Where two or more persons are concerned in the composition of a book,
the relation between them may be through a written document, or it may
be oral. Hitherto we have been going upon the latter assumption: the
mediating theories that we have been considering, so far as they were
mediating, have treated the writer of the Gospel, whatever his name, as
a disciple or associate of St. John the Apostle; and the information
derived from him is supposed to have come by way of personal
intercourse. But it is quite conceivable that St. John may have set down
something on paper, and that some later Christian—disciple or not—took
this and worked it up into our present Gospel. Accordingly, various
attempts have been made at different times to mark off a Gospel within
the Gospel, an original authentic document derived from a first-hand
authority—either the Apostle or the Presbyter—and certain added material
incorporated in the Gospel as we now have it. Many of these attempts are
obsolete and do not need discussion. It has already been mentioned that
Delff—without any clear necessity even from his own point of view—cuts
out more particularly the Galilean passages and some others with them as
interpolations. These additions to the Gospel he regards as the work of
the author of chap. xxi[10]. But the most systematic and important
experiments in this direction are those of Dr. Wendt and Dr. Briggs.
After a preliminary sketch of his theory in the first edition of his
_Lehre Jesu_ (1886), i. 215-342, Dr. H. H. Wendt brought out in 1900 an
elaborate and fully argued analysis of the Gospel, carefully dissecting
each section and assigning the parts either to the Apostolic author or
to the later redactor. Approximately similar results were obtained
independently with a less amount of published argument, by Dr. C. A.
Briggs in his _General Introduction to the Study of Holy Scripture_
(1899), p. 327, and in his _New Light on the Life of Jesus_ (1904), pp.
140-58. A like theory has been put forward by Professor Soltau
(_Zeitschrift f. d. neutest. Wissenschaft_, 1901, pp. 140-9).
In my opinion all attempts of this kind are fore-doomed to failure. The
underlying motive is to rescue some portion of the Gospel as historical,
while others are dismissed as untrustworthy. At the same time it is
allowed that the separation can only be made where there is a real break
in the connexion. On this Schmiedel pertinently remarks:—
‘There is much reason to fear that distrust of the authenticity of
the substance often causes an interruption of the connexion to be
imagined where in reality there is none. Many passages of the same
sort as others, which give Wendt occasion for the separating
process, are left by him untouched, when the result would not be
removal of some piece held to be open to exception in respect to its
contents; the ground for exception which he actually takes, on the
other hand, is often altogether non-existent[11].’
I look with considerable distrust on many of the attempts that are made
to divide up documents on the ground of want of connexion. I suspect
that the standard of consecutiveness applied is often too Western and
too modern. But the one rock on which it seems to me that any partition
theory must be wrecked is the deep-seated unity of structure and
composition which is characteristic of the Gospel. Dr. Briggs turns the
edge of this argument by referring the unity to the masterful hand of
the editor. It is, no doubt, open to him to do so; but we may observe
that, if in this way he makes the theory difficult to disprove, he also
makes it difficult to prove. I must needs think that both in this case
and in Dr. Wendt’s the proof is quite insufficient. I would undertake to
show that the distinctive features of the Gospel are just as plentiful
in the passages excised as in those that are retained. Perhaps the most
tangible point made by the two critics is the attempt to distinguish
between the words for ‘miracle’: ‘works’ they would assign to the
earlier writer, and ‘signs’ to the later. We remember, however, that the
combination of ‘signs’ and ‘wonders’ occurs markedly in St. Paul, e. g.
Rom. xv. 19, 2 Cor. xii. 12, and is indeed characteristic of early
Christian literature long before the Fourth Gospel was written.
Another very original suggestion of Dr. Briggs’ which would be helpful
if we could accept it, is that we are not tied down to the chronological
order of the Gospel as we have it, but that this too is due to the later
editor, who has arranged the sections of his narrative rather according
to subject than to sequence in time. I am prepared to allow that the
narrative may not be always strictly in the order in which the events
occurred; and it is true that there are some difficulties which the
hypothesis would meet. At the same time we cannot but notice that the
order is by no means accidental, but that attention is expressly drawn
to it in the Gospel itself; see (e. g. ii. 11, iv. 54, xxi. 14). And
some incidents seem clearly to hang together which Dr. Briggs has
divided[12] (e. g. i. 29, 35, 43, where the connexion is natural
historically, as well as expressly noted by the Evangelist).
I fear that the learned Professor is seeking in a wrong direction for a
solution of the problem of the Gospel. But I would be the last to
undervalue the vigorous independence and the fearlessness and fertility
in experiment that are conspicuous in all his writings.
Perhaps I should be right in saying a few words at this point about
Professor B. W. Bacon of Yale. His view is not as yet (I believe) quite
sufficiently developed in print for me to be clear how much he would
refer to oral transmission and how much to a written source. He
distinguishes three hands in the Gospel. I gather that the first would
be that of the Apostle, but he as yet stands dimly in the background.
Then comes the main body of the Gospel, without the Appendix. This is
ascribed to John the Presbyter, whom—rather by a paradox—Professor Bacon
would seek in Palestine and not in Asia Minor. Lastly there is the
editor who works over the whole.
The two articles lately contributed to the _Hibbert Journal_ (i. 511
ff., ii. 323 ff.)[13] are highly original, very incisive, and
exceedingly clever. My objection to them would be that they are too
clever. Professor Bacon has been to Germany, and learnt his lesson there
too well. At least I find myself differing profoundly from his whole
method of argument. The broad simple arguments that seem to me really of
importance (Irenaeus, Heracleon, Polycrates, Tatian, Clement of
Alexandria) he puts aside, and then he spends his strength in making
bricks with a minimum of straw, and even with no straw at all (the
argument from silence).