FOOTNOTES:

[1] So Selwyn, _Christian Prophets_ (pp. 133-145), Harnack, Heinrici

(_Das Urchristenthum_, 1902, pp. 129 seq.), and von Soden (_History

of Early Christian Literature_, pp. 445-446), after Renan (_L'Église

chrétienne_, pp. 78 seq.). Von Dobschütz (_Christian Life in the

Primitive Church_, pp. 218 seq.) and R. Knopf (_Das nachapost.

Zeitalter_, 1905, pp. 32 seq., &c.) are among the most recent critics

who ascribe all three epistles to the presbyter.

[2] On the early allusions to these brief notes, cf. Gregory: _The

Canon and Text of the New Testament_ (1907), pp. 131, 190 seq.,

Westcott's _Canon of the New Testament_, pp. 218 seq., 355, 357, 366,

&c., and Leipoldt's _Geschichte d. neut. Kanons_ (1907), i. pp. 66

seq., 78 seq., 99 seq., 151 seq., 192 seq., 232 seq.

[3] In his ingenious study (_Texte und Untersuchungen_, xv. 3), whose

main contention is adopted by von Dobschütz and Knopf. On this view

(for criticism see Belser in the _Tübing. Quartalschrift_, 1897, pp.

150 seq., Krüger in _Zeitschrift für die wiss. Theologie_, 1898, pp.

307-311, and Hilgenfeld: ibid. 316-320), Diotrephes was voicing a

successful protest of the local monarchical bishops against the older

itinerant authorities (cf. Schmiedel, _Ency. Bib._, 3146-3147). As

Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (_Hermes_, 1898, pp. 529 seq.) points out,

there is a close connexion between ver. 11 and ver. 10. The same

writer argues that, as the substitution of [Greek: âgapêtos] for

[Greek: philtatos] (ver. 1) "ist Schönrednerei und nicht vom besten

Geschmacke," the writer adds [Greek: ón égô ágapô én álêtheía].

[4] This is the force of the [Greek: êmeîs] in 3 John 9-10 (cf. 1

John iv. 6, 14) "The truth" (3 John 3-5) seems to mean a life

answering to the apostolic standard thus enforced and exemplified.

[5] Several of these traits were reproduced in the teaching of

Cerinthus, others may have been directly Jewish or Jewish Christian.

The opposition to the Messianic rôle of Jesus had varied adherents.

The denial of the Virgin-birth, which also formed part of the system

of Cerinthus, was met by anticipation in the stories of Matthew and

Luke, which pushed back the reception of the spirit from the baptism

to the birth, but the Johannine school evidently preferred to answer

this heresy by developing the theory of the Logos, with its implicate

of pre-existence.

[6] On the vexed question whether the language of this paragraph is

purely spiritual or includes a realistic reference, cf. G. E. Findlay

(_Expositor_, 1893, pp. 97 seq.), and Dr E. A. Abbott's recent study

in _Diatessarica_, §§ 1615-1620. The writer is controverting the

Docetic heresy, and at the same time keeping up the line of

communications with the apostolic base.

[7] The universal range (ii. 2) ascribed to the redeeming work of

Christ is directed against Gnostic dualism and the Ebionitic

narrowing of salvation to Israel; only [Greek: êmeîs] here denotes

Christians in general, not Jewish Christians. On the answer to the

Gnostic pride of perfectionism (i. 8), cf. Epict. iv. 12, 19. The

emphasis on "you all" (ii. 20) hints at the Gnostic aristocratic

system of degrees among believers, which naturally tended to break up

brotherly love (cf. 1 Cor. viii. 1 seq.). The Gnostics also held that

a spiritual seed (cf. iii. 9) was implanted in man, as the germ of

his higher development into the divine life; for the Valentinian idea

cf. Iren. _Adv. Haer._ i. 64, and Tertull. _De anima_, 11 [haeretici]

"nescio quod spiritale semen infulciunt animae". Cf. the general

discussions by Häring in _Theologische Abhandlungen C. von Weizsäcker

gewidmet_ (1892), pp. 188 seq., and Zahn in _Wanderungen durch

Schrift u. Geschichte_ (1892), pp. 3-74.

[8] Cf. Denney, _The Death of Christ_ (1902), pp. 269-281. The

polemical reference to Cerinthus is specially clear at this point.

The death of Jesus was not that of a phantom, nor was his ministry

from the baptism to the crucifixion that of a heavenly aeon which

suffered nothing: such is the writer's contention. "In every case the

historical is asserted, but care is taken that it shall not be

materialized: a primacy is given to the spiritual.... Except through

the historical, there is no Christianity at all, but neither is there

any Christianity till the historical has been spiritually

comprehended." The well-known interpolation of the three heavenly

witnesses (v. 7) has now been proved by Karl Künstle (_Das Comma

Johanneum_, 1905) to have originally come from the pen of the 4th

century Spaniard, Priscillian, who himself denied all distinctions of

person in the Godhead.

[9] On the "sin to death" (v. 16) cf. Jubilees xxi. 22, xxvi. 34 with

Karl's _Johann. Studien_ (1898), i. 97 seq. and M. Goguel's _La

Notion johannique de l'esprit_ (1902), pp. 147-153, for the general

theology of the epistle. The conceptions of light and life are best

handled by Grill in his _Untersuchungen über die Entstehung des

vierten Evgliums_ (1902), pp. 301 seq., 312 seq.

[10] In Preuschen's _Zeitschrift für die neutest. Wissenschaft_

(1907), pp. 1-8, von Dobschütz tries to show that the present text of

ii. 28-iii. 12 indicates a revision or rearrangement of an earlier

text. Cludius (_Uransichten des Christentums_, Altona, 1808) had

already conjectured that a Gnostic editor must have worked over a

Jewish Christian document.

[11] Dr Alois Wurm's attempt (_Die Irrlehrer im ersten

Johannesbriefe_, 1903) to read the references to errorists solely in

the light of Jewish Christianity ignores or underrates several of the

data. He is supported on the whole by Clemen, in Preuschen's

_Zeitschrift_ (1905), pp. 271-281. There is certainly an anti-Jewish

touch, e.g. in the claim of iii. 1 (note the emphatic [Greek:

hêmin]), when one recollects the saying of Aqiba (Aboth iii. 12) and

Philo's remark, [Greek: kai gar ei mêpô ikanoi theou paides

nomizesthai gegonamen, alla toi tês aeidous eikonos autou, logou tou

hierôt atou theou gar eikôn logos ho presbytatos] (_De conf. ling._

28). But the antithesis of John and Cerinthus, unlike that of Paul

and Cerinthus (Epiph. _Haer._ xxviii.), is too well based in the

tradition of the early Church to be dismissed as a later dogmatic

reflection, and the internal evidence of this manifesto corroborates

it clearly.

[12] "The style is not flowing and articulated; the sentences come

like minute-guns, as they would drop from a natural Hebrew. The

writer moves, indeed, amidst that order of religious ideas which

meets us in the Fourth Gospel, and which was that of the Greek world

wherein he found himself. He moves amongst these new ideas, however,

not with the practised felicity of the evangelist, but with something

of helplessness, although the depth and serene beauty of his spirit

give to all he says an infinite impressiveness and charm" (M. Arnold;

_God and the Bible_, ch. vi.).

[13] By the end of the 2nd century it appears to have been fairly

well-known, to judge from Origen, Irenaeus (iii. 16, 8), and Clement

of Alexandria (_Stran._ ii. 15, 66). In the Muratorian canon, which

mentions two epistles of John, it seems to be reckoned (cf. Kuhn,

_Das Murat. Fragment_, pp. 58 f.) as an appendix or sequel to the

Fourth Gospel. The apparent traces of its use in Ignatius (cf.

_Smyrn._ vi. 2 = 1 John iii. 17; _Smyrn._ vii = 1 John iii. 14, and

_Eph._ xviii. = 1 John v. 6) seem too insecure, of themselves, to

warrant any hypothesis of filiation.

JOHN, GOSPEL OF ST, the fourth and latest of the Gospels, in the Bible,

and, next to that of St Mark, the shortest. The present article will

first describe its general structure and more obvious contents; compare

it with the Synoptic Gospels; and draw out its leading characteristics

and final object. It will then apply the tests thus gained to the

narratives special to this Gospel; and point out the book's special

difficulties and limits, and its abiding appeal and greatness. And it

will finally consider the questions of its origin and authorship.

_Analysis of Contents._--The book's chief break is at xiii. 1, the

solemn introduction to the feet-washing: all up to here reports Jesus'

signs and apologetic or polemical discourses to the outer world; hence

onwards it pictures the manifestation of His glory to the inner circle

of His disciples. These two parts contain three sections each.

1. (i.) Introduces the whole work (i. 1-ii. 11). (a) The prologue, i.

1-18. The Logos existed before creation and time; was with the very

God and was God; and all things were made through Him. For in this

Logos is Life, and this Life is a Light which, though shining in

darkness, cannot be suppressed by it. This true Light became flesh and

tabernacled amongst us; and we beheld His glory, as of an

Only-Begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. John the

Baptist testified concerning Him, the Logos-Light and Logos-Life

incarnate; but this Logos alone, who is in the bosom of the Father,

hath declared the very God. (b) The four days' work (i. 19-51). On the

first three days John declares that he is not the Christ, proclaims

Jesus to be the Christ, and sends his own disciples away to Jesus. On

the fourth day, Jesus Himself calls Philip and Nathanael. (c) The

seventh day's first manifestation of the Incarnate Light's glory (ii.

1-11 ); Jesus at Cana turns water into wine.

(ii.) Records the manifestations of the Light's and Life's glory and

power to friend and foe (ii. 22-vi. 71). (d) Solemn inauguration of

the Messianic ministry (ii. 12-iii. 21): cleansing of the Temple and

prophecy of His resurrection; discourse to Nicodemus on baptismal

regeneration. (e) Three scenes in Judea, Samaria, Galilee respectively

(iii. 32-iv. 54): the Baptist's second testimony; Jesus' discourse

with the woman at the well concerning the spiritual, universal

character of the new religion; and cure of the ruler's son, the reward

of faith in the simple word of Jesus. (f) Manifestation of Jesus as

the vivifying Life-Logos and its contradiction in Judea, v.: the

paralytic's cure. (g) Manifestation of Jesus as the heaven-descended

living Bread and its contradiction in Galilee, vi.: multiplication of

the loaves; walking on the waters; and His discourse on the holy

Eucharist.

(iii.) Acute conflict between the New Light and the old darkness

(vii.-xii). (h) Self-manifestation of the Logos-Light in the Temple

(vii. 1-x. 39). Journey to the feast of tabernacles; invitation to the

soul athirst to come to Him (the fountain of Life) and drink, and

proclamation of Himself as the Light of the world; cure of the man

born blind; allegory of the good shepherd. The allegory continued at

the feast of the dedication. They strive to stone or to take Him. (i)

The Logos-Life brings Lazarus to life; effects of the act (x. 40-xii.

50). Jesus withdraws beyond Jordan, and then comes to Bethany, His

friend Lazarus being buried three days; proclaims Himself the

Resurrection and the Life; and calls Lazarus back to life. Some who

saw it report the act to the Pharisees; the Sanhedrim meets, Caiaphas

declares that one man must die for the people, and henceforward they

ceaselessly plan His death. Jesus withdraws to the Judaean desert, but

soon returns, six days before Passover, to Bethany; Mary anoints Him,

a crowd comes to see Him and Lazarus, and the hierarchs then plan the

killing of Lazarus also. Next morning He rides into Jerusalem on an

ass's colt. Certain Greeks desire to see Him: He declares the hour of

His glorification to have come: "Now My soul is troubled.... Father,

save Me from this hour. But for this have I come unto this hour:

Father, glorify Thy Name." A voice answers, "I have glorified it and

will glorify it again": some think that an angel spoke; but Jesus

explains that this voice was not for His sake but for theirs. When

lifted up from earth, He will draw all men to Himself; they are to

believe in Him, the Light. The writer's concluding reflection: the

small success of Jesus' activity among the Jews. Once again He cries:

"I am come a Light into the world, that whoso believeth in Me should

not abide in darkness."

2. The Logos-Christ's manifestation of His life and love to His

disciples, during the last supper, the passion, the risen life

(xiii.-xx.).

(iv.) The Last Supper (xiii.-xvii.) (j) Solemn washing of the

disciples' feet; the beloved disciple; designates the traitor; Judas

goes forth, it is night (xiii. 1-30). (k) Last discourses, first

series (xiii. 31-xiv. 31): the new commandment, the other helper;

"Arise, let us go hence." Second series (xv. 1-xvi. 33): allegory of

the true vine; "Greater love than this hath no man, that he lay down

his life for his friend"; the world's hatred; the spirit of truth

shall lead them into all truth; "I came forth from the Father and am

come into the world, again I leave the world and go to the Father";

"Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." (l) The high-priestly

prayer (xvii). "Father, glorify Thy Son ... with the glory which I had

with Thee before the world was ... that to as many as Thou hast given

Him, He should give eternal life." "I pray for them, I pray not for

the world. I pray also for them that shall believe in Me through their

word, that they may be all one, as Thou Father art in Me, and I in

Thee."

(v.) The Passion (xviii.-xix.). (m) In the garden: the Roman soldiers

come to apprehend Him, fall back upon the ground at His declaration "I

am He." Peter and Malchus. (n) Before Annas at night and Caiaphas at

dawn; Peter's denials (xviii. 12-27). (o) Before Pilate (xviii.

28-40). Jesus declares, "My kingdom is not of this world. I have come

into the world that I may bear witness to the truth: everyone that is

of the truth, heareth My voice"; Pilate asks sceptically "What is

truth?" and the crowd prefers Barabbas. (p) The true king presented to

the people as a mock-king; His rejection by the Jews and abandonment

to them (xix. 1-16). (q) Jesus carries His cross to Golgotha, and is

crucified there between two others; the cross's title and Pilate's

refusal to alter it (xix. 17-22). (r) The soldiers cast lots upon His

garments and seamless tunic; His mother with two faithful women and

the beloved disciple at the cross's foot; His commendation of His

mother and the disciple to each other; His last two sayings in

deliberate accomplishment of scripture "I thirst," "It is

accomplished." He gives up the spirit; His bones remain unbroken; and

from His spear-lanced side blood and water issue (xix. 23-37). (s) The

two nobles, Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus, bind the dead body in

a winding sheet with one hundred pounds of precious spices, and place

it in a new monument in a near garden, since the sabbath is at hand.

(vi.) The risen Jesus, Lord and God (xx.). (t) At early dawn on the

first day of the week, Mary Magdalen, finding the stone rolled away

from the monument, runs to tell Peter and the beloved disciple that

the Lord's body has been removed. Peter and the other disciple run to

the grave; the latter, arriving first, enters only after Peter has

gone in and noted the empty grave-clothes--enters and believes. After

their departure, Mary sees two angels where His body had lain and

turning away beholds Jesus standing, yet recognizes Him only when He

addresses her. He bids her "Do not touch Me, for I have not yet

ascended"; but to tell His brethren "I ascend to My Father and to your

Father, to My God and to your God." And she does so. (u) Second

apparition (xx. 19-23). Later on the same day, the doors being shut,

Jesus appears amongst His disciples, shows them His (pierced) hands

and side, and solemnly commissions and endows them for the apostolate

by the words, "As the Father hath sent Me, so I send you," and by

breathing upon them saying "Receive the Holy Spirit: whose sins ye

remit, they are remitted to them; whose sins ye retain, they are

retained." (v) Third apparition and culminating saying; conclusion of

entire book (xx. 24-31). Thomas, who had been absent, doubts the

resurrection; Jesus comes and submits to the doubter's tests. Thomas

exclaims, "My Lord and my God"; but Jesus declares "Blessed are they

that have not seen and yet have believed." "Now Jesus," concludes the

writer, "did many other signs, ... but these are written, that ye may

believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing

ye may have life in His name."

The above analysis is rough, since even distantly placed sections,

indeed the two parts themselves, are interrelated by delicate complex

references on and back. And it omits the account of the adulteress

(vii. 53-viii. 11): (a valuable report of an actual occurrence which

probably belonged to some primitive document otherwise incorporated by

the Synoptists), because it is quite un-Johannine in vocabulary, style

and character, intercepts the Gospel's thread wherever placed, and is

absent from its best MSS. It also omits xxi. This chapter's first two

stages contain an important early historical document of Synoptic

type: Jesus' apparition to seven disciples by the Lake of Galilee and

the miraculous draught of fishes; and Peter's threefold confession and

Jesus' threefold commission to him. And its third stage, Jesus'

prophecies to Peter and to the beloved disciple concerning their

future, and the declaration "This is the disciple who testifies to

these things and who has written them, and we know that his testimony

is true," is doubtless written by the redactor of the previous two

stages. This writer imitates, but is different from, the great author

of the first twenty chapters.

_Comparison with the Synoptists._--The following are the most obvious

differences between the original book and the Synoptists. John has a

metaphysical prologue; Matthew and Luke have historical prologues; and

Mark is without any prologue. The earthly scene is here Judea, indeed

Jerusalem, with but five breaks (vi. 1-vii. 10) is the only long one;

whilst over two-thirds of each Synoptist deal with Galilee or Samaria.

The ministry here lasts about three and a half years (it begins some

months before the first Passover, ii. 13; the feast of v. 1 is

probably a second; the third occurs vi. 4; and on the fourth, xi. 55,

He dies): whilst the Synoptists have but the one Passover of His

death, after barely a year of ministry. Here Jesus' teaching contains

no parables and but three allegories, the Synoptists present it as

parabolic through and through. Here not one exorcism occurs; in the

Synoptists the exorcisms are as prominent as the cures and the

preaching, John has, besides the passion, seven accounts in common

with the Synoptists: the Baptist and Jesus, (i. 19-34); cleansing of

the Temple (ii. 13-16); cure of the centurion's (ruler's) servant

(son) (iv. 46-54); multiplication of the loaves (vi. 1-13); walking

upon the water (vi. 16-21); anointing at Bethany, (xii. 1-8); entry

into Jerusalem (xii. 12-16): all unique occurrences. In the first,

John describes how the Baptist, on Jesus' approach, cries "Behold the

Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world"; and how he says

"I saw the spirit descending upon Him, and I bore witness that this is

the Son of God." But the Synoptists, especially Mark, give the slow

steps in even the apostles' realization of Jesus' Messianic character;

only at Caesarea Philippi Simon alone, for the first time, clearly

discerns it, Jesus declaring that His Father has revealed it to Him,

and yet Simon is still scandalized at the thought of a suffering

Messiah (Mark viii. 28-34). Only some two weeks before the end is He

proclaimed Messiah at Jericho (x. 46-48); then in Jerusalem, five days

before dying for this upon the cross (xi. 1-10, xv. 37). As to the

Baptist, in all three Synoptists, he baptizes Jesus, and in Mark i.

10, 11 it is Jesus who sees the Spirit descending upon Himself on His

emerging from beneath the water, and it is to Himself that God's voice

is addressed; in John, Jesus' baptism is ignored, only the Spirit

remains hovering above Him, as a sign for the Baptist's instruction.

And in Matt. xi. 2-6, the Baptist, several months after the Jordan

scene, sends from his prison to ascertain if Jesus is indeed the

Messiah; in John, the Baptist remains at large so as again (iii.

22-36) to proclaim Jesus' heavenly provenance. The cleansing of the

Temple occurs in the Synoptists four days before His death, and

instantly determines the hierarchs to seek His destruction (Mark xi.

15-18); John puts it three years back, as an appropriate frontispiece

to His complete claims and work.

The passion-narratives reveal the following main differences. John

omits, at the last supper, its central point, the great historic act

of the holy eucharist, carefully given by the Synoptists and St Paul,

having provided a highly doctrinal equivalent in the discourse on the

living bread, here spoken by Jesus in Capernaum over a year before the

passion (vi. 4), the day after the multiplication of the loaves. This

transference is doubtless connected with the change in the relations

between the time of the Passover meal and that of His death: in the

Synoptists, the Thursday evening's supper is a true Passover meal, the

lamb had been slain that afternoon and Jesus dies some twenty-four

hours later; in John, the supper is not a Passover-meal, the Passover

is celebrated on Friday, and Jesus, proclaimed here from the first,

the Lamb of God, dies whilst the paschal lambs, His prototypes, are

being slain. The scene in the garden is without the agony of

Gethsemane; a faint echo of this historic anguish appears in the scene

with the Greeks four days earlier, and even that peaceful appeal to,

and answer of, the Father occurs only for His followers' sakes. In the

garden Jesus here Himself goes forth to meet His captors, and these

fall back upon the ground, on His revealing Himself as Jesus of

Nazareth. The long scenes with Pilate culminate in the great sayings

concerning His kingdom not being of this world and the object of this

His coming being to bear witness to the truth, thus explaining how,

though affirming kingship (Mark xv. 2) He could be innocent. In John

He does not declare Himself Messiah before the Jewish Sanhedrin (Mark

xiv. 61) but declares Himself supermundane regal witness to the truth

before the Roman governor. The scene on Calvary differs as follows: In

the Synoptists the soldiers divide His garments among them, casting

lots (Mark xv. 24); in John they make four parts of them and cast lots

concerning His seamless tunic, thus fulfilling the text, "They divided

My garments among them and upon My vesture they cast lots": the

parallelism of Hebrew poetry, which twice describes one fact, being

taken as witnessing to two, and the tunic doubtless symbolizing the

unity of the Church, as in Philo the high priest's seamless robe

symbolizes the indivisible unity of the universe, expressive of the

Logos (_De ebrietate_, xxi.). In the Synoptists, of His followers only

women--the careful, seemingly exhaustive lists do not include His

mother--remain, looking on "from afar" (Mark xv. 40); in John, His

mother stands with the two other Marys and the beloved disciple

beneath the cross, and "from that hour the disciple took her unto his

own (house)," while in the older literature His mother does not appear

in Jerusalem till just before Pentecost, and with "His brethren" (Acts

i. 14). And John alone tells how the bones of the dead body remained

unbroken, fulfilling the ordinance as to the paschal lamb (Exod. xii.

46) and how blood and water flow from His spear-pierced side: thus the

Lamb "taketh away the sins of the world" by shedding His blood which

"cleanseth us from every sin"; and "He cometh by water and blood,"

historically at His baptism and crucifixion, and mystically to each

faithful soul in baptism and the eucharist. The story of the risen

Christ (xx.) shows dependence on and contrast to the Synoptic

accounts. Its two halves have each a negative and a positive scene.

The empty grave (1-10) and the apparition to the Magdalen (11-18)

together correspond to the message brought by the women (Matt. xxviii.

1-10); and the apparition to the ten joyously believing apostles

(19-23) and then to the sadly doubting Thomas (24-29) together

correspond to Luke xxiv. 36-43, where the eleven apostles jointly

receive one visit from the risen One, and both doubt and believe,

mourn and rejoice.

The Johannine discourses reveal differences from the Synoptists so

profound as to be admitted by all. Here Jesus, the Baptist and the

writer speak so much alike that it is sometimes impossible to say

where each speaker begins and ends: e.g. in iii. 27-30, 31-36. The

speeches dwell upon Jesus' person and work, as we shall find, with a

didactic directness, philosophical terminology and denunciatory

exclusiveness unmatched in the Synoptist sayings. "This is eternal

life, that they may know Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom

Thou hast sent" (xvii. 3), is part of the high-priestly prayer; yet

Père Calmes, with the papal censor's approbation, says, "It seems to

us impossible not to admit that we have here dogmatic developments

explicable rather by the evangelist's habits of mind than by the

actual words of Jesus." "I have told you of earthly things and you

believe not; how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?"

(iii. 12), and "Ye are from beneath, I am from above" (viii. 23), give

us a Plato-(Philo-) like upper, "true" world, and a lower, delusive

world. "Ye shall die in your sins" (viii. 21); "ye are from your

father the devil" (viii. 44); "I am the door of the sheep, all they

that came before Me are thieves and robbers," (x. 7, 8); "they have no

excuse for their sin" (xv. 22)--contrast strongly with the yearning

over Jerusalem: "The blood of Abel the just" and "the blood of

Zacharias son of Barachias" (Matt. xxiii. 35-37; and "Father, forgive

them; for they know not what they do" Luke xxiii. 34). And whilst the

Synoptist speeches and actions stand in loose and natural relation to

each other, the Johannine deeds so closely illustrate the sayings that

each set everywhere supplements the other: the history itself here

tends to become one long allegory. So with the woman at the well and

"the living water"; the multiplication of the loaves and "the living

Bread"; "I am the Light of the world" and the blind man's cure; "I am

the Resurrection and the Life" and the raising of Lazarus; indeed even

with the Temple-cleansing and the prophecy as to His resurrection,

Nicodemus's night visit and "men loved the darkness rather than the

light," the cure of the inoperative paralytic and "My Father and I

work hitherto," the walking phantom-like upon the waters (John vi.

15-21; Mark vi. 49), and the declaration concerning the eucharist,

"the spirit it is that quickeneth" (John vi. 63). Only some sixteen

Synoptic sayings reappear here; but we are given some great new

sayings full of the Synoptic spirit.

_Characteristics and Object._--The book's character results from the

continuous operation of four great tendencies. There is everywhere a

readiness to handle traditional, largely historical, materials with a

sovereign freedom, controlled and limited by doctrinal convictions and

devotional experiences alone. There is everywhere the mystic's deep love

for double, even treble meanings: e.g. the "again" in iii. 2, means,

literally, "from the beginning," to be physically born again; morally,

to become as a little child; mystically, "from heaven, God," to be

spiritually renewed. "Judgment" ([Greek: krisis]), in the popular sense,

condemnation, a future act; in the mystical sense, discrimination, a

present fact. There is everywhere the influence of certain central

ideas, partly identical with, but largely developments of, those less

reflectively operative in the Synoptists. Thus six great terms are

characteristic of, or even special to, this Gospel. "The Only-Begotten"

is most nearly reached by St Paul's term "His own Son." The "Word," or

"Logos," is a term derived from Heracleitus of Ephesus and the Stoics,

through the Alexandrian Jew Philo, but conceived here throughout as

definitely personal. "The Light of the World" the Jesus-Logos here

proclaims Himself to be; in the Synoptists He only declares His

disciples to be such. "The Paraclete," as in Philo, is a "helper,"

"intercessor"; but in Philo he is the intelligible universe, whilst here

He is a self-conscious Spirit. "Truth," "the truth," "to know," have

here a prominence and significance far beyond their Synoptic or even

their Pauline use. And above all stand the uses of "Life," "Eternal

Life." The living ever-working Father (vi. 57; v. 17) has a Logos in

whom is Life (i. 4), an ever-working Son (v. 17), who declares Himself

"the living Bread," "the Resurrection and the Life," "the Way, the Truth

and the Life" (vi. 51; xi. 25; xiv. 16): so that Father and Son quicken

whom they will (v. 21); the Father's commandment is life everlasting,

and Jesus' words are spirit and life (xii. 50; vi. 63, 68). The term,

already Synoptic, takes over here most of the connotations of the

"Kingdom of God," the standing Synoptic expression, which appears here

only in iii. 3-5; xviii. 36. Note that the term "the Logos" is peculiar

to the Apocalypse (xix. 13), and the prologue here; but that, as Light

and Life, the Logos-conception is present throughout the book. And thus

there is everywhere a striving to contemplate history _sub specie

aeternitatis_ and to englobe the successiveness of man in the

simultaneity of God.

_Narratives Peculiar to John._--Of his seven great symbolical,

doctrinally interpreted "signs," John shares three, the cure of the

ruler's son, the multiplication of the loaves, the walking on the

waters, with the Synoptists: yet here the first is transformed almost

beyond recognition; and the two others only typify and prepare the

eucharistic discourse. Of the four purely Johannine signs, two--the

cures of the paralytic (v. 1-16), and of the man born blind (ix.

1-34)--are, admittedly, profoundly symbolical. In the first case, the

man's physical and spiritual lethargy are closely interconnected and

strongly contrasted with the ever-active God and His Logos. In the

second case there is also the closest parallel between physical

blindness cured, and spiritual darkness dispelled, by the Logos-Light as

described in the accompanying discourse. Both narratives are doubtless

based upon actual occurrences--the cures narrated in Mark ii., iii.,

viii., x. and scenes witnessed by the writer in later times; yet here

they do but picture our Lord's spiritual work in the human soul achieved

throughout Christian history. We cannot well claim more than these three

kinds of reality for the first and the last signs, the miracle at Cana

and the resurrection of Lazarus.

For the marriage-feast sign yields throughout an allegorical meaning.

Water stands in this Gospel for what is still but symbol; thus the

water-pots serve here the external Jewish ablutions--old bottles which

the "new wine" of the Gospel is to burst (Mark ii. 22). Wine is the

blood of the new covenant, and He will drink the fruit of the vine new

in the Kingdom of God (Mark xiv. 23-25); the vineyard where He Himself

is the true Vine (Mark xii. 1; John xv. 1). And "the kingdom of heaven

is like to a marriage-feast" (Matt. xxii. 2); Jesus is the Bridegroom

(Mark ii. 19); "the marriage of the Lamb has come" (Rev. xix. 7). "They

have no wine": the hopelessness of the old conditions is announced here

by the true Israel, the Messiah's spiritual mother, the same "woman" who

in Rev. xii. 2, 5 "brought forth a man-child who was to rule all

nations." Cardinal Newman admits that the latter woman "represents the

church, this is the real or direct sense"; yet as her man-child is

certainly the Messiah, this church must be the faithful Jewish church.

Thus also the "woman" at the wedding and beneath the cross stands

primarily for the faithful Old Testament community, corresponding to the

beloved disciple, the typical New Testament follower of her Son, the

Messiah: in each case the devotional accommodation to His earthly mother

is equally ancient and legitimate. He answers her "My hour is not yet

come," i.e. in the symbolic story, the moment for working the miracle;

in the symbolized reality, the hour of His death, condition for the

spirit's advent; and "what is there between Me and thee?" i.e. "My

motives spring no more from the old religion," words devoid of

difficulty, if spoken thus by the Eternal Logos to the passing Jewish

church. The transformation is soon afterwards accomplished, but in

symbol only; the "hour" of the full sense is still over three years off.

Already Philo says "the Logos is the master of the spiritual

drinking-feast," and "let Melchisedeck"--the Logos--"in lieu of water

offer wine to souls and inebriate them" (_De somn._ ii. 37; _Legg. all._

iii. 26). But in John this symbolism figures a great historic fact, the

joyous freshness of Jesus' ministerial beginnings, as indicated in the

sayings of the Bridegroom and of the new wine, a freshness typical of

Jesus' ceaseless renovation of souls.

The raising of Lazarus, in appearance a massive, definitely localized

historical fact, requires a similar interpretation, unless we would, in

favour of the direct historicity of a story peculiar to a profoundly

allegorical treatise, ruin the historical trustworthiness of the largely

historical Synoptists in precisely their most complete and verisimilar

part. For especially in Mark, the passing through Jericho, the entry

into Jerusalem, the Temple-cleansing and its immediate effect upon the

hierarchs, their next day's interrogatory, "By what authority doest thou

these things?" i.e. the cleansing (x. 46-xi. 33), are all closely

interdependent and lead at once to His discussions with His Jerusalem

opponents (xii. xiii.), and to the anointing, last supper, and passion

(xiv. xv). John's last and greatest symbolic sign replaces those

historic motives, since here it is the raising of Lazarus which

determines the hierarchs to kill Jesus (xi. 46-52), and occasions the

crowds which accompany and meet Him on His entry (xii. 9-19). The

intrinsic improbabilities of the narrative, if taken as direct history,

are also great: Jesus' deliberate delay of two days to secure His

friend's dying, and His rejoicing at the death, since thus He can

revivify His friend and bring His disciples to believe in Himself as the

Life; His deliberate weeping over the death which He has thus let

happen, yet His anger at the similar tears of Lazarus's other friends;

and His praying, as He tells the Father in the prayer itself, simply to

edify the bystanders: all point to a doctrinal allegory. Indeed the

climax of the whole account is already reached in Jesus' great saying:

"I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me ... shall

not die for ever," and in Martha's answer: "I believe that Thou art the

Christ, the Son of God, who hast come into the world" (xi. 26, 27); the

sign which follows is but the pictorial representation of this abiding

truth. The materials for the allegory will have been certain Old

Testament narratives, but especially the Synoptic accounts of Jesus'

raisings of Jairus's daughter and of the widow's son (Mark v.; Luke

vii.). Mary and Martha are admittedly identical with the sisters in Luke

x. 38-42; and already some Greek fathers connect the Lazarus of this

allegory with the Lazarus of the parable (Luke xvi. 19-31). In the

parable Lazarus returns not to earth, since Abraham foresees that the

rich man's brethren would disbelieve even if one rose from the dead; in

the corresponding allegory, Lazarus does actually return to life, and

the Jews believe so little as to determine upon killing the very Life

Himself.

_Special Difficulties and Special Greatness._--The difficulties,

limitations and temporary means special to the book are closely

connected with its ready appeal and abiding power; let us take both sets

of things together, in three couples of interrelated price and gift.

The book's method and form are pervadingly allegorical; its instinct and

aim are profoundly mystical. Now from Philo to Origen we have a long

Hellenistic, Jewish and Christian application of that all-embracing

allegorism, where one thing stands for another and where no factual

details resist resolution into a symbol of religious ideas and forces.

Thus Philo had, in his life of Moses, allegorized the Pentateuchal

narratives so as to represent him as mediator, saviour, intercessor of

his people, the one great organ of revelation, and the soul's guide from

the false lower world into the upper true one. The Fourth Gospel is the

noblest instance of this kind of literature, of which the truth depends

not on the factual accuracy of the symbolizing appearances but on the

truth of the ideas and experiences thus symbolized. And Origen is still

full of spontaneous sympathy with its pervading allegorism. But this

method has lost its attraction; the Synoptists, with their rarer and

slighter pragmatic rearrangements and their greater closeness to our

Lord's actual words, deeds, experiences, environment, now come home to

us as indefinitely richer in content and stimulative appeal. Yet

mysticism persists, as the intuitive and emotional apprehension of the

most specifically religious of all truths, viz. the already full,

operative existence of eternal beauty, truth and goodness, of infinite

Personality and Spirit independently of our action, and not, as in

ethics, the simple possibility and obligation for ourselves to produce

such-like things. And of this elemental mode of apprehension and

root-truth, the Johannine Gospel is the greatest literary document and

incentive extant: its ultimate aim and deepest content retain all their

potency.

The book contains an intellectualist, static, determinist, abstractive

trend. In Luke x. 25-28, eternal life depends upon loving God and man;

here it consists in knowing the one true God and Christ whom He has

sent. In the Synoptists, Jesus "grows in favour with God and man,"

passes through true human experiences and trials, prays alone on the

mountain-side, and dies with a cry of desolation; here the Logos'

watchword is "I am," He has deliberately to stir up emotion in Himself,

never prays for Himself, and in the garden and on the cross shows but

power and self-possession. Here we find "ye cannot hear, cannot believe,

because ye are not from God, not of My sheep" (viii. 47, x. 26); "the

world cannot receive the spirit of truth" (xiv. 17). Yet the ethical

current appears here also strongly: "he who doeth the truth, cometh to

the light" (iii. 21), "if you love Me, keep My commandments" (xiv. 15).

Libertarianism is here: "the light came, but men loved the darkness

better than the light," "ye will not come to Me" (iii. 19, v. 40); hence

the appeal "abide in Me"--the branch can cease to be in Him the Vine

(xv. 4, 2). Indeed even those first currents stand here for the deepest

religious truths, the prevenience of God and man's affinity to Him. "Not

we loved God (first), but He (first) loved us"; "let us love Him,

because He first loved us" (1 John iv. 10, 19); "no man can come to Me,

unless the Father draw him" (vi. 44), a drawing which effects a hunger

and thirst for Christ and God (iv. 14, vi. 35). Thus man's spirit, ever

largely but potential, can respond actively to the historic Jesus,

because already touched and made hungry by the all-actual Spirit-God who

made that soul akin unto Himself.

The book has an outer protective shell of acutely polemical and

exclusive moods and insistences, whilst certain splendid Synoptic

breadths and reconciliations are nowhere reached; but this is primarily

because it is fighting, more consciously than they, for that inalienable

ideal of all deepest religion, unity, even external and corporate,

amongst all believers. The "Pneumatic" Gospel comes thus specially to

emphasize certain central historical facts; and, the most explicitly

institutional and sacramental of the four, to proclaim the most

universalistic and developmental of all Biblical sayings. Here indeed

Jesus will not pray for the world (xvii. 9); "ye shall die in your

sins," He insists to His opponents (viii. 44, 24); it is the Jews

generally who appear throughout as such; nowhere is there a word as to

forgiving our enemies; and the commandment of love is designated by

Jesus as His, as new, and as binding the disciples to "love one another"

within the community to which He gives His "example" (xv. 12, xiii. 34,

15). In the Synoptists, the disciples' intolerance is rebuked (Mark ix.

38-41); Jesus' opposition is everywhere restricted to the Pharisees and

the worldly Sadducees; He ever longs for the conversion of Jerusalem;

the great double commandment of love is proclaimed as already formulated

in the Mosaic law (Mark xii. 28-34); the neighbour to be thus loved and

served is simply any and every suffering fellow-man; and the pattern for

such perfect love is found in a schismatical Samaritan (Luke x. 25-37).

Yet the deepest strain here is more serenely universalist even than St

Paul, for here Jesus says: "God so loved the world, that He gave His

only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should ... have

everlasting life" (iii. 16). True, the great prologue passage (i. 9)

probably reads "He was the true Light coming into the world, that

enlighteneth every man," so that the writer would everywhere concentrate

his mind upon the grace attendant upon explicit knowledge of the

incarnate, historic Christ. Yet Christian orthodoxy, which itself has,

all but uniformly, understood this passage of the spiritual radiation

throughout the world of the Word before His incarnation, has been aided

towards such breadth as to the past by the Johannine outlook into the

future. For, in contrast to the earliest Synoptic tradition, where the

full Christian truth and its first form remain undistinguished, and

where its earthly future appears restricted to that generation, in John

the Eternal Life conception largely absorbs the attention away from all

successiveness; Jesus' earthly life does not limit the religion's

assimilation of further truth and experience: "I have many things to

tell you, but you cannot bear them now," "the Father will give you

another Helper, the spirit of truth, who will abide with you for ever"

(xvi. 12, xiv. 15). This universalism is not simply spiritual; the

external element, presupposed in the Synoptists as that of the Jewish

church within which Jesus' earthly life was spent, is here that of the

now separate Christian community: He has other sheep not of this

fold--them also He must bring, there will be one fold, one shepherd; and

His seamless tunic, and Peter's net which, holding every kind of fish,

is not rent, are symbols of this visible unity. Ministerial gradations

exist in this church; Jesus begins the feet-washing with Peter, who

alone speaks and is spoken to; the beloved disciple outruns Peter to

Jesus' monument, yet waits to go in till Peter has done so first; and in

the appendix the treble pastoral commission is to Peter alone: a Petrine

pre-eminence which but echoes the Synoptists. And sacramentalism informs

the great discourses concerning rebirth by water and the spirit, and

feeding on the Living Bread, Jesus' flesh and blood, and the narrative

of the issue of blood and water from the dead Jesus' side. Indeed so

severe a stress is laid upon the explicitly Christian life and its

specific means, that orthodoxy itself interprets the rebirth by water

and spirit, and the eating the flesh and drinking the blood to which

entrance into the Kingdom and possession of interior life are here

exclusively attached, as often represented by a simple sincere desire

and will for spiritual purification and a keen hunger and thirst for

God's aid, together with such cultual acts as such souls can know or

find, even without any knowledge of the Christian rites. Thus there is

many "a pedagogue to Christ," and the Christian visible means and

expressions are the culmination and measure of what, in various degrees

and forms, accompanies every sincerely striving soul throughout all

human history.

_Origin and Authorship._--The question as to the book's origin has lost

its poignancy through the ever-increasing recognition of the book's

intrinsic character. Thus the recent defenders of the apostolic

authorship, the Unitarian James Drummond (1903), the Anglican William

Sanday (1905), the Roman Catholic Theodore Calmes (1904), can tell us,

the first, that "the evangelist did not aim at an illustrative picture

of what was most characteristic of Jesus"; the second, that "the author

sank into his own consciousness and at last brought to light what he

found there"; the third, that "the Gospel contains an entire theological

system," "history is seen through the intervening dogmatic development,"

"the Samaritan woman is ... a personification," "the behaviour of the

Greeks is entirely natural in such a book." We thus get at

cross-purposes with this powerful, profound work. Only some such

position as Abbé Loisy's critical summing up (1903) brings out its

specific greatness. "What the author was, his book, in spite of himself,

tells us to some extent: a Christian of Judeo-Alexandrine formation; a

believer without, apparently, any personal reminiscence of what had

actually been the life, preaching and death of Jesus; a theologian far

removed from every historical preoccupation, though he retains certain

principal facts of tradition without which Christianity would evaporate

into pure ideas; and a seer who has lived the Gospel which he

propounds." "To find his book beautiful and true, we need but take it as

it is and understand it." "The church, which has never discussed the

literary problem of this Gospel, in nowise erred as to its worth."

Several traditional positions have indeed been approximately maintained

or reconquered against the critics. As to the Gospel's date, critics

have returned from 160-170 (Baur), 150 (Zeller), 130 (Keim), to 110-115

(Renan) and 80-110 (Harnack): since Irenaeus says its author lived into

the times of Trajan (90-117), a date somewhere about 105 would satisfy

tradition. As to the place, the critics accept proconsular Asia with

practical unanimity, thus endorsing Irenaeus's declaration that the

Gospel was published in Ephesus. As to the author's antecedents, critics

have ceased to hold that he could not have been a Jew-Christian (so

Bretschneider, 1820), and admit (so Schmiedel, (1901) that he must have

been by birth a Jew of the Dispersion, or the son of Christian parents

who had been such Jews. And as to the vivid accuracy of many of his

topographical and social details, the predominant critical verdict now

is that he betrays an eye-witness's knowledge of the country between

Sichem and Jordan and as to Jerusalem; he will have visited these

places, say in 90, or may have lived in Jerusalem shortly before its

fall. But the reasons against the author being John the Zebedean or any

other eyewitness of Jesus' earthly life have accumulated to a practical

demonstration.

As to the external evidence for the book's early date, we must remember

that the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation, though

admittedly earlier, are of the same school, and, with the great Pauline

Epistles, show many preformations of Johannine phrases and ideas. Other

slighter prolusions will have circulated in that Philonian centre

Ephesus, before the great Gospel englobed and superseded them. Hence the

precariousness of the proofs derived from more or less close parallels

to Johannine passages in the apostolic fathers. Justin Martyr (163-167)

certainly uses the Gospel; but his conception of Jesus' life is so

strictly Synoptic that he can hardly have accepted it as from an

apostolic eyewitness. Papias of Hierapolis, in his _Exposition of the

Lord's Sayings_ (145-160) appears nowhere to have mentioned it, and

clearly distinguishes between "what Andrew, Peter, ... John or Matthew

or any other of the Lord's disciples spoke," and "what Aristion and the

presbyter John, the Lord's disciples, say." Thus Papias, as Eusebius

about 314 insists, knew two Johns, and the apostle was to him a far-away

figure; indeed early medieval chroniclers recount that Papias "in the

second book of the Lord's sayings" asserted that both the sons of

Zebedee were "slain by Jews," so that the apostle John would have died

before 70. Irenaeus's testimony is the earliest and admittedly the

strongest we possess for the Zebedean authorship; yet, as Calmes admits,

"it cannot be considered decisive." In his work against the Heresies and

in his letter to Florinus, about 185-191, he tells how he had himself

known Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, and how Polycarp "used to recount his

familiar intercourse with John and the others who had seen the Lord";

and explicitly identifies this John with the Zebedean and the

evangelist. But Irenaeus was at most fifteen when thus frequenting

Polycarp; writes thirty-five to fifty years later in Lyons, admitting

that he noted down nothing at the time; and, since his mistaken

description of Papias as "a hearer of John" the Zebedean was certainly

reached by mistaking the presbyter for the apostle, his additional words

"and a companion of Polycarp" point to this same mistaken identification

having also operated in his mind with regard to Polycarp. In any case,

the very real and important presbyter is completely unknown to

Irenaeus, and his conclusion as to the book's authorship resulted

apparently from a comparison of its contents with Polycarp's teaching.

If the presbyter wrote Revelation and was Polycarp's master, such a

mistake could easily arise. Certainly Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus,

made a precisely similar mistake when about 190 he described the Philip

"who rests in Hierapolis" as "one of the twelve apostles," since

Eusebius rightly identifies this Philip with the deacon of Acts xxi. A

positive testimony for the critical conclusion is derived from the

existence of a group of Asia Minor Christians who about 165 rejected the

Gospel as not by John but by Cerinthus. The attribution is doubtless

mistaken. But could Christians sufficiently numerous to deserve a long

discussion by St Epiphanius in 374-377, who upheld the Synoptists,

stoutly opposed the Gnostics and Montanists, and had escaped every

special designation till the bishop nicknamed them the "Alogoi"

(irrational rejectors of the Logos-Gospel), dare, in such a time and

country, to hold such views, had the apostolic origin been

incontestable? Surely not. The Alexandrian Clement, Tertullian, Origen,

Eusebius, Jerome and Augustine only tell of the Zebedean what is

traceable to stories told by Papias of others, to passages of Revelation

and the Gospel, or to the assured fact of the long-lived Asian

presbyter.

As to the internal evidence, if the Gospel typifies various imperfect or

sinful attitudes in Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman and Thomas; if even

the mother appears to symbolize faithful Israel: then, profoundly

spiritual and forward-looking as it is, a type of the perfect disciple,

not all unlike Clement's perfect "Gnostic," could hardly be omitted by

it; and the precise details of this figure may well be only ideally,

mystically true. The original work nowhere identifies this disciple with

any particular historic figure. "He who saw" the lance-thrust "hath

borne witness, and his witness is true," is asserted (xix. 35) of the

disciple. Yet "to see" is said also of intuitive faith, "whoso hath seen

Me, hath seen the Father" (xiv. 9); and "true" appears also in "the true

Light," "the true Bread from heaven," as characterizing the realities of

the upper, alone fully true world, and equals "heavenly" (iii. 12); thus

a "true witness" testifies to some heavenly reality, and appeals to the

reader's "pneumatic," i.e. allegorical, understanding.

Only in the appendix do we find any deliberate identification with a

particular historic person: "this is the disciple who witnessed to and

who wrote these things" (24) refers doubtless to the whole previous work

and to "the disciple whom Jesus loved," identified here with an unnamed

historic personage whose recent death had created a shock, evidently

because he was the last of that apostolic generation which had so keenly

expected the second coming (18-23). This man was so great that the

writer strives to win his authority for this Gospel; and yet this man

was not John the Zebedean, else why, now he is dead and gone, not

proclaim the fact? If the dead man was John the presbyter--if this John

had in youth just seen Jesus and the Zebedean, and in extreme old age

had still seen and approved the Gospel--to attribute this Gospel to him,

as is done here, would not violate the literary ethics of those times.

Thus the heathen philosopher Iamblichus (d. c. 330) declares: "this was

admirable" amongst the Neo-Pythagoreans "that they ascribed everything

to Pythagoras; but few of them acknowledge their own works as their own"

(_de Pythag. vita_, 198). And as to Christians, Tertullian about 210

tells how the presbyter who, in proconsular Asia, had "composed the

_Acts of Paul and Thecla_" was convicted and deposed, for how could it

be credible that Paul should confer upon women the power to "teach and

baptize" as these _Acts_ averred? The attribution as such, then, was not

condemned.

The facts of the problem would all appear covered by the hypothesis that

John the presbyter, the eleven being all dead, wrote the book of

Revelation (its more ancient Christian portions) say in 69, and died at

Ephesus say in 100; that the author of the Gospel wrote the first draft,

here, say in 97; that this book, expanded by him, first circulated

within a select Ephesian Christian circle; and that the Ephesian church

officials added to it the appendix and published it in 110-120. But

however different or more complicated may have been the actual origins,

three points remain certain. The real situation that confronts us is not

an unbroken tradition of apostolic eye-witnesses, incapable of

re-statement with any hope of ecclesiastical acceptance, except by

another apostolic eye-witness. On one side indeed there was the record,

underlying the Synoptists, of at least two eye-witnesses, and the

necessity of its preservation and transmission; but on the other side a

profound double change had come over the Christian outlook and

requirements. St Paul's heroic labours (30-64) had gradually gained full

recognition and separate organization for the universalist strain in our

Lord's teaching; and he who had never seen the earthly Jesus, but only

the heavenly Christ, could even declare that Christ "though from the

Jewish fathers according to the flesh" had died, "so that henceforth,

even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, now we no further

know Him thus," "the Lord is the Spirit," and "where the Spirit of the

Lord is, there is liberty." And the Jewish church, within which

Christianity had first lived and moved, ceased to have a visible centre.

Thus a super-spatial and super-temporal interpretation of that first

markedly Jewish setting and apprehension of the Christian truth became

as necessary as the attachment to the original contingencies. The Fourth

Gospel, inexplicable without St Paul and the fall of Jerusalem, is fully

understandable with them. The attribution of the book to an eye-witness

nowhere resolves, it everywhere increases, the real difficulties; and by

insisting upon having history in the same degree and way in John as in

the Synoptists, we cease to get it sufficiently anywhere at all. And the

Fourth Gospel's true greatness lies well within the range of this its

special character. In character it is profoundly "pneumatic"; Paul's

super-earthly Spirit-Christ here breathes and speaks, and invites a

corresponding spiritual comprehension. And its greatness appears in its

inexhaustibly deep teachings concerning Christ's sheep and fold; the

Father's drawing of souls to Christ; the dependence of knowledge as to

Christ's doctrine upon the doing of God's will; the fulfilling of the

commandment of love, as the test of true discipleship; eternal life,

begun even here and now; and God a Spirit, to be served in spirit and in

truth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--See also the independent discussion, under REVELATION,

BOOK OF, of the authorship of that work. Among the immense literature

of the subject, the following books will be found especially

instructive by the classically trained reader: Origen's commentary,

finished (only to John xiii. 33) in 235-237 (best ed. by Preuschen,

1903). St Augustine's _Tractatus in Joannis Ev. et Ep._, about 416.

The Spanish Jesuit Juan Maldonatus' Latin commentary, published 1596

(critical reprint, edited by Raich, 1874), a pathfinder on many

obscure points, is still a model for tenacious penetration of

Johannine ideas. Bretschneider's short _Probabilia de Evangelii ...

Joannis Apostoli indole et origine_ (1820), the first systematic

assault on the traditional attribution, remains unrefuted in its main

contention. The best summing up and ripest fruit of the critical

labour since then are Professor H. J. Holtzmann's _Handkommentar_ (2nd

ed., 1893) and the respective sections in his _Einleitung in d. N. T._

(3rd ed., 1892) and his _Lehrbuch der N. T. Theologie_ (1897), vol. 2.

Professor C. E. Luthardt's _St John, Author of the Fourth Gospel_

(Eng. trans., with admirable bibliography by C. R. Gregory, 1875),

still remains the best conservative statement. Among the few

critically satisfactory French books, Abbé Loisy's _Le Quatrième

évangile_ (1903) stands pre-eminent for delicate psychological

analysis and continuous sense of the book's closely knit unity; whilst

Père Th. Calmes' _Évangile selon S. Jean_ (1904) indicates how

numerous are the admissions as to the book's character and the

evidences for its authorship, made by intelligent Roman Catholic

apologists with Rome's explicit approbation. In England a considerably

less docile conservatism has been predominant. Bp Lightfoot's _Essays

on ... Supernatural Religion_ (1874-1877; collected 1889) are often

masterly conservative interpretations of the external evidence; but

they leave this evidence still inconclusive, and the formidable

contrary internal evidence remains practically untouched. Much the

same applies to Bp Westcott's _Gospel according to St John_ (1882),

devotionally so attractive, and in textual criticism excellent. Dr

James Drummond's _Inquiry into the Character and Authorship of the

Fourth Gospel_ (1903) does not, by its valuable survey of the external

evidence, succeed in giving credibility to the eyewitness origin of

such a book as this is admitted to be. Professor W. Sanday's slighter

_Criticism of the Fourth Gospel_ (1905) is in a similar position.

Professor P. W. Schmiedel's article "John s. of Zebedee" in the _Ency.

Bib._ (1901) is the work of a German of the advanced left. Dr E. A.

Abbott's laborious _From Letter to Spirit_ (1903), _Joannine

Vocabulary_ (1904) and _Grammar_ (1906) overflow with statistical

details and ever acute, often fanciful, conjecture. Professor F. C.

Burkitt's _The Gospel History_ (1906) vigorously sketches the book's

dominant characteristics and true function. E. F. Scott's _The Fourth

Gospel_ (1906) gives a lucid, critical and religiously tempered

account of the Gospel's ideas, aims, affinities, difficulties and

abiding significance. (F. v. H.)

JOHN ALBERT (1459-1501), king of Poland, third son of Casimir IV. king

of Poland and Elizabeth of Austria. As crown prince he distinguished

himself by his brilliant victory over the Tatars at Kopersztyn in 1487.

He succeeded his father in 1492. The loss of revenue consequent upon the

secession of Lithuania placed John Albert at the mercy of the Polish

Sejmiki or local diets, where the _szlachta_, or country gentry, made

their subsidies dependent upon the king's subservience. Primarily a

warrior with a strong taste for heroic adventure, John Albert desired to

pose as the champion of Christendom against the Turks. Circumstances

seemed, moreover, to favour him. In his brother Wladislaus, who as king

of Hungary and Bohemia possessed a dominant influence in Central Europe,

he found a counterpoise to the machinations of the emperor Maximilian,

who in 1492 had concluded an alliance against him with Ivan III. of

Muscovy, while, as suzerain of Moldavia, John Albert was favourably

situated for attacking the Turks. At the conference of Leutschau in 1494

the details of the expedition were arranged between the kings of Poland

and Hungary and the elector Frederick of Brandenburg, with the

co-operation of Stephen, hospodar of Moldavia, who had appealed to John

Albert for assistance. In the course of 1496 John Albert with great

difficulty collected an army of 80,000 men in Poland, but the crusade

was deflected from its proper course by the sudden invasion of Galicia

by the hospodar, who apparently--for the whole subject is still very

obscure--had been misled by reports from Hungary that John Albert was

bent upon placing his younger brother Sigismund on the throne of

Moldavia. Be that as it may, the Poles entered Moldavia not as friends,

but as foes, and, after the abortive siege of Suczawa, were compelled to

retreat through the Bukowina to Sniatyn, harassed all the way by the

forces of the hospodar. The insubordination of the _szlachta_ seems to

have been one cause of this disgraceful collapse, for John Albert

confiscated hundreds of their estates after his return; in spite of

which, to the end of his life he retained his extraordinary popularity.

When the new grand master of the Teutonic order, Frederic of Saxony,

refused to render homage to the Polish crown, John Albert compelled him

to do so. His intention of still further humiliating the Teutonic order

was frustrated by his sudden death in 1501. A valiant soldier and a man

of much enlightenment, John Albert was a poor politician, recklessly

sacrificing the future to the present.

See V. Czerny, _The Reigns of John Albert and Alexander Jagiello_

(Pol.) (Cracow, 1882).

JOHN ANGELUS (d. 1244), emperor of Thessalonica. In 1232 he received the

throne from his father Theodore, who, after a period of exile, had

re-established his authority, but owing to his loss of eyesight resolved

to make John the nominal sovereign. His reign is chiefly marked by the

aggressions of the rival emperor of Nicaea, John Vatatzes, who laid

siege to Thessalonica in 1243 and only withdrew upon John Angelus

consenting to exchange the title "emperor" for the subordinate one of

"despot."

See G. Finlay, _History of Greece_, vol. iii. (1877).

JOHN FREDERICK I. (1503-1554), called the Magnanimous, elector of

Saxony, was the elder son of the elector, John the Steadfast, and

belonged to the Ernestine branch of the Wettin family. Born at Torgau on

the 30th of June 1503 and educated as a Lutheran, he took some part in

imperial politics and in the business of the league of Schmalkalden

before he became elector by his father's death in August 1532. His lands

comprised the western part of Saxony, and included Thuringia, but in

1542 Coburg was surrendered to form an apanage for his brother, John

Ernest (d. 1553). John Frederick, who was an ardent Lutheran and had a

high regard for Luther, continued the religious policy of his father. In

1534 he assisted to make peace between the German king Ferdinand I. and

Ulrich, duke of Württemberg, but his general attitude was one of

vacillation between the emperor and his own impetuous colleague in the

league of Schmalkalden, Philip, landgrave of Hesse. He was often at

variance with Philip, whose bigamy he disliked, and his belief in the

pacific intentions of Charles V. and his loyalty to the Empire prevented

him from pursuing any definite policy for the defence of Protestantism.

In 1541 his kinsman Maurice became duke of Saxony, and cast covetous

eyes upon the electoral dignity. A cause of quarrel soon arose. In 1541

John Frederick forced Nicholas Amsdorf into the see of Naumburg in spite

of the chapter, who had elected a Roman Catholic, Julius von Pflug; and

about the same time he seized Wurzen, the property of the bishop of

Meissen, whose see was under the joint protection of electoral and ducal

Saxony. Maurice took up arms, and war was only averted by the efforts of

Philip of Hesse and Luther. In 1542 the elector assisted to drive Henry,

duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, from his duchy, but in spite of this his

relations with Charles V. at the diet of Spires in 1544 were very

amicable. This was, however, only a lull in the storm, and the emperor

soon began to make preparations for attacking the league of

Schmalkalden, and especially John Frederick and Philip of Hesse. The

support, or at least the neutrality, of Maurice was won by the hope of

the electoral dignity, and in July 1546 war broke out between Charles

and the league. In September John Frederick was placed under the

imperial ban, and in November Maurice invaded the electorate. Hastening

from southern Germany the elector drove Maurice from the land, took his

ally, Albert Alcibiades, prince of Bayreuth, prisoner at Rochlitz, and

overran ducal Saxony. His progress, however, was checked by the advance

of Charles V. Notwithstanding his valour he was wounded and taken

prisoner at Mühlberg on the 24th of April 1547, and was condemned to

death in order to induce Wittenberg to surrender. The sentence was not

carried out, but by the capitulation of Wittenberg (May 1547) he

renounced the electoral dignity and a part of his lands in favour of

Maurice, steadfastly refusing however to make any concessions on

religious matters, and remained in captivity until May 1552, when he

returned to the Thuringian lands which his sons had been allowed to

retain, his return being hailed with wild enthusiasm. During his

imprisonment he had refused to accept the _Interim_, issued from

Augsburg in May 1548, and had urged his sons to make no peace with

Maurice. After his release the emperor had restored his dignities to

him, and his assumption of the electoral arms and title prevented any

arrangement with Maurice. However, after the death of this prince in

July 1553, a treaty was made at Naumburg in February 1554 with his

successor Augustus. John Frederick consented to the transfer of the

electoral dignity, but retained for himself the title of "born elector,"

and received some lands and a sum of money. He was thus the last

Ernestine elector of Saxony. He died at Weimar on the 3rd of March 1554,

having had three sons by his wife, Sibylla (d. 1554), daughter of John

III., duke of Cleves, whom he had married in 1527, and was succeeded by

his eldest son, John Frederick. The elector was a great hunter and a

hard drinker, whose brave and dignified bearing in a time of misfortune

won for him his surname of Magnanimous, and drew eulogies from Roger

Ascham and Melanchthon. He founded the university of Jena and was a

benefactor to that of Leipzig.

See Mentz, _Johann Friedrich der Grossmütige_ (Jena, 1903); Rogge,

_Johann Friedrich der Grossmütige_ (Halle, 1902) and L. von Ranke,

_Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation_ (Leipzig, 1882).

JOHN FREDERICK (1529-1595), called _der Mittlere_, duke of Saxony, was

the eldest son of John Frederick, who had been deprived of the Saxon

electorate by the emperor Charles V. in 1547. Born at Torgau on the 8th

of January 1529, he received a good education, and when his father was

imprisoned in 1547 undertook the government of the remnant of electoral

Saxony which the emperor allowed the Ernestine branch of the Wettin

family to keep. Released in 1552 John Frederick the elder died two years

later, and his three sons ruled Ernestine Saxony together until 1557,

when John Frederick was made sole ruler. This arrangement lasted until

1565, when John Frederick shared his lands with his surviving brother,

John William (1530-1573), retaining for himself Gotha and Weimar. The

duke was a strong, even a fanatical, Lutheran, but his religious views

were gradually subordinated to the one idea of regaining the electoral

dignity then held by Augustus I. To attain this end he lent a willing

ear to the schemes of Wilhelm von Grumbach, who came to his court about

1557 and offered to regain the electoral dignity and even to acquire the

Empire for his patron. In spite of repeated warnings from the emperor

Ferdinand I., John Frederick continued to protect Grumbach, and in 1566

his obstinacy caused him to be placed under the imperial ban. Its

execution was entrusted to Augustus who, aided by the duke's brother,

John William, marched against Gotha with a strong force. In consequence

of a mutiny the town surrendered in April 1567, and John Frederick was

delivered to the emperor Maximilian II. He was imprisoned in Vienna, his

lands were given to his brother, and he remained in captivity until his

death at Steyer on the 6th of May 1595. These years were mainly occupied

with studying theology and in correspondence. John Frederick married

firstly Agnes (d. 1555) daughter of Philip, landgrave of Hesse, and

widow of Maurice, elector of Saxony, and secondly Elizabeth (d. 1594)

daughter of Frederick III., elector palatine of the Rhine, by whom he

left two sons, John Casimir (1564-1633) and John Ernest (1566-1638).

Elizabeth shared her husband's imprisonment for twenty-two years.

See A. Beck, _Johann Friedrich der Mittlere, Herzog zu Sachsen_

(Vienna, 1858); and F. Ortloff, _Geschichte der Grumbachischen Händel_

(Jena, 1868-1870).

JOHN GEORGE I. (1585-1656), elector of Saxony, second son of the elector

Christian I., was born on the 5th of March 1585, succeeding to the

electorate in June 1611 on the death of his elder brother, Christian II.

The geographical position of electoral Saxony hardly less than her high

standing among the German Protestants gave her ruler much importance

during the Thirty Years' War. At the beginning of his reign, however,

the new elector took up a somewhat detached position. His personal

allegiance to Lutheranism was sound, but he liked neither the growing

strength of Brandenburg nor the increasing prestige of the Palatinate;

the adherence of the other branches of the Saxon ruling house to

Protestantism seemed to him to suggest that the head of electoral Saxony

should throw his weight into the other scale, and he was prepared to

favour the advances of the Habsburgs and the Roman Catholic party. Thus

he was easily induced to vote for the election of Ferdinand, archduke of

Styria, as emperor in August 1619, an action which nullified the

anticipated opposition of the Protestant electors. The new emperor

secured the help of John George for the impending campaign in Bohemia by

promising that he should be undisturbed in his possession of certain

ecclesiastical lands. Carrying out his share of the bargain by occupying

Silesia and Lusatia, where he displayed much clemency, the Saxon elector

had thus some part in driving Frederick V., elector palatine of the

Rhine, from Bohemia and in crushing Protestantism in that country, the

crown of which he himself had previously refused. Gradually, however, he

was made uneasy by the obvious trend of the imperial policy towards the

annihilation of Protestantism, and by a dread lest the ecclesiastical

lands should be taken from him; and the issue of the edict of

restitution in March 1629 put the coping-stone to his fears. Still,

although clamouring vainly for the exemption of the electorate from the

area covered by the edict, John George took no decided measures to break

his alliance with the emperor. He did, indeed, in February 1631 call a

meeting of Protestant princes at Leipzig, but in spite of the appeals of

the preacher Matthias Hoë von Hohenegg (1580-1645) he contented himself

with a formal protest. Meanwhile Gustavus Adolphus had landed in

Germany, and the elector had refused to allow him to cross the Elbe at

Wittenberg, thus hindering his attempt to relieve Magdeburg. But John

George's reluctance to join the Protestants disappeared when the

imperial troops under Tilly began to ravage Saxony, and in September

1631 he concluded an alliance with the Swedish king. The Saxon troops

were present at the battle of Breitenfeld, but were routed by the

imperialists, the elector himself seeking safety in flight. Nevertheless

he soon took the offensive. Marching into Bohemia the Saxons occupied

Prague, but John George soon began to negotiate for peace and

consequently his soldiers offered little resistance to Wallenstein, who

drove them back into Saxony. However, for the present the efforts of

Gustavus Adolphus prevented the elector from deserting him, but the

position was changed by the death of the king at Lützen in 1632, and the

refusal of Saxony to join the Protestant league under Swedish

leadership. Still letting his troops fight in a desultory fashion

against the imperialists, John George again negotiated for peace, and in

May 1635 he concluded the important treaty of Prague with Ferdinand II.

His reward was Lusatia and certain other additions of territory; the

retention by his son Augustus of the archbishopric of Magdeburg; and

some concessions with regard to the edict of restitution. Almost at once

he declared war upon the Swedes, but in October 1636 he was beaten at

Wittstock; and Saxony, ravaged impartially by both sides, was soon in a

deplorable condition. At length in September 1645 the elector was

compelled to agree to a truce with the Swedes, who, however, retained

Leipzig; and as far as Saxony was concerned this ended the Thirty Years'

War. After the peace of Westphalia, which with regard to Saxony did

little more than confirm the treaty of Prague, John George died on the

8th of October 1656. Although not without political acumen, he was not a

great ruler; his character appears to have been harsh and unlovely, and

he was addicted to drink. He was twice married, and in addition to his

successor John George II. he left three sons, Augustus (1614-1680),

Christian (d. 1691) and Maurice (d. 1681) who were all endowed with

lands in Saxony, and who founded cadet branches of the Saxon house.

JOHN GEORGE II. (1613-1680), elector of Saxony, was born on the 31st of

May 1613. In 1657, just after his accession, he made an arrangement with

his three brothers with the object of preventing disputes over their

separate territories, and in 1664 he entered into friendly relations

with Louis XIV. He received money from the French king, but the

existence of a strong anti-French party in Saxony induced him

occasionally to respond to the overtures of the emperor Leopold I. The

elector's primary interests were not in politics, but in music and art.

He adorned Dresden, which under him became the musical centre of

Germany; welcoming foreign musicians and others he gathered around him a

large and splendid court, and his capital was the constant scene of

musical and other festivals. His enormous expenditure compelled him in

1661 to grant greater control over monetary matters to the estates, a

step which laid the foundation of the later system of finance in Saxony.

John George died at Freiberg on the 22nd of August 1680.

JOHN GEORGE III. (1647-1691), elector of Saxony, the only son of John

George II., was born on the 20th of June 1647. He forsook the

vacillating foreign policy of his father and in June 1683 joined an

alliance against France. Having raised the first standing army in the

electorate he helped to drive the Turks from Vienna in September 1680,

leading his men with great gallantry; but disgusted with the attitude of

the emperor Leopold I. after the victory, he returned at once to Saxony.

However, he sent aid to Leopold in 1685. When Louis XIV.'s armies

invaded Germany in September 1688 John George was one of the first to

take up arms against the French, and after sharing in the capture of

Mainz he was appointed commander-in-chief of the imperial forces. He had

not, however, met with any notable success when he died at Tübingen on

the 12th of September 1691. Like his father, he was very fond of music,

but he appears to have been less extravagant than John George II. His

wife was Anna Sophia, daughter of Frederick III. king of Denmark, and

both his sons, John George and Frederick Augustus, became electors of

Saxony, the latter also becoming king of Poland as Augustus II.

JOHN GEORGE IV. (1668-1694), elector of Saxony, was born on the 18th of

October 1668. At the beginning of his reign his chief adviser was Hans

Adam von Schöning (1641-1696), who counselled a union between Saxony and

Brandenburg and a more independent attitude towards the emperor. In

accordance with this advice certain proposals were put before Leopold I.

to which he refused to agree; and consequently the Saxon troops withdrew

from the imperial army, a proceeding which led the chagrined emperor to

seize and imprison Schöning in July 1692. Although John George was

unable to procure his minister's release, Leopold managed to allay the

elector's anger, and early in 1693 the Saxon soldiers rejoined the

imperialists. This elector is chiefly celebrated for his passion for

Magdalene Sibylle von Neidschütz (d. 1694), created in 1693 countess of

Rochlitz, whom on his accession he publicly established as his mistress.

John George left no legitimate issue when he died on the 27th of April

1694.

JOHN[1] MAURICE OF NASSAU (1604-1679), surnamed the Brazilian, was the

son of John the Younger, count of Nassau-Siegen-Dillenburg, and the

grandson of John, the elder brother of William the Silent and the chief

author of the Union of Utrecht. He distinguished himself in the

campaigns of his cousin, the stadtholder Frederick Henry of Orange, and

was by him recommended to the directors of the Dutch West India company

in 1636 to be governor-general of the new dominion in Brazil recently

conquered by the company. He landed at the Recife, the port of

Pernambuco, and the chief stronghold of the Dutch, in January 1637. By a

series of successful expeditions he gradually extended the Dutch

possessions from Sergipe on the south to S. Luis de Maranham in the

north. He likewise conquered the Portuguese possessions of St George del

Mina and St Thomas on the west coast of Africa. With the assistance of

the famous architect, Pieter Post of Haarlem, he transformed the Recife

by building a new town adorned with splendid public edifices and

gardens, which was called after his name Mauritstad. By his

statesmanlike policy he brought the colony into a most flourishing

condition and succeeded even in reconciling the Portuguese settlers to

submit quietly to Dutch rule. His large schemes and lavish expenditure

alarmed however the parsimonious directors of the West India company,

but John Maurice refused to retain his post unless he was given a free

hand, and he returned to Europe in July 1644. He was shortly afterwards

appointed by Frederick Henry to the command of the cavalry in the States

army, and he took part in the campaigns of 1645 and 1646. When the war

was ended by the peace of Münster in January 1648, he accepted from the

elector of Brandenburg the post of governor of Cleves, Mark and

Ravensberg, and later also of Minden. His success in the Rhineland was

as great as it had been in Brazil, and he proved himself a most able and

wise ruler. At the end of 1652 he was appointed head of the order of St

John and made a prince of the Empire. In 1664 he came back to Holland;

when the war broke out with England supported by an invasion from the

bishop of Münster, he was appointed commander-in-chief of the Dutch

forces on land. Though hampered in his command by the restrictions of

the states-general, he repelled the invasion, and the bishop, Christoph

von Galen, was forced to conclude peace. His campaigning was not yet at

an end, for in 1673 he was appointed by the stadtholder William III. to

command the forces in Friesland and Groningen, and to defend the eastern

frontier of the Provinces. In 1675 his health compelled him to give up

active military service, and he spent his last years in his beloved

Cleves, where he died on the 20th of December 1679. The house which he

built at the Hague, named after him the Maurits-huis, now contains the

splendid collections of pictures so well known to all admirers of Dutch

art.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Caspar Barlaeus, _Rerum per octennium in Brasilia et

alibi nuper gestarum historia, sub praefectura illustrissimi comitis

J. Mauritii Nassoviae_ (Amsterdam, 1647); L. Driessen, _Leben des

Fürsten Johann Moritz von Nassau_ (Berlin, 1849); D. Veegens, _Leven

van Jaan Maurits_, Graaf van Nassau-Siegen (Haarlem, 1840).