From them, far more than from his laboured arguments, we may tell what is his real standpoint and attitude. In regard to the abundant details which we have examined, the Evangelist had plentiful opportunities of tripping; but in no single instance is he really convicted of doing so, whereas in a vast number his record has been verified.
Taking this ample verification of details with the direct claim considered in the last lecture but one, we have reached a point at which the authentic character of the Gospel, its claim to come from an eye-witness if not from an Apostle, seems to be really well assured. But the question that now meets us is, how far this assurance is neutralized by the arguments brought against the Gospel from a comparison of it with the Synoptics and from certain points of general probability. It is true that there are differences, which may amount to discrepancies, between the Fourth Gospel and its predecessors.
There is, however, this preliminary remark to be made, before we discuss the differences in detail, that whatever we may think in regard to them, in any case the result must in one respect be favourable, and not adverse, to the Gospel; it must be favourable at least to its independence and authority. For there are two things to be noticed in regard to these differences.