The great mass of ancient stories about this apostle, take no notice
at all of his residence in the far eastern regions, on and beyond the
Euphrates, but make mention of the countries inhabited by Greeks and
Romans, as the scenes of the greater part of his long life, after the
destruction of Jerusalem. The palpable reason of the character of these
traditions, no doubt, is, that they all come from the very regions
which they commemorate as the home of John; and the authors of the
stories being interested only to secure for their own region the
honor of an apostolic visit, cared nothing about the similar glory of
countries far eastward, with which they had no connection whatever,
and of which they knew nothing. That region which is most particularly
pointed out as the great scene of John’s life and labors, is ASIA, in
the original, limited sense of the term, which includes only a small
portion of the eastern border of the Aegean sea, as already described
in the life of Peter. The most important place in this _Little_ Asia,
was Ephesus; and in this famous city the apostle John is said to have
spent the latter part of his life, after the great dispersion from
Palestine.
The _motives_ of John’s visit to Ephesus, are variously given by
different writers, both ancient and modern. All refer the primary
impulse to the Holy Spirit, which was the constant and unerring guide
of all the apostles in their movements abroad on the great mission of
their Master. The divine presence of their Lord himself, too, was ever
with them to support and encourage, in their most distant wanderings,
even as he promised at parting,――“Lo! I am with you always, even to
the end of the world.” But historical investigation may very properly
proceed with the inquiry into the real _occasion_ which led him, under
that divine guidance, to this distant city, among a people who were
mostly foreign to him in language, habits and feelings, even though
many of them owned the faith of Christ, and reverenced the apostle
of his word. It is said, but not proved, that a division of the great
fields of labor was made by the apostles among themselves, about
the time of the destruction of Jerusalem; and that, when Andrew took
Scythia, and others their sections of duty, Asia was assigned to
John, who passed the rest of his life there accordingly. This field
had already, indeed, been gone over by Paul and his companions, and
already at Ephesus itself had a church been gathered, which was now
flourishing under the pastoral care of Timothy, who had been instructed
and commissioned for this very field, by Paul himself. But these
circumstances, so far from deterring the apostle John from presenting
himself on a field of labor already so nobly entered, are supposed
rather to have operated as incitements to draw him into a place where
so solid a foundation had been laid for a complete fabric. As a center
of missionary action, indeed, Ephesus certainly did possess many local
advantages of a high order. The metropolis of all Asia Minor,――a noble
emporium for the productions of that great section of the eastern
continent, on whose farthest western shore it stood,――and a grand
center for the traffic of the great Mediterranean sea, whose waters
rolled from that haven over the mighty shores of three continents,
bearing, wherever they flowed, the ships of Ephesus,――this port
offered the most ready and desirable means of intercourse with all the
commercial cities of the world, from Tyre, or Alexandria, or Sinope,
to the pillars of Hercules, and gave the quickest and surest access to
the gates of Rome itself. Its widely extended commerce, of course, drew
around its gates a constant throng of people from many distant parts of
the world, a few of whom, if imbued with the gospel, would thus become
the missionaries of the word of truth to millions, where the name of
Jesus was before unknown. And since, after the death of all the other
apostles, John survived alone, so long, it was desirable for all the
Christian churches in the world, that the only living minister of the
word who had been instructed from the lips of Jesus himself, should
reside in some such place, where he might so easily be visited by all,
and whence his instructions might quickly go forth to all. His inspired
counsels, and his wonder-working prayers, might be sought for all who
needed them, and his apostolic ordinances might be heard and obeyed,
almost at once, by the most distant churches. But the circumstance,
which more especially might lead the wanderer from the ruined city and
homes of his fathers, to Ephesus, was the great gathering of Jews at
this spot, who of course thus presented to the Jewish apostle an ample
field for exertions, for which his natural and acquired endowments best
fitted him.
In the account given in the Acts of the Apostles of Paul’s visit to
Ephesus, particular mention is made of a synagogue there, in which
he preached and disputed daily, for a long period, with great effect.
Yet Paul’s labors had by no means attained such complete success among
the Jews there, as to make it unnecessary for another apostle to labor
in the ministry of the circumcision, in that same place; for it is
especially mentioned that Paul, after three months’ active exertion
in setting forth the truth in the synagogues, was induced by the
consideration of the peculiar difficulties which beset him, among these
proud and stubborn adherents of the old Mosaic system, to withdraw
himself from among them; and during the remainder of his two years’
stay, he devoted himself, for the most part, to the instruction of the
willing Greeks, who opened the schools of philosophy for his teachings,
with far more willingness than the Jews did their house of religious
assembly. And it appears that the greater part of his converts were
rather among the Greeks than the Jews; for in the great commotions
that followed, the attack upon the preachers of Christianity was
made entirely by a _heathen_ mob, in which no Israelite seems to
have had any hand whatever; so that Paul had evidently made but
little impression, comparatively, on the latter class. Among the
Jews then, there was still a wide field open for the labors of one,
consecrated, more especially, for the ministry of the circumcision.
The circumstances of the times, also, presented many advantages for a
successful assault upon the religious prejudices of his countrymen. The
great Center of Unity for the race of Israel throughout the world, had
now fallen into an irretrievable oblivion, under the fire and sword of
the invader. The glories of the ancient covenant seemed to have passed
away forever; and in the high devotion of the Jew, a blank was now
left, by the destruction of the only temple of his ancient faith, which
nothing else on earth could fill. Henceforth he might be trained to
look for a spiritual temple,――a city eternal in the heavens, whose
lasting foundations were laid by no mortal hand, for the heathen to
sweep away in unholy triumph; but whose builder and maker was God. Thus
prepared, by the mournful consummation of their country’s utter ruin,
for the reception of a pure faith, the condition of the disconsolate
Jews must have appeared in the highest degree interesting to the
solitary surviving apostle of Jesus; and he would naturally devote the
remnant of his days to that portion of the world where he might make
the deepest impression on them, and where his influence might spread
widest to the scattered members of a people, then as now, eminently
commercial.
Under these peculiarly interesting circumstances, the Apostle John is
supposed to have arrived at Ephesus, where Timothy, still holding the
episcopal chair in which he had been placed by the Apostle Paul, must
have hailed with great delight the arrival of the venerable John, from
whose instructions and counsels, he might hope to derive advantages so
much the more welcome, since the sword of the heathen persecution had
removed his original apostolic teacher from the world. John must have
been, at the time of his journey to Ephesus, considerably advanced
in life. His precise age, and the date of his arrival, are altogether
unknown, nor are there any fixed points on which the most critical
and ingenious historical investigation can base any certain conclusion
whatever, as to these interesting matters. Various and widely different
have been the conclusions on these points;――some fixing his journey
to Ephesus in the reign of Claudius, long before the destruction
of Jerusalem, and even before the council on the question of the
circumcision. The true character of this tale can be best appreciated
by a reference to another circumstance, which is gravely appended
to it by its narrators;――which is, that he was accompanied on this
tour by the Virgin Mary, and that she lived there with him for a long
time. This journey too, is thus made to precede the journey of Paul
to Ephesus, by many years, and yet no account whatever is given of the
reasons of the profound silence observed in the Acts of the Apostles,
on an event so important to the history of the propagation of the
gospel, nor why John could have lived so long at Ephesus, and yet have
effected so little, that when Paul came to the same place, the very
name of Christ was new there. But such stories are not worth refuting,
standing as they do, self-convicted falsehoods. Others however, are
more reasonable, and date this journey in the year of the destruction
of Jerusalem, supposing that Ephesus was the first place of refuge
to which the apostle went. But this conjecture is totally destitute
of all ancient authority, and is inconsistent with the very reasonable
supposition adopted above,――that he, in the flight from Jerusalem,
first journeyed eastward, following the general current of the
fugitives, towards the Euphrates. Where there is such a total want of
all data, any fixed decision is out of the question; but it is very
reasonable to suppose that John’s final departure from the east did
not take place till some years after this date; probably not until the
reign of Domitian. (A. D. 81 or 82.) He had lived in Babylon therefore,
till he had seen most of his brethren and friends pass away from
his eyes. The venerable Peter had sunk into the grave, and had been
followed by the rest of the apostolic band, until the youngest apostle,
now grown old, found himself standing alone in the midst of a new
generation, like one of the solitary columns of desolate Babylon,
among the low dwelling places of its refugee inhabitants. But among
the hourly crumbling heaps of that ruined city, and the fast-darkening
regions of that half-savage dominion, there was each year less and
less around him, on which his precious labor could be advantageously
expended. Christianity never seizes readily on the energies of a broken
or degenerating people, nor does it flourish where the influences of
civilization are losing their hold. Its exalted and exalting genius
rather takes the spirits that are already on the wing for an upward
course, and rises with them, giving new energy to the ascending
movement. It may exert its elevating influence too, on the yet wild
spirit of the uncivilized, and give, in the new conceptions of a
pure faith and a high destiny, the first impulse to the advance of
man towards refinement, in knowledge, and art, and freedom; but its
very existence among them is dependent on this _forward_ and _upward_
movement,――and the beginning of its mortal decay dates from the
cessation of the developments of the intellectual and physical
resources of the race on which it operates. Among the subjects of the
Parthian empire, this downward movement was already fully decided; and
they were fast losing those refinements of feeling and thought on which
the new faith could best fasten its spiritual and inspiring influences;
they therefore soon became but hopeless objects of missionary exertion,
when compared with the active and enterprising inhabitants of the
still improving regions of the west. “Westward” then, “the star” of
Christianity as “of empire, took its way;” and the last of the apostles
was but following, not leading, the march of his Lord’s advancing
dominion, when he shook off the dust of the darkening eastern lands
from his feet, forever; turning his aged face towards the setting sun,
to find in his latter days, a new home and a foreign grave among the
children of his brethren; and to rejoice his old eyes with the glorious
sight of what God had done for the churches, among the flourishing
cities of the west, that were still advancing under Grecian art and
Roman sway.
_Ephesus._――On the importance of this place, as an apostolic
station, the Magdeburg Centuriators are eloquent; and such is
the classic elegance of the Latin in which these moderns have
expressed themselves, that the passage is worth giving entire,
for the sake of those who can enjoy the beauty of the original.
“Considera mirabile Dei consilium. Joannes in Ephesum ad littus
maris Aegei collocatus est: ut inde, quasi e specula, retro
suam Asiam videret, suaque fragrantia repleret: ante se vero
Graeciam, totamque Europam haberet; ut inde, tanquam tuba Domini
sonora, etiam ultra-marinos populos suis concionibus ac scriptis
inclamaret et invitaret ad Christum; presertim, cum ibi fuerit
admodum commodus portus, plurimique mercatores ac homines
peregrini ea loca adierint.” The beauty of such a sentence
is altogether beyond the force of English, and the elegant
paronomasia which repeatedly occurs in it, increasing the power
of the original expression to charm the ear and mind, is totally
lost in a translation, but the meanings of the sentences may be
given for the benefit of those readers to whom the Latin is not
familiar.――“Regard the wonderful providence of God. John was
stationed at Ephesus, on the shore of the Aegean sea; so that
there, as in a mirror, he might behold his peculiar province,
Asia, behind him, and might fill it with the incense of his
prayers: before him too, he had Greece and all Europe; so that
there, as with the far-sounding trumpet of the Lord, he might
summon and invite to Christ, by his sermons and writings, even
the nations beyond the sea, by the circumstance that there,
was a most spacious haven, and that vast numbers of traders and
travelers thronged to the place.”
Chrysostom speaks also of the importance of Ephesus as an
apostolic station, alluding to it as a strong hold of heathen
philosophy; but there is no reason to think that John ever
distinguished himself by any assaults upon systems with which
he was not, and could never have been sufficiently acquainted
to enable him to attack them; for in order to meet an evil, it
is necessary to understand it thoroughly. There is no hint of
an acquaintance with philosophy in any part of his writings,
nor does any historian speak of his making converts among them.
Chrysostom’s words are,――“He fixed himself also in Asia, where
anciently all the sects of Grecian philosophy cultivated their
sciences. There he flashed out in the midst of the foe, clearing
away their darkness, and storming the very citadel of demons.
And with this design he went to this place, so well suited to
one who would work such wonders.” (Homily 1, on John.)
The idea of John’s visit to Ephesus, where Timothy was already
settled over the church as bishop, has made a great deal of
trouble to those who stupidly confound the office of an apostle
with that of a bishop, and are always degrading an apostle into
a mere church-officer. Such blunderers of course, are put to
a vast deal of pains to make out how Timothy could manage to
keep possession of his bishopric, with the Apostle John in the
same town with him; for they seem to think that a bishop, like
the flag-officer on a naval station, can hold the command of the
post not a moment after a senior officer appears in sight; but
that then down comes the broad blue pennon to be sure, and never
is hoisted again till the greater officer is off beyond the
horizon. But no such idle arrangements of mere etiquette were
ever suffered to mar the noble and useful simplicity of the
primitive church government, in the least. The presence of an
apostle in the same town with a bishop, could no more interfere
with the regular function of the latter, than the presence of a
diocesan bishop in any city of his diocese, excludes the rector
of the church there, from his pastoral charge. The sacred duties
of Timothy were those of the pastoral care of a single church,――a
sort of charge that no apostle ever assumed out of Jerusalem;
but John’s apostolic duties led him to exercise a general
supervision over a great number of churches. All those in Little
Asia would claim his care alike, and the most distant would look
to him for counsel; while that in Ephesus, having been so well
established by Paul, and being blessed by the pastoral care of
Timothy, who had been instructed and commissioned for that very
place and duty, by him, would really stand in very little need
of any direct attention from John. Yet among his Jewish brethren
he would still find much occasion for his missionary labor,
even in that city; and this was the sort of duty which was most
appropriate to his apostolic character; for the apostles were
missionaries and not bishops.
Others pretend to say, however, that Timothy was dead when John
arrived, and that John succeeded him in the bishopric,――a mere
invention to get rid of the difficulty, and proved to be such
by the assertion that the apostle was a bishop, and rendered
suspicious also by the circumstance of Timothy being so young
a man.
The fable of the Virgin Mary’s journey, in company with John, to
Ephesus, has been very gravely supported by Baronius, (Annals,
44, § 29,) who makes it happen in the second year of the reign
of Claudius, and quotes as his authority a groundless statement,
drawn from a mis-translation of a synodical epistle from the
council of Ephesus to the clergy at Constantinople, containing
a spurious passage which alludes to this story, condemning the
Nestorians as heretics, for rejecting the tale. There are, and
have long been, however, a vast number of truly discreet and
learned Romanists, who have scorned to receive such contemptible
and useless inventions. Among these, the learned Antony Pagus,
in his Historico-Chronological Review of Baronius, has utterly
refuted the whole story, showing the spurious character of
the passage quoted in its support. (Pagus, Critica Baronius
Annals, 42. § 3.) Lampe quotes moreover, the Abbot Facditius,
the Trevoltian collectors and Combefisius, as also refuting the
fable. Among the Protestant critics, Rivetus and Basnage have
discussed the same point.
Of the incidents of John’s life at Ephesus, no well authorized account
whatever can be given. Yet on this part of apostolic history the
Fathers are uncommonly rich in details, which are interesting, and
some of which present no improbability on examination; but their worst
character is, that they do not make their appearance until above one
hundred years after the date of the incidents which they commemorate,
and refer to no authority but loose and floating tradition. In
respect to these, too, occurs exactly the same difficulty which has
already been specified in connection with the traditionary history of
Peter,――that the same early writers, who record as true these stories
which are so probable and reasonable in their character, also present
in the same grave manner other stories, which do bear, with them,
on their very faces, the evidence of their utter falsehood, in their
palpable and monstrous absurdity. Among the possible and probable
incidents of John’s life, narrated by the Fathers, are a journey to
Jerusalem, and one also to Rome,――but of these there is no certainty,
nor any acceptable evidence. These long journeys, too, are wholly
without any sufficient assigned object, which would induce so old a man
to leave his quiet and useful residence at Ephesus, to travel hundreds
and thousands of miles. The churches of both Rome and Jerusalem were
under well organized governments, which were perfectly competent to the
administration of their own affairs, without the presence of an apostle;
or, if they needed his counsel in an emergency, he could communicate
his opinions to them with great certainty, by message, and with far
more quickness and ease, than by a journey to them. Such an occasion
for a direct call on him, however, could but very rarely occur,――nor
would so unimportant an event as the death of one bishop and the
installation of another, ever induce him to take a journey to sanction
a mere formality by his presence. His help certainly was not needed
by any church out of his own little Asian circle, in the selection of
proper persons to fill vacant offices of government or instruction.
They knew best their own wants, and the abilities of their own members
to exercise any official duty to which they might be called; while
John, a perfect stranger to most of them, would feel neither disposed
nor qualified for meddling with any part of the internal policy of
other churches. But the principal condemnation of the statement of his
journey to Rome is contained in the foolish story connected with it,
by its earliest narrator,――that on his arrival there, he was, by order
of the emperor Domitian, thrown into a vessel full of hot oil; but,
so far from receiving the slightest injury from such a frying, he came
out of this greasy place of torture, quite improved in every respect
by the immersion; and, as the story goes, arose from it perfumed like
an _athleta_ anointed for the combat. There are very great variations,
however, in the different narrations of this affair; some representing
the event as having occurred in Ephesus, under the orders of the
proconsul of Asia, and not in Rome, under the emperor, as the earlier
form of the fable states. Among the statements which fix the scene of
this miracle in Rome, too, there is a very important chronological
difference,――some dating it under the emperor Nero, which would carry
it back as early as the time of Peter’s fabled martyrdom, and implies
a total contradiction of all established opinions on his prolonged
residence in the east. In short, the whole story is so completely
covered over with gross blunders and contradictions about times and
places, that it can not receive any place among the details of serious
and well-authorized history.
_Thrown into a vessel of oil._――This greasy story has a
tolerably respectable antiquity, going farther back with its
authorities than any other fable in the Christian mythology,
except Justin Martyr’s story about Simon Magus. The earliest
authority for this is Tertullian, (A. D. 200,) who says that
“at Rome, the Apostle John, having been immersed in hot oil,
suffered no harm at all from it.” (De Praescriptionibus adversus
Haereticos, c. 36.) “In oleum igneum immersus nihil passus est.”
But for nearly two hundred years after, no one of the Fathers
refers to this fable. Jerome (A. D. 397.) is the next of any
certain date, and speaks of it in two passages. In the first
(Against Jovinianus I. 14,) he quotes Tertullian as authority,
but bunglingly says, that “he was thrown into the kettle by
order of _Nero_,”――a most palpable error, not sanctioned by
Tertullian. In the second passage, (Commentary on Matthew xx.
23,) he furthermore refers in general terms to “ecclesiastical
histories, in which it was said that John, on account of his
testimony concerning Christ, was thrown into a kettle of boiling
oil, and came out thence like an _athleta_, to win the crown
of Christ.” From these two sources, the other narrators of
the story have drawn it. Of the modern critics and historians,
besides the great herd of Papists, several Protestants are
quoted by Lampe, as strenuously defending it; and several of
the greatest, who do not absolutely receive it as true, yet do
not presume to decide against it; as the Magdeburg Centuriators,
(Century 1, lib. 2. c. 10,) who however declare it very doubtful
indeed, “_rem incertissimam_;”――Ittig, Le Clerc and Mosheim
taking the same ground. But Meisner, Cellarius, Dodwell,
Spanheim, Heumann and others, overthrow it utterly, as a
baseless fable. They argue against it _first_, from the bad
character of its only ancient witness. Tertullian is well known
as most miserably credulous, and fond of catching up these idle
tales; and even the devoutly credulous Baronius condemns him in
the most unmeasured terms for his greedy and undiscriminating
love of falsehood. _Secondly_, they object the profound silence
of all the Fathers of the second, third and fourth centuries,
excepting him and Jerome; whereas, if such a remarkable incident
were of any authority whatever, those numerous occasions on
which they refer to the banishment of John to Patmos, which
Tertullian connects so closely with this story, would suggest
and require a notice of the causes and attendant circumstances
of that banishment, as stated by him. How could those eloquent
writers, who seem to dwell with so much delight on the noble
trials and triumphs of the apostles, pass over this wonderful
peril and miraculous deliverance? Why did Irenaeus, so studious
in extolling the glory of John, forget to specify an incident
implying at once such a courageous spirit of martyrdom in this
apostle, and such a peculiar favor of God, in thus wonderfully
preserving him? Hippolytus and Sulpitius Severus too, are silent;
and more than all, Eusebius, so diligent in scraping together
all that can heap up the martyr-glories of the apostles, and
more particularly of John himself, is here utterly without a
word on this interesting event. Origen, too, dwelling on the
modes in which the two sons of Zebedee drank the cup of Jesus,
as he prophesied, makes no use of this valuable illustration.
On the origin of this fable, Lampe mentions a very ingenious
conjecture, that some such act of cruelty may have been
meditated or threatened, but afterwards given up; and that
thence the story became accidentally so perverted as to make
what was merely designed, appear to have been partly put in
execution.
In this decided condemnation of the venerable Tertullian, I
am justified by the example of Lampe, whose reverence for the
authority of the Fathers is much greater than that of most
theologians of later days. He refers to him in these terms:
“TERTULLIANUS, cujus credulitas, in arripiendis futilibus
narratiunculis alias non ignota est.”――“Whose credulity in
catching up idle tales is well known in other instances.”
Haenlein also calls him “der leichtglaubige Tertullian,”――“the
credulous Tertullian.” (Haenlein’s Einleitung in Neuen
Testamentes vol. III. p. 166.)
This miraculous event procured the highly-favored John, by
this _extreme unction_, all the advantages with none of the
disadvantages of martyrdom; for in consequence of this peril he
has received among the Fathers the name of a “living martyr.”
(ζοων μαρτυρ) Gregory of Nazianzus, Chrysostom, Athanasius,
Theophylact and others, quoted by Suicer, [sub voc. μαρτυρ,]
apply this term to him. “He had the _mind_ though not the _fate_
of a martyr.” “Non defuit animus martyrio,” &c. [Jerome and
Cyprian.] Through ignorance of the meaning of the word μαρτυρ,
in this peculiar application to John, the learned Haenlein
seems to me to have fallen into an error on the opinion of these
Fathers about his mode of death. In speaking of the general
testimony as to the quiet death of this apostle, Haenlein says:
“But Chrysostom, only in one ambiguous passage, (Homily 63
in Matthew) and his follower Theophylact, number the Apostle
John among the martyrs.” [Haenlein’s Einleitung in Neuen
Testamentes vol. III. chap. vi. § 1, p. 168.] The fact is, that
not only these two, but several other Fathers, use the term in
application to John, and they all do it without any implication
of an actual, fatal martyrdom; as may be seen by a reference to
Suicer, sub voc.
So little reverence have the critical, even among the Romanists,
for any of these old stories about John’s adventures, that the
sagacious Abbot Facditius (quoted by Lampe) quite turns these
matters into a jest. Coupling this story with the one about
John’s chaste celibacy, (as supported by the monachists,) he
says, in reference to the latter, that if John made out to
preserve his chastity uncontaminated among such a people as the
Jews were, in that most corrupt age, he should consider it a
greater miracle than if John had come safe out of the kettle of
boiling oil; but on the reverend Abbot’s sentiment, perhaps many
will remark with Lampe,――“quod pronuntiatum tamen nimis audax
est.”――“It is rather too bold to pronounce such an opinion.”
Nevertheless, such a termination of life would be so much in
accordance with the standard mode of dispatching an apostle,
that they would never have taken him out of the oil-kettle,
except for the necessity of sending him to Patmos, and dragging
him on through multitudes of odd adventures yet to come. So we
might then have had the satisfaction of winding up his story,
in the _literal_ and happy application of the words of a certain
venerable poetical formula for the conclusion of a nursery tale,
which here makes not only rhyme but reason,――
* * * * *