‘This is among the most striking of those vivid descriptive traits
which distinguish the narrative of the Fourth Gospel generally, and
which are especially remarkable in these last scenes of Jesus’ life,
where the beloved disciple was himself an eye-witness and an
actor[38].’
It has been objected that too high a place is given to the ‘beloved
disciple,’ and that the stress laid on this is a mark of egotism. But
Bishop Westcott has shown (_ad loc._) that this criticism rests on a
mistaken view of the order of precedence. The place of honour was in the
centre, and the guests reclined on the left side. Peter occupies the
second place behind his Master. The beloved disciple has the third
place, where his head would naturally be in his Master’s bosom. When we
realize this all the details of the narrative become plain.
What we have said of the Last Supper applies also to the last discourses
which followed upon it. There too we have the same distinct recollection
of persons, of the questions put by each, and the replies which they
received. Thomas and Philip stand out in the dialogue of xiv. 4-9. But
what is perhaps still more noticeable is the careful specification of
Judas (not Iscariot), a disciple otherwise obscure and of little
prominence, in ver. 22. If this is art, it is art that is wonderfully
like nature. We notice also the disciples’ comments, evidently spoken in
an undertone, in xvi. 17.
What could be more easy or more natural than the description of
Gethsemane in xviii, 1, 2, and the explanation that it was a familiar
haunt of Jesus and His disciples? This is just such a reminiscence as we
might expect from one who had been himself a disciple.
There is an ‘undesigned coincidence’ in the fact that the unnamed
disciple is described as being ‘known to the high priest,’ and that the
Gospel, of which he may be presumed to be the writer, alone gives the
name of the high priest’s servant, whose ear Peter cut off, as Malchus,
and alone knows that one of the servants who questioned Peter was his
kinsman (xviii. 10, 15, 26). It was apparently because the unnamed
disciple was a privileged person, that he was not called upon to give an
account of himself as Peter was.
We need not go the whole length of the way with Delff, and may yet feel
sure that it is not an accident that this same disciple, who is so much
at home in the high priest’s house, should also have special knowledge
of persons like Joseph of Arimathaea and Nicodemus, both members of the
Sanhedrin.
Other portions of chaps. xviii and xix will come before us in other
connexions. The important passage xix. 34, 35 has already been discussed
in part, and we shall have to return to it later. The whole of chap. xx
is really significant for our purpose. It is a record of events that
immediately followed the Resurrection, and is told throughout from the
point of view of the disciples. The delicate precision of the narrative
is specially noteworthy in vers. 3-10, where again we have the unnamed
disciple in the company of St. Peter. The story is briefly told, but
there is enough detail to let us see the different characterization of
the two men. We shall not be wrong in thinking of the unnamed disciple
as the younger of the two, indeed in the first flush of youth. He is
fleet of foot and outstrips his companion; but he is also of a finer and
more sensitive mould, and when he reaches the tomb a feeling of awe
comes over him, and he pauses for a moment outside. The impetuous Peter
has fewer scruples, and he hurries at once into the tomb, and makes his
examination of its contents. The spell is broken, and the young disciple
also enters. I shall have a word to say later of the effect on both
disciples of what they see.
In the rest of the chapter the reader, with the author, is drawn a
little aside and allowed to witness the events one by one; first, the
appearance to Mary Magdalene, and then the two appearances to the
collected disciples, when Thomas is absent and afterwards when he is
present.
A like point of view appears in the next chapter. The narrator is
himself never far away from the events he is recording. Towards the end
of the chapter he is pushed forward into a prominence that is only
faintly disguised. In the scene on the lake there comes back to him the
feeling that had first passed through his own mind as well as those of
his companions. They did not recognize the figure that in the grey dawn
called to them from the shore. The instinct of love was the first to
awake that sensitive quick perception: the old parts are again repeated;
it is the unnamed disciple who speaks and Peter who acts. But the two
are friends; and presently, when Peter has been rather hard pressed by
his Lord’s searching inquiry and the prophetic forecast with which it
ends, a sudden impulse leads him to turn the conversation to his
companion. He would fain have the forecast extended to him. His
interest, or curiosity, is baffled by an ambiguous reply. And here, once
more, the writer steps in to prevent a wrong inference being drawn from
its ambiguity.
So far we have been following a series of passages which place us at the
standpoint of the disciples at the time of the events of which they were
witnesses. The writer for the moment revives in himself, or seems to
revive, the old impression. If it is not a spontaneous recurrence to the
past, it is at least successful in giving the appearance of spontaneity.
But there is another class of passages where the procedure is rather
more complex; where the writer not only throws himself back into the
past, but also looks back upon the past in the light of his subsequent
experience. There is no better example of this than the very first that
meets us:
‘And to them that sold the doves he said, Take these things hence;
make not my Father’s house a house of merchandise. His disciples
remembered that it was written, The zeal of thine house shall eat me
up. The Jews therefore answered and said unto him, What sign shewest
thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered
and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up. The Jews therefore said, Forty and six years was this
temple in building, and wilt thou raise it up in three days? But he
spake of the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from
the dead, his disciples remembered that he spake this; and they
believed the scripture, and the word which Jesus had said’ (John ii.
16-22).
Here we have two allusions to the disciples as ‘remembering’ something
that had happened, and combining it in their minds with an idea of
interpretation. Bishop Westcott distinguishes between the two occasions.
He thinks that the expulsion of the buyers and sellers recalled to the
disciples at once the passage of the psalm (Ps. lxix. 9): he thinks that
they applied it to the act while it was going on. On the other hand ver.
22 is explicit to the effect that the disciples did not bethink them of
the saying, and see what they conceive to be the meaning, until after
the Lord was risen from the dead. I am not so sure that any contrast is
intended. The tense (ἐμνήσθησαν) in the first instance is indefinite,
and allows us to think that the application of the psalm was an
after-thought; and the attitude of mind which was on the watch for
fulfilments of scripture came later. However this may be, in the second
instance at least, we clearly have what professes to be a bit of
autobiography—autobiography in which the writer speaks for his fellows
as well as himself.
Exactly similar to this is the comment on the Triumphal Entry, and the
passages of Scripture which it too recalled:
‘These things understood not his disciples at the first: but when
Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these things were
written of him, and that they had done these things unto him’ (xii.
16).
It is an apt description of a process that we may be sure was constantly
going on in the minds of the first disciples. It is a rather different
kind of allusion when at the Last Supper the Lord explains to Peter in
reference to the washing of the disciples’ feet, ‘What I do thou knowest
not now; but thou shalt understand hereafter.’ This points to the
interpretation which was to come, not so much from Scripture as from
experience and reflection.
The last discourses contain many passages of this latter kind. Their
general character is prophetic; but the writer and his companions had
lived to see the prophecies fulfilled. It is very natural, and we cannot
be surprised if the effect of the fulfilment is traceable in the form
given to the prediction. The spirit in which the writer looks back upon
the events that happened after the Resurrection is that expressed in
xiv. 29, ‘And now I have told you before it come to pass, that, when it
is come to pass, ye may believe.’
Here is a retrospect: ‘They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea,
the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth
service unto God.... But these things have I spoken unto you, that when
their hour is come, ye may remember them, how that I told you’ (xvi. 2,
4).
And this is another: ‘Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is come, that ye
shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave me alone’
(xvi. 32).
A later stage of the Apostles’ experience is reflected in the following:
‘Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the
world shall rejoice: ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be
turned into joy. A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her
hour is come: but when she is delivered of her child, she remembereth no
more the anguish, for the joy that a man is born into the world. And ye
therefore now have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart
shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you’ (xvi. 20-2).
The great salient fact that stood out in the experience of the first
disciples was the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and its effect upon
themselves. This is vividly reflected in a series of passages:
‘These things have I spoken unto you, while yet abiding with you.
But the Comforter, even the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send
in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring to your
remembrance all that I said unto you. Peace I leave with you; my
peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let
not your heart be troubled, neither let it be fearful’ (xiv. 25-7).
‘But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the
Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father,
he shall bear witness of me: and ye also bear witness, because ye
have been with me from the beginning’ (xv. 26, 27).
‘Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you
into all the truth: for he shall not speak from himself; but what
things soever he shall hear, these shall he speak: and he shall
declare unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify me:
for he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you’ (xvi. 13,
14).
It might be said that these passages are a summary sketch of the mental
history of the Evangelist from the day of Pentecost onwards. They show
him to us looking back upon the eventful time through which he had
passed with ever broadening intelligence. They contain the whole secret
of the way in which he came to write the ‘spiritual Gospel.’
* * * * *
I am aware that the probative force of the phenomena which I have been
reviewing will be differently estimated. I should myself not have laid
so much stress upon them if they had stood alone, or if they had
occurred in a different class of literature. The novel writers and
imaginative biographers of the present day make a point of keeping up
the illusion of only allowing the supposed author to use the language
appropriate to the exact situation in which he is placed at the time
when he is conceived to be writing. But the writers of the first century
A.D. were not so scrupulous, and what is natural to us would be very
unusual with them. Still I do not deny that a writer whose habit of mind
it was to throw himself back into an assumed position, might by the
exercise of a special gift have been able to keep up the position so
assumed. But in the case before us, we have the instances which I began
by quoting where the author claims for himself or others claim for him
that he is recording what he had himself heard and seen. This at once
puts in our hands a far simpler and easier hypothesis, a hypothesis
which really makes no demands upon our constructive powers at all.
Whereas it is probable that not one ancient in a thousand, or one in ten
thousand, would have written as the writer of the Fourth Gospel has
done, if he had not been an eye-witness; it would have been only the
natural way for him to write, if he had been an eye-witness. This latter
hypothesis therefore seems much preferable to the other. It is confirmed
by the really remarkable consistency with which the point of view is
carried out, and by another large class of phenomena which will come
before us in the next lecture.